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Velikovsky’s Contributions

The purpose of this article is not to repeat the ‘scientific’ criticisms of Velikovsky, but to praise his contributions to the unraveling of the ancient texts and to reveal the ultimate solution to which they have led. His collection of hundreds of ancient references having relevance to recent catastrophism is unrivaled. Every time  I refer back to Worlds in Collision I am amazed how much is there. Ultimately, his lack of training in physics limited his ability to imagine the profound astrophysical implications of his research.

When first published in 1950 this book raised enormous interest among the general populace, which ironically, was increased by the unexpectedly vicious attacks from the astronomical ‘community’.  At that date astronomers had paid little attention to the planets and were not prepared to stifle the popularity of the work. In fact, Velikovsky’s ideas were the single greatest impetus to the study of the solar system, opposition to which stimulated the opening of Planetary Science departments in most major universities.

The material of which these ‘professors’ still teach is based primarily on the highly vocal and outdated ideas of Carl Sagan, invented to counter Velikovsky’s new ideas. Believe it or not, the currently published and taught hypothesis of the makeup of Jupiter, that of a hydrogen ‘gas giant’, was originally advanced by Rupert Wildt in 1917. In almost a century, even after a multi-year investigation of the planet by the NASA Galileo probe and many unsuccessful laboratory experiments to determine the equation of state of hydrogen, this hypothesis remains unproven – because it is not true. It is a great shame that the consummation of Velikovsky’s work (the subject matter of this entire blog) remains unrecognized – lost in the maze of books and TV documentaries published every year by the ‘consensus science’  of academia.

Jupiter

Velikovsky championed the idea, present in the ancient texts of many cultures, that Venus was ‘born’ out of Jupiter within the recent history of mankind, but failed to understand the implications for the makeup of Jupiter. For an impact to eject sufficient mass to create a Venus-sized planet, implies that Jupiter is a solid planet, not a ‘gas giant’. The fact that he did not recognize this led to numerous attacks by ‘consensus science’. Also Velikovsky’s dating of the creation of Venus, around the date of the Exodus, was much too recent, but this was not as serious a detriment.

The birth of Venus out of Jupiter has profound implications.  Not only does it reveal that Jupiter is a solid, frozen, methane gas hydrate planet, but by extension it reveals the entire cosmogony (origin) of the solar system! It means that all the heavy elements in the nascent solar system were accreted into Jupiter by the snowflakes that formed around the dust particles at the radius of Jupiter from the Sun.  Thus the planet formed slow and cold, probably over 70 million years. At some indeterminable later dates, impacts on Jupiter formed each of the terrestrial planets: Mars, including Mercury its former solid core 4.6 billion years BP; 700 million years later (3.9 billion years BP) the Earth; and only 6,000 years ago, Venus.

Venus

Velikovsky correctly interpreted the Greek myths as telling of the birth of proto-Venus out of Jupiter as Pallas Athene (young Athena) and presented innumerable quotations suggesting that it subsequently passed close to the Earth, the most descriptive being the myth of Phaethon.  As a result of this and its recent birth, he correctly predicted that it would still be very hot, which was subsequently proven by infrared observations and space probes. The data from the Pioneer Venus probe was cynically distorted, with the acceptance of the entire scientific ‘community’.  The high temperature was attributed to a ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ invented by Carl Sagan.  The ‘impossible’ atmospheric dropout of carbon dioxide data between 50 and 31 km altitudes was blamed on a clogged input leak to the mass spectrometer, and the high radiation from the lava on the surface of the planet was arbitrarily thrown out because “signals in all channels (of the sensitive radiometer) increased unreasonably”. The data is still there and accurately depicts the true makeup of Venus.

Velikovsky’s unfortunate dating of Venus’ approach to the Earth at the time of the Exodus was not consistent with his research indicating Venus had overturned the earth twice. Only a few beings on Earth could have survived such events because the oceans overflowed entire continents (the deucalion floods).  The overturnings occurred about 4,000 BC, and the state of the earth immediately after them is given in the second verse of Genesis “And the Earth became void and without form” (tohu and bohu).  Completely failing to understand the one-hundred interactions of Mars with the earth (in the Rig Veda and Hindu myth), he attributed many references about Mars to Venus instead. The fact that Venus remained closely watched and feared up to the time of Isaiah, was because of the effect it had in releasing Mars from its geostationary orbits of the Earth.  Unfortunately, Velikovsky never realized that Mars was the most significant and closest planet to the Earth for 3,000 years.

