mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== HONORED AT RECENT OREGON SYMPOSIUM IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY: HERETIC-SAVANT Walter Alter In the history of heretical thinkers, one name is particularly conspicuous for the scope of his ideas. Immanuel Velikovsky's odyssey of discovery spanned two generations and numerous disciplines. He was a friend and colleague of Albert Einstein, a student of Wilhelm Stekel (Freud's first pupil), Israel's first practicing psychoanalyst, and author of a dozen books on ancient myth and astronomy, archaeology, ancient chronologies, geological upheaval, and trauma-induced cultural neurosis. By academic training he was a renaissance scholar. But when he challenged modern views of the solar system and of man's past, he quickly became an outcast, ridiculed at every turn, and denied an opportunity to defend his work. The author of the 1950 bestseller, Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky believed that only a few thousand years ago our planetary system was unstable; that more than one planet formerly moved on earth-threatening courses, and that early civilizations experienced overwhelming catastrophes caused by planetary encounters. The terrifying "gods" of the ancient world, Velikovsky claimed, were the now-quiet planets, those inconspicuous specks of light we see today moving in clock-like and stately procession, as if to deny their own violent past. TALES OF CATASTROPHE Velikovsky himself was surprised by his findings, which arose from research along quite different lines. A respected psychoanalyst, known to have questioned some of Freud's ideas, Velikovsky was researching Freud's interpretation of Moses and the origins of Hebrew monotheism. It was this research that drew him into Biblical and Talmudic records relating to the Hebrew Exodus. In the course of this investigation, he grew curious about repeated descriptions of upheaval, of rains of fire and stone, massive earthquakes, days of darkness, rivers running red, and destruction of vast populations. He wondered if unusual natural events may have occurred in these times. Then he began to find surprising parallels in Egyptian papyri, Babylonian and Assyrian clay tablets, Vedic poems, Chinese epics, and North American Indian, Maya, Aztec, and Peruvian legends- in short, the myths and chronologies of virtually every ancient culture. From these remarkably similar accounts, Velikovsky constructed a thesis of planetary disorder. He concluded that a very large body-apparently a "comet"-passed close enough to the Earth to violently perturb the Earth's axis, giving rise to great earthquakes and wind, causing oceans to rush across continents, and decimating early civilizations. But before Velikovsky could complete his reconstruction, he had to account for one additional aspect of the stories. He had found that in the accounts of widely dispersed races, the cometary intruder was identified as the planet Venus. While the words and symbols for Venus differed from one culture to another, why did they consistently mean "the comet" in the respective languages? The Babylonian "torch-star" Venus and "bearded star" Venus, the Mexican "smoking star" Venus, the Peruvian "long-haired" star Venus, the Egyptian star "scattering its flame in fire" and the global imagery of Venus as a flaming serpent or dragon in the sky-in each instance the cometary language was undeniable. That bizarre and seemingly preposterous connection would be Velikovsky's undoing. Yet in the end Velikovsky believed the evidence to be conclusive: the world-destroying "comet" of global myths was the now-settled planet Venus, a body every astronomer assumes to have occupied its present course for billions of years. SCIENTIFIC MISBEHAVIOR So the die was cast, and Velikovsky revolutionary work, Worlds In Collision, quickly became the nation's number one best seller, sparking a scientific controversy that has only grown deeper over the past 45 years. What is now called "the Velikovsky Affair" is an oft-told tale of scientific misbehavior, many would say one of the darkest episodes in the legacy of modern science. The response of the academic mainstream was ridicule and vilification, a national campaign to disgrace Velikovsky, led by none other than the dean of astronomers, Harlow Shapley of the Harvard Observatory. Shapley's explicit strategy was to threaten a scientific boycott of Macmillan And incredibly, while Worlds in Collision was leading the best seller list, Macmillan pulled the book from the shelves, transferring the rights to Doubleday-an unprecedented event in the publishing industry. The editor who accepted the work at Macmillan was summarily fired; the notorious Bulletin of Atomic Scientists began a series of articles debunking-and grossly misrepresenting-Velikovsky; while leading astronomers such as Fred Whipple and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin added fuel to