You've just entered the theater of an alien sky.
If the words and images seem strange to you, there's a reason for this.
Our world was once a vastly different place.
To experience this won't hurt you
and there is nothing to fear.
Remembering Velikovsky's Comet
Did cultures the world over describe the planet Venus as a comet?
This was the radical conclusion of Immanuel Velikovsky,
author of the best-selling book, "Worlds in collision" in 1950.
For Velikovsky, the comet-like features of Venus in world mythology
became key pieces of a historical argument
and the strength of the argument was derived from inexplicable images
attached to Venus throughout the ancient world.
To a remarkable extent, ancient words or phrases for a comet
were the very words or phrases describing the planet Venus
in archaic astronomical traditions.
For example, Velikovsky had observed that in Mexico, Venus was the smoking star,
the very phrase natives employed for a comet.
He found in both the Americas and the Near East,
a recurrent association of Venus with streaming celestial hair
and with the celestial beard,
two of the most common hieroglyphs for the comet in the ancient world.
Another popular glyph for the comet was the serpent or dragon.
A form taken by the Venus goddess in virtually every land.
The same planet among the Egyptians and Babylonians and other races
was called the flame or torch of heaven,
a widespread symbol of a comet amongst ancient peoples.
According to Velikovsky, the history of the great comet
inspired one of the most powerful themes of ancient myth and symbolism.
In mythic terms, the end of one world age and the birth of another.
Such facts as these make clear to us that the history of the great comet
inspired one of the most powerful themes in the ancient world,
a compelling reason to revisit Velikovsky's work today.
Identical images for Venus and for a comet around the world would not be accidental.
And there's more because Venus' cometary aspect cannot be separated
from the planet's identity as the archetypal mother goddess.
That means both the love goddess, the goddess of unrivaled radiance
and an angry goddess linked to earth-shaking catastrophe.
The story of the comet Venus is not an isolated theme.
It is intimately connected to other themes and to other planets,
first and foremost the planet Saturn, anciently celebrated as the primeval Sun.
The story of the comet Venus is the story of the primeval sun's radiant heart or soul
departing from the god in the midst of a celestial crisis.
What followed was the earth-shaking war of the planetary gods.
When we see the universal story of the comet
in terms of our reconstructed gathering of planets, the polar configuration,
every symbol of Venus will fall into place as a reflection of the archetypal great comet.
The story recounts what happened to the central star in the polar configuration
as instabilities disrupted the planetary alignment
and the displacement of Venus, from its original central position,
came to be seen as the death or catastrophic weakening of the primeval Sun,
the overarching power we've identified as Saturn in the astronomical traditions.
This was when his luminous heart and soul appeared in the sky
as a flaming serpent or dragon.
Or as the raging or lamenting mother goddess
which means precisely the same thing.
California rock art: the discharging Venus?
The intensely memorable events that followed
drove imagination in many competing directions.
Those recounting the stories could not even speak of them
without the required use of mythic symbols provoked by the experience itself.
Why a warring goddess amongst the chaos hordes?
The shadow cast by these events and by their imaginative or mythic interpretations
conditioned all collective practices at the dawn of civilization.
In this sense the emerging civilizations arose as a compendium of ritual repetition.
Symbolic repetition, holding these events front and center
in the rights of kingship, the rights of marriages of Kings,
the imperatives of war and sacrifice,
the explosion of monumental construction and much, much more.
It's only to be expected that the great comet archetype
would extend to the perceived fates of kings and kingdoms
since the comet meant the death of the prototypical King,
the primeval Sun, the mythic father of kings.
That was when darkness overtook the Earth
and the god's luminous heart or soul rose in the sky.
And the gods went to war
and one world age passed into another.
So, of course, kings feared nothing more than the wispy first appearance of a comet.
The reason for the superstition has never been adequately recognized or explained.
The myths and symbols of comets trace directly to the story of the great comet,
the prototype that gave the later symbols their range of meaning.
Unpredictable comets, wandering into view in later times,
could only produce more echoes of the archetypal theme, the mother of all comets.
A fascinating demonstration of the substructure
occurs in the symbolism attached to the death of Julius Caesar
where we see the soul of the Emperor rising as a star.
In his groundbreaking book on the Roman cult of Venus,
the 20th century's leading authority on the subject, Robert Schilling,
gathered references to Caesar's apotheosis.
He observed a curious blend of two ideas.
Caesar's heart soul rose as a comet
but it also rose as the planet Venus,
and he noticed that the two ideas were actually joined as one.
The poet Ovid describes the soul as a flaming comet
but also carried aloft by Venus.
In more than one instance, the soul itself is actually described as Venus,
a curiosity indeed.
"What general conspiracy seems to have tacitly excluded the comet to the profit of the star [Venus]?"
It seems that the distinguished specialist was simply unaware of a larger connection,
the global memory of Venus as a comet,
a point ironically highlighted
in the 16th century debate between Galileo and the priest Horatio Grassi.
The priest had reminded Galileo that the ignorant masses could believe anything,
even the popular idea that Venus was a comet.
"The ignorant mass of the people had considered Venus as a comet."
Of course, this is precisely why comparative study
of the ancient comet Venus is so critical today.
To engage the study properly,
the subject must be opened up to the full range of symbols involved,
even if on the surface the symbols appear disconnected.
In numerous cases, different symbols pointing to the same experience,
are the key to discovery.
To make this point clear, we will take up next
an alternative mythic interpretation of Venus
as the central radiant eye of the primeval Sun.
Always look for the underlying form!