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Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology --Jno Cook
Part 11: The eighth century BC and Quetzalcoatl.


[Table of Contents]

$Revision: 19.38 $
Contents of this chapter: [The Ballgame] [The Ragings of Mars] [Calendar Reforms] [A Blast From Heaven] [The Death of Quetzalcoatl] [The Tablets of Ammizaduga] [The Golden Throne] [The Blazing Star] [The Bolt from Jupiter] [The Planets in the Sky] [The Last Changes] [Endnotes]

This chapter deals with events during the 8th and 7th centuries BC: a visit from Venus, repeated close calls by Mars, the death of Quetzalcoatl (Venus), and the circularization of the Earth's orbit. After this we are in the 'modern' period of history.

"Holy Dreamtime is threatened if a disorderly cosmos is recalled."
-- Alfred de Grazia, "The Disasterous Love Affair of Moon and Mars" (1984)

The Ballgame

Between 2349 BC and 2193 BC, in the age of Noah, Venus had made four close approaches to Earth, each 52 years after the previous visit. Only during the first and last of these was an electrical contact made with Earth, in both cases increasing the orbit, and, as detailed in Chapters 8 and 9, destroying the Absu in 2349 BC. The approaches at 50 to 52 year intervals likely continued, but without interfering with Earth. We know the close calls continued because some 800 years later, in 1492 and 1440 BC, during the age of Moses, two destructive electrical contacts were again experienced, and again nearly 52 years apart. In Mesoamerica these last two disturbances might have been more severe than they were for the Middle East. After 1440 BC Mesoamerica continued to expect complete destruction at 52 year intervals. That fear continued to the time of the Spanish invasion of Mexico, 3000 years later. [note a]

These close calls might have repeated yet again another 700 or 800 years later, but Earth and Venus were then on considerably different orbits. With the electrical contact of 1492 BC the orbit of Earth had increased by a large amount, so that the Earth's orbit fell entirely outside the orbit of Venus. When Venus, 700 years after the Exodus date of 1492 BC, again came close, it was inside the orbit of Earth. Venus would have been seen streaking across the daytime skies. This was recorded in one instance, apparently in 776 BC, but only because Mars appeared near Earth at the same time.

But with the enlarged orbit of Earth after 1492 BC, the Earth now started to cross the path of Mars. Earth's orbit had changed to fall partially inside and partially outside the orbit of Mars. This would be of little concern, for eccentric (elliptical) orbits precess only slowly, and it might have taken a very long time before Mars and Earth would come close to each other on their intersecting orbits. [note 1]

Not until the eighth century BC did Mars start to cross Earth's orbit close to the location of Earth. Not only did Mars come close to Earth, but on at least one occasion, as I noted above, this happened at the same time that Venus was near Earth. Thus both Venus and Mars were seen on the day-side of Earth, and the two planets seemed to chase each other across the sky towards the west, passing Earth at a distance of one quarter to one half million miles -- Mars the size of the Moon and Venus perhaps as large as four times that size and still trailing a mane (although foreshortened as seen from Earth at this location). The Earth's Moon seemed to cross the path of the two planets in its normal rotation around the Earth, but in the opposite direction. It may have started to change its orbit in response to gravitational forces from three directions. Although I doubt this. It is much more likely that Mercury played the part of the ball, although from Greek sources the Moon certainly was involved. Traveling somewhat faster than the Earth, Venus and Mars eventually disappeared into the west. (This is as seen from the day side of the rotating Earth. In actuality the two planets moved to the east.) [note 2a]

The "Popol Vu" records this interactions as the 'ballgame' of One-Hunahpu and Seven-Hunahpu, the father and uncle of the celestial twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. The father and uncle were Venus and Mars, most likely using Mercury as their ball. In the "Popol Vu" the brothers (as with the later Hunahpu and Xbalanque) are said to travel west to reach the ballcourt of the Gods of the Underworld. The exact year in the eighth century BC of this race between Venus and Mars (or the ballgame involving Mercury) has never been certain, although a date (780 or 776 BC) can be inferred from the date of the first Olympic Games in Greece. See below. [note 2]

During the encounters, plasma interactions occurred between Venus and Mars, and between Mars and the Earth's Moon. These are described in the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey." The "Homeric Poems," which follow closely in time to Homer's epics, have similar descriptions. The "Iliad" retells the events of 776 BC as the interaction between the Olympian gods in the skies above Troy. The action is between the warrior goddess Athena (Venus), and the blood-stained god of war Ares (Mars), with Aphrodite (the Moon) as a bystander. To keep Ares from aiding the Trojans in the battle over Troy, Athena drives a spear into Ares' "lower belly, below his belt." The scar still shows as a 3000 mile long gash below the Martian equator. As Aphrodite approaches to help Ares, Athena bashes her in the breast. "And her heart bled [or melted]," reads the "Iliad." [note 3]

Roman historians for the 8th century BC record wildly wildly erratic 'months' which remain unresolved for a century. Despite the descriptions from the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," it is unlikely that the orbit of the Moon changed because of plasma strikes. Plasma strikes will wear away the crust of a planet before 'moving' it in space. [note 4]

In the Odyssey, Demodocus, one of the fictional characters (and a poet), recites a poem dealing with a tryst of Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (the Moon in this case). In this poetic interpretation, Ares' repeated arc mode plasma discharges to the smaller Moon are his ejaculations. Ralph Juergens mentions that, as Mars closed in, the display would have changed from long range single arcs to much smaller arcs encompassing the whole sphere of the Moon. This is the net devised by the smith Hephaestus (played by Venus) which falls on the lovers and holds them captive. [note 5]

It appears that the Olympic Games in Greece were instituted in 772 BC to commemorate the chases between the planets Venus and Mars four or eight years earlier. Originally the games consisted of just one foot race. With each of the following Olympics at 4 year intervals (originally at 8 year intervals), the activities were expanded to include additional foot races. Other athletic contests did not enter the Olympics until many decades later. [note 6]

In Mesoamerica the 'ballgame' event receives an entirely different interpretation from the 'foot race' in Greece. The Olmecs engaged in a game involving a large rubber ball. In Mexico the ballcourt comes into use, although possibly not until some 800 years later. The shape of the ball court seems to be based on the look of the south night sky, the Absu, before 2349 BC. It will feature the religious re-enactment of the adventures of the ball-playing twins mentioned in the "Popol Vu" -- mimicking the planets Venus and Mars playing ball with the much smaller Mercury (or a similar event in 685 BC; see later text). The ball court is a feature which came to near-universal use throughout Mexico and the game, in typical Mesoamerican style, was a deadly affair -- it is today suspected that the loser (or the winner, some say) was decapitated. It is also, as ever and everywhere in antiquity, in imitation of what was seen in the sky. [note 7]

The Ragings of Mars

Starting in 747 BC, and for 60 years thereafter, Mars crossed Earth's orbit and passed close to Earth five times. Prayers and pleadings to Mars proliferate in Mesopotamia and India during this period. The Book of Joel (in the Bible) also records the threat of Mars. A troop of warriers travel with Mars, called Maruts, the "Terrible Ones," in Vedic sources, carrying gleaming spears and throwing fire, lightning bolts, and bolides to Earth. Joel, of course, identifies them as the "hosts of the Lord." He also calls them Ariz, "Terrible Ones," the name for Mars adopted by the Greeks, Ares.

These are the companions of Mars, asteroids which had accompanied Mars since the time of the first dynasty of Egypt, when the Egyptians duly counted them as the herds of small and large cattle of Horus. They will now also show up in the tales of Hercules, as his stolen cattle or as the armies he raised for various exploits. [note 8]

All nations watched Mars during these years with great anxiety. Most notable among the destructive effects of these close passes are the frequency of earthquakes, due to gravitational and electrical forces on the crust, and a moving electrical arc which burned forests -- and lifted the material along with soil ahead of itself. In an era of city walls, built as a measure against rampaging tribes, and most frequently built on hilltops, Mars becomes known as the "stormer of walls." In many locations the seven to ten foot cover of burnt matter and soil, which buried fortified hilltop citadels, far exceeds the amount ever deposited by any forest fires or volcanic eruptions, which are seldom over a few inches.

Alfred de Grazia, in the following, imagines the devastations of Mars. He has reference to the event of 767 BC, the ballgame, but it probably more accurately reflects the events of 747 BC and after.

"There emerge, in the perspective of the human race, disasters without number. The gaseous composition of the atmosphere changes (a noticeable thinning and occasional mass poisonings). Large-scale destruction of herds and crops, and of wild-life and forests occurs. Basins are emptied or filled with water."

"Tidal waves wipe out nearly all coastal settlements (where perhaps 80% of the Greek-speaking population was contained in 800 B.C.). Chasms are opened; volcanoes are created and activated. Surface soils are ripped off by winds traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. Communities are obliterated or disrupted by showers of ash and debris, winds, water, fire, and famine. The apocalyptic vision, historically founded, is renewed."

-- Alfred de Grazia, in "The Disasterous Love Affair of Moon and Mars" (1984)

It should be pointed out that the traveling arc probably did not come directly from Mars, but from the upper atmosphere, or the region of the ionosphere. The presence of Mars between the Sun and Earth would have induced a change in the part of the Earth's plasmasphere envelope in the region facing the Sun (and Mars). This is "electrical induction" -- the migration away of electrons when experiencing a nearby (negative) electrical field. The induced electrical field would propagate through the layers of the ionosphere, the upper atmosphere, and the Earth's surface. This is exactly how lightning occurs under 'normal' conditions. Negatively charged clouds chase away electron at the ground below the clouds, resulting in a high potential difference, which leads to lightning strikes.

The lightning strikes of the 8th and 7th centuries BC traveled west across the surface of the Earth (because Earth rotates to the east). The lightning strikes may have ignited, extinguished, and restarted numerous times, preferring high ground to land on. The lighting bolts must have been enormous and mostly continuous, and might have traveled in groups. They could probably be seen coming from over the far horizon, for in a number of instances we have evidence of people evacuating hilltop locations only minutes before being struck. [note 9]

As a continuous arc, the bolts would have left behind a path of incinerated trees and grasses and upturned soil. The arc would have resulted in tornado-like forces which would have lifted loose soil and ashes into the air. If a bolt extinguished on a hilltop, the suspended material would have been dropped. [note 10a]

Mars came close enough to Earth to have its two peculiar satellites observed and described. Both are very small and they circle Mars on extremely tight orbits. To Homer they are Ares' dogs of war, Deimos and Phobus -- Fear and Panic -- rushing madly about his chariot. They are the horses of his chariot, says Hesiod. Dean Swift describes the satellites of Mars quite accurately in "Gulliver's Travels" in 1726, apparently on the basis of sources from antiquity, for they are only discovered by telescope one hundred and fifty years after its publication, and 2400 years after they were first seen. [note 10]

In the "Iliad," Ares, "the bloodied stormer of walls," always loses. Yet a number of belligerent nations take Mars as their primary God. Mars is the chief God of Rome. Their calendar year starts with the month of March in his honor and the founding of Rome is dated to the middle years of the eighth century BC -- coincident with the first major disturbance of Earth by Mars in 747 BC. The Cimmerians and Scythians, an eastern European steppen people, also take Mars as their chief god and start destructive raiding expeditions into Anatolia in the 8th century BC. In the middle of the 8th century BC, coinciding with the return of Mars, Assyria, a small nation in northern Mesopotamia, models its army after Mars's 'horsemounted' hordes, and with similar tactics of speed and utter destruction, expands its conquests over a region from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and to Aswan in Egypt.

