Attos' Magazine

Volume #109, March/2010

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

The Blazing Star

Plato, citing the Egyptian priest, said that the world conflagration associated with Phaëthon was caused by a shifting of bodies in the sky which move around the earth. As we have reason to assume that it was the comet Venus that, after two contacts with the earth, eventually became a planet, we shall do well to inquire: Did Phaëthon turn into the Morning Star?

Phaëthon, which means “the blazing star,” became the Morning Star. The earliest writer who refers to the transformation of Phaëthon into a planet is Hesiod. This transformation is related by Hyginus in his Astronomy, where he tells how Phaëthon, that caused the conflagration of the world, was struck by a thunderbolt of Jupiter and was placed by the sun among the stars (planets) . It was the general belief that Phaëthon changed into the Morning Star.

On the island of Crete, Atymnios was the name of the unlucky driver of the sun’s chariot; he was worshiped as the Evening Star, which is the same as the Morning Star.

The birth of the Morning Star, or the transformation of a legendary person (Istehar, Phaëthon, Quetzal-cohuatl) into the Morning Star was a widespread motif in the folklore of the oriental and occidental peoples. The Tahitian tradition of the birth of the Morning Star is narrated on the Society Island in the Pacific; the Mangaian legend says that with the birth of a new star, the earth was battered by countless fragments. The Buriats, Kirghiz, and Yakuts of Siberia, and the Eskimos of North America also tell of the birth of the planet Venus.

A blazing star disrupted the visible movement of the sun, caused a world conflagration, and became the Morning-Evening Star. This may be found not only in the legends and traditions, but also in astronomical books of the ancient peoples of both hemispheres.

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