the fire, Whipple's sweeping denunciations punctuated by a refusal to even read Worlds in Collision. The campaign of suppression worked, and for more than 15 years, not only Velikovsky but anyone defending his ideas, was persona non grata on college campuses. But the situation changed dramatically in the early '70's when a small student journal in Portland, Oregon, called Pensée, launched a full-scale investigation of Velikovsky's work, leading to a ten-issue series, "Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered." The space age was underway, and evidence coming in suggested more violence and recent activity in the solar system than any astronomer had anticipated. It was known that Velikovsky had accurately predicted radio noises from Jupiter, when the idea was still considered ridiculous; claimed that Venus would be extremely hot (it turned out to be a seething cauldron with a surface temperature about 900 degrees Fahrenheit); and correctly anticipated that the Moon and Mars would reveal dramatic scars and other effects of past catastrophes. Clearly, it was time for a reassessment of Velikovsky's work, and the Pensée series brought international attention to the Velikovsky debate. The first issue became the number one best seller on several college campuses and inspired stories in Readers Digest, Analog, Time Magazine, Physics Today, Chemistry, Industrial Research, World Medical Tribune and numerous other publications. (In 1974, portions of the Pensée series were published by Doubleday as the book Velikovsky Reconsidered.) At the invitation of students, Velikovsky spoke at Harvard, the site from which the original boycott was launched, and now he was getting numerous invitations from other campuses, receiving repeated standing ovations; the British Broadcasting Corporation produced a special documentary on Velikovksy, shown twice because of popular interest; producer David Wolper approached Velikovsky, proposing a two-hour major network documentary (an offer Velikovsky declined, fearing a sensationalized treatment), and an international symposium was held in Toronto, Ontario. Velikovsky also gave a talk at the NASA Ames Research Center, suggesting experiments and procedures to test his claims. AAAS COUNTERATTACK This resurrection of a heretic, long presumed dead, was more than the champions of orthodoxy could endure. To counter the growing interest in Velikovsky, the American Association for the Advancement of Science orchestrated a "symposium" on Worlds in Collision. The proceedings of the 1974 San Francisco AAAS gathering on Velikovsky, in which the popular astronomer Carl Sagan played the featured role, had all of the trappings of a media event, and for years afterwards it was dutifully remembered in mainstream publications as the "definitive refutation" of Velikovsky. (In truth almost nothing stated at the symposium has withstood critical analysis). The retaliation against Velikovsky was, over the next several years, relentless, with Sagan himself devoting a substantial section of each book he published to debunking Velikovsky, and countless other authors routinely citing Velikovsky's ideas as the work of a crank. The repressive effects of this campaign were not only devastating to Velikovsky, but led to a litany of abuses-graduate students pressured or forced out of programs because of their interest in Velikovsky, professors forced to "retire" or leave their jobs. (In at least one instance this involved a professor who had been given the highest rating both by his students and by his colleagues.) A cloud settled over the Velikovsky movement, and before he died in 1979 Velikovsky grew darkly pessimistic, telling those closest to him that the battle was over, that the critics had won. Mainstream science, he said, would never permit an objective or open- minded hearing on the subject of Worlds in Collision. And yet, even as the Velikovsky controversy seemed to fade into the background, a number of independent researchers, inspired by new possibilities, labored quietly in their own fields of study, seeking out the remaining pieces of the puzzle Velikovsky had laid before them. THE SATURN MYTH One such researcher, who had cut out for himself a life's work on a "Velikovskian" question, was David Talbott, founder and publisher of Pensée and the "Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered" series. It seems that Velikovsky, in addition to the thesis of Worlds in Collision, had privately set forth an extraordinary idea. In a brief, unpublished manuscript, he suggested that in the earliest age remembered by man, the Earth was a satellite of the planet Saturn, a planet Velikovsky associated with a former Golden Age. He identified Saturn as the "dying god" of ancient lore, and he claimed that a disruption of Saturn was responsible for the mythical Deluge. But over the last 25 years of his life the details of his Saturn research remained sketchy, and nothing