Velikovsky's Question: Why Isn't Planetary Catastrophe Remembered?

[Brigit]

At Powell's Books I found a copy of Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. The store takes up a city block and is several stories high, so with help from the in-store computer, I found this original hardbound 1950 copy in the section called "Metaphysical," on the shelf labeled "Speculative History."

He writes with such clarity, depth and force, that reading Velikovsky can be an intense experience. I have hardly advanced passed the Introduction. But that may be because in the Introduction he asks a simple and completely open-ended question. This very question has been on my mind for the past 16 years, and of course touches a major theme in the Thunderbolts/Electric Universe broader scientific picture.

From the Jacket:
"Are the planets of our solar system as fixed in their orbits as we have always believed them to be? They have not been, according to Dr. Velikovsky, and may not always be in the future."

In the Indroduction he writes:

• "The historical-cosmological story of this book is based on the evidence of historical texts of many peoples around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material."
  
  "If cosmic upheavals occurred in the historical past, why does not the human race remember them, and why was it necessary to carry on research to find out about them? I discuss this problem in the Section 'The Collective Amnesia.' The task I had to accomplish was not unlike that faced by a psychoanalyst who, out of disassociated memories and dreams, reconstructs a forgotten traumatic experience in the early life of the individual. In an analytical experiment on mankind, historical inscriptions and legendary motifs often play the same role as recollections (infantile memories) and dreams in the analysis of personality."

That's it, that is the question: "If cosmic upheavals occurred in the historical past, why does not the human race remember them, and why was it necessary to carry on research to find out about them?"

While Thunderbolts and the Electric Universe have carried on in Velikovsky's own tradition, preferring a psychoanalytical explanation involving repression of a traumatic experience, I think there are several major factors contributing to the reason that the planetary catastrophes have been "forgotten." And they are simple enough that after all these years, I would like to share it as a short list.

[Brigit]

If the planets were out of their own courses in the Solar System within human experience, why doesn't the human race remember, and why is it necessary to carry on research to find out about it?

1. The amount of history retrieved from ancient times is only about <1% of what actually happened. For example, out of hundreds of sites that could be excavated in Syria, only a few have been. For a second example, historians both deeply favor and are more familiar with monumental structures, while structures made from less permanent materials are under-appreciated or unknown.

2. The Greek and Roman Empires eliminated the writing of the people they conquered. (There was also loss of local histories, memories and traditions because of other, previous world Empires as well).

3. The process of Hellenization and Romanization altered and attempted to unify cultural-religious traditions. Political dominance was expressed by making all the gods and goddesses "equivalent" to Greek and Roman gods.

4. The reverence of Greek and Roman writers characterized learning for centuries under the Roman Church.

5. Reverence for Greek and Roman writers characterized learning for the Scholastics during the Medieval period.

6. Reverence for Greek and Roman writers characterized learning for the Humanists and continues to do so.

7. This reverence for Greek and Roman civilizations is suffused in most subjects, and is based on philosophical commitments as well as the accident of survival.

8. Some legends and myths and traditions do state that the planets were out of their courses; some state that planets, or the moon, came close.

[nick c]

Velikovsky on "Cultural Amnesia"

[Brigit]

That is some excellent reading.

It has six sections. Here's something particularly interesting from the second section, Amnesia:

"Plato’s pupil Aristotle refused to believe in catastrophes. The scholarly world has accepted Aristotle’s view that the planets can never change their motions. He, more than anyone else is responsible for the continuing belief that we live in a safe world, on a planet to which nothing like collisions can happen. Aristotle argued that those who believe in celestial catastrophes should be brought to trial, and if convicted, punished by death."

"In the first century before the present era Lucretius knows of, and writes about these catastrophes and their terror. Cicero, like Aristotle, denies the possibility of the planets changing their orbits and advocates that people believing this should be brought to court and severely punished."

