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

[Brigit]

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

Now I can turn our attention to the Aztecs, since their culture seems to be the particular, expected type of response of trauma survivors, in this forum. (: Fine.

Regarding any possible human records of planets being out of their courses, or of close planetary encounters witnessed by humans, or especially of there once having been "another sun", before the brown dwarf system was captured by our main sequence star -- I am going to generalize, and suggest several fates these records might have met.

• They may have been lost with a tribe whose language was lost, or with a generation that modernized their beliefs and never knew the stories to begin with.
  They may have been changed with time in oral transmissions.
  They may have been purposefully destroyed.

Just for argument's sake, I will take an example of Aztec cosmology, the Leyenda de los Soles, or "Legend of the Suns."

[Brigit]

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

• Codex Chimalpopoca or Códice Chimalpopoca is a postconquest cartographic Aztec codex[1] which is officially listed as being in the collection of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia located in Mexico City under "Collección Antiguo no. 159".
  
  It is best known for its stories of the hero-god Quetzalcoatl.[2] The current whereabouts of the codex are unknown. It appears to have disappeared in the mid-twentieth century, [3] so that study of the codex can be done only through copies and photographs.
  
  The codex consists of three parts, two of which are more important, one that regards the pre-Hispanic history of Central Mexico, the Anales de Cuauhtitlan and the other that regards the study of Aztec cosmology, the Leyenda de los Soles."

Now for the sake of argument, or actually as a kind of fictional demonstration, this is a rather interesting disappearance. The Codex is missing, and "appears to have disappeared in the mid-twentieth century". Again, just for illustration's sake, this document disappeared at the time when Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky was putting forth his thesis, that there had been planetary chaos in the solar system within human memory. Of course I don't know what happened to the Aztec cosmology, "Legend of the Suns," or the exact year of its loss, but it does serve to illustrate what is actually a common occurence in history: records can possibly disappear or be destroyed for political reasons.

And that is one answer to Velikovsky's question about why the human race does not remember: possible destruction of historical records.

[nick c]

And that is one answer to Velikovsky's question about why the human race does not remember: possible destruction of historical records.

You are in good company with that thought. on p.299 of Worlds In Collision (1950 Doubleday) Velikovsky cited Plato from his book Timaeus:

The Egyptian priest, described by Plato as conversing with Solon, supposed that the memory of the catastrophes of fire and flood had been lost because literate men had perished in them, together with all the achievements of their cultures, and these upheavals "escaped your notice because for many generations the survivors died with no power to express themselves in writing."

Several centuries after Plato, this same idea was put forward by Philo the Alexandrian.

Philo knew about the repeated destructions of the world by water and fire, it did not occur to him that a catastrophe of conflagration was described in the Book of Exodus. Nor did he think that anything of this sort took place in the days of Joshua or even of Isaiah.....

..... The memory of the cataclysms was erased, not because of lack of written traditions, but because of some characteristic process, that later caused entire nations, together with their literate men, to read into these traditions allegories or metaphors where actually cosmic catastrophes are clearly described.

It is a psychological phenomenon in the life of individuals as well as whole nations that the most terrifying events of the past may be forgotten or displaced in the subconscious mind. As if obliterated are impressions that should be unforgettable. To uncover their vestiges and their distorted equivalents in the physical life of peoples is a task not unlike that of overcoming amnesia in a single person.

In the above quote, Velikovsky, who was a psychiatrist, understood that the therapist must gradually bring the repressed memories back to the consciousness of the patient. The patient must gradually recover the lost memories by the subtle direction of the therapist. Any sudden revelation by the therapist could have a negative or even hostile effect upon the amnesia patient's recovery.

And therein lies the dilemma, which Velikovsky understood: there was no way to apply those psychiatric techniques to the entire human race. His book was a story that most people did not want to hear or more likely, were not ready to hear. Velikovsky understood that because of his revelations, that he, as the bearer of unwanted news, was destined to bear the brunt of a very hostile reaction.

[Brigit]

nickc says, "Velikovsky wrote:
The Egyptian priest, described by Plato as conversing with Solon, supposed that the memory of the catastrophes of fire and flood had been lost because literate men had perished in them, together with all the achievements of their cultures, and these upheavals "escaped your notice because for many generations the survivors died with no power to express themselves in writing.""

