Attos' Magazine

Volume #108, March/2010

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

The Birth of Venus

A planet turns and revolves on a quite circular orbit around a greater body, the sun; it makes contact with another body, a comet, that travels on a stretched out ellipse. The planet slips from its axis, runs in disorder off its orbit, wanders rather erratically, and in the end is freed from the embrace of the comet.

The body on the long ellipse experiences similar disturbances. Drawn off its path, it glides to some new orbit; its long train of gaseous substances and stones is torn away by the sun or by the planet, or runs away and revolves as a smaller comet along its own ellipse; a part of the tail is retained by the parent comet on its new orbit.

Ancient Mexican records give the order of the occurrences. The sun was attacked by Quetzal-cohuatl; after the disappearance of this serpent-shaped heavenly body, the sun refused to shine, and during four days the world was deprived of its light; a great many people died at that time. Thereafter, the snakelike body transformed itself into a great star. The star retained the name of Quetzal-cohuatl [Quetzal-coatl]. This great and brilliant star appeared for the first time in the east. Quetzal-cohuatl is the well-known name of the planet Venus.

Thus we read that “the sun refused to show itself and during four days the world was deprived of light. Then a great star . . . appeared; it was given the name Quetzal-cohuatl . . . the sky, to show its anger . . . caused to perish a great number of people who died of famine and pestilence.” The sequence of seasons and the duration of days and nights became disarranged. “It was then . . . that the people [of Mexico] regulated anew the reckoning of days, nights, and hours, according to the difference in time.”

“It is a remarkable thing, moreover, that time is measured from the moment of its [Morning Star’s] appearance. . . . Tlahuizcalpanteuctli or the Morning Star appeared for the first time following the convulsions of the earth overwhelmed by a deluge.” It looked like a monstrous serpent. “This serpent is adorned with feathers: that is why it is called Quetzal-cohuatl, Gukumatz or Kukulcan. Just as the world is about to emerge from the chaos of the great catastrophe, it is seen to appear.” The feather arrangement of Quetzalcohuatl “represented flames of fire.”

Again, the old texts speak “of the change that took place, at the moment of the great catastrophe of the deluge, in the condition of many constellations, principal among them being precisely Tlahuizcalpanteuctli or the star of Venus.”

The cataclysm, accompanied by a prolonged darkness, appears to have been that of the days of the Exodus, when a tempest of cinders darkened the world disturbed in its rotation. Some of the references may allude to the subsequent catastrophe of the time of the conquest by Joshua, when the sun remained for more than a day in the sky of the old world. Since it was the same comet that on both occasions made contact with the earth, and at each of the contacts the comet changed its own orbit, the relevant question is not, “On which occasion did the comet change its orbit?” but first of all, “Which comet changed to a planet?” or “Which planet was a comet in historical times?” The transformation of the comet into a planet began on contact with the earth in the middle of the second millennium before the present era and was carried a step further one jubilee period later.

After the dramatic events of the time of Exodus, the earth was shrouded in dense clouds for decades, and observation of stars was not possible; after the second contact, Venus, the new and splendid member of the solar family, was seen moving along its orbit. It was in the days of Joshua, a time designation meaningful to the reader of the sixth book of the Scriptures; but for the ancients it was “the time of Agog.” As I explained above, he was the king by whose name the cataclysm (the Deluge of Ogyges) was known, and who, according to Greek tradition, laid the foundations of Thebes in Egypt.

In The City of God by Augustine it is written:

“From the book of Marcus Varro, entitled Of the Race of the Roman People, I cite word for word the following instance: ‘There occurred a remarkable celestial portent; for Castor records that in the brilliant star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and the lovely Hesperus by Homer, there occurred so strange a prodigy, that it changed its color, size, form, course, which never happened before nor since. Adrastus of Cyzicus, and Dion of Naples, famous mathematicians, said that this occurred in the reign of Ogyges.’”

The Fathers of the Church considered Ogyges a contemporary of Moses. Agog, mentioned in the blessing of Balaam, was the king Ogyges. The upheaval that took place in the days of Joshua and Agog, the deluge that occurred in the days of Ogyges, the metamorphosis of Venus in the days of Ogyges, the star Venus which appeared in the sky of Mexico after a protracted night and a great catastrophe -all these occurrences are related.

Augustine went on to make a curious comment on the transformation of Venus: “Certainly that phenomenon disturbed the canons of the astronomers . . . so as to take upon them to afflrm that this which happened to the Morning Star (Venus) never happened before nor since. But we read in the divine books that even the sun itself stood still when a holy man, Joshua the son of Nun, had begged this from God.”

Augustine had no inkling that Castor, as quoted by Varro, and the Book of Jasher, as quoted in the Book of Joshua, refer to the same occurrence.

Are Hebrew sources silent on the birth of a new star in the days of Joshua? They are not. It is written in a Samaritan chronicle that during the invasion of Palestine by the Israelites under Joshua, a new star was born in the east: “A star arose out of the east against which all magic is vain.”

Chinese chronicles record that “a brilliant star appeared in the days of Yahu [Yahou].”

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