The Aztec's chief god is Huitzilopochtli, "destroyer of cities and killer of people," and the Aztecs proceed (at a much later date) to terrorize the other nations of Mexico. Huitzilopochtli is Mars. (There are other Mesoamerican gods associated with Mars, such as the "flayed god" and the "scarfaced god.") [note 11]

Mars came close enough to Earth to cause a disturbance of the Earth's orbit on February 26th in 747 BC. Every 15 years thereafter Earth and Mars closed in on each other. A second significant disturbance probably happened in 686 BC, on March 23 (some sources suggest 702 or 701 BC). [note 12]

The events of 747 BC and 686 BC, stand out, for the Earth experienced a seismic shock and the axis of the Earth was disturbed. During the gyroscopic reaction which swung the axis through a loop, the day was temporarily lengthened or shortened. In the "Iliad," Hera sends the Sun unwillingly into the ocean, that is, she is shortening the day. In the "Odyssey," Athena holds back the dawn at the edge of the ocean, thus lengthening the night.

[Image: Two planets in line with the Sun]
Image: Two planets in line with the Sun. When the inner planet's plasmasphere tail, directed away from the Sun, touches the leading edge of the other planet's plasmasphere there will be an electrical interaction.

The reaction to having the plasmaspheres of two planets touch would be a sudden experience of each other's electrical fields. This would result in an instantaneous repulsive force -- an Earth shock. As the planets would both move away from each other (in the direction radial with the Sun), the force would decrease, and stop as suddenly when the plasmaspheres no longer touched. This might take only hours. The repulsive forces would also disappear as the planet with the larger negative charge would induce an opposing charge in the facing hemisphere of the second planet. Since this involves the movement of electrons through the crust, it would also take time. The increased localized difference in charge would, of course, result in arcing from one planet to the other in an attempt to achieve charge equalization. [note 14a]

Because of the repulsive electrical force, the crust would be depressed over a large area, resulting in an uplift at the margins. As the Earth rotated, the center of the compressive forces would rotate toward the west but would diminish very rapidly with the induced charge change and as the planets distanced from each other.

The shock would be transmitted to all of the globe of the Earth, and both move the Earth in space, and, if the center of the impact was off-center to the Earth's equator, tilt the rotational axis. A gyroscopic reaction torque would result if the Earth's axis were tilted -- a second twist which would attempt to bring the Earth's axis back to its original poisition. Additionally, the Earth's crust would attempt to make corrections for the sudden change in the direction of the surface of the Earth. The crust would attempt to slide over the mantle to follow the new direction of rotation, crumpling mountains as it did. Mesopotamian records indicate earthquakes on an almost daily basis during these two centuries and, even four hundred years later, Rome still records over 50 earthquakes per year. Hurricanes and tsunamis swept the Earth. (See Chapter 14, "Celestial Mechanics," for the mechanics of the interactions.) [note 14]

Calendar Reforms

During the disturbance of 747 BC, the year lengthens by five days, six hours, and 20 minutes to become 365 1/4 days -- nominally a change of 5 and 1/4 days. Calendar reforms were instituted worldwide, some in 747 BC but a few much later. Egypt attempts an additional correction to the calendar in 239 BC when the priests issue a decree which adds one day to the civil calendar every four years. [note 15]

"... that the case shall not occur, that all the Egyptian festivals, now celebrated in winter, shall not be celebrated some time or other in summer, on account of the precession of the rising of the Divine Sothis by one day in the course of 4 years."

-- Canopus Decree, 239 BC, found at Tanis.

However, the Egyptian Venus calendar, based on the heliacal rising of Venus (Sothis in this case) every 8 years, remained in use until Julius Caesar's calendar was introduced 200 years later under Roman occupation. [note 16]

Between 2193 and 1492 BC there probably were ten lunar months of about 28 days in the year. Shang dynasty oracle records indicate months of 27 and 28 days. I have used a year of 270 or 280 days for this earlier period, but think it was probably 273 days. This is reason enough why Shang records seem to use both 27 day months and 28 day months.

In the following era, from 1492 BC to 747 BC, the year was 360 days, and the Moon in an orbit of 30 days. Both of these periods are well established.

When, after 747 BC, the period of the Moon (the month) was no longer a whole number interval of the year, the previous religious feast days started to wander around the year, and efforts were made throughout the world to rectify this. Here is a list of how the ancients took notice of the new celestial order of 365 and one quarter days...

Before 747 BC there had been 12 lunar months of 30 days during a year of 360 days. Since, during this period, an exact multiple of lunar months coincided with the solar year, a lunar calendar was in use to govern the dates when religious observations were to be held. The phases of the Moon would represent a very visible public calendar, which everyone could understand.

The change to a new year of an odd number of days, with a fractional day left over, and with a month no longer composed of an even fraction of the year, brought religious observances into total confusion. Attempts at corrections were made worldwide, resulting in many very complex calendars. All of these reforms are obvious attempts to bring a lunar religious calendar into conformity with a new solar year, because following a strict lunar calendar during the new era would continuously displace all celebrations by many days over the year.

It should be noted that there is worldwide disagreement on which day constituted the start of the new era. As Athena "holds back the dawn at the edge of the ocean" in the Mediterranean region, the Indians of Mesoamerica experience a night which lasted four nights -- thus equal to two full days. Just as in the Mediterranean region we have the Era of Nabonassar starting on February 26th and the Roman calendar starting after February 28th (the changes to new calendars were independently arrived at), so in Mesoamerica we have a similar disagreement over when the new era started.

In the case of Mesoamerica, the question of dates has become an issue among scholars, and deals with the initial date of the Maya (Olmec) Long Count. John E. Thompson first suggested in 1927 that the Maya Long Count of days starts on August 13, 3114 BC. In 1935 Thompson revised his calculation to August 11, validating the opinion of another scholar who also arrived at the date of August 11, 3114 BC.

This last date (the "August 11" correlation) has become the accepted archaeological standard and is generally used today, although any number of researchers think that the date of August 13, 3114 BC, is more likely to be correct, because a calendar based on August 13 correctly dates many known recorded eclipses. A calendar based on August 11, however, is still used by some people in Mexico and Guatemala. [note 24]

There have been suggestions that the Maya made a two day correction at some time in the past, but this assumes an absolute and uniform use of the calendar since remote antiquity. Considering the widespread adoption of the Olmec religious practices among the diverse tribes of southern Mexico, the Yucatan, and Guatemala, as well as the universal use of the 2000 year old Tzolkin calendar, it can be assumed that in 747 BC, when the Long Count was devised, there were some diverse regional opinions on the concept of where one era ended and another started, as well as questions about the existence ("completion") of two days which had not been seen in progress. [note 25a]

A Blast From Heaven

Another strange incident at the time of the disturbance of 687 BC was widely known in the Middle East. In 687 (or 686) BC the Assyrian army of Sennacherib, on its way to quell a revolt in Egypt, camps some distance from Jerusalem and demands its capitulation on threat of a seige. The prophet Isaiah urges Hezekiah, the king of Jerusalem, to resist, telling him that Sennacherib's army would never arrive. Apparently Sennacherib had been similarly warned by his advisors. [note 25]

"The very same night God sent his angel to their camp. He destroyed every man of valour, every commander, and chief man in the Assyrian army. The next morning there were found 185,000 dead men. After this Sennacherib shamefully broke camp and returned into his own land to rest at Nineveh. Isaiah 37:36-38 2-Kings 19:35-37 2-Chronicles 32:21 All this was foretold by the prophet. Isaiah 38:1-22 31:8,9"

-- paraphrased by Bishop Ussher

Since antiquity there has been endless speculation as to what really happened, starting with Herodotus (fifth century BC), who attributes it to mice. Josephus (first century AD), along with modern historians, suggested a plague. But Biblical and Egyptian sources plainly state that it was Ignis Coelis -- "a blast of fire from the heavens." Such would be one of the effects of a close pass of another planet. [note 26]

There are two independent records of this event from China. The following is quoted from the Bamboo Books..

In the tenth year of the Emperor Kwei, ".. the five planets went out of their course. In the night, stars fell like rain. The earth shook."

-- "Annals of the Bamboo Books"

The "Bamboo Books" were found in China in a grave in AD 279. The "Spring and Autumn Annals," compiled for the state of Lu by Confucius and completed about 480 BC, reads almost identically, but does not recognize the Earth shock.

"In the seventh year of the Duke [Chwang] ... In summer, in the fourth month, on Sin-maou, at night, the regular stars were not visible. At midnight, there was a fall of stars like rain.

-- James Legge, translator, "The Ch'un Ts'ew and The Tso Chuen" (1872)

The seventh year of the Duke Chwang of Lu is identified as 686 BC by Legge. The quote from the "Bamboo Books" lists the date (-687) in astronomical notation, which is equivalent to 686 BC, Julian.

These terse Chinese historical notes, which have been dated to March 23, 686 BC, can be interpreted as a swing of the spin axis of the Earth as it underwent a gyroscopic reaction to an external torque induced by the Earth's plasmasphere contact with the plasmasphere of another planet. The other planet, in this case, was Mercury.

The first effect of the sudden electrical repulsive forces experienced from Mercury, as the plasmaspheres connected, was a shock felt worldwide. The stars would seem to fall, or, on the day side of Earth, the Sun would move away from its normal path.

Sennacherib returned to Assyria, did not record this disasterous campaign among his records, and spent the next 8 years in seclusion. Two of his sons kill him while he is at prayers in the temple of Negral (Mars).

There was an Egyptian monument in the eastern delta (at Letopolis, "Mouse City," also known as the "City of the Thunderbolt") to a 'mouse god' (per Herodotus), erected in commemoration (apparently) of the defeat of Sennacherib's army which had left Egypt in 686 BC (or never reached Egypt). There are also extant temple inscriptions bearing on this.

I would suggest that it was Mercury which was involved in the incident of 686 BC. Mercury is Hermes among the Greeks, but known as Smintheus ("mouse god") in Asia Minor at the time when Mercury was still known as Apollo, the Archer God, among the Greeks, as in the "Iliad." The name Apollo is transferred to the Sun at a later date.

Mercury, which is only a little larger than our Moon, certainly might have looked like a mouse without its bow-shock wings, just as it might have looked like a bow and arrow with the bow shock and tail. Although the date, March 23, 687 BC (Julian), would seem to argue for Mars as the agent, this second Earth shock by Mars is not at all well supported. (The first shock was experienced 61 years earlier, in 747 BC.) I would opt for Mercury as the agent, and I would place the event in 686 BC. For more information bearing on this see Chapter 14, "Mechanics."