In one of Dave Talbott's early presentations he discussed the cave art, and then he did something amazing. He talked about the period of cave dwelling itself, as a temporary period in which survivors of planetary catastrophe were driven to live in the safety of caves.

[Brigit]

nickc discussed, back on page 1, the Japanese movies that reflected WWII devastations in movies about Godzilla.

There seemed to me to be a need for a place to share movies that are related to all Electric Universe subjects, but especially planetary catastrophes.

I found one! I found a Topic where Electric Universe themes in movies are posted. Here:

• EU in Modern Cinema, Alien Skies
  viewtopic.php?t=1078
  
  by Cargo

[Brigit]

Alright. Remember I said that I would give references for people who have legends of resisting invasion by what are clearly monumental cultures.

The first reference is a traditional memory about how the people were subjected to tyranny by the Incas:

• How the Incas Began to Terrorize Over the Lands
  https://web.archive.org/web/20170619105 ... -Inca.html

Next, the Shoshone tribe, which ranged traditionally through California, Nevada, and parts of Oregon, keep this legend:

• The Queen of Death Valley
  
  "Ground Afire" is the meaning of the Indians' name for what is now known as Death Valley. "And in the height of summer there is no better name for this sun-tortured trench between blistered ranges. But when a group of forty-niners [1849] blundered into it, they renamed it Death Valley."
  
  The valley and the high mountain ranges west and east of it are now called Death Valley National Monument. It is located in southeastern California and southwestern Nevada. Many square miles of the valley are below sea level--the lowest level in the Western Hemisphere.
  
  More than 600 kinds of plants thrive in the valley. Its rocks make it a geologists' paradise. And for everyone, "the great charm of the area lies in its magnificent range of color, which varies from hour to hour."
  
  
  Long, long ago, Indians used to say, this valley was beautiful and fertile. The people who lived there were ruled by a beautiful but capricious queen. One time she ordered them to build a mansion for her, one that would surpass any mansion ever built by their neighbours, the Aztecs.
  
  For years, her people worked to make a palace that would please her. From places many miles away they dragged stones and logs. The queen, fearing that her age or an accident or an illness might prevent her from seeing her dream come true, ordered many of her people to assist in the work. Gradually, her tribe became a tribe of slaves.
  
  The queen commanded even her own daughter to join those dragging logs and stones. When the noonday heat caused the workers to drag along slowly, with heads bowed, the queen strode angrily among them and lashed their naked backs.
  
  Because royalty was sacred, the people did not complain. But when she struck her daughter, the girl turned, threw down her load of stone, and solemnly cursed her mother and her mother's kingdom. Then, overcome by heat and weariness, the girl sank to the ground and died.
  
  In vain, the queen lamented and regretted. All nature seemed to punish her. The sun came out with blinding heat and light. Vegetation withered. Animals disappeared. Streams and wells dried up. At last the queen had to give up her life; she died with high fever. There was no one to soothe her last moments, for her people, too, were dead.
  
  The mansion, half-completed, stands in the midst of this desolation. Sometimes it seems to rise into view of people at a distance, in the shifting mirage that plays along the horizon.

A third example is that of the Navajo legend which tells of enslavement and human sacrifice, which the Chaco Canyon people brought to their region. They were delivered from the Chaco Canyon culture of enslavement, monumental building, and "practices that ought never be done," when a great wind, or bolts of lightning, struck some of the cities of the canyon. According to some Navajo or Dine tribal teachers, there are no descendants of Chaco Canyon culture today.

[Brigit]

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

The question that Velikovsky raises is extraordinary.

If there were planetary catastrophes, in which the Earth was on an elliptical orbit and the Polar Configuration dominated the sky, then some of the legends would tell of these celestial events in a nearly perfectly literal sense. These legends would recount that there were "two suns", or "a new sun and an old sun", or that the stars or planets came close to the Earth. And it is precisely legends that were labelled as "ridiculous tales"!

These would be summarily dismissed by both the younger generations and by some newly arrived cultures.

So much so that some tribes forbade sharing their stories with people who did not need to know. But there are certainly many mentions of two suns.

