Letters by a modern St. Ferdinand III about cults

 Velikovsky was a Russian scientist much hated by the 'establishment' or the 'consensus group' which represented 'accepted wisdom'. He spent decades studying the cult of evolution, geology, and real climate publishing his findings in the early 1950s. He was not the first of course to challenge the mysticism and irresponsibility, replete with massive gaps, embodied by the Church of the Holy Evolution. Nor was he the first or the last to postulate that the Earth's climate was one long saga of disruption, tearing and violent change, extraterrestrial impacts and mass appearances and then extinction of species. These challenges to the prevailing cults of 'science' can be found in World in Upheaval [link].

In his other seminal work, much derided by the smart-set, the activist, the cult member and the government-grant making apparatchik, 'Worlds in Collision', Velikovsky goes back to ancient sources from around the world, and marries their astrological observations, their written and oral histories and their beliefs that both Venus and Mars 'attacked' the earth, into a compelling tale of planets and orbits gone awry. The ancient sources and their knowledge are married with terrestrial events – the immediate disappearance of civilizations, the almost unending references to pole reversals, the abrupt change in climate and temperature, plagues and famine; wars and migrations, and the death of millions of humans.

Chaldean scholars [circa 9^th century BC] were aware that the planetary system is not rigid and that the planets undergo changes. We find in Diodorus of Sicily: “Each of the planets, according to them [the Chaldeans] has its own particular course, and its velocities and periods of time are subject to change and variation.” They counted the earth among the planets, for Diodorus wrote that the Chaldeans stated “that the moon’s light is reflected and her eclipses are due to the shadow of the earth.” This implies that they knew the earth is a sphere in space, a fact known also to a number of Greek philosophers.

The thesis put forward by Velikovsky and supported by civilizational memory texts, traditions and star worship is this: Venus as a comet which came from the head of Zeus or Jupiter in about 1500 BC or during the Hebrew exodus and interfered with the earth raining down destruction, death and darkness, and did so on a regular 50 year basis for hundreds of years. World's colliding were known to the ancients.

Ancient authors the world-over make Athena-Venus the offspring of Jupiter: she sprang from his head, and this birth was accompanied by great disturbances in the celestial and terrestrial spheres. The comet rushed toward the earth, and it could not be very well distinguished whether the planet Jupiter or its offspring was approaching. I may divulge here something that belongs to the second book of this work; namely, that at an earlier time, Jupiter had already caused havoc in the planetary family, the earth included, and it was therefore only natural to see in the approaching body the planet Jupiter. I referred in the introductory part of this work to the modern theory which ascribes the birth of the terrestrial planets to the process of expulsion by larger ones. This appears to be true in the case of Venus. The other modern theory, which ascribes the origin of comets of short period to expulsion by large planets, is also correct: Venus was expelled as a comet and then changed to a planet after contact with a number of members of the solar system.

The end of the terror which Venus kept alive for eight centuries after the days of the Exodus was the inspiration for Isaiah when he said: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.” Septuagint and Vulgate both translate “Morning Star” or “Lucifer”. What does it mean, that the Morning Star was assailing the heavens and rising high, and that it was cut down low to the horizon, and would weaken no more the nations?

As Velikovsky states and proves, Venus is indeed a very new planet. There is no mention of the 'morning star', as Venus became called throughout the world, before 1500 BC. Athena in the Greek pantheon is Venus and she is only worshipped after the world was nearly destroyed during the time of Moses.

Venus was not then moving on a circular orbit as it does now; its orbit crossed the orbit of the earth and endangered it every fifty years. Since, by the second half of the eighth century before the present era, Venus’ cycle was similar to what it is today, it follows that some time before then Venus must have changed its orbit and achieved its present circular path between Mercury and the earth and become the Morning and Evening Star. The irregularities in the movements of Venus must have been observed by the ancients; the data in the ancient records must differ very much from the figures on Venus’ movements given at the head of this section.