The Earth shock event was experienced at night in Peking and Jerusalem. Chinese sources read "at night" and "at midnight," as does the Bible. Although Mercury was not seen during the daytime in Asia or the Middle East, it was seen by North American Indians. To paraphrase from various legendary American Indian sources, this is what transpired:

The Sun was in the day sky a few hours before or after noon when it turned black and started to move down, that is, moving directly toward the horizon and additionally toward the southeast. The Sun was choking, and as it dipped down in the sky, the sky darkened and Coyote (Mars) was noticed in the east. Coyote had just crossed over the Earth's orbit in the last few days. Obviously Coyote had snared the Sun, and was dragging it backwards. Only after an hour did the Sun brighten again and return to its path across the sky. Then it was seen what had happened. A mouse had chewed through the lasso. It could still be seen just west of the Sun, with its tail pointing away. [note 27a]

The Death of Quetzalcoatl

Soon after the encounter with Mercury, Earth seemed to have moved (rotated) its orbit away from intersecting the orbit of Mars and removed the threat of Mars. Shortly after Earth is removed from the vicinity of Mars, Venus, too, fell from the sky. [note 27]

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer!"
-- Isaiah. [note 28]

What happened to Venus? From what little we know, it looks like Venus was suddenly involved in a massive plasma discharge. The flare-up also involved Mercury. But less notice was taken of Mercury, for at the start of the nova event Mercury was very close to Venus in the sky. Most peoples recognized Venus, but not Mercury. Mesoamerica thought that the other planet in flames was Mars, which stood in the day sky a little west of Mercury. (The starting and ending dates of this event are developed in Chapter 12, "Modern History," and Chapter 13, "Chronology Notes") [note 29a]

In Mesoamerica, Quetzalcoatl, who is Venus, is represented as the bearded man or God, who had come from the east to deliver all the benefits of civilization. In their recycling of all history, the Mesoamericans make Quetzalcoatl into the last king of the abandoned and famed city of Tula, already an ancient ruin at the time of the Mesoamerican authors. To paraphrase, "Quetzalcoatl, the last King of Tula, traveled east, and set himself on fire. Eight days later he arose in the sky as the Morning Star (Venus)." Both the "Popol Vu" and the "Annals of Cuauhitlan," two documents independently written a thousand miles apart, agree on this. In the "Codex Borgia" the mythical hero Quetzalcoatl is burned while his heart ascends to heaven as the Morning Star. [note 29]

The "burning of Quetzalcoatl" happened far from Earth, since it did not involve any noticeable geological disturbance on Earth, although we have many notices of the "Ignis Coelis" during this period. It may very well be that the condition of electric charge for Venus had mounted to the point where only a plasma discharge or a mass ejection could balance forces. At any rate, after its last passage behind the Sun, Venus seems to have undergone a massive plasma discharge, and, at some later time, assumed a circular orbit. It must have been an enormous energy outpouring, for Venus lost its coma, its talons, its feathers, and the tail or flowing hair. It assumed the looks of a star. But it took months.

If, as I have suggested, Mercury was involved in the March 23, 686 BC, plasma contact with Earth, then it might also be suggested that we are not seeing Venus involved in a nova event, but that this was a nova-like event of the Sun, involving both Mercury and Venus. Mercury would have changed its orbit (or its eccentricity) and disturbed electrical conditions close to the Sun. Today the Sun still reacts to comets which come close by hurling coronal mass ejections into space. That would make more sense of the description, from China, that two suns were seen battling in the sky at this time. The two Suns do not imply that one of them was the actual Sun. But since Mercury remains close to the Sun because of its much smaller orbit, it is certain that for many observers the display involved only Venus and the Sun. The sudden brightening of Venus was recorded in extensive references to "a prodigy in the sky" and of Venus "blazing through the day sky brighter than the Sun," as well as references relating the changes in the sky. [note 31]

We do not know exactly when this happened, but my suspicion is that it occurred during the year 680 BC in eastern Mediterranean chronology, which is 685 BC in absolute astronomical chronology (to be discussed below). There are a number of reasons why we have no certain date for this event. First, because the flare-up of Venus spanned a considerable amount of time. It was not an event lasting only a day. In fact, it lasted a month and a half, 40 days. Second, the event was not associated with any cataclysmic changes on Earth. And third, the effects were not noticed until the following year, or later. Only later were the lasting changes recognized: Spring started a week later, the constellations had moved in the sky, and the polar axis no longer pointed to a location in Ursa Major. When later attempts were made to understand the changes, it came as a massive shock to ideas about the Gods, about knowledge, and about the workings of the Universe -- which will be the subject of the following chapter.

The flare-up must have represented a cataclysm equivalent to a supernova. The event should have been noted in Chinese records as a nova. It was not. The earliest Chinese record of a supernova (a "guest star") is for AD 185. The flare-up of Venus was not considered a "guest star" because the display was immense and happened during day time. It was not a star, it was obviously the planet Venus, which, because of its coma and tail, would have readily been seen in the daytime in antiquity.

For both the Mediterranean region and Mesoamerica, the blazing of Venus became the end of mythical and divine history. No new Gods enter the pantheon after this -- with the exception of the personification of Venus (as Quetzalcoatl, Mazda, Mithra, and Christ) as the saviour of mankind. Saved, that is, from sixty years of harrasment by planets and planetary Gods. Mars shows up five times during this period, delivering a shock the first time, which changed the orbit of the Earth, and landing continuous lightning strikes the other four times. Mercury closed in on Earth nine times, delivering a shock to Earth the last time, which may have altered the Earth's orbit slightly. (For the Earth shock by Mercury see Chapter 14, "Celestial Mechanics." For the nine visits of Mercury, see Chapter 17, "The Chilam Balam Books.") In addition the region of Mesopotamia, the Near East, and Egypt were subjected to constant warfare, as was China during this time.

When Venus and Mercury started to blaze in the skies, it must have seemed as if the end of the creation was at hand. But it ceased, on July 25th, 685 BC, suddenly, when a massive plasmoid lightning strike by Jupiter stopped the blazing planets. I'll discuss this further below.

The Tablets of Ammizaduga

For such significant events, we have surprisingly few accurate written records. From Mesoamerican we have the story that Quetzalcoatl set himself on fire. We do have a date from late Maya sources (the "Books of the Chilam Balam"), which can be verified against the alignments of Mesoamerican ceremonial centers. Other than that we have the Phaethon legend from the Mediterranean and a few other curious documents. I'll discuss dates in the year of this event in the next Chapter. First I need to establish the year.

Among Mesopotamian sources we have, almost as a coincidence, the most curious and frequently misread, "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga" -- a 21 year Babylonian record of the appearances and disappearances of Venus. Velikovsky used the information from the "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga" to demonstrate the erratic behaviour of Venus in the era of the Exodus of Moses in 1492 BC. The "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga" have traditionally been assigned to 1900 to 1000 BC. But an investigation by Lynn Rose and Raymond Vaughan in 1994 determined that the "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga" belonged to the 7th century BC, as others have suggest also, and revealed the data for Venus to be inherently consistent.

The "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga" are clay tablets found in the library of Assurbanipal of Nineveh, which burned down in 612 BC. Some 20 copies have been found (including some at other locations). Assurbanipal was a king of Assyria, the grandson of Sennacherib, and a collector of ancient literature. The tablets record the first and last visibility of Venus in the east and in the west (what we today call the Morning Star and Evening Star). They read (for example), "Venus disappeared in the east on ... remained absent ... months and ... days and reappeared in the west on ...." [note 34]

Dating these tablets has been a problem. The only clue has been an insertion on a line of the tablet which should show the record of the second half of the cycle of year 8 of the observations. "Venus was not observed for a period of nine months and four days." The data is missing and instead we find the words "The Golden Throne." [note 34a]

" ... this phrase meant "year of the golden throne," ... a year-formula that had been used to refer to the eighth year of the reign of Ammizaduga, the next-to-last king during the first Babylonian dynasty [ca 1500 or 1900 BC] ... it is located in the space that would originally have contained the rest of the observational material for the eighth year. As it is now, we have only the date of Venus' disappearance [in the east], not the interval of invisibility and not the data of reappearance [in the west]." [note 34b]

-- Lynn Rose and Raymond Vaughan (1994)

The tablets are at times dismissed as 'omen tablets' because the data for each year are annotated with what is thought to be omen information, like ".. and there is war in the east" or, "the harvest is good." But omens traditionally read as 'if-then' phrases, like, "if earthquakes last all day, then there will be destruction in the land." The "Venus Tablets" do not read like this. Of course there are also problems distinguishing tenses, but the few I have seen read like contemporaneous observations.

Separate tablets have small errors of a day or so between them, as if we are looking at a collation of separate observations. But the tablets had to be important. They may have been used in a scribal school, which generally copied only important documents. And they are unique. No other planets were observed closely at that time. The movements of Venus must have been regarded as very significant.

But the biggest problem with the tablets has been the fact that the data -- the times of visibility and invisibility -- do not match the observations of today. That has been very disconcerting to astronomers who expect that the orbits of the Earth and all the planets have remained the same since the beginnings of the Solar System, 4 billion years ago. If the orbits had always remained the same, the risings and settings of Venus could be calculated back to the eighth century BC or even earlier, but backwards calculations do not match the Babylonian data for Venus. This is disconcerting because the same Babylonians plotted the stars accurately to within a few seconds of a degree, measured the length of each day of movement of the Sun against the stars during the year, kept detailed records of the travels of other planets, knew the length of the year to within 20 minutes, and could measure the latitude of cities to within a fraction of a degree. Something was wrong. [note 35]

The "Tablets of Ammizaduga" had been investigated and discussed in archaeological and astronomical literature repeatedly since AD 1865. A number of these studies held that the data was in error, or suggested that it was made up. The studies all assumed that the orbits of Venus and Earth were nearly perfect circles in the past, as they are today.

In the early 1990's the tablets were investigated again by Lynn Rose and Raymond Vaughan, but without the bias of academic astronomy which, over a century of investigations, had simply removed data which did not fit (Kronia Conference, Portland, 1994).

Rose and Vaughan hold the data to be from the eighth century BC, not from the reign of Ammizaduga nearly a thousand years earlier as had previously been assumed, although exact dates were not determined. Rose and Vaughan use the fact that the orbits of Venus and Earth did not intersect.

Schiaparelli in 1906 also dated the tablets to the 8th century BC, based on mention of an invading Asiatic tribe which can with certainty be dated to the eighth century BC.

What Rose and Vaughan did was to normalize the data with respect to planetary orbital eccentricities. (Eccentricity is a measure of how much an orbit deviates from the circular.) That process removed the variations in actual day counts, yielding dimensionless units related to planetary eccentricities. In 'normalized' form, the data tells very little about actual orbits, but it does tell of changes in eccentricities, and changes in perihelion. There are changes in eccentricities after years 9 and 19 and a change in the aphelion of Earth's orbit after year 9. Normalized, the data looks little different from today's observations. The large remaining discrepancy is the missing data of year 8, and the insertion of the phrase "The Golden Throne." [note 36]

The Golden Throne

I think the tablets record planetary events surrounding the destruction of the temple of Marduk at Babylon in 689 BC, and its subsequent restoration in 680 BC. To point up the disruptions of the seventh century, Velikovsky had written that Babylon "did not celebrate New Year's day for a twenty year period" from 687 BC to 669 or 667 BC. "Eight years under Sennacherib, twelve years under Esarhaddon," Velikovsky quoted from the records from Nineveh, a sum of twenty years. He fit this period to what he thought to be the Earth shock of 687 BC as the start date and the death of Esarhaddon in 668 BC as the end date -- also a difference of twenty years. However, it adds up to 21 years if different end points are counted -- 689 BC -- the destruction of the temple at Babylon -- instead of 687 BC, the suspected second Earth shock of Earth, through 668 BC, the crowning of a new king of Babylon. Velikovsky never connected the 20 year hiatus of New Year celebrations with the 21 year record of the Venus tablets which he had quoted earlier in his book.

Additionally, Velikovsky does not mention that Babylon, occupied by Elam, was destroyed under an Assyrian seige in 689 BC, the temple compounds at the center were razed and left unoccupied for eight years, and not rebuilt until 680 BC. No wonder there were no New Year celebrations.