[Open Mind]

I love the stories of two days of sun on one side of the earth, and two days of no sun on the opposite side. That's such a mic drop observation of ancient tales.

[Brigit]

Open Mind says » "I love the stories of two days of sun on one side of the earth, and two days of no sun on the opposite side. That's such a mic drop observation of ancient tales."

Okay, I forgot about that. There are legends in South America that talk about "the time of one cosmic catastrophe [when] the sun rose only a little way over the horizon and remained there without moving; the moon also stood still." Velikovsky related this Central American legend to a legend on the other side of the world where the sun was said to have stood still in the sky, prolonging the day. This is Chapter One of Worlds in Collision. These events are set in historical times, sometime in the middle of the 2nd Millenium BC.

[Brigit]

But the period in which the Sun was capturing bodies from outside of the Solar System was far earlier than the episode in the account from the time c. 1400 BC. These legends also tell of terrible times for life on Earth -- times when it was far too hot, and then far too cold, then also, too dark (and let's not forget, too wet).

The most complete legends recount the story of a new sun and the death of an old sun; that is, a time when both appeared in the sky.

The origin of these stories would be, in the Capture Model of the Solar System, describing a time when the Earth (along with the others) was on a temporarily elliptical orbit around the Sun. Its previous star, now fast becoming the gas giant planet Saturn, was still in the lead, but sputtering out and failing like an old fluorescent light which is losing electrical power.

Velikovsky actually concludes Chapter One with a statement that there was more than one catastrophe that caused the Earth to experience these periods of darkness, when the Sun did not rise and shine with the full light of day. He says,

• "There was more than one catastrophe when, according to the memory of mankind, the earth refused to play the chronometer by undisturbed rotation on its axis. First, we must differentiate the single occurrences of cosmic catastrophes, some of which took place before the one described here, some after it; some of which were of greater extent, and some of lesser."

[Brigit]

Earlier in this topic we talked about the disappearance of the original document containing the Aztec cosmology called the "Leyenda de los Soles."

There is a book called The Flayed God, published in 1998, which contains "The Legend of the Suns."

It is a gorgeous hardbound book by Roberta and Peter Markman on the mythological texts and images of pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America.

[Bin-Ra]

Having just read through pages 1-4,I feel to offer at least a sketch of something at a 'deeper level' for consideration.
Separation-Trauma is a term I sometimes use for the split mind.
Note that Mind as such cannot be separated or split but that a 'physicalised mind' is a result of the wish, fear or belief in 'Separation' that we normalise as a physically or structurally framed continuity of an 'object model'.
It must appear philosophical, presumptuous or imaginary to posit a 'Mind' of which and in which all that is, Is.
But consider the zero-point of which 'charged separations both divide and recombine as the fundamental to existence as a 'Communication' of the Whole in all its parts.
Is it not a unity point from which and to which all else rises and falls?
Fractality does not mean that your or my mind is the Mind of God, but the patterning of a consciousness as a focal experience holds a creative interplay of an inner relative to an outer, within a larger patterning of orders that cannot be mapped out but yet replicate as the signature characteristics of creative unfoldment or indeed projection.
There is no point in physical existence (to rearrange something I heard Wal Thornhill say). But that we give it - be that as a cause, a beginning, goal or outcome. Our (largely unconscious) predicates organise our perception of the 'reality' we thus resonate with as relevant to our unfolding existence or experience of being.

Giving and receiving are poles of energetic exchange or 'transformation' for both the physical existence, living 'organisms' and psychic/psychological experience. The loss of equilibrium corresponds with polarised and polarising 'action-reaction' as distinct from giving and receiving as one - or synchronicity of being. This then 'splits' or projects a fragmented constellation of experience as a process of both going forth and reintegration.

The terror evoked by reopening a catastrophic loss is not really physically based but will probably be focused or reiterated there.
For "none walk the world in armature but have terror stalking at their heart".

