Attos' Magazine

Volume #106, March/2010

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

The Fifty-Two-Year Period

THE WORKS of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, the early Mexican scholar (circa 1568-1648) who was able to read old Mexican texts, preserve the ancient tradition according to which the multiple of fifty-two-year periods played an important role in the recurrence of world catastrophes. He asserts also that only fifty-two years elapsed between two great catastrophes, each of which terminated a world age.

As I have already pointed out, the Israelite tradition counts forty years of wandering in the desert; between the time when the Israelites left the desert and started the difficult task of the conquest, and the dine of the battle at Beth-horon twelve years may well have passed. The conquest of Canaan took fourteen years, and the entire duration of Joshua’s leadership amounted to twenty-eight years.

Now there exists a remarkable fact: the natives of pre-Columbian Mexico expected a new catastrophe at the end of every period of fifty-two years and congregated to await the event. “When the night of this ceremony arrived, all the people were seized with fear and waited in anxiety for what might take place.” They were afraid that “it will be the end of the human race and that the darkness of the night may become permanent: the sun may not rise anymore.” They watched for the appearance of the planet Venus, and when, on the feared day, no catastrophe occurred, the people of Maya rejoiced. They brought human sacrifices and offered the hearts of prisoners whose chests they opened with knives of flint. On that night, when the fifty-two-year period ended, a great bonfire announced to the fearful crowds that a new period of grace had been granted and a new Venus cycle started.

The period of fifty-two years, regarded by the ancient Mexicans as the interval between two world catastrophes, was definitely related by them to the planet Venus; and this period of Venus was observed by both the Mayas and the Aztecs.

The old Mexican custom of sacrificing to the Morning Star survived in human sacrifices by the Skidi Pawnee of Nebraska in years when the Morning Star “appeared especially bright, or in years when there was a comet in the sky.”

What had Venus to do with the catastrophes that brought the world to the brink of destruction? Here is a question that will carry us very far, indeed.

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