In about 695 BC, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, who later lost an army in the seige of Jerusalem (686 BC), had attacked the kingdom of Elam on the Persian Gulf, by sending ships and troops down the Tigris river from Syria. Elam, although an Iranian nation, at that time held most of Babylonia (Mesopotamia) from south of the city of Babylon to the Persian Gulf. Elam struck back with an overland expedition which took the city of Babylon from Assyrian control.

By 693 BC the Assyrian army had made its way back north to Assyria, having defeated the Elamites (in six campaigns) throughout Babylonia, except for the city of Babylon. Sennacherib spent the next 4 years on other punitive expeditions throughout the Assyrian empire, and finally in 689 attacked Babylon, then still held by the Elamites.

Babylon was taken and sacked. Some 60,000 lives were lost in the seige, according to the records of Sennacherib. The city fortifications were destroyed and the temple compounds leveled. The God Marduk was removed to Ashur in Assyria. A canal off the Euphrates was rerouted to flood the central area of the city. The center of Babylon, where the temple had been, stood empty for eight years.

Babylon had become important a thousand years earlier, in the time of Hammarabi (1792 -1750 BC), and, although at different times under the rule of different tribes, Babylon represented all of Mesopotamia. The whole region, once known as Akkad and Sumer, had became known as "Babylonia." The city God of Babylon, Marduk, had become the "King of the Gods," replacing the much older Mesopotamian God Enlil of Nippur as the regionwide God who would approve kingships and settle border disputes. Marduk had originally been a god of thunder and lightning, and can be identified with Jupiter.

Kingship in Mesopotamia had been secular since the very beginning and the concept of a "King of the Gods" was an attempt by the priesthood to impose some control over the city states of Mesopotamia and their individual kings. The priests of Enlil at Nippur had attempted to gain control over the kings of the individual cities at an earlier time. When Hammarabi unified the country after ca 1800 BC and made Babylon the most important city, the priests again saw an opening. They elevated Marduk to the status of a region-wide God and wrote a new creation epic, the "Enuma Elish," around the exploits of Marduk.

At the time of Sennacherib, Marduk had been the primary God of Mesopotamia for a thousand years. He was recognized throughout Babylonian Mesopotamia, in Elam in the south, and even in Assyria in the north. Even later, Cyrus, the Persian, paid homage to Marduk when he took Babylon in 539 BC. All the Gods of Mesopotamia came to Babylon ("The Gate of the Gods") to honor Marduk, reminiscent of the state councils often employed by the earlier earthly kings of Sumer and Akkad. The "Enuma Elish" related this new theogony, with Marduk even elevated as Creator God. On New Year's day (Spring Equinox) the "Enuma Elish" was recited at the temple of Marduk. The celebration of New Year was the most important festival of Babylon, in which the king himself participated, playing the role of Marduk.

Sennacherib's very long struggle against the Elamites, and his failures at Jerusalem three years later, added to his growing unpopularity among the Assyrians. His kingdom apparently suffered from crop failures also. His removal of Marduk from Babylon was seen as the cause of his misfortunes.

"Even many Assyrians were indignant at this, believing that the Babylonian God Marduk must be grievously offended at the destruction of the temple and the carrying off of his image."

-- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition

Attempts were made by the Assyrian court to rewrite the "Enuma Elish" to show Marduk at fault. The politics came to a head in 681 BC. There was a revolt and Sennacherib was killed by two of his sons. The two sons had to flee the country and were pursued by Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib's surviving wife. He was subsequently crowned as King.

Esarhaddon immediately made amends for his father's behaviour and in 680 BC rebuilt Babylon and the temple compounds, although the statue of Marduk remained in Ashur. He continued to maintain good relations with Babylon, spending part of the year there, but calling himself only the "Governor of Babylon." In 677 BC he installed one of his own sons, Shamash-shum-ukin, as Crown Prince of Babylon, but the prince did not assume kingship of Babylon during Esarhaddon's lifetime. [note 37]

Esarhaddon spends the remainder of his reign maintaining his father's kingdom. He worried much about his failing health and, at times of impending lunar eclipses, installed temporary substitute kings of Assyria so the Gods could not find him. Esharhaddon died in 669 BC while on a punitive expedition to Egypt, which was then in revolt.

In 668 BC his third son, Ashurbanipal, took the crown of Assyria and Shamash-shum-ukin was crowned king of Babylon. In the following year the Babylonian New Year festival was again celebrated. The statue of Marduk had been returned. It had been twenty-one years since the destruction of the temple. It is in Ashurbanipal's archives at Nineveh that the "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga" were found 2500 years later. [note 38]

There is a remarkable coincidence between the 21 years of observations recorded by the "Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga" and the 21 years without a New Year celebration in Babylon. If we place the end points of the 21 year record at the beginning and end of the period when no New Year celebrations happen in Babylon, then the year of "The Golden Throne" falls in 680 BC, the year the temple of Marduk is rebuilt.

It was the phrase, "The Year of the Golden Throne," which caused the initial researchers of the 19th century to date the tablets to 1900 or 1500 BC. However, what the insertion "The Golden Throne" strongly reminds me of is not Ammizaduga, a minor king in the declining days of the First Babylonian empire in 1500 BC, but the "Lowering of Kingship" at the start of time before the Flood and again with the first king after the Flood. As always, the Mesopotamians look backwards to the beginnings. [note 39]

After the ... [missing text] ... of kingship had descended from heaven, after the exalted crown and throne of kingship had descended from heaven, the divine rites and the exalted powers were perfected, the bricks of the cities were laid in holy places ...etc.

-- Ziudsura tablets, segment B, (some parts missing) ca 2700 BC.

To the Babylonians the rebuilding of the temple of Marduk must have seemed like the "Kingship of God" had again descended to Earth, and in the same manner as at the beginning of time. Most likely the Venus data was compiled to these tablets for the sole purpose of declaring how the "Kingship of God" had returned to Babylon by the will of the Gods. The data for Venus was used because the sudden blazing of Venus in 680 BC (astronomical year -685) clearly declared the event.

The beginning point of the Venus Tablets follows the destruction of the temple precincts by Sennacherib in 689 BC. A central panel which recorded the phrase "The Golden Throne" corresponds to the rebuilding of the temple in 680 BC. The end point of the data follows the coronation of Shamash-shum-ukin as king of Babylon in 668 BC and the return of Marduk.

The long delay in celebrating the New Year was due to the fact that there was no acknowledged king of Babylon until Shamash-shum-ukin was crowned and because Marduk was missing. Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib, had taken the title of "Governor of Babylon," for political reasons, and his son had remained the "Crown Prince of Babylon." Only after 668 BC was there again a "King of Babylon." [note 40]

The Blazing Star

What was the year of the Golden Throne like? The account from Mesoamerica, that Quatzalcoatl "set himself on fire," suggests an absolutely astounding sight. After having set in the east early in the year and a month late (about mid-February of 685 BC), as noted by Rose and Vaughan, Venus became visible after having passed from behind the Sun and started to appear in the day sky, following the Sun across the sky for some 60 days (but flaring up only 40 days), before disappearing again in the west. It was as if Venus was on fire, an apparition as bright as the Sun, climbing up with the Sun on rising in the east, blazing through the day skies, initially trailing the Sun and progressively distancing from the Sun, until it "lit up the western night sky" at dusk after the Sun had set. This would have been a year when no conventional settings or risings of Venus could be recorded. At some point, after setting in the west, and after an eight day 'canonical' disappearance from view (which may indeed have been actual), it would rise again in the east, no longer in flames, as the Morning Star. [note 41]

Sources describing the flare-up of Venus abound, although most cannot be dated. A Greek 'legend' has Phaethon (Phaëthon) (another name for the planet Venus) steal the chariot of his father the Sun to go on an uncontrollable ride through the sky. His ride ends when he is struck by a thunderbolt from Jupiter (or the Sun) and placed among the stars as the Morning Star. Augustine notes the same as a secondary recollection from other sources, relative to Venus. [note 42]

Once we understand the stupendous flareup of 680 BC (685 BC), we should be able to recognize other mentions of this event. As a matter of fact, Isaiah, who had asked, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" continues on with ...

"For thou hast said in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God"

-- Isaiah 14:12-13

Isaiah does not recognize Venus (Lucifer) as a deity, but only as a self-willed animate phenomenon. His text recognizes that the apparition rose high in the sky (as also noted by other sources) and expresses his contempt for a spirit who would rival God by setting up a throne above the stars. These lines would have been written after 680 BC.

Here is Ezekiel's vision, which may have been recalled from an earlier account. Ezekiel lived a generation later, during the time of the Israelites' captivity in Babylon, 597 BC - 536 BC:

"... upon the throne, a form in human likeness. I saw what might have been brass glowing like fire in a furnace from the waist upwards; and from the waist downwards I saw what looked like fire with encircling radiance. Like a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day was the sight of that encircling radiance; it was like the appearance of the glory of the Lord. When I saw this I threw myself on my face ... "

-- Ezekiel 1:27-28

I should add a note about the "Golden Throne." A 'throne' in antiquity is not the high-backed arm chair we think of. It is, after all, a coma and plasma tail we are looking at. It would perhaps look like the presentation of the mountain of Horus between 3100 BC and 2700 BC -- a vertical section of a truncated cone in profile and perhaps with distinct legs, depending on how the Sun illuminated the coma and the plasma outpouring.

Because Venus orbits between the Earth and the Sun, during the part of the time when Venus was more in line with the Sun, the plasma tail would be directed toward Earth, and foreshortened, and the planet with its plasma would have looked more like an inverted bucket than a blazing ball with a tail stretching halfway across the sky. The rationalization of the image, of course, depends entirely on expectations. Once you see a throne in the celestial display, it will remain a throne through any amount of distortion.

The Persian Zend-Avista (written contemporaneously, or within a generation) is filled with offers of supplication and sacrifices to Tristrya (Venus), and also evokes an image of light similar to Isaiah's text ... [note 43]

"For ten nights ... Tishtrya, the bright and glorious star, mingles his shape with light, moving in the shape of.. [a boy, a bull, a horse]". [this phrasing is repeated three times]

"We sacrifice unto Tishtrya, the bright and glorious star who from the shining east moves along his long winding path, along the path made by the Gods."

-- Zend-Avista II, "Khorda Avesta" Section 8, "Tishtar Yasht" James Darmesteter, translater (1880)

The description matches what we would expect. The "long winding path" is the loop normally traveled by Venus above the east or west horizon as the Morning Star or Evening Star. But at the time when Venus was regularly seen in the daytime skies, the "long winding path" actually describes the loop traveled around the Sun in the daytime. It is "long" because Venus extends some 40 degrees from the Sun as seen from Earth. The "path made by the Gods" is of course the ecliptic. Despite the "winding path" Venus stayed mostly on the ecliptic. The ten nights (actually, days) are repeated for three different shapes. This is a total of thirty days. In the "Khorda Avesta," after a lapse of 30 days, Tishtrya engages a daemon in battle, but loses during the first three days. An appeal is made to Ahura Mazda [Jupiter] for intervention -- a sacrifice to give Tishtrya strength. This happens, and on the last day, Tishtrya proves stronger. Thirty four days have passed (there may be additional days at the end of the hymn). The time span is close to being correct. I will get back to this. [note 44]

There are similar descriptions of a blazing apparition among Hindu sources, describing it as a "horse without hips." Assurbanipal, the king of Assyria who reinstalled Marduk to the temple at Babylon, also witnessed the event, and wrote about Ishtar (Venus),

"... who is clothed with fire and bears aloft a crown of awful splendor, raining fire over Arabia."