The shock of terror and its reiteration in both reiteration and appeasement frame the physical identity in the 'human condition'.
Fear of pain of loss underlie 'consciousness' as a bounded and separate survival imperative, dictate or law.
Self-Existence conceived in terror is not unselfconscious Participance or Communioned being - so much as a split-mind locked into the use of the body as a mask and distance from Infinity - now framed as total sacrifice or loss of 'self' that must mask and limit to hold order against overwhelm.
Yet an unselfconscious nature abides beneath all development of 'getting' —or indeed forgetting mechanisms.

It is often noticed that mythic creation or projections are not relegated to a past framed 'ignorant' - but remain active as our (reiterating) present as cultural expressions of psychic undercurrents—beneath rational 'superstructure'. But who can see or look on the mind from which they experience, while using it as a basis for seeing?

The capacity of a currently active focus to replace and discard any other - excepting insofar as it serves the current, is simply observable.
I think we confuse Creation with control because the mind seeks to hack and hijack or usurp the power in Life as a personal or private agenda - that MUST then live in fear and guilt for 'Separation trauma' by projecting external 'solutions' by which to 'scape guilt by limitation, conflict and sacrifice.

Of course none of this makes sense at the Heart of Life - or the intuition of true being - but that the belief or fear and threat of pain and loss does not have to exist - for the mind to generate countermeasures that then DO the very thing they are invoked to defend.

I sketch this to embrace and expand the thread of worthy commenting. All perspectives may serve an alignment of a greater conscious appreciation and participation where that is the underlying purpose. None of them can claim to be the truth.
That is not to say there is no call to balance intuitive or intellective functions with empirical evidence - but that the fruits or results of any chosen predicate or path are not always physically evident or quantifiable. Hence the call for a true discernment - lest fools rush in where angels fear to tread - precipitating 'War in the Heavens'.

If 'Know Thy Self' points to a discernment within life, Solon's other inscription at Delphi marks the wisdom of equilibrium within the push and pull of living; "Nothing Too Much!".

[Brigit]

Bin-Ra says, "I sketch this to embrace and expand the thread of worthy commenting. All perspectives may serve an alignment of a greater conscious appreciation and participation where that is the underlying purpose. None of them can claim to be the truth."

It is very true that the study of what the ancient people have handed down in myths, legends and texts can be a task that requires the utmost care and humility.

I once had a conversation on an Indian reservation with a woman who had concluded that the petroglyphs in that state were images of "aliens" from "another planet". I knew that it was not my place to change her mind but to find out oldest traditions. Of course I did ask if she had heard of high energy plasma discharges created by concentrating electrical energy in a vacuum that recreate glowing instabilities that look exactly like the Squatterman Petroglyph. I asked if there was any lightning in the stories she had heard. These are just genuine questions and I know that lightning is everywhere present in the best-preserved memories.

But I do not believe we are here to tell other people what they believe.

[Brigit]

Here is another take on mankind's "amnesia" by David Talbott, which he wrote in 1999.

• SACRIFICE AND AMNESIA
  By Dave Talbott
  
  'A couple of comments recently concerning sacrifice and the
  phenomenon of amnesia have, I think, inverted the truth of the
  matter.
  
  Velikovsky spoke of amnesia in the wake of cosmic catastrophe.
  The memory of terrifying events, he suggested, was repressed
  because humankind could not deal with the depth of the trauma.
  Therefore, we could not recognize the true source of our own urge
  to act out cosmic violence.
  
  Here is an alternative way of viewing cosmic catastrophe and the
  role of amnesia.
  
  We did not forget the world falling out of control, but
  remembered these events to the point of obsession. The entire
  sweep of ritual activity at the dawn of civilization shows a
  preoccupation with the dramas of creation, destruction and
  renewal. Ritual practices were, in fact, a deliberate exercise
  in remembering. But this preoccupation, expressing a sense of
  universal rupture, could only foster a *forgetfulness* at the
  deepest level of human awareness - that level at which one
  recognizes the kinship of all life, the brotherhood of man, the
  unity of creation.
  
  >From the dawn of civilization onward, ancient ritual is filled
  with mnemonic devices. It is filled with the symbols of
  catastrophe. Nowhere in the world can you find an early culture
  that did not look back to the age of the gods in wonder and
  terror. But fixation on the past is the one thing *certain* to
  obstruct human awareness at the level of spiritual connectedness.
  
