My most recent book, Egypt Under the Stars, offers a paradigm-shifting vision of ancient religion. Together with my previous book, The Case of the Turquoise Sun (2024), it summarizes nearly a half-century’s worth of research into ancient cosmogonic myth and archaeoastronomy. The principal findings include:
The first gods were the planets, pure and simple.
Myths of Creation are best understood as eye-witness accounts describing singular cataclysmic events involving the respective planets moving in close proximity to Earth.
The earliest cosmogonic myths of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Vedic India, and Mesoamerica encode the “birth” of the Turquoise Sun, a Sun which is clearly distinguishable from the present sun.
The Queen of Heaven referenced in the Old Testament and in countless other ancient traditions around the globe is to be identified with the planet Venus.
The Warrior-Hero—represented by such familiar figures as Heracles, Gilgamesh, Samson, and Odysseus—is to be identified with the planet Mars.
The global myth of the hieros gamos, most familiar in Homer’s account of the torrid love affair between Aphrodite and Ares, describes a close conjunction (“marriage”) between Venus and Mars.
The origin of the primary institutions of human civilization—religion, drama, dance, music, philosophy, monumental architecture, New Year’s ritual, marriage, sports, etc.—is firmly rooted in, and ultimately inseparable from, the catastrophic events involving the respective planets.
The history of the solar system recounted in modern textbooks is utterly wrongheaded and divorced from reality.
An excerpt from, "On Fossil Gods and Forgotten Worlds" by Ev Cochrane, Lulu Press, May 2010:
How are we to explain ancient man's collective obsession with the comings and goings of the Great Gods-much less the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum evoked by their tumultuous fulminations from on high? For one reason or another, ancient man seems to have been fixated on observing the Great Gods and chronicling their extraordinary behavior-their peculiar births, uncanny metamorphoses, and innumerable love affairs. Why this should be the case has long been a puzzle and remains enshrouded in mystery to this very day. The answer, or so we have proposed in several monographs on the subject, is that ancient man actually witnessed the trials and tribulations of the Great Gods firsthand-this despite what we think possible nowadays. Indeed, a review of the evidence will reveal that the ancients were the traumatized survivors of truly extraordinary and devastating cataclysms involving various planetary bodies, the latter constituting the Gods themselves. Being at once life-threatening and strangely beautiful, the catastrophic events dominated the celestial landscape and were utterly mesmerizing. Indeed, it is precisely because the planetary cataclysms were so traumatic and fascinating that they were duly recorded-often in striking and painstaking detail. Upon being committed to memory, the events in question were eventually encoded in myth and endlessly celebrated in public celebrations and ritual reenactments. The unfolding celestial drama, properly reconstructed, is nothing less than the history of the Gods.
Like the fossilized bones of great dinosaurs revealed by a retreating riverbed, the testimony regarding fossil Gods provides telltale evidence of lost worlds and world-engulfing catastrophe. In this sense our work of historical reconstruction is not unlike that of a paleontologist, who seeks to deduce and reconstruct the biological record from a mere handful of scattered bones and teeth. Considered in isolation and without regard for historical context, no one bone or tooth can ever be conclusive. Rather, it is the comparison and analysis of detailed structures from around the globe that offers the most compelling evidence for the seemingly fantastic monsters that once ruled the earth. And the same logic and methodological rationale offers the surest guide for reconstructing the Great Gods who only recently dominated the sky. By revisiting and analyzing the abundant mnemonic structures attested in ancient myth and ritual, Fossil Gods and Forgotten Worlds attempts to shed some much needed light on the dramatic celestial events encoded therein-events that literally shook the world while exercising a decisive and formative influence on cultural institutions around the globe.