The "raining fire" is noted in a number of other contemporaneous sources. It is the "Ignis Coelis" which will continue to fall sporadically on regions of Earth far into the future.

With this display in the sky in 680 BC, we should find similar activities among humans -- as ever in imitation of the spectacle in the skies. And we do. There are two recorded instances, dated to the seventh century, of kings in western Anatolia committing suicide in their burning palaces -- Rusas I of Urarta, and Midas of the Phrygians, both after attacks by the Cimmerians. In Mesopotamia we have two Assyrian kings who are reported to have gone up in the smoke of their beseiged palaces -- Sin-shar-ishkun in 611 BC, after a seige by the Medes under Cyaxares, and Shamash-shum-ukin in 648 BC, after a three year seige of Babylon by his brother Ashurbanipal. Ussher writes about Shamash-shum-ukin (under the identity of Sardanapalus)..

"... he made a huge pile of wood in his palace court and set it on fire, which burned himself, his concubines, his eunuchs and all his riches. The palace itself was also burned to ashes."

-- James Ussher "The Annals of The World" (1650)

Croesus is reputed to also have been burned to death when Sardis was taken by Cyrus in 546 BC, although Herodotus has it that he was taken prisoner by the Persians.

I have not found earlier instances of this. As always, a touch of the supernatural is added to history.

In China the last emperor of the Shang dynasty is said to have similarly set himself on fire. The Shang ends in 1125 BC, but the report is from the Chou dynasty, and may be apocryphal, in which case I would presume it was created by the Chi or Eastern Chou, and dated after the eighth century BC, when extensive historical records first appear.

Lastly, Hercules of Greek and Roman mythology, who represents an earlier Mars (before 2800 BC), but also the later wanderings of Venus (he battles Mars in one instance), and especially the destructive visits by Mars in the 7th and 8th century BC, similarly seeks deification through self-immolation. [note 45]

The bolt from Jupiter

Having established the year of these events, I should at this point indicate the likely dates, the sources for which I will discuss in the next Chapter in more detail. The following seems like the most likely sequence of events for the year 685 BC. I'll embelish the chronology with some quotations from various sources, which I will cover in more detail later.

When I first came to a realization of the above events, I simply could not believe it, and was reluctant to put together this narrative. It is absolutely unimaginable that a planet could have bolted its star with an electrical arc which had to travel 480,000,000 miles to reach its destination. I was familiar with the plasmoid imagery of Rome and Babylon, as well as the numerous 'model plasmoids' in Asia, depicted in "Thunderbolts of the Gods" (2005) by David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill. The plasmoids are depicted on coins also. These images were from late antiquity, none from before 600 BC. That was a troubling fact, for the previous depiction of a plasmoid was nearly 3000 years earlier, the predynastic Egyptian king "Catfish-drill."

I was also familiar with the 'rigid bar' insignia of Maya rulers in the Classical Era (AD 400 to AD 900), but it was only when I started to look at the iconography of the Olmec site of La Venta, which can be clearly dated to directly after 650 BC (see Chapter 19), that I was forced to accept the fact that I was obviously looking at a depiction of Jupiter in glow mode plasma discharge (easily recognizable because of Jupiter's reversed magnetic field), and a massive plasmoid lightning bolt shaped exactly like the classical laboratory forms. The diverse imagery suddenly came together to explain the connection between what the Greeks considered the 'mythological past' and what they and we consider the 'modern world.'

The plasma bolt launched from Jupiter is the "lightning bolt of Zeus" which toppled Phaethon from his father's chariot. The myth of Phaethon is thus the last 'mythology' from antiquity. In 685 BC, before releasing the plasmoid, Jupiter must have flared up and assumed the size of a mountain. The bolt traveled over 480 million miles to the Sun. It is little wonder that Jupiter, despite its diminished visual display since 2200 BC, continued to be held as the chief God everywhere in the world.

[Image: Plasmoid lightning bolt] [Image: Plasmoid end structure] [Image: Plasmoid end structure]
Images: Left: Plasmoid lightning bolt shown in its full extent. Right: The end form is based on viewing the denser edge of the cup-like form and a dense central core. After David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill, "Thunderbolts of the Gods" (2005).

We have to ask how this could have happened. What would normally happen to cause lightning between planets, is that a conductive path has to pre-exist and that the voltage difference has to be sensed. That would happen if the plasmaspheres of two planets touched. Although the existence of a long tail would have furnished the electrical path for a return lightning strike, it is just not likely that the plasmasphere tail of Venus (or Earth) would have reached 500 million miles into space, through the Asteroid Belt, to Jupiter. But there is an entirely different condition which fulfils the need for a conductive media between Jupiter and the Sun, and for sensing the voltage difference.

[Image: Plasmoid lightning bolt]
Image: The Plasmoid lightning bolt depicted as the "Rigid Serpent Bar" in Maya illustrations, meant as a token of office. Two Gods are coming out of the distended mouths of the serpent. The two Saint Andrew's crosses on the body denote the 'vernal equinox' and 'autumnal equinox' of the ecliptic. After Linda Schele and David Freidel "A Forest of Kings" (1990).

It already was my suspicion that the "Venus nova event" was in actuality a month long coronal mass expulsion of the Sun. It lit up Venus and Mercury like suns. It was at this time that both planets ended up becoming pockmarked with craters and electrical scars. It altered the spin axis of the Earth.

And it provided a highly conductive path between the Sun and the far reaches of space, certainly to the location of Jupiter -- a distance of 5.2 AU. A continuous plasma expulsion of the Sun would extend the high voltage drop, the voltage inversion layer which is normally relatively close to the Sun, far out into space. Rather than having to breach 500 million miles of a very large voltage difference, Jupiter was suddenly in almost direct electrical connection with the Sun. The voltage difference between Jupiter and the Sun would be sensed by the plasmasphere of Jupiter which, like those of the other planets, actually travels within the plasmasphere of the Sun.

Earth, Venus, and Mercury were not involved. Earth and Venus remained invisible to Jupiter, protected by their own plasmaspheres. Earth and Venus were also well away from the line connecting the Sun and Jupiter.

[Image: Planets about the Sun, July 26, 685 BC]
Image: Planets about the Sun, July 26, 685 BC, seen from 'above.' Orbital rotation is counterclockwise.

Scaled from the diagram above, it would appear that Earth was some 30 or 40 million miles from the path of the lightning bolt. The plasmoid from Jupiter aimed directly at the Sun. The people of Earth witnessed the travel of the plasmoid through the night and daytime skies. Even if the bolt was only 1/10th of the diameter of Jupiter, it would have been the diameter of the Earth. It is even possible that the plasmoid bolt from Jupiter, passing by Earth, influenced the inclination of Earth's axis, but both the "Chilam Balam" and the "Sibylline Oracle Books" insist that the process started earlier.

In November of AD 2003 the Sun sent a number of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) into space. These usually travel at a speed of about 2 million miles per hour by the time they reach the Earth's orbit (as does the Solar Wind). The CMEs of 2003 traveled across the 93 million miles between the Sun and Earth in 30 minutes, averaging 200 million miles per hour -- a quarter of the speed of light. There is no reason to believe that the lightning bolt from Jupiter in 685 BC could not have traveled at a wide range of possible speeds.

From a comparison of the depictions of plasmoids in Europe and Asia with Mesoamerica, it is clear that Europe and Asia saw the bolt when it was released from Jupiter, saw it travel for 10 or 12 days and may have entirely missed the splashdown, but understood it as headed for Venus. The bolt was traveling 40,000,000 miles per day. Mesoamerica also saw the startup of the event, but had the privilege of seeing the plasmoid pass by Earth during the daytime, visually extended to its full size. Mesoamerica likely did see it reach its target, but the explosion at the Sun would have been large enough to make it look like the nearby planet Mars was struck. [note 48]

The plasmoids depicted in Mesoamerica are longer than the short hand-held objects depicted in Europe and Asia. The Mesoamerican plasmoid, depicted as carried in the arms of figures, look to be 5 or 6 foot long object.

[Image: Dragon]

Image: Chinese depiction of the dragon.

China saw more of the plasmoid than Europe or most of the rest of Asia. China understood the plasmoid as a dragon approaching from the east, and records dragons in exactly the manner in which the plasmoid was seen in the sky (in a somewhat contracted form), head first, with an open mouth, long feelers attached to the mouth parts, and what looked like legs attached further away along the body.

[Image: Plasmoid lightning bolt]
Image: The Plasmoid lightning bolt depicted as the "Rigid Serpent Bar" in Maya illustrations. Two planetary Gods are coming out of the distended mouths of the serpent. After Linda Schele and David Freidel "A Forest of Kings" (1990).

Mesoamerica also records a dragon, but it has no legs. Instead it has heads at both ends of the body, but also with the wide open mouth and the tendrils attached to the mouth parts. What was understood as legs in China, was properly attached to the rear mouth of the dragons of the Maya.

Mesoamerican chiefs carry a rigid bar in their arms as an emblem of office, with triple tines at both ends. A bar like this is first shown held by a person (actually the God Jupiter) on stela 2 of La Venta and on a number of engraved dedicatory celts at the same location. By the time of the Classical Maya (AD 400 to AD 900), the bar is four times as thick as in Olmec times of 600 BC, and it is conceived of as a tube, a rigid snake, or a dragon with a head at each end. The tines have become mouth and jaw parts of the dragon, and Venus and the Sun are shown emerging from the two mouths.

Short hand-held 'model' plasmoids, dating from this era, are found today in Tibet, India, and Japan, nearly identical to European sculptural and mural depictions. All of them mostly follow the shape of laboratory plasma discharges: a twisted body with balls at both ends, from which emerge three tines like flower petals.

[Image: Plasmoid model, Tibet] [Image: Plasmoid model, India] [Image: Plasmoid model, Japan]
Images: Plasmoid models from Tibet, India, Japan. After David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill, "Thunderbolts of the Gods" (2005).

The same triple tined objects with a twisted center are shown as being held in the hand of Zeus in Roman statues. The trident arrow appears (as the weapon of Marduk) in wall sculptures in Mesopotamia after 600 BC.

The Roman naturalist Pliny, in the first century AD, still discusses lightning bolts from planets, and distinguishes between various types. If the plasmoids had last been seen shortly after the end of the "Age of the Gods" (3114 BC) it would have been unlikely to suddenly appear in the last few centuries of the previous era to become the object of philosophical speculation.

[Image: Plasmoid lightning bolt] [Image: Plasmoid lightning bolt] [Image: Plasmoid lightning bolt]
Images: Short Plasmoid lightning bolt depicted as vase paintings, statues, and murals (Greek, Roman, Babylonian). All dated after ca 600 BC.

It seems clear that the difference in the images between Europe and the Americas is entirely due to seeing this object in different stages of its travel. If Mesoamerica had seen the plasmoid bolt in the day sky (with Asia and Europe turned away to the night side of Earth) just as it passed Earth, then the bolt would have been seen in full profile. From this the size could be estimated.

[Image: Plasmoid lightning bolt]  [Image: Plasmoid lightning bolt]
Images: Left two: Long Plasmoid lightning bolt depicted on two celts from La Venta, ca 650 BC. The second figure, with the crocodile legs, is carrying a bar in the shape of snake or cayman. Right: Stela 11 at Seibal, dated 10.1.0.0.0, AD 849. After Linda Schele and David Freidel "Maya Cosmos" (1993), and "A Forest of Kings" (1990).