  In one form or another, all of the early religions cultivated the
  principle of sacrifice. If sacrifice entails "the failure of
  amnesia," as has been suggested, then the failure was complete
  from the very beginning, and the amnesia concept is essentially
  irrelevant. But there is another sense in which one could say
  that sacrifice *means* amnesia.
  
  In the elaborated memories of the Golden Age or ancestral
  paradise, there is no sacrifice, no war, no sickness or death, no
  division of nation against nation, and no division of language
  between man and animal, or between man and man. And thus, no
  need for ritual cleansing or defense. Whatever the natural
  conditions may have been during this celebrated epoch, they were
  sufficient to plant in collective memory a root metaphor for
  benevolent creation, cosmic harmony, and the unity of life, a
  discernment of "*that* place," *that* time" now standing outside
  of human perception, but to which philosophy, mysticism, moral
  teaching and higher religion would seek to direct human
  attention.
  
  In the wake of catastrophe, the ancestral paradise is certainly
  not forgotten, since the yearning for paradise is an overarching
  motive. But the eruption of sacrificial rites speaks volumes for
  forgetfulness in its deepest spiritual sense. The direct human
  response to catastrophe is a rush to "renew" the world through
  ritual practices, but it is not the world of kinship that is
  achieved; it is the world of division and of combat, of
  relentless bargaining with the gods.
  
  In the fixation on catastrophe, we ratified a human perception of
  our relationship to creation. We saw huge and terrifying forces
  outside ourselves, and clouds of chaos. Cosmic catastrophe was
  the proof of rupture. The world was not a safe place, and the
  gods could not be trusted except in the most tentative sense,
  under conditions which must be re-created by rites of sacrifice.
  
  The emerging consciousness was driven toward ritual forms of
  cleansing, purifying, and renewing the world, whereas, under the
  analogy of the Golden Age, no such renewal was necessary. The
  principle of sacrifice must be considered against the collective
  contest with chaos. Wherever you look in the ancient world you
  will see the sense of threat, the shadow of catastrophe, the
  ever-present "fiends of darkness" (chaos clouds) whose invasion
  is always imminent. While many forms of sacrifice involved the
  slaughter of animal and human victims, the broader concept
  included a vast range of rites in which the practitioners
  deliberately "gave up" something to the gods, to purchase
  something in return. Offerings of food and possessions, various
  forms of abstinence and renunciation, scarification and
  bloodletting, circumcision, castration and shaving the head
  were all included in the bargain.
  
  I think the purpose is clear. It was to secure a truce with the
  gods, a new lease on life, to make the world whole again, however
  tentative the bargain . That is the fundamental meaning of
  sacrifice - "to make holy." Under this kind of contract with the
  gods, there can be no holiness without some form of loss, even if
  someone else, a "scapegoat," is preferred. That this sense of
  necessity attached itself to THINGS REMEMBERED should not be
  overlooked. If the Golden Age provided later philosophy with one
  analogy, cosmic catastrophe provided another - confirming a
  universal rupture - and in its ritualized repetition, it would
  continue to feed the most profound sense of conflict,
  insufficiency, and danger, inviting the deeper form of
  forgetfulness, without which the investment in sacrifice could
  not have arisen.'

----------------------------------------------


I added the bold type.
ref: Thoth Newsletter Vo3 No2

[Brigit]

This is a deep insight by Dave Talbott, and represents the presence of different and variant theories within the Catastrophist movement: another mark of a truly scientific inquiry -- or of a search for the truth of the Earth's past.

What strikes me about it is that he is, in a way, suggesting a psychosomatic reality one giant step beyond Freud's Psychoanalysis. He is suggesting that it is the most positive and beautiful and harmonious memories of a previous era, on a different Earth, with a different sky, that affects our subconscious minds most deeply. This memory of a lived-Golden-Age imprints the individuals descended from that Golden Age with a haunting thought of the possibility of a paradise. And therefore people long for something they can never actually physically experience because it was lost.

And then they fight so hard with each other about how to get there ! Or, perhaps they find themselves so easily manipulated by the PTBs and the trendy thinkers of every decade, who claim to have the correct way to restore the conditions we feel we are -- usually "unjustly" -- lacking on our present Earth.