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Worlds in Collision

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This book is worth the effort. Whether a scholar, or a person with a healthy curiosity, this book should stimulate your brain cells. The book does not roll along like a Tom Clancy novel, but it does describe more chaos and destruction than all his novels combined. We're talking "a disaster of Biblical proportions, Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff, fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, . . . dogs & cats living together, mass hysteria" ("Ghostbusters I" but right on target).

Reading this book gives the open minded reader the opportunity to view the history of the Earth in a completely new way, and some of our favorite mysteries of the past may be decoded in conjunction with Velikovsky's "theories". The scientific discoveries of the 49 years since the book was first published have been very kind to Dr. Velikovsky, but not so kind to scientific dogma of the same period).

Velikovsky dares to read ancient works literally, and to look for proof of their accuracy, even when they appear flawed. If a document states that the sun rose in the west, Velikovsky is willing to search for proof that it did, instead of presuming the text is flawed. Velikovsky's ideas help to unravel mysteries which cannot be decoded until we are willing to challenge the scientific dogma which presumes that ancient documents are incorrect whenever they disagree with our perceptions of what they ought to say.

Will Stonehenge be forever a mystery, because theories that it was built as an astrological computer are dashed by the fact that present planetary orbits do not fit its alignment? Or can we suppose that prehistoric man dragged those stones around, and reset them several times, because keeping up with the wanderings of comets/planets was important to their survival. Is it possible that today Stonehenge does not align because the orbits of stars and planets, relative to the Earth's, have changed?

If the errosion on the Sphinx is a result of water, not wind and sand, could this relate to a drastic shift in the Earth's axis since it was built? Could such a shift have caused the sudden decline of Egyptian culture?

And have we ever wondered what those Mammoths ate out there on the Siberian tundra? Did they live on lichen and snowcones, or did they eat a few tons of subtropical plants each day (as supported by the stomach contents found in those flash frozen Mammoths found in Siberia in the sixties). And HOW did they get flash frozen so quickly that the meat never spoiled?

I first read this book in the seventies, while in college. A theologian at the time suggested I should not read the book, as he felt Velikovsky was trying to show that God did not cause the events recorded in the Bible which so often helped the Jews. I am sure Dr. Velikovsky would not try to prove a negative hypothesis, and I found no evidence of same in the book.

It is interesting that all other cultures perceived the comets to be gods, while the Jews saw the comets as messengers of the one God. It is curious that these cataclysms only seemed to help the Jews.

The book supports the historical accuracy of the Bible, as well as other religious writings and "mythologies". This book in worth the effort, as it has a lot to contribute to our own perceptions of nature, history, and religion.

This is among the league of revolutionary books that change the world and add to human knowledge in the true sense. I first read it aged 11 in 1979, in condensed form in the Book Section of the "Reader's Digest" magazine, and it changed and shaped my whole outlook on life. Here I must point out that it isn't an inspirational literary or poetic work on an abstract or moral issue; it is a book on an ingenious theory that predicates several ancient historical and legendary events in Human history upon various changes in the solar system. In other words, it seeks a rational basis for issues regarded as ephemeral and mythical at best. That is what is so remarkable to me about it. Velikovsky postulates that the formation of the planet Venus was an extremely recent event in the history of our Solar System - taking place perhaps only 4000 years ago (the Earth by comparison, was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and the "Big Bang" is said to have taken place about 11 billion years ago). Taking place as it did within the era of Man's recorded history, it should have left many awesome and profound effects upon our Earth, the second closest planet to it, which the ancients would have chronicled and passed down in legend and religious lore. And indeed there are. According to Velikovsky, Venus was "torn out" of Jupiter by the influence of a passing star. It then became a huge molten "comet" which passed by Mars and the Earth, to settle in its present orbit around the sun. Although all this is still conjecture at best, it is revolutionary and ingenious. Velikovsky goes on to offer it as an explaination for several seminal events that took place in Moses' time, when he was leading the Israelites out of Egypt (he himself was a Jew). For instance, the parting of the Red Sea into "walls" of water to allow them to flee from the Pharoah's armies is attributed to Venus' gravitational effects, the waters of the Nile turning bloody in another legend of the time is explained by the entry of an iron compound from Venus' "cometary tail" into our atmosphere when it crossed it, and the dropping of Manna was because of the synthesis of organic compounds present in that tail which when it encountered our atmosphere, caused them to drop out of the sky. Different legends of the time state that the Sun would rise in the West or remain suspended in the sky for long periods, suggesting that Venus' passage had disturbed the Earth's axial rotation... He gives this and other evidence along with detailed ingenious explainations. He also predicted several other phenomena regarding Venus' physical and chemical qualities, which he deduced would be valid if his theory was correct. Later, all these were proved as true. But this was not accepted in the early 1950s when this work was first published. Velikovsky was hounded most mercilessly by the Western scientific establishment for two decades, and regarded as an eccentric