I would suggest that, as seen from Mesoamerica, it probably subtended an angle of about 30 degrees in the sky -- understood as a five or six foot long object held by a God. With the Earth 30 million miles from the path of travel of the plasmoid, it must have been about 15 million miles long (30,000,000 * s(30/deg) = 15,000,000 miles). If seen at a distance of 40 million miles, the plasmoid would have been 20 million miles long.

In early depictions in Mesoamerica the object looks to have a diameter of about 1/10th of its length. That would make the lightning bolt 1.5 to 2 million miles in diameter. This is certainly larger by far than the diameter of the planet Jupiter (80,000 miles), but the plasmasphere of Jupiter, under normal conditions, is on the order of 20 planet diameters, thus 1.6 million miles wide. Plasmoids also tend to shrink on cutting loose from their cathode, and thus thicken.

Europe saw the plasmoid again as Earth turned back to the day side, but the plasmoid had passed by. Mesopotamia and Greece were certain that Venus was hit, visually some 15 or 20 million miles further west in the sky, for a day later Venus had quelled its blazing. Europe probably never saw the plasmoid reach the Sun, which would have required another 30 million miles of travel (about a day of travel). Mesoamerica, on the other hand, probable saw the plasmoid contact the Sun (it would have caused a stupendous flare-up), but assumed it was destined for Mars, which stood in the sky just past the Sun in the west.

From these rough estimates it could be suggested that the plasmoid was traveling at a rate of about 20 to 30 million miles per half day -- or 1.5 to 2.5 million miles per hour. These estimates are in line with what we know of the solar wind and CMEs traveling from the Sun.

How long did it take to travel from Jupiter to the Sun? Assuming that the gradient of the electrical field between Jupiter and the Sun was low enough that acceleration during travel could be neglected, and at an average rate of 1.5 to 2.5 million miles per hour, it would take 8 to 13 days. (Based on (5.2 * au) / (2500000 * 24) = 8.06 days and (5.2 * au) / (1500000 * 24) = 13.4 days.) The people of Mesoamerica claim it took 12 days. It would thus have been traveling at a rate of 5.2 * AU /12 = 40,000,000 miles per day.

The Planets in the Sky

During much of the last half of the eighth and much of the seventh century BC the skies of Earth were crowded with unwanted planets. Then, after 685 BC, they all disappeared. Venus was finally held to be a planet by the Babylonians. A hundred years later much had been forgotten. Noone remembered, or wanted to remember. History was turned into mythology.

... Venus

Venus already had a coma and a plasma tail since remotest times, as did Mercury. I will describe these below, but what is of especial interest here is the increased activities of the planets the 8th and 7th century BC, resulting from an apparent increase in solar activity in 685 BC.

Venus, without a magnetic field, would not likely have produced the tri-lobe shape, but only the tail of its surrounding coma, directed away from the Sun, and splitting into two parts which would diverge. This is still seen in comets today (which also do not have a magnetic field). Additionally there would have been long wisps of plasma from its polar regions. These would seem to be coherent plasma streams, bent to the direction of the Sun, but not organized into tri-lobed plumes. The streamers, if they existed, are readily identified in the imagery of Maya celestial dragons, where they attach at the mouth, looking almost identical to depictions of dragons in China, although, as I have pointed out, it is more likely that these were observed with the travel past Earth of the giant plasmoid from Jupiter.

In 685 BC Venus brightened enormously, and any of these features, which had been seen for ages, suddenly increased in intensity. Assurbanipal described Ishtar (Venus) as "... who is clothed with fire and bears aloft a crown of awful splendor."

... Jupiter

The tri-lobed plasma formation, describe above, would also appear at the poles of a planet with a magnetic field when in glow mode plasma discharge. Jupiter did this in 685 BC. Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field, and it produced a giant three-lobed flower form extending from its north magnetic pole above the coma surrounding the planet. The surrounding coma probably looked the size of the Moon.

The same strong magnetic field produced another tri-lobed form, much larger than the top, at its south pole (the 'north' magnetic pole), making it look as the 'body' of the planet, although, and as noted by the Olmecs, the body looked like the open jaws of a crocodile, the central tongue of which might have been missing or not observed. Crocodiles have only a short tongue.

These features were recorded after 685 BC by the Olmecs on stelae and engraved ceremonial celts. Archaeologists hold that the headdress is to be identified as a corn plant, with two leaves pulled away from an ear of corn. But the figure universally recognized as the "Corn God" in the Classical Maya era does not wear such a hat. The tri-lobed headdress shows up, instead, and from very early times among the Maya as the "jester hat" of a scepter or headband representing Venus, and known among arhaeologists as the Jester God. [note 17a]

[Image: La Venta celt] [Image: Maya Crocodile tree] [Image: Maya Crocodile tree]
Images: Left: An Olmec celt, ca 685 BC, with the body of a crocodile's head. Shown amid the four trees of the cardinal directions. Middle: Maya crocodile maize plant with a bird at the top. Right: Maya crocodile tree on a blood offering plate. After Linda Schele and David Freidel "A Forest of Kings" (1990), and "Maya Cosmos" (1993).

Jupiter in this condition was also identified as the central (or southern) tree of creation, the World Tree of the Maya. The same World Tree is often shown by the Maya with branches and leaves at the top, but with the head of a crocodile as its base at the bottom.

The tri-lobed crown of Jupiter waved back and forth, since the magnetic poles of planets do not coincide with the rotational axis. At a rotational rate of 9 hours, this would have been seen as a plant waving in the wind. Jupiter was probably also seen during the day. At Teotihuacan the favored headdress of dignitaries and Gods becomes a hat of feathers and plumes. This fashion carried through for a thousand years to the Maya and the Aztecs.

In the eastern Mediterranean region the Gods had already taken human form, and the only strange animals depicted as supernatural beings are the deamons they battle.

... Mars

In Mesoamerica Mars is often depicted as 'smoking' or with a mirror on his forehead. I cannot place the mirror, but obviously the smoking is an unshaped plasma discharge because Mars also has no magnetic field. One wonders if the 'smoking' dates from the lightning bolt suspected to have been delivered by Venus in ca 776 BC. When Mars is depicted with an axe piercing his forehead, recognition is certainly given to some gigantic lightning stroke of the past, which probably excavated Valles Marineris.

At later times among the Maya, Mars (God K), is often depicted with the leg of a snake, signifying a lightning strike. That describes the effect of electrical contacts after 747 BC.

An estimate of the number of visits by Mars can be deduced from the religious monuments at Olmec La Venta, whose monumental construction spans 747 BC to about 400 BC. There are, within the confines of the pyramid and adjacent plazas, five elaborate graves (one of the graves is a coffin shaped as a gigantic caymen), five massive offering caches of serpentine blocks, and four collosal stone heads. The first passage of Mars perhaps did not require a stone head. Or it has not yet been found. The three mosaic tiled floors (two were buried) read "9 Jaguar" -- a bar and 4 dots, shaped like a jaguar face with the characteristic forehead cleft -- which in effect equals the "Chilam Balam's" name for Mars, Bolon Dzacab, "Nine Lives."

Except for this repetition of five, along with the four giant heads, there is no clear record of the number of visits. The only additional suggestion comes from the "Chilam Balam," which records, after the first mention of the appearance of Bolon Dzacab, Mars, in 747 BC, the descent of four "mighty demon bats."

The best reconstruction by Velikovsky from Biblical sources was to suggest appearances of Mars at 15 year intervals. The 60 year time span of 477 BC to 687 BC represents five visits if they were 15 years apart.

... Earth

The Earth, another planet with a magnetic field, would, at various times of excess electrical activity, also have had the same tri-lobed vortexes standing above the Earth's north and south magnetic poles, and extending perhaps 10 or 20 Earth diameters into space. The plasma above the north magnetic pole would have been larger than the plasma of the south magnetic pole. But the southern plasma was most likely visible also in the northern hemisphere, for the plumes would have bent away from Earth into the tail of the magnetosphere.

It is quite likely that the outer shell also would be mostly transparent, and only the central spikes were seen. A plasma stream above the north and south magnetic poles would answer to the claims of the four trees of the cardinal directions of the Maya, which appeared four times since 3114 BC, according to the "Chilam Balam."

... Mercury

The "Chilam Balam" lists nine close calls by a planet in the eighth and seventh century BC (747 BC to 686 BC), described as delivering flowers and fragrances. The "flowers" are curious, because a flower-form (the tri-lobe form) would not be expected for Mars. This would suggest that the planet describes as "Nine Fragrances" was Mercury, instead. Mercury has a minor magnetic field, and still has a strange mix of gasses as a thin atmosphere.

The sweet smells are noted from other sources dating to this time also. If Mercury has an atmosphere, then the outer layer of its plasmashere (the double layer) would be composed of ions of atmospheric gasses and electrons. Since Mercury came close nine times during this period, it could be suggested that gasses could be transmitted from one planet to another simply by having the double layer of their plasmasheres come close, or brush against each other.

The repeated destructions of sites in Persia, the Middle East, Greece, Italy, and apparently in Europe, together with the identification of Mars, and lamentations about the followers of Mars, would suggest Mars as the main agent of the destructions of the 8th century BC. But the flower forms and the associated fragrances point to Mercury. These are not mentioned (except for the fragrances) in the Middle East.

The Last Changes

There is another very interesting and related consideration arising from the analysis by Rose and Vaughan. They note a change in the aphelion of Earth's orbit in 679 BC, immediately following the year of the "Golden Throne" of 680 BC (actual year 685 BC). The orbit of the Earth had changed its shape. Probably the most important aspect of the change in aphelion is the fact that it immediately removed the Earth's orbit from further interactions with Mars' orbit, by rotating away from the location where it crossed Mars' orbit. Moving aphelion by 10 or 15 degrees within the time of a single rotation around the Sun is not a small amount. This clearly is in conflict with current theories of how orbits might change, which could only happen under the gravitational effects of other planets. Such gravitational tugging is a very small percentage of the effect of the gravity due to the Sun, and would take millions of years to have some effect.

What also happened simultaneously was a change in the place in the heavens to which the axis of the Earth pointed. The result would amount to a 10 to 20 degree shift of the vernal equinox (the first day of spring, and the start of the year for most nations), and thus a 10 to 20 day delay in the start of spring. Instead of the Sun rising in the constellation of the Bull, Taurus, as it had for thousands of years, it suddenly started to rise in the constellation of the Ram, Aries.

Chaldean priests had kept records of the movements of the planets since 747 BC and certainly by 652 BC (we have records from that date), but often on differing coordinate systems. These make no sense to astronomers today. The Vedas mention a sinking of the Earth. Numerous Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian sources mention the change in the Earth axis, and even a later Roman playwright incorporates the well known 'change in the heavens' in a play -- specifically in reference to the zodiac. [note 46]

It was as if a power outside the dome of the stars had suddenly shifted the heavens by rotating them away from the horned bull -- the age-old symbol of the celestial Gods. This was a power greater than that of any of the Gods worshipped up to that time. It closed an era.

Although the changes in the night sky were seen immediately, the significance of the change was not initially appreciated. But within a hundred years it had entered religious and philosophical thinking in the Middle East, India, and China. It is almost certain that Budhism can trace its inspiration to this event of 680 BC. The Persian Zoroastrianism similarly dates from this period, and strongly influenced Judaism. In China the concepts are expressed in the philosophy of Taoism. The Tao proposes to explain "the change of the path." The "mystery religions" of the Middle East and Greece date from this period. I will get back to this topic in the following chapter.