Mars

The second part of Worlds in Collision was devoted to the idea that Mars had some sort of close interactions with the Earth, but the author never came close to determining their true nature. However, his study of the historical writings of Amos and Isaiah have been instrumental in revealing the length and tidal effects of Mars’ orbits of the Earth.  They revealed raash (inadequately rendered ‘commotions’) involving floods and ‘eclipses’ when they could not have occurred. Quoting Velikovsky: “the word shaog, used by Amos and Joel, is explained by the Talmud as an ‘earthshock’, the field of action of which is the entire world, whereas a regular earthquake  is of local character. Such a shaking of the Earth, disturbed in its rotation, is visualized also as a “shaking of the sky”, an expression found in the Prophets, in Babylonian texts, and in other literary sources”. Many ancient texts tell of the resulting reorientations of the Earth’s axis at these dates. The best known was the sign given by the Lord to Hezekiah (Isaiah 38:7) that he would stop Sennacherib’s attack on Jerusalem. Also, Velikovsky quotes an actual speech of Amos, saying that the Lord (Yahweh) “orders the planets (Khima and Khesil)”.

The periods of fourteen and sixteen years between raash discovered by Velikovsky, were actually the time between the many captures and releases of Mars in geostationary orbit of the Earth.  In addition he noted that they occurred in late October and at the Passover (vernal equinox). This has allowed the determination of the of the intersection of Mars’ with the Earth’s orbit during the times between encounters.

Mercury

In Worlds in Collision Velikovsky mentions an important observation of Mercury, but did not recognize it as such. “The catastrophe came on the day on which King Ahaz was buried.  There was a “commotion”: the terrestrial axis shifted or was tilted, and the sunset was hastened by several hours. This cosmic disturbance is described in the Talmud, in the Midrashim, and referred to by the Fathers of the Church. It is related also in the records and told in the traditions of many peoples. It appears that a heavenly body passed very close to the Earth, moving as it seems, in the same direction as the Earth on its nocturnal side“.  This was the once-every- 30-year orbit of the Earth made by Mercury (Hermes, Hathor), the solid iron core of Mars, toward the East – an integral part of the process by which Mars left each orbit of the Earth.

What Velikovsky Failed to See

At the publication of Worlds in Collision (1950) no one would have accused Velikovsky of lacking imagination or daring, but he failed, in the case of Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Mercury, to take his work to its ultimate conclusion. If his grasp of the astrophysical consequences of the ancient texts had been more complete, he might have had a chance to establish a scientific following, because the accepted ideas of the planets at the time were not so fully ensconsed as they are now. Shamefully, the astronomical ‘community’ under Harold Shapely and Carl Sagan quickly came up with opposing hypotheses, all incorrect, the acceptance of which have resulted in setting back the world’s understanding of our ancient past and the solar system by some sixty years.

Convinced that the two overturnings of the Earth by Venus occurred in the second millennium BC, Velikovsky limited the entire range of his thinking concerning the period of cosmic chaos. Considering the fifteen-year raash period and reorientations of the Earth’s axis noted by Velikovsky, along with the Vedic ninety-nine Indras (visits of Mars), the Hindu life of Brahma equal to one hundred ‘holy days’, and the Greek contribution that the Olympian Gods (Olympus was Mars) reigned 3,000 years, the amazing conclusion presents itself that Venus initiated a period of cyclic encounters of Mars with the Earth beginning around 3700 BC which lasted until Velikovsky’s end date of 687 BC.

During this period, Mars became captured in a geostationary orbit for 14.4 years at a time and then was released into a planetary orbit for 15.6 years, resulting in a period of 30 years. This cycle was repeated one hundred times! Each capture of Mars caused a reorienting of the Earth’s axis and its added intertia changed the calendar to 360 days per year. With each Mars escape, the Earth returned to its normal spin axis and the calendar reverted to 365.25 days per year.  The escapes were triggered by approaches of Venus, but actually involved the temporary extraction of Mars’ solid iron core (now Mercury), with the two portions recombining eight days later (as described in Egyptian texts) as they drifted away from the Earth. At the final escape (687 BC) the outer shell and solid iron core failed to recombine and the two became the two incomplete ‘planets’ Mars and Mercury.

These encounters were indeed controlled by Yahweh because all the water, atmosphere and the seeds of tens of thousands of plants were blasted from the originally living planet Mars, to the Earth during the 3,000 years of cyclic catastrophism.  Scientists today wonder where the atmosphere and water on Mars have gone. Ironically, they are part of every living creature on Earth today.

~ by Angiras on March 3, 2013.

Posted in astronomy, Astrophysics, Bible, catastrophism, Hindu Mythology, mythology, paradigm shift, planetary science, Velikovsky
Tags: Velikovsky