[Brigit]

This is a truly incredible essay by Immanuel Velikovsky. His psychoanalytical observations are evenly aimed and fired at scientists, theologians, academics and historians alike, so that he takes a swipe at everyone, even Darwinists.

And also in this lecture Velikovsky addresses at least some of the real problems with the overly simplistic explanation that mankind is traumatized and has amnesia collectively. In other words, he answers a few of the main difficulties with his own psychoanalytical approach -- including the ones in my list-- quite handily.

The opposition to his book, Worlds in Collision (and then subsequently to Earth in Upheaval), was genuinely excessive and a phenomenon in itself. If we keep that in mind, and the considerable grit and manly obstinance he mustered in continuing to present and advance his thesis -- that the planets of the Solar System were themselves captured by the Sun -- then this particular essay goes a long way to explaining the extraordinary hostility to his postulated disturbance of planetary orbits.

• Suppression and Regression
  
  "In postulating that the Earth was a planet travelling around the Sun, Aristarchus was the precursor of Copernicus. Copernicus realized this, because in the original preface to De Revolutionibus6 he referred to Aristarchus, but removed the reference before the book was published in the year of his death. Between these men are seventeen centuries yet both were opposed by the scientific minds of their day. Mankind has the need to live in an unreal world. Men did not wish to believe that their planet travels through space. A moving planet might not be safe, it could collide with something. The thought that the Earth could collide is by itself traumatic."
  
  "No ancient scientist is considered greater than Archimedes. Archimedes was irreverent toward his senior contemporary, Aristarchus, for believing that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Archimedes won, and after the time of Ptolemy (second century of the current era) the victory was complete. Science accepted this untruth, not just for centuries, but for more than a millennium."

"Men did not wish to believe that their planet travels through space." To have come in tow with the brown dwarf Saturn, and been captured by the Sun, is equally difficult. Velikovsky must be yielded his point, about the sheer emotion involved, and the sheer dogmatism surrounding Greek writers.

[nick c]

In an interesting article that appeared Kronos Vol 1 #2, “Theomachy In The Theater: On The Fringes Of The Collective Amnesia”, the authors John V. Myers and Lewis M. Greenberg present a fascinating thesis.

The flood of Japanese monster/horror movies in the 1950’s and to the present, is the result of the Japanese collective psyche, stimulated by two nuclear bomb attacks and the fire bombing of Tokyo in WWII, recreating the end of the world anxiety from the attack of a fire breathing dragon.

Of course, Godzilla (note the Anglicized name of a deity) is a giant rampaging fire breathing dragon/monster who rampages through Japan, destroying Tokyo and other cities with no seeming motive other than that he can. Most of the movies have fire breathing saurians, but there are also movies that feature Mothra (a giant moth) and King Kong. Nevertheless, like the original King Kong movie of 1933, the theme is that even modern man is helpless before the forces of nature.

Godzilla is an ancient monster who was sleeping deep in the Earth and is revived by the US testing of nuclear bombs on Bikini Atoll. The fire breathing dragon immediately makes his way to Japan, and wantonly destroys every kind of structure in his path. There are even simulated thunderbolts when Godzilla gets entangled in electrical high tension wires. Finally, the monster is destroyed, and the scientist who engineered his destruction is like St George slaying the dragon. But of course, as it turns out, the destruction is not complete and in the many sequels Godzilla or a surrogate is revived to continue its mindless rampage.

The overwhelming havoc which inevitably occurs in these movies is directed primarily at physical installations; consequently, considerable human life is lost in the process as well. Destruction appears to be indiscriminate and its modus operendi totally haphazard and irrational.

The authors then go on to explain how Japanese mythology (like many others) is populated by a wide variety of demons and monsters. This provided the fruitful demonological base for the development of cinematic (the new form of theater) monsters.

This archetypal legacy was incidentally observed by the eminent psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, “Ancient mythological beings are now curiousities in museums. But the archetypes they expressed have not lost their power to affect men’s minds. Perhaps the monsters of modern horror films [Godzilla] are distorted versions of archetypes that will no longer be repressed.