Additionally Rose and Vaughan report that 9 years later, in 670 BC, for some unknown cause, the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit changed significantly (from 0.10 to 0.0+). This means the orbit of earth became nearly circular, and no longer overran the orbit of Mars. With that the drama in the skies was over. [note 47]

Endnotes

Note a --

After 2193 BC the repeating period for Venus changed to a smaller value. See Chapter 14, "Celestial Mechanics," for details. The 52 year intervals were of course in solar years, not in current years. Mesoamerica counted in 'Tun' years of 360 days until 747 BC, and counted in 'Haab' years of 365 days after that. Today one of the two Sun transit periods of Venus, when the Sun, Venus, and Earth are directly in line, is still a double interval of 52 years.
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Note 1 --

Eccentricity is a measure of how much an orbit deviates from the circular, and thus how elliptical the orbit is. Precession is the slow rotation of an elliptical orbit around the Sun, not to be confused with the precession of the equinox. Orbits, as ellipses, have two centers (a circle has one center). One center is located at the Sun, the other lies some distance away from the Sun. This second center slowly revolves about the Sun.

Earth's orbit today is fairly circular, and takes 40,000 years to revolve around the Sun. But the orbit of Mars is still notably eccentric, and every 30 years Mars passes 30 million miles closer to Earth -- to within about 40 million miles.
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Note 2a --

It had been assumed by Velikovsky that the 'ball' in the celestial ballgame of 776 BC was the Moon. This was based on reports from the Romans that the 'month' varied greatly around the time of the founding of Rome, ca 747 BC. But the 'month' was a calendar measure, not the orbital period of the Moon. It was an attempt by the Romans to adjust the calendar to the new length of the year after 747 BC. It is just doubtful that the orbit of the Moon would be effected, especially repeatedly. There is also no information on this from any other sources.

Considering that Mercury shows up repeatedly during the period of 747 BC to 686 BC (as it had in 3100 to 2800 BC), it is more likely that it was Mercury which was understood as the ball. Of course only the Olmecs make note of this, because the Olmecs had been playing games with a large rubber ball since perhaps 1400 BC (at San Lorenzo).
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Note 2 --

The Olympic Games were said to have been founded by Hercules (Mars) at Pelop's tomb at Olympia. There is evidence from ephemeris information that a near conjunction of Earth with Mars and Venus happens in 776 BC. Notes on this may be found in Chapter 14, "Celestial Mechanics."

The Chinese Book of Shih King, the "Book of Odes," lists a "celestial event" for 776 BC. But it is reputed to only be an eclipse of the Sun, and, as a book of collected poetry, the Shih King is not really concerned with celestial events. But it is the only celestial event which is listed. Since the Moon was on a slightly larger orbit, it is unlikely that the eclipse was caused by the Moon. Thus it might have been a planet on an inner orbit.

Another source for celestial phenomena during this period of time, the "Spring and Autumn Annals," compiled by Confucius and completed about 480 BC, lists some 35 eclipses, almost all of which were verified in the 19th century, but includes no dates significant to conjunctions with Venus or Mars.

Venus and Mars may have met near Earth at other times in addition to 776 BC, for in 742 BC Isaiah declared a prophetic sign "in the height above," to King Ahaz of Israel, saying, "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat.." (Isaiah 7:12-14) "The Virgin" is Venus. "Virgin" is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word "the maid" (Ha'almah), that is, young woman, as Isis/Astarte (Venus) had been known for 2500 years.

Bob Fritzius contends that the "child" is Mars appearing from behind the coma of Venus, and moving though the tail. See the website at [http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/ha-almah.htm].

A later addition to this webpage sensibly suggests that what may have been seen was an aborted fissioning of Venus. Fritzis believes there is support for this from Greek mythology. This is certainly an interesting notion, and fully in line with my suggestion that in 685 BC Venus went nova. Fritzius is a published astronomer and an electrical engineer.

I would suggest that the "butter and honey" are plasma displays in glow mode which disconnect from the planet, initially as teardrops, and then as round droplet shapes, perhaps to be dispersed to smaller globules. These are flares rising as ejections from the atmosphere of Venus due to cathode plasma sources at the surface, and are thus entrapped gases at high temperatures. Any gases so ejected would be ionized and surrounded by electrons in glow mode. These may also been part of the planetary fissioning which produced the 'child.' The "butter and honey" may also represent the lighted ecliptic and the last equatorial ring of the Earth, although this last ring was colored red.

Mars also appears as "Horus the Child" in Egyptian sculpture at about this time (after 747 BC), the inexplicable second third Horus. He is originally shown trampling snakes and scorpions, and his image is a charm against snake bites and scorpion stings, but he is soon depicted at the breast of Isis. This 'Mother and Child' image spreads to the Middle East and the Roman empire, and eventually, through Greek influences in Buddhist India, is introduced to China. For the Egyptians of the New Kingdom, Horus had been assumed dead since ca 2700 BC when he last passed close to Earth, but at this time Mars is recognized again as Horus.

Seen (initially) in proximity to Venus, Mars is very small and the "Horus the Child" image may have derived from this comparison. The snakes being trampled are described in Vedic literature in the 7th and 8th century BC as contemporaneous companions of Mars. The Vedic hymns, as well as Bible passages and Mesopotamian documents, describe the furious rotation of Mars' satellites accompanied by moving plasma streams, looking like scorpions with waving tails. Vedic literature equates the satellites also with chariot wheels. If this was not Mars, but was the "aborted" fissioned offspring of Venus, the snakes and scorpions are likely to be a plasma phenomena.

At first, Olmec sculptures of the full-sized adult jaguar or were-jaguar (a half human, half jaguar form) carrying the baby was probably Venus. But with the passages of Mars and Mercury in the 8th and 7th century BC, Mars is the jaguar and Mercury is probably the baby.

Although hard to read, the Popol Vu is clear about the directions of travel and whether events happened on the day side or night side of Earth. The difficulty is that the document list events in order by the actors and location, but not in time order. The Popol Vu is a symphony orchestrated to the day-names of the Tzolkin. See the excellent translation by Dennis Tedlock, "Popol Vu" (rev 1996).

The Popol Vu takes liberties with history in order to come up with a smooth narrative. The hero twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, are clearly meant to represent Venus and Mercury, although by the story of their birth they would be Venus and Mars. One twin, Hunahpu, is identified by the Tzolkin day-name of the first day of the Venus cycle, the second twin's name, Xbalamque, could be translated from Quiché as "Little Jaguar of Night." This is a transliteration from the notes of the book by Dennis Tedlock, "Popol Vu" (rev 1996), but not his choice. Xbalamque may be equated to the Egyptian Horus the Child but is most likely Mercury.

The appearance of Venus and Mars a hundred years earlier was understood to represent their father and uncle, who were put to death by the Lords of Xibalba, the Underworld. Both Venus and Mars had simply disappeared into the night sky after the incident of the 8th century BC.

The activities of Hunahpu and Xbalanque are thus modeled both on the simultaneous appearance of Venus, Mars, and the Moon in about 776 BC and on the flaring up of Venus and Mercury in the day sky in 685 BC (see later text) when the Moon also appeared, strangely misshapen, in the sky. The event of 685 BC leaves a lasting impact on religious philosophy, and needed a narrative explanation. The Popol Vu achieves this by mixing recent events with events dating back 4000 years. It is cohesive to facts, but not to chronology.
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Note 3 --

In the 5th century BC Herodotus placed the Trojan war in 1200 BC, a date later taken up by Eratosthenes. However, the date has been in controversy since that time. The Trojan War should be placed in the ninth or tenth century (800 - 900 BC) or later, not in the 11th century BC. The testimony of the Asiatic Greeks, who traced their ancestry to the heroes of the "Iliad," agrees on this. Velikovsky also makes a good case for placing the war in the middle of the 8th century BC, after 747 BC.

Following is a footnote from an unpublished document by Velikovsky on the later dating of the Trojan war. The footnote is added by Jan Sammer. The actual document expands on this considerably ...

A. R. Burn, "Minoans, Philistines, and Greeks: B.C. 1400-900" (London, 1930) pp. 52-54: "It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the traditional date of the Trojan War, 1194-84, adopted by Eratosthenes and more or less tentatively accepted in so many modern books, is absolutely worthless" being based on Eratosthenes' "wild overestimate of the average length of a generation." Cf. idem, "Dates in Early Greek History," Journal of Hellenic Studies 55 (1935) pp. 130-146. Cf. also D. Page, "History and the Homeric Iliad" (University of California Press, 1959) p. 96, n. 159: "(the date) given by Eratosthenes is nothing but a guess proceeding from flimsy premises which could not possibly have led to a scientific calculation." Another writer adds: "sober historical judgement must discard the ancient chronological schemes in toto; they are nothing more than elaborate harmonizations of myths and legends which were known in later times and have no independent value whatever for historical purposes." (G. Starr, "The Origins of Greek civilization: 1100-650 B.C." (New York, 1961) p. 67.

-- Velikovsky (Sammer) unpublished document at [http://www.varchive.org]

But the actual dates of the war do not matter. The war was probably a fiction. (See endnotes to Chapter 8, "The Flood.") It is the retelling by Homer and others which weave into the tale the doings of the planets in the 8th century BC, that is of interest. Authorship of the "Iliad" can definitely be placed in the 8th century BC, and more likely the composition dates to the second half of the 7th century.

Alfred de Grazia, in "The Disasterous Love Affair of Moon and Mars" (1984), make a cogent case for placing the composition of the Homeric epics to after 650 BC. He suggests that the characterization of the heroes as beserkers, pirates, and incompetent warriors and sailors correspond to the expected reaction of survivors of calamities of enormous scope, which removed all prior institutions of government, religion, history, and literacy.
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Note 4 --

Velikovsky quotes Roman historians of the era of 200 BC through AD 200. But the quotations speak to the length of the month, not the travels of the Moon. It is more likely that what this records are the attempts of the Latin tribe and their allies to adjust a calendar from the previous era to the new period of the Moon after 747 BC, 29.5 days.

The new period of the Moon did not fit evenly into a solar year of 365.25 days. In the previous period 12 months of 30 days had equaled a year of 360 days. It is my suspicion that the peoples of Italy were still using a 10 month calendar cycle, left over from the calendar of an earlier epoch. One of the first kings of Rome, Numa, before 747 BC, adds two months, January and February, at the end of the ten month civil year, whose names ended in the series of September, October, November, and December, which translate as seventh, eight, ninth, and tenth.
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Note 5 --

"Of The Moon And Mars, The Origins Of The Lunar Sinuous Rilles" Ralph E. Juergens, Published in Pensee, 1974.

[Image: Travel of Venus during the daylight skies]
Image: Travel of Venus during the daylight skies, known in this instance as Hephaestus.

Seen traveling across the skies, and at close range, Venus is here known as the smith Hephaestus, who otherwise cannot be related to a planet. Alfred de Grazia at length discusses what is thought to be the event of 776 BC in "The Disasterous Love Affair of Moon and Mars" (1984) under the assumption that the love affair, which is presented in comic form, is a disguise for the actual terror and devastation it involved.
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Note 6 --

There is a clear reference to the Olympic Games in the "Iliad," about a chariot race, recounted by Nestor, which was recognized as an anachronism by the Greek editors in the sixth century BC. This anachronism, one of a number of instances, would date the authorship to after 680 BC, when chariot racing was added.
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Note 7 --

Despite the universal use of the ball game by many diverse societies in Mesoamerica over a 2200 year time span, we do not have a single description of how it was played. All the information which has been gathered is inferential.