more than a few pages was ever published. Following Velikovsky's lead, Talbott wanted to know whether the notion of Saturn's original dominance and of planetary upheaval would find support in ancient sources. Over several years, that desire became a near-obsession, driving him to learn the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic language (as well as French and German), and to spend weeks at a time at the Harvard, Princeton and New York public libraries gathering original sources. His research eventually convinced him that modern man has completely misunderstood the history of the solar system, the evolution of Earth, and the origins of civilization. In The Saturn Myth (Doubleday, 1980) Talbott presented evidence of the planet Saturn's central place in the great myths of the world. The book summarized the mythical Golden Age of Saturn, when Saturn was remembered as the ancient "sun", and it claimed that a spectacular celestial configuration once towered over mankind. This unique planetary arrangement, Talbott argued, was the source of the unexplained mythical and symbolic forms recorded by ancient civilizations on every continent (world pillar, world mountain, wheel of the sun, celestial city, ship of heaven, etc.)-images that historians and mythologists have usually related to inner states or patterns of the subconscious alone. Talbott's thesis has now begun to draw attention from specialists in the affected disciplines. Dr. Brian Stross, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, for example, on reading The Saturn Myth, called it the best explanation of ancient mythology yet offered by anyone. When Ev Cochrane, then a graduate student at Iowa State University read The Saturn Myth, he resolved personally to become an expert on the subject-which is exactly what he did; fourteen years later he has emerged as the editor of the scholarly journal Aeon and a leading authority on the recurring themes of myth. Cochrane is convinced that Velikovsky's insights, though requiring amendments, will soon transform our understanding of the past. Also convinced was Dwardu Cardona of Vancouver, BC, who dove into Velikovskian studies with a fervor, focusing on the wide-ranging images of the planet Saturn, and finding repeated confirmations of Saturn's original, spectacular influence on human imagination. He has since published almost 100 articles on this and related issues. Though beginning as outsiders, these pioneering researchers show a determination-and the intellectual skills-to challenge current theoretical models at their foundations. And they are not alone. In every discipline touched by Velikovsky's work, and on many continents, the seeds of a revolution were planted twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, and those seeds are now beginning to emerge in full flower. VELIKOVSKY'S LEGACY In the last years of his life, Velikovsky came to know a young man named Richard Heinberg, who had developed a passionate interest in his ideas. By the time of Velikovsky's death, Heinberg had become a personal assistant to Velikovsky, gaining crucial insights into both his published and unpublished works. Now, fifteen years later, his books and articles, drawing on many lessons taught by Velikovsky, are creating an effect of their own. His recent Memories and Visions of Paradise was hailed by Jean Houston (noted authority on the great religions) as "a new classic in the study of the world’s psyche." He is also the author of two other books and numerous articles on mythology, anthropology, and ecology. Charles Ginenthal of Forest Hills, New York, was a science teacher for the handicapped, with no formal training in advanced physics or astronomy. But on discovering Velikovsky's work, he set a new course, to determine whether Carl Sagan's "refutation," and other establishment criticisms of Velikovsky, would withstand careful analysis. That commitment grew into intensive self education and a life's work, one of the first results of which is the book Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky-a devastating exposé of disinformation, scholarly incompetence, and unethical conduct by the scientific elite. In Australia, the computer system engineer, Wallace Thornhill, after discovering Velikovsky through the Pensée series, launched a twenty-year investigation into the modern science of Venus. His conclusion: the planet Venus stands as an immense anomaly-or one should say, a hundred anomalies. On every acid test, according to Thornhill, the paradoxes of Venus suggest either a newborn, or a recently tortured planet, something much closer to Velikovsky's former "comet" than astronomers had ever imagined or are now willing to admit (it even has a comet-like "tail", Thornhill points out!). While the mainstream press has repeatedly pronounced Velikovsky dead and buried, many new lines of research inspired by Velikovsky are now converging through interdisciplinary