......Isis, the planet Venus,was represented as a human figure with two horns, like Astarte (Ishtar) of the horns; and sometimes it was fashioned in the likeness of a cow. In time, Ishtar changed from male to female, and in many places worship of the bull changed to worship of the cow. The main reason for this seems to have been the fall of manna which turned the rivers into streams of honey and milk. A horned planet that produced milk most closely resembled a cow. In the Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, in which the ambrosia that falls from the sky is glorified, the god is exalted as the “great cow” which “drips with streams of milk” and as “a bull” that “hurlest thy fire upon earth and heaven.” A passage of the Ramayana about the “celestial cow” says: “Honey she gave, and roasted grain ... and curled milk, and soup in lakes with sugared milk,” which is the Hindu version of “rivers of milk and honey.”

In Babylonia the planet Venus was distinguished from other planets and worshiped as a member of a trinity: Venus, Moon, and Sun.”This triad became the Babylonian holy trinity in the fourteenth century before the present era. In the Vedas the planet Venus is compared to a bull: “As a bull thou hurlest thy fire upon earth and heaven.” The Morning Star of the Phoenicians and Syrians was Ashteroth-Karnaim, Astarte of the Horns. Belith of Sidon was likewise Venus, and Izebel, wife of Ahab, made her the chief deity of the Northern Kingdom. The “queen of heaven,” referred to repeatedly by Jeremiah, was Venus. The women of Jerusalem made cakes for the queen of heaven and worshiped her from the roofs of their houses.

The 'Trinity' of the Toltecs, Mayans and later the Aztecs also included Venus, the moon and the Sun. One only has to go to Teotihuan outside of Mexico City to view the dedicated temples and palaces built by the Amero-Indians to these divinities. The planets or 'gods' were to be feared and appeased. This would explain quite a lot of religious fervour in supplication and penance, to ward off the vengeful gods and their interference with the earth and humans. When Venus became entangled with the earth during the time of exodus or around 1500 BC, the carnage was immense. The Hittites, Minoans and Chinese civilizations disappeared. Egypt was destroyed. Darkness enveloped the earth. Food was scarce, war, disease and famine the mainstays of life. The Greeks descend into a 'dark age' until 700 BC – an event never explained by historians. How does one go from Agamemnon and the 'Tyrants of the Argive', to illiteracy ? Why did the urban centres of the Near East empty within a space of a few years ?

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.”

......The Hebrews similarly described the planet: “The brilliant light of Venus blazes from one end of the cosmos to the other end.” The Chinese astronomical text from Soochow refers to the past when “Venus was visible in full daylight and, while moving across the sky, rivaled the sun in brightness.” As late as the seventh century, Assurbanipal wrote about Venus (Ishtar) “who is clothed with fire and bears aloft a crown of awful splendor.” The Egyptians under Seti thus described Venus (Sekhmet): “A circling star which scatters its flame in fire ... a flame of fire in her tempest.” Possessing a tail and moving on a not yet circular orbit, Venus was more of a comet than a planet, and was called a “smoking star” or a comet by the Mexicans. They also called it by the name of “Tzontemocque”, or “the mane.” The Arabs called Ishtar (Venus) by the name “Zebbaj” or “one with hair,” as did the Babylonians.

Then in about 700 BC or the time of the prophet Isiah, Venus and Mars collided, driving Mars into the earth's orbit and wreaking devastation. From this event Mars becomes the war-god, a divinity of terror and death, propitiated around the world with sacrifices. Diverse cultures including ancient China, Amero-Indian, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Babylonian, Egyptian and Hebrew sources amongst others, are used by Velikovsky as proof of the proliferation of world-wide cults now suddenly devoted to Mars the 'sword god', he of death and fire circa 700 B.C.

After 700 B.C. Velikovsky forwards proof that the propitiation of Mars was to that of a warring, vengeful, demonic sky god whose irrational and quite erratic orbit appeared to the ancients as a god carrying a sword. Again sources from the world over are used to justify the claims that Venus was originally a comet and Mars a wandering, smaller divinity, at war and in conflict with the much larger and even more vicious goddess Venus, she who had been born from Jupiter's head.

The conflict between Venus and Mars was also symbolized in religious ceremonies of the ancient Mexicans. In one of these ceremonies the priest of Quetzal-cohuatl shot an arrow into an effigy of Huitzilopochtli, which penetrated the god, who was then considered dead. This appears to have been a symbolic repetition of the electrical discharge that Venus ejected toward Mars.

But in the ninth or eighth century before this era, the situation changed radically. Mars became the dreaded planet. Accordingly, Mars-Nergal rose to the position of the frightful storm and war god. The question must then present itself: Why, previous to that time, did Mars signify no danger to the earth, and what caused Mars to shift its orbit nearer to the earth?

Mars collided or 'fought' with Venus, a depiction clearly presented in the Iliad and in every culture's memory. The ancients would have seen the two planets 'fighting' and becoming entangled, with Mars at 1/8 the size, being 'thrown' towards the earth. It must have appeared that the Gods were exacting revenge for human arrogance, pride, sin and deceit.

The trembling earth, the displacement of the poles, the change in the climate, the frightening prodigies in the sky, caused great movements of peoples. The Aztecs changed their homeland. “These Mexicans carried with them an idol which they called Huitzilopochtli. ... They asserted that this idol commanded them to leave their country, promising to make them lords and masters of all the lands ... which abounded with gold, silver, feathers ... and all the things necessary for life. 

....Isaiah, who encouraged Hezekiah to resist Sennacherib [685 BC], reckoned with the possibility of a disaster in the year of the opposition of Mars, and thus built his hope on the intervention of the forces of nature. The Babylonians called the year of the close opposition of Mars “the year of the fire-god,” and the month “the month of descent of the fire-god,” as, for instance, in an inscription of Sargon. In The Birth of the War-God, the Hindu poet Kalidasa gives a vivid picture of the wars above and on the earth, weaving them into one great battle. “Foul birds came, a horrid flock to see ... and dimmed the sun. ...And monstrous snakes, as black as powdered soot, spitting hot poison high into the air, brought terror to the army underfoot. ... The sun a sickly halo round him had; coiling within it frightened eyes could see great, writhing serpents ... and in the very circle of the sun were phantom jackals.

......The Roman god Mars was pictured with a sword, he became the god of war. The Chaldean Nergal is called “Sword-god.” Of this sword Isaiah spoke when he predicted the repetition of the catastrophe, a stream of brimstone, flame, storm, and reeling of the sky. “Then shall the Assyrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him ... and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign.” “And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved ... for my sword shall be bathed in heaven.” The ancients classified the comets according to their appearance. In old astrological texts, as in the book of Prophecies of Daniel, comets that took the form of a sword were originally related to the planet Mars.

First with Venus in about 1500 BC and then again some 700 years later with Mars, the ancients saw 'worlds colliding'. Poles changed, fires raged, manna or some milky honey type of substance covered the morning dew. Rocks, stones, brimstone rained down. Millions would have died. The climate was irrevocably changed. Religions and cults developed, all of them looking to the stars and the 'gods', trying to divine what was next in their plans for the earth. Would Venus attack, or would Mars return with his sword ?

Mars and Venus becoming entangled with the earth, and rendering untold devastation would certainly call into question many belief systems. It makes a mockery out of 'climate change' and the cult of the Holy Church of Evolution. Both posit that the earth is stable, that the climate and 'evolution' are in billion-year processes which never 'change' and that catastrophes such as Mars and Venus colliding with the earth the stuff of a bad Hollywood movie [are there any other varieties?]. Co2 has nothing whatsoever to do with 'climate changing', certainly not on the scale described by Amoz, Isiah, the Mosaic prophets, Homer, Plato, Democritus, Aristotle, Pliny, or the hundreds if not thousands of other sources and material which Velikovsky uses.

The Russian was of course brutalized, pilloried and slandered. No one has bother to refute his sources, they simply attacked the man. This activism and non-science is now called the 'scientific method'. Apparently the 'consensus' of those receiving tax money and making millions from their scams is preferable to thinking and proof. This is the new cult of scientism. Ignore reality. Pray to false idols. This is now deemed progressive education.