mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 11:35:36 GMT Reply-To: Terry Colvin Sender: Weird News Discussion List From: [12]Terry Colvin Subject: Venus, Velikovsky and Vanity oh Vanities Comments: To: ewittig at c2i2.com, sightings at aol.com, space-tech at isu.isunet.edu, Sundance.wnin at smtp.usi.edu, ufo at holodeck.demon.co.uk _________________________ Forward Header __________________________________ Subject: Venus, Velikovsky and Vanity oh Vanities Author: forteana at lists.primenet.com at smtp-fhu Date: 7/09/96 04:33 Topic 26 Re: Velikovsky and Venus 1 response ev alt.paranormal 12:21 pm May 1, 1994 (at pi.eai.iastate.edu) (From News system) I would like to address the following statement to various critics who have written in about one or another of my posts regarding ancient observations of the planet Venus. On April 28th, Bruce Burden asked the following question: "If the Sumerians didn't leave any records or evidence that they practiced observational astronomy, then how do you know that they were, in fact, referring to Venus." This is a very important question; and, in fact, it is not always an easy task to understand what the ancients had in mind when they made reference to such objects as "Morning Star", "Sun", "Milky Way", etc. Inasmuch as I hold that the ancient skies were dramatically different than those which currently prevail, I have given this matter a great deal of thought. The key is to take a comparative approach to the ancient sources. In the case of Sumerian references to the planet Venus, for example, it is well-known that Inanna/Venus is attested in all periods of Sumerian civilization, often in the guise of the "Queen of Heaven", a well-known epithet of the planet Venus for several millennia (mentioned numerous times in the Old Testament, for example). There is also the fact that the Sumerian Inanna was identified very early on with such goddesses as the Akkadian Ishtar, Canaanite Astarte, etc., each of whom was identified with the planet Venus by their respective cultures (for a thorough treatment of ancient Venus-worship see Wolfgang Heimpel, "A Catalog of Near Eastern Venus Deities", in Syro-Mesopotamian Studies, 1982, pp. 9-22). On April 27th, Tim Thompson asked a similar question: "As far as I know, it is true that the oldest extant observational record of Venus is the collection of Ammizaduga tablets. However, if the Sumerians left no such records, and did not appear to practice observational astronomy, then why and how would they worship Venus? And how would we know? Perhaps you can summarize for us the arguments in your 1993 Aeon paper?" As noted above, no scholar of Sumerian civilization would deny that they worshipped Inanna or that this goddess was identified with the planet Venus. Why did they worship Venus? The conventional answer, of course, is that Venus, together with the Sun and Moon forms the brightest objects in the sky and would appear to be a natural source of worship. The answer of Talbott and myself, following Velikovsky, is that ancient Sumeria worshipped Venus as a direct result of spectacular cataclysms associated with this goddess, during which this planet-goddess presented a comet-like appearance and shook the foundations of heaven and earth (among other things). How do we know that? Fortunately, the Sumerians left us a good deal of literature involving Inanna/Venus, in which they proclaimed their obsessive devotion to this planet-goddess while describing her destructive powers and capricious nature. One early poem, The Exaltation to Inanna, describes the goddess as follows: "Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the land. When you roar at the earth like Thunder, no vegetation can stand up to you. A flood descending from its mountain. Oh foremost one, you are Inanna of heaven and earth! Raining the fanned fire down upon the nation..." (See W. Hallo & J. van Dijk, The Exaltation of Inanna, 1968, pp. 15-17). Similar statements abound in the Sumerian literature. One more example will suffice here: "You make the heavens tremble and the earth quake. Great Priestess, who can soothe your troubled heart? You flash like lightning over the highlands; you throw your firebrands across the earth." (See D. Wolkstein & S. Kramer, Inanna, 1983, p. 95) It goes without saying, of course, that such descriptions do not accord with the currently peaceful, non-intrusive nature of Venus. Why then do scholars such as Velikovsky, Talbott and myself think that they are objective in nature? For the simple reason that similar descriptions are associated with the planet Venus in cultures throughout the ancient world. Ishtar, for example, was described as follows: "By causing the heavens to tremble and the earth to quake, By the gleam which lightens in the sky, By the blazing fire which rains upon the hostile land, I am Ishtar." (quoted from I. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, 1950, p. 186). Here the Mesoamerican material is especially helpful as it, unlike the Akkadian literature surrounding Ishtar, is testimony against the claim that such traditions could have been borrowed from ancient Sumeria. And in Mesoamerica, as in Sumerian, the planet Venus is specifically associated with war and destruction, the shaking of heaven and earth, the raining of fire from heaven, and described as a great dragon spanning the skies (See the discussion in E. Cochrane, "On Comets and Kings," Aeon 1989, pp. 53-75; D. Talbott, "The Great Comet Venus," Aeon 1994, pp. 1-47) If Velikovsky, Talbott, and myself are right, of course, it stands to reason that there can be no astronomical records from either the prehistoric or early historic (i.e., Sumerian, Old Egyptian) periods which show Venus in its current orbit. And indeed there are not. Most significant, however, is the fact that astronomical records from a much later time - those of the Babylonian Ammizaduga tablets, and those of the Maya - likewise do not accord with the current orbit of Venus! Thus they both credited Venus with a 90-day disappearance interval at superior conjunction, nearly twice the true value (See A. Aveni, Skywatchers in Ancient Mexico, 1980, p. 86). And these were the two greatest astronomers of all antiquity, the Maya calculations of Venus' period being legendary for their accuracy. How is it possible to explain these glaring anomalies? -- Ev Cochrane/Editor-Publisher of Aeon, A Journal of Myth and Science 2326 Knapp, Ames IA, 50014 ev at eai.com The views presented here are those of Ev Cochrane alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of EAI and Iowa State University. (However, it wouldn't surprise me if both attempt to claim responsibility in the years ahead). livesey alt.paranormal 2:27 pm May 1, 1994 (at solntze.engr.sgi.com) (From News system) In article <2q1di5$pvb at news.iastate.edu>, ev at pi.eai.iastate.edu (Ev Cochrane) writes: > scholars such as Velikovsky, Talbott and myself think that they are > objective in nature? Whether they are objective or not, I don't see why you insist that they all refer to a single body. If these people worshipped X Goddess as Queen of Heaven, then I don't see why they might not have attributed almost any spectacular astronomical phenomenon to her. jon. Velikovsky Reconsidered "....early people had recorded Venus as an exceptionally bright object trailing smoke. The Chinese, Mayas, Toltecs and Aztecs also recorded its motion...and the early Venus followed a much different orbit..... The people of Mesopotamia did not even record Venus in their astronomical records. Later the Chaldeans recorded it as a "bright torch in the heaven" that "illuminates like the sun" and "fills the entire heaven". Other far-flung cultures preserved similar comments, all of which suggest that Venus began as a comet which roared very close to the earth at one point.... "The ancient texts described the comet Venus as coming from the fifth planet, Jupiter.... Maybe one planet could not give birth to another but a star, even a very cold star, could.....Morris Jessup and other ufologists have advanced the notion that the red spot is actually a great spaceship, a monumental Ark from outer space.... waiting for the day when the Earth will be evacuated by the kindly space people.... "Professor Raymond Hide....proposed in Scientific American in February 1968 that it could be the visible part of a phenomenon known as a Taylor column - a stagnant cylinder of liquid centred above some depression centred above some depression or topographical feature on the planet below. The late Frank Edwards...equated it with a giant eye always turned towards the earth. Some followers of Velikovsky have asserted that the red spot is really the hole left behind when Venus was catapulted out into space. "...it would have to attain an incredible escape velocity...would require a tremendous amount of energy...as much energy as the sun emits in more than a year.... "Dr Velikovsky attempted to explain this by theorizing that a large mass on a near collison course with Saturn and Jupiter may have set the cosmic machinery in motion. "Velikovsky...predicted in 1950 that Venus would prove to be hot and that it would display orbital eccentricities. The claims have now been verified. He claimed that....Venus was not even present in the skies until fairly recent times, that it first appeared as a comet hauling a tail ... It's passage thorugh our Solar System caused massive disturbances on Earth and probably wholesale destruction." (78-82) Our Haunted Planet by John A Keel (Neville Spearman London 1971) * * * * * It is not uncommon for comets' tails to look undidy, like "trailing smoke". Venus is the size of the Earth, while comets are more typically the size of a small mountain at most. Sometimes when waxing fanciful I wonder if the incoming material carries or will unpack some sort of wallop sufficiently big enough to vindicate Velikovsky's scholarship at last. BX - - - - - - - - - - - - EVIL SCISSORS HERE! :} - - - - - - - My addendum added before Hale-Bopp showed. The astroscholars had their heads up their donkeys, to be sure, the stonomers are right there. My work has completely revised what really happened. Can anyone recall the gist of my explanation of it? Dang! I didn't think anyone was listening. 1. http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/