Rodan is a flying pterodactyl like creature, with a 500 foot wingspan, who wreaks havoc by destroying everything in the path of its supersonic shock wave.

Enter Ghidrah in 1965. Born in outer space from the explosion of a fireball. Ghidrah is a giant three headed flying fire breathing saurian, who comes to Earth “hellbent on massive destruction.”

In seeking Ghidrah’s archetype, therefore, one must seriously consider the relevance of both Japanese cultural beliefs and in addition, the universal historical cosmic catastrophes postulated by Velikovsky….
….For while one cannot deny the atomic factor in considering Ghidrah’s cinematic birth, there is also a strong possibility that nuclear disaster merely rekindled a suppressed subconscious Japanese image of previous cosmic horror.
As it happens, the cult of the serpent was indeed an integral part of the primeval mythos of Japanese culture.

As the series of movies progressed, the destruction became worldwide.

In “Destroy All Monsters” (1968) Rodan demolishes Moscow; Mothra devastates Peking; Manda obliterates London; Godzilla smashes New York; Russia, China, England and America [all Japanese enemies in WWII] are all made to vicariously repay for their earlier triumphs at the expense of the Japanese.

As the genre progressed, humanity was not only afflicted with impending extinction but was rather forced to helplessly witness the battle between monsters in the sky.
This is a subconscious attempt to remember the battle of the gods (the theomachy). Invariably, one monster would be the hero and the other the cosmic dragon.

Humankind could only watch in awe as their impending extinction was held in the balance.

[nick c]

The above article concludes with an interesting comment...:

Assuming our analogies are valid, we can make the following observations concerning the collective amnesia: One, it goes to work promptly. It only took a few years after the war that the monster movies began to appear. Two, it works rapidly in less than the span of a generation, it attenuated the catastrophe, transformed the agent into a dragon, and - as in several of the world's religions - split him down the middle into a god of good and a god of evil. Three, since it is a process which enables the conscious mind to forget, it goes to work without waiting for the conscious mind to have forgotten.

[Brigit]

That is a wonderful discussion on Kronia. I have never read that publication, but I do read and enjoy Thoth, which was a newsletter from 1997 on.

I have often thought that a thread here on the forum for sharing movie experiences, which clearly reflect the orbital chaos of the planets as witnessed in historic times, would be amazing.

It may also fit in with brain bilateralization. Perhaps we can picture and visually portray truths and experiences, but our conscious mind simply will not allow some things to be discussed.

Japanese movies about Godzilla illustrate something powerful going on for their culture. I am fully persuaded of that just now. I love all the newer releases, btw. Mothra is a favorite in our house.

[nick c]

In 1951 Hollywood produced a movie, "When Worlds Collide" that was clearly inspired by Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision which was a 1950 best seller. I find it curious, that the Wiki entry on that movie (see the above link) does not mention the book or Velikovsky, or that it was obviously (duh!) the inspiration for the movie.

The theme of the movie is that a star enters the solar system and is on collision course with Earth. That star is accompanied by one planet which is similar to Earth, and the survival of humanity depends upon mankind migrating to that planet.

In Worlds In Collision Velikovsky describes a similar scenario (without the human migration) on p. 373, when discussing possible cosmic catastrophes that could, in the future, threaten Earth.

...some dark star like Jupiter or Saturn, may be in the path of the sun, and may be attracted to the system and cause havoc in it.

[Brigit]

nick c says » "In Worlds In Collision Velikovsky describes a similar scenario (without the human migration) on p. 373, when discussing possible cosmic catastrophes that could, in the future, threaten Earth.
'...some dark star like Jupiter or Saturn, may be in the path of the sun, and may be attracted to the system and cause havoc in it.'"

If memory serves, he had already, at the time of completing WIC, formed the hypothesis that Saturn was previously a Brown dwarf star and had been captured by the Sun. The way you have quoted it shows that he felt Brown dwarf stars were not uncommon in the Milky Way and could cross paths with our Solar System again.