discussion. And though not all of the participants in these discussions are "Velikovskians" in the stricter sense of the term, almost all appear to share an admiration for Velikovsky's insights into the relationship of ancient myth and celestial catastrophe. Perhaps the best expression for the interdisciplinary synthesis these researchers are striving for was recently offered by Dr. William Mullen, professor of classics at Bard College-another innovator who encountered Velikovsky many years ago and later emerged as an intellectual leader in his own field. Dr. Mullen suggested the term cenocatastrophism-a big word with a simple, very significant meaning. It is the study of recent catastrophes. The term captures nicely the essence of a message: not that long ago, perhaps a few thousand years ago, the Earth came under the influence of devastating celestial powers. Though these powers are no longer present, they left an indelible mark on humanity. In myths and symbols, sacred texts and pictographs around the world, mankind recorded terrifying events in the sky. Moreover, if this be so, it should be possible, through rigorous analysis and cross-referencing with the physical sciences, to reconstruct these earthshaking events. And that is the purpose of the cenocatastrophist agenda-to reach an interdisciplinary consensus, a new understanding of the catastrophic backdrop to the birth and death of early civilizations. A NEW MOVEMENT BEGINS One thing is clear-these researchers will no longer be laboring in isolation. In November, 1994, an international symposium, "Immanuel Velikovsky, Ancient Myth and Modern Science," was held in Portland, Oregon, a gathering of 25 scientists and scholars from around the world, to compare insights into man's catastrophic past. Talbott, Cochrane and Cardona on the role of myth and symbol; Ginenthal and Thornhill on the scars of Mars and Venus; Heinberg on ancient civilization's birth from trauma; and Mullen defining cenocatastrophist objectives. And many others as well, helping to assure that the cenocatastrophist agenda reaches well beyond Velikovsky alone-Dr. William Clube, dean of the department of Astrophysics at Oxford University, the well-known astronomer Tom Van Flandern, the popular native American author Vine Deloria (God is Red, Custer Died for Your Sins), Dr. Roger Wescott, anthropologist and former president of the American Linguistics Association. The open-minded, constructive, and far-ranging discussions of these scholars with more orthodox "Velikovskians" (such as Dr Lynn Rose, professor of Philosophy at State University of New York, or Irving Wolfe, professor of literature at McGill University) helped to lay the groundwork for a more vigorous inquiry into the role of cosmic catastrophes in man's past, with particular emphasis on those events recent enough and destructive enough to have left their scars on human imagination. TARGET EARTH? The study of recent catastrophes is far more than a purely theoretical exercise, as Dr. Clube would be the first to emphasize. In the wake of the highly publicized Shoemaker/Levy's collision with Jupiter, Clube points out that industrial nations have been terribly lax in their responsibilities when it comes to identifying and tracking Shoemaker/Levy-sized objects. These bodies are singularly capable of producing a new ice age, or worse. Astronomers estimate that there are some 20,000 such kilometer-wide or larger objects moving in an elliptic orbit about the Sun, and that the Earth passes through this dispersed stream of debris twice yearly. Perhaps another 200,000 objects in this path are smaller, but still big enough to wipe out a large city. The point made by the these catastrophist researchers will be driven home again and again in the coming years: it not only happened before; it could happen again. Anxiety about such intruders is not what propels this new school of science, however. The overriding mood at the symposium's conclusion was exhilaration and a sense of momentum. In fact, this recent gathering was only a prelude to a larger event scheduled for November 27-29, in Phoenix, Arizona-billed as the "first world conference on cenocatastrophism." In the interim, newsletters and regional seminars are being organized; the "100th birthday celebration" of Velikovsky is planned for June, at Fordham University in New York; the Voyager Institute has been formed to promote these new fields of research; and two major video documentaries are now in production. The tow-hour documentary "Velikovsky: Ancient Myth and Modern Science," is scheduled for completion in June, 1995, and the 13 part network release documentary "In Saturn's Shadow" is slated for completion prior to the December world conference. We witness the spectacle of an obsolete science taking on more and more the attributes or Counterreformation churchmen. In the "Age of Information", these living anachronisms constitute a new archetype: "The Learned Fool"