The concept of a celestial ball court becomes an architectural feature of some Mesoamerican ceremonial centers, such that the center and the setting location of the Sun along the horizon, become the two bouncing walls of the ball court. The ceremonial centers thus controlled the travels of the Sun.

Early excavators at the Olmec site of La Venta (900 BC to 400 BC) thought they had discovered a ball court (the area between two berms, north of the pyramid), but it turned out not to be so. One of the discovered sculptures, however, is still known today as "the football player." They did find rubber balls, to be expected, since the Olmec cultivated the rubber tree. Apparently ball games were played at La Venta and the earlier San Lorenzo (1450 BC to 900 BC), for sculptures of the gear and accessories have been identified. Additionally, the colossal heads found in the surrounding jungles all have "helmet" head wrappings, also suggestive of later ball-court players elsewhere in Mesoamerica (but the original suggestion for this is based on American leather football helmets of the 1920s).

The head wrap may represent a means by which the Olmec people identified themselves with Mars, whose smooth upper half was seen on the close approaches in the 8th and 7th century BC, but this does not explain its use with the 10 heads found at San Lorenzo, which, as I will suggest in Chapter 19, most likely represent Venus.

See also Linda Schele and David Freidel "Maya Cosmos" (1993), which discusses three ballcourts at the Maya site of Yaxchilan. The ball courts were named "First Conquest," "Second Conquest," and the "Third Conquest" (or "Creation"), and have, in addition to the dedication date, appended time intervals pointing to earlier (or first) manifestation of events (for which these ball courts are dedicated as commemorations), all of which can be placed, as suggested by Schele and Freidel, in the 7th century BC. As I will point out in Chapter 19, the historical references are to 'creation' celebrations involving the large 'altars' found at La Venta, not to ball games.
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Note 8 --

Velikovsky quotes from Vedic hymns and from Joel. Inadvertently many of the descriptions match plasma effect and interactions with Earth's plasmasphere of the asteroids closely following Mars.

Mars was seen on the day side of Earth as many of the descriptions make clear, although the night sky is invoked in some instances.

There are also descriptions of Mars causing solar eclipses during this period -- a phenomenon completely inexplicable to later researchers of Mesopotamian astronomical records. The fact that Mars was repeatedly seen in the day sky, and at times must have blocked the Sun, might explain the obsession of Assyrian kings with lunar and solar eclipses after 747 BC, since these eclipses were accompanied with destructive interactions.
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Note 9 --

As mentioned earlier, during the 8th and 7th century some 300 cities in the Middle East are destroyed by earthquakes and fire. The Mycenaean Greek culture (although conventionally dated 1200 BC) came to an end at this time. Mesoamerican farming villages, originally established after 1500 or 1200 BC, also suddenly disappear after the about 800 BC.

Patten and Windsor, in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996), assume that Mars alternately showed up at the spring equinox and in October.
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Note 10a --

The iconography of the Maya, as well as the Quiché Popol Vu, describe a direct connection between Mars and Earth by having Mars (K'awil, in Mayan; Tohil in Quiché) stand on a single leg, often a snake (representational also of lightning), reaching down four or five diameters from the bulbous body (or head) of Mars. Tohil is also known as Hurricane.
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Note 10 --

There is a third companion or satellite of Mars mentioned by Homer ("Discord"), which is missing today. However, the description is closer to a rising aurora or a stream of plasma, reading, "She lifts her head slowly at first, then plants her feet firmly on Earth."

Jonathan Swift wrote the following in "Gulliver's Travels" (AD 1726)..

"They [the Laputans] have likewise discovered two lesser Stars of Satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the Centre of the Primary Planet exactly three of his Diameters, and the outermost five [Diameters]; the former revolves in the Space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half...."

He follows this with some mathematical information. The information is nearly correct, and involves both Keplerian and Newtonian mechanics. Swift knew both Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley. But no telescope could resolve the satellites until 1877. The actual distances are 0.4 and 3.5 diameters and the periods of rotation are 7.5 hours and 30 hours. Patten and Windsor make the following observation in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996)..

"At that time, in 1725 and 1726, astronomers did not know the diameter of Mars. Laputans disclosed the distance of Phobos and Deimos from Mars not in English miles but rather in Mars diameters. Astronomers in the early 1700's did not know the accurate value for the length of the astronomical unit, or how far the Earth is from the Sun. And they didn't know how far Mars was from the Sun. This unit of measurement in the satire suggests a very ancient sketch was involved, or a copy thereof from the Catastrophic Era."

Isaac Asimov, in "The Kingdom of the Sun" (1960), dismisses Swift's claims as a lucky guess, but then writes..

"However, his guess that Phobos would rise in the west and set in the east because of its speed of revolution is uncanny, it is undoubtedly the luckiest guess in literature"

Other have suggested that the information came from China or Japan during the 18th century. Swift places Laputa as a small island off the coast of China.
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Note 11--

Although the Aztec arrive very late to central Mexico (AD 1100) they derive the qualities of their war God (Huitzilopochtli) from the Toltecs (since ca AD 800) whose war-like God (initially Xipe Totec) had been imported into the region. The people of the earlier classical phase, as at the ceremonial city of Teotihuacan, lasting from ca 200 BC to ca AD 700, had worshipped more benign deities (as far as we know).

It was visitors from Teotihuacan, however, who introduced a magic shield consisting of a flayed human face, to the Maya (along with a somewhat less effective dart thrower). The genesis of the flayed face, as a mask or shield is clearly seen in earlier Olmec sculptures.
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Note 12--

The year 687 BC is four 15-year periods after 747 BC, thus suggesting 5 close passes of Mars. The year 702 BC is three 15-year periods after 747 BC (equivalent to four close passes). Velikovsky was initially uncertain about the date of the second close approach, but in the chapter "The Later Campaigns of Sennacherib," of the later unpublished text "The Assyrian Conquest," Velikovsky notes..

"In the last century scholars became aware that there were two invasions of Palestine by Sennacherib and that it is possible to discern in the scriptural record an early and a late campaign against Hezekiah. The first campaign to Palestine took place about -701. The second campaign is dated by modern historians to -687 or -686."

He sources Henry Rawlinson and, more recently, William Albright (1956) (?), John Bright (1962) and Edwin R. Thiele (1951).

Likewise Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor, in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996), also use 701 BC, based on the chronology developed by Edwin R. Thiele in "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings" (1965, as 1951 above).

I am not at all convinced if either 687 BC or 701 BC should be used for a second Earth shock. The selection of dates hinges on the supposition that the catastrophe which befell Sennacherib at the gates of Jerusalem needs to be identified directly with an Earth shock by Mars. This is simply not so, since Sennacherib's army obviously was afflicted with a localized Ignis Coelis. Earth shocks are not required for that to happen, as subsequent history -- into the 21st century AD -- testifies. See Chapter 14, "The Celestial Mechanics."

The "Chilam Balam" only has reference to the first and the last appearance of Mars. The first appearance of 747 BC produced the Earth shock, and changed the orbit of the Earth. Earlier close passes of Mars (before 747 BC) were not recorded as significant.

Additional text of the Maya "Chilam Balam" states that some planet showed up 9 times ("Bolon Mayel" -- Nine Fragrances), bringing flowers and perfumes. This has to be a planet with a magnetic field. As I point out in Chapter 14, "Celestial Mechanics," this was Mercury. I will insist on the date of 686 BC, not 687 BC, and suggest that Mercury, not Mars, was the agent for the second Earth shock. Two independent Chinese sources confirm the date.
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Note 14a --

By the look of the rilles of craters of the Moon, it might only take seconds for electrons to course through crustal material, that is, if (some of) these craters were cause by Mars. Craters caused by Venus would be formed under the condition that both the Moon and Venus would not have rotated much during the time period. See the article by [Ralph Juergens].
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Note 14 --

The Earth is a semi-liquid gyroscope, and does not react the same as a solid gyroscope. (See notes on this in another chapter.) So say Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor, in "The Mars-Earth Wars" (1996), and they note the following with respect to liquid or semi-liquid gyroscopes..

"The study of soft, planetary gyroscopes should prove rewarding as well as interesting. The effects on magma of the stirring resulting from spin axis precession would include changes in temperature gradients, chemical compositions, electric current flow, magnetic field perturbations, thinning or thickening of the crust, etc. This is all in addition to the geologic changes in the crust, oceanographic changes on the crust, and the extra-terrestrial electrical effects during the proximity of the two close passing planets."

I have noted elsewhere that the inclination of the axes of all the Saturnian planets (except Earth at an earlier time), is at 30 to 31 degrees from the rotational axis of the Sun.

[Image: Axial and orbital inclination of Earth today]
Image: Axial and orbital inclination of Earth today, and the inclination of the Earth's rotational axis with respect to the rotational axis of the Sun.

From this I would expect that any movement of the polar axis would follow a path which describes a 30 - 31 degree circle about the axis of the Sun. This cannot be correct, however. In the next chapter I place the axis of the Earth before 685 BC in the pan of Ursa Major, which is about 40 degrees from the axis of the Sun.

It remains to be suggested, as I will do in the following Chapter, that at all times before 685 BC the polar axis of Earth was located 40 degrees away from the rotational axis of the Sun. This means that the inclination of the Earth's axis of rotation was 30 degrees to the normal of the orbit before 685 BC.

I have proposed elsewhere that, from 3100 BC through ca 2700 BC, the orbit of Mars was elongated so that at perihelion it would be at a distance from the Sun which would be coincident with, but elevated above, the (then current) orbit of Earth. Thus 'visits' by Horus lasting some days could be assured. I also suggested that, on the basis of Mesopotamian and Egyptian records, this happened at 30 year intervals, on average, due to the cyclical nature of planetary orbits. This periodicity still exists today. Today the orbit of Mars still has a notable eccentricity of nearly 10 percent, while Earth's orbit is nearly circular, with an eccentricity of one percent.

The coincident orbits would not cause a collision between planets, because planetary orbits are differently inclined to the ecliptic, and easily remain tens of millions of miles apart. Additionally the electrical repulsion of planets would overcome the gravitational attraction at closer distances. It is quite possible that Mars missed coming anywhere near Earth after about 2700 BC just due to some minor tick in its travels -- perhaps coursing along Earth's orbit while Earth was not anywhere near, or at an elevation far above or below.

When the Earth assumed a larger orbit in 1492 BC, Mars would again cross the Earth's orbit -- an event which would be over in a day. Mars might not have come close to Earth again for hundreds or thousands of years after 1440 BC, but in 780 or 776 BC it started to come close at regular intervals. At first, these close passes occurred without any major effect. The prophet Amos had already experienced two or more passes and predicted the disturbance of 747 BC by two years. Mars would have looked like a gigantic orb repeatedly wizzing past Earth at close range on the night side, and then doing the same on the the day side, before diminishing in size to return in reverse order years later on another orbital cycle. The look of repeated passes is caused by the rotation of earth. Predicting a later close passage of Mars would not have been all that complicated, and could have been done on the basis of minimal records and contemporaneous observations.

Patten and Windsor have noted that the Roman feast days of Tubulustrum (March 20) and Armilustrum (October 24) might have been the dates on which Mars arrived to cross Earth's orbit -- but not in the same year. These dates correspond approximately to the Hebrew