There is a lecture by Wal Thornhill from 2012, where he displays one of his beautiful slides, featuring the Sharpless-2 106 nebula. It is a star forming region with the familiar hourglass/z-pinch form. He says it has over 300 Brown dwarfs within it.

[nick c]

If memory serves, he had already, at the time of completing WIC, formed the hypothesis that Saturn was previously a Brown dwarf star and had been captured by the Sun. The way you have quoted it shows that he felt Brown dwarf stars were not uncommon in the Milky Way and could cross paths with our Solar System again.

Not exactly. V speculated before Worlds In Collision in the 1940's, that the Earth was at one time a satellite of Saturn. But as far as I know, he never proposed that the Saturn system was moving alone through interstellar space before being captured by the Sun. In fact, other than the quote about the possible capture of a "dark star" like Jupiter or Saturn, he never wrote anything else on that subject.

I believe it was Wal Thornhill that first came up with the idea that Saturn, Earth, and other satellites were originally traveling through interstellar space before being captured by the Sun. Both Cardona and Talbott were receptive to that idea as it fit nicely into each of their respective "Saturn Theories".
Thornhill credited Velikovsky with an extraordinary leap of intuition for that quote from Worlds In Collision.

It must be remembered that in the 1940's when Velikovsky was writing WiC mainstream science had not yet discovered Brown Dwarf stars. The first Brown Dwarf star to be discovered, was in 1994, named Gliese 229B, it turned out to be a double Brown Dwarf star. After that there was an avalanche of discoveries of many hundreds of Brown Dwarf stars. The theoretical existence of the Brown Dwarf was first put forth in the 1960's and the name was coined in the 1970's.

So, Wal is quite correct in crediting Velikovsky (for that quote) with a strange intuitive brilliance,

[Brigit]

nickc says, "Not exactly. V speculated before Worlds In Collision in the 1940's, that the Earth was at one time a satellite of Saturn. But as far as I know, he never proposed that the Saturn system was moving alone through interstellar space before being captured by the Sun."

Ahh, the timing is not exactly clear on Varchive.org. It says,

A Technical Note
"I have been asked by the compliers of the Velikovsky archive to briefly describe the present condition of Velikovsky’s unpublished manuscript entitled In the Beginning. As Velikovsky explains, parts of this volume were already complete in the 1940s and originally formed part of Worlds in Collision."

The discovery of Brown dwarf stars, their frequency as twins or multiple systems, their abundant water signatures, and their peculiar light spectrum that is safe for life -- all of these characteristics were extraordinary discoveries of the space age, and yet anticipated by the work of Velikovsky, and by Wal Thornhill's adaptation of the Sun's capture of Saturn.

I cannot imagine the sense of awe as it was discovered in the 90s that Saturn's rings are made of water ice, and not only water ice but salt water ice, with a signature (isotopically) that matches our oceans, as it was observed later. I wish Velikovsky could have seen this result.

Velikovsky had speculated that Saturn brightened, then released a mass ejection of water which quickly engulfed the earth.

It is very possible (a near certainty in my mind) that this is where our oceans came from. This is why the Thunderbolts Project, all of them, took every single opportunity to point out that the comets were rocky bodies. Every one of them. Why not look into Saturn's rings as the recent event which showered the earth with salt water? The rings are young. Coincidences like this don't come along every day.

[nick c]

Yes, Cassini not only found a great amount of water in the Saturn system, but its spectroscopic signature is like that of Earth's water.

see the thread:
The Saturn System has water just like Earth's - Except Phoebe

[Brigit]

That's an amazing Forum topic. Of course, we have to add the 2022 presentation --

"Wal Thornhill: JWST & L-Type Brown Dwarf Stars | Thunderbolts"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvA3IRWBBus
Jan 1 2022

• "What will the JWST tell us about the origins of life, newborn planets, and subsequent formation of planetary systems?
  
  The L-Type Brown Dwarf is a class of faint star bridging the gap between stars and Jupiter-sized planets, and the most numerous stellar object in the galaxy. Life may be possible inside the glow of a brown dwarf—far more likely than on a planet orbiting outside a star—since the radiant energy arriving on a planet orbiting inside a glowing sphere is evenly distributed over its entire surface.
  
  Wal Thornhill, Thunderbolts Chief Science Advisor, demonstrates why an important science goal for the infrared JWST is an examination of brown dwarfs to verify they are gas-giant sized bodies enclosed in a huge red anode glow. For perspective—if Jupiter’s present invisible plasma sheath were lit up it would appear in the sky the same size of the Sun. Brown Dwarfs are simply small Red Giants."

(try speed 1.25x for a younger-sounding Wal Thornhill (: )


That gives more background on why the Brown Dwarfs and Red Giants are so suitable for life, something that had to be very carefully tracked and worked out as the space age unfolded.


Also, I found something remarkable in the UK EU talk, "The History of Electric Universe Ideas". In "The HIstory of Electric Universe Ideas" at the 29 minute mark, CER Bruce (1902-1979) is quoted as saying,

• "It may well be that Jupiter and Saturn were at one time minor stars" and that "their satellites were formed as a result of minor or planetary nova outbursts."

This would be very early, in 1941.

[Brigit]

In "Cultural Amnesia," under the subheading, "Suppression and Regression," Velikovsky writes:

• "Although I still have to study Boulanger’s work carefully, his findings surprise me greatly. I realized that he was the precursor of Freud, and in many respects of myself. I do not know what led Boulanger to his discovery. He writes mostly of the Deluge, but not only does he realize that there were catastrophes, he draws some conclusions about the mental effects they caused.
  
  The recognition of past cataclysms opens new vistas in all fields of inquiry, even in morals and ethics. I wish to draw your attention to a book by Pitirim Sorokin9 in which he discussed calamities like world wars and famine. He discovered that two reactions occur. One reaction is to help (a humanitarian reaction), and the other reaction is to harm (a destructive reaction); he saw evidence for this in the excesses of the Russian Revolution. Sorokin’s idea of dichotomy is illustrated on the one hand by the way the escapees from Egypt interpreted the noises caused by the folding and twisting of strata, noises of the screeching Earth described also by Hesiod — the Israelites heard in them a voice giving ethical commands.
  
  Elsewhere on the tortured Earth, other races responded differently: compare Olympus to Sinai. The Homeric scandals on Olympus occurred at the time of the cataclysms; this was the other reaction. Another example comes from Heraclitus10, who compared the different descriptions of the Pantheon by Plato and by Homer.
  
  We see then, past and present, both reactions to calamity."
  (Emphasis added.)

The fact that Velikovsky utilized (at first) a psychoanalytical approach to find lost memories of the earth's catastrophic past is just one example of the fascinating and unique tales that begin any arc of important discovery. The original energy and inspiration that leads an individual to seek answers to a question is personal, subjective, and different for each of the discoverers and inventors. Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky later went on to search out the evidence of global catastrophes in the physical records of fossil beds, archaeological digs, the biological sciences and written records, and made a solid empirical case from those.

Psychoanalysis itself has not stood the test of time as a reliable science. In fact, it is the branch of study that Karl Popper used to demonstrate the best example of a non-science. That is, it has terminology and explanatory powers that appear to be scientific, but in fact the explanations it offers fits every single outcome. This makes it what Karl Popper called "unfalsifiable." And Velikovsky addresses this precise problem with psychoanalytical conclusions in the quote above: he states that the responses to exactly the same destructive and painful trauma experienced by two individuals can be worlds apart from one another: "One reaction is to help (a humanitarian reaction), and the other reaction is to harm (a destructive reaction); he saw evidence for this in the excesses of the Russian Revolution."

I want to give a couple of examples of this equal and opposite reaction to trauma -- one from a family, and one from a pair of past Amercian civilizations.