Attos' Magazine

Volume #99, March/2010

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

Ambrosia

In what way did this veil of gloom dissolve itself?

When the air is overcharged with vapor, dew, rain, hail, or snow falls. Most probably the atmosphere discharged its compounds, presumably of carbon and hydrogen, in a similar way.

Has any testimony been preserved that during the many years of gloom carbohydrates precipitated?

“When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it.” It was like “the hoar frost on the ground.” It had the shape of coriander seed, the yellowish color of bdellium, and an oily taste like honeycomb. It was called “corn of heaven” and it was ground between stones and baked in pans. The manna fell from the clouds.

After the nightly cooling, the carbohydrates precipitated and fell with the morning dew. The grains dissolved in the heat and evaporated; but in a closed vessel the substance could be preserved for a long time.

The exegetes have endeavored to explain the phenomenon of manna and were helped by the naturalists who discovered that a tamarisk in the desert of Sinai sheds its seeds during certain months of the year. But why should this seed be called “corn of heaven,” “bread of heaven,” or why should it be said it “will rain bread from heaven?” It is also not easy to explain how a multitude of men and animals could have existed for many years in a wilderness on the scarce and seasonal seeds of some desert plant. Were such a thing possible, the desert would be preferable to tillable land that yields bread to the laborer only in the sweat of his brow.

The clouds brought the heavenly bread, it is also said in the Talmud. But if the manna fell from clouds that enveloped the entire world, it must have fallen not only in the Desert of Wanderings, but everywhere; and not only the Israelites, but other peoples, too, must have tasted it and spoken of it in their traditions.

There was a world fire, says the Icelandic tradition, followed by the Fimbul-winter, and only one human pair remained alive in the north. “This human pair lie hidden in the holt during the fire of Surt.” Then came “the terrible Fimbul-winter at the end of the world [age]; meanwhile they feed on morning dew, and from them come the folk who people the renewed earth.”

Three elements are connected in the Icelandic tradition which are the same three we met in the Israelite tradition: the world fire, the dark winter that endured many years, and the morning dew that served as food during these years of gloom when nothing budded.

The Maoris of New Zealand tell of fiery winds and fierce clouds that lashed the waters into tidal waves that touched the sky and were accompanied by furious hailstorms. The ocean fled. The progeny of the storm and hail were “Mist, and Heavy-dew and Light-dew.” After the catastrophe “but little of the dry land was left standing above the sea. Then clear light increased in the world, and the beings who had been hidden between [sky and earth] before they were parted, now multiplied upon the earth.”

This tradition of the Maoris has substantially the same elements as the Israelite tradition. The destruction of the world was accompanied by hurricanes, hail (meteorites), and sky-high billows; the land submerged; a mist covered the earth for a long time; heavy dew fell to the ground together with light dew, as in the passage quoted from Numbers 11: 9.

The writings of Buddhism relate that when a world cycle comes to an end with the world destroyed and the ocean dried up, there is no distinction of day and night and heavenly ambrosia serves as food.

In the hymns of Rig-Veda,” it is said that honey (madhu) comes from the clouds. These clouds originated from the pillar of cloud. Among the hymns of the Atharva-Veda there is one to the honey-lash: “From heaven, from earth, from the atmosphere, from the sea, from the fire, and from the wind, the honey-lash hath verily sprung. This, clothed in amrite (ambrosia), all the creatures revering, acclaim in their hearts.”

The Egyptian Book of the Dead speaks of “the divine clouds and the great dew” that bring the earth into contact with the heavens.

The Greeks called the heavenly bread ambrosia. It is described by the Greek poets in identical terms with manna: it had the taste of honey and a fragrance. This heavenly bread has given classical scholars many headaches. Greek authors from Homer and Hesiod down through the ages continually referred to ambrosia as the heavenly food which in its fluid state is called nectar. But it was used also as ointment (it had the fragrance of a lily), and as food for the horses of Hera when she visited Zeus in the sky. Hera (Earth) was veiled in it when she hurried from her brother Ares (Mars) to Zeus (Jupiter). What could it be, this heavenly bread, which served also as a veil for a goddess-planet, and was used as an ointment, too? It was honey, said some scholars. But honey is a regular food for mortals, whereas ambrosia was given only to the generation of heroes.

Then what was this substance that served as fodder on the ground for horses, as a veil for planets, bread from the sky for heroes, and that also turned fluid for their drink, and was oil and perfume for ointments?

It was the manna that was baked into bread, had an oily taste and also a honey taste, was found on the ground by man and beast, wrapped the earth and the heavenly bodies in a veil, was called “corn of heaven” and “bread of the mighty,” had a fragrant odor, and served the women in the wilderness as ointment. Manna, like ambrosia, was compared with honey and with morning dew.

The belief of Aristotle and other writers that honey falls from the atmosphere with the dew was based on the experience of those days when the world was veiled in the carbon clouds that precipitated honey-frost.

These clouds are described as “dreaded shades” in the Kalevala. From these “dreaded shades,” says the epos, honey dropped. “And the clouds their fragrance sifted, sifted honey . . . from their home within the heavens.”

The Maoris in the Pacific, the Jews on the border of Asia and Africa, the Hindus, the Finns, the Icelanders, all describe the honey-food being dropped from the clouds, dreary shades of the shadow of death, that enveloped the earth after a cosmic catastrophe. All traditions agree also that the source of the heavenly bread falling from the clouds with the morning dew was a celestial body. The Sibyl says that the sweet heavenly bread came from the starry heavens. The planet-god Ukko, or Jupiter, is said to have been the source of the honey that dropped from the clouds. Athena covered other planet goddesses with a “robe ambrosial,” and provided nectar and ambrosia to the heroes. Other traditions, too, see the origin of the honey-dew in a celestial body that enveloped the earth in clouds. For this reason ambrosia or manna is called “heavenly bread.”

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