This a short portion of Velikovsky's book. You can read it at Google Scholar.
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=...il&f=false
Worlds In Collision Immanuel Velikovsky
1950 First Edition The Macmillan Company
offered for educational purposes:
CHAPTER 8
Page 153
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.
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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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The Birth of Venus
...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-coati]. 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-cohuatI . . . 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-cohuatI, 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 affirm 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."
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Chinese chronicles record that "a brilliant star appeared in the days of Yahu [Yahou]."
The Blazing Star
Plato, citing the Egyptian priest, said that the world conflagration associated with Phaethon 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 Phaethon turn into the Morning Star?
Phaethon, which means "the blazing star," became the Morning Star. The earliest writer who refers to the transformation of Phaethon into a planet is Hesiod. This transformation is related by Hyginus in his Astronomy,
where he tells how Phaethon, 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 Phaethon 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.
The Four-Planet System
By asserting that the planet Venus was born in the first half of the second millennium, I assume also that in the third millennium only four planets could have been seen, and that in astronomical charts of this early period the planet Venus cannot be found.
In an ancient Hindu table of planets, attributed to the year -3102, Venus alone among the visible planets is absent. The Brahmans of the early period did not know the five-planet system, and only in a later ("middle") period did the Brahmans speak of five planets.
Babylonian astronomy, too, had a four-planet system. In ancient prayers the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury are invoked; the planet Venus is missing; and one speaks of "the four-planet system of the ancient astronomers of Babylonia." These four-planet systems and the inability of the ancient Hindus and Babylonians to see Venus in the sky, even though it is more conspicuous than the other planets, are puzzling unless Venus was not among the planets.
On a later date "the planet Venus receives the appellative: 'The great star that joins the great stars.' The great stars are, of course, the four planets Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. . . and Venus joins them as the fifth planet."
Apollonius Rhodius refers to a time "when not all the orbs were yet in the heavens."
One of the Planets Is a Comet
Democritus (circa -460 to circa -370), ... wrote: "The worlds are unequally distributed in space; here there are more, there fewer; some are waxing, some are in their prime, some waning: coming into being in one part of the universe, ceasing in another part. The cause of their perishing is collision with one another." He knew that "the planets are at unequal distances from us" and that there are more planets than we are able to discover with our eyes. Aristotle quoted the opinion of Democritus:
"Stars have been seen when comets dissolve."
Among the early Greek scholars, Pythagoras of the sixth century is generally credited with having had access to some secret science. His pupils, and their pupils, the so-called Pythagoreans, were cautious not to disclose their science to anyone who did not belong to their circle. Aristotle wrote of their interpretation of the nature of comets: "Some of the Italians called Pythagoreans say that the comet is one of the planets, but that it appears at great intervals of time and only rises a little above the horizon. This is the case with Mercury too; because it only rises a little above the horizon it often fails to be seen and consequently appears at great intervals of time."
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Aristotle disagreed with the Pythagorean scholars who considered one of the five planets to be a comet.
...the Pythagoreans apparently knew that the comet which is "one of the planets" is Venus.
The Comet Venus
During the centuries when Venus was a comet, it had a tail.
The early traditions of the peoples of Mexico, written down in pre-Columbian days, relate that Venus smoked.
"The star that smoked, la estrella que humeava, was Sitlae choloha, which the Spaniards call Venus."
"Now, I ask," says Alexander Humboldt, "what optical illusion could give Venus the appearance of a star throwing out smoke?"
Sahagun, the sixteenth century Spanish authority on Mexico, wrote that the Mexicans called a comet "a star that smoked." It may thus be concluded that since the Mexicans called Venus "a star that smoked," they considered it a comet.
It is also said in the Vedas that the star Venus looks like fire with smoke. Apparently, the star had a tail, dark in the daytime and luminous at night. In very concrete form this luminous tail, which Venus had in earlier centuries, is mentioned in the Talmud, in the Tractate Shabbat: "Fire is hanging down from the planet Venus."
This phenomenon was described by the Chaldeans. The planet Venus "was said to have a beard." This same technical expression ("beard") is used in modem astronomy in the description of comets.
These parallels in observations made in the valley of the Ganges, on the shores of the Euphrates, and on the coast of the Mexican Gulf prove their objectivity. The question must then be put, not in the form, What was the illusion of the ancient Toltecs and Mayas? but, What was the phenomenon and what was its cause? A train, large enough to be visible from the earth and giving the impression of smoke and fire, hung from the planet Venus.
Venus, with its glowing train, was a very brilliant body; it is therefore not strange that the Chaldeans described it as a "bright torch of heaven," also as a "diamond that illuminates like the sun," and compared its light with the light of the rising sun. At present, the light of Venus is less than one millionth of the light of the sun. "A stupendous prodigy in the sky," the Chaldeans called it.
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.
"Sometimes there are hairs attached to the planets," wrote Pliny; an old description of Venus must have served as a basis for his assertion. But hair or coma is a characteristic of comets, and in fact "comet" is derived from the Greek word for ''hair.'' The Peruvian name "Chaska" (wavy-haired) is still the name for Venus, though at present the Morning Star is definitely a planet and has no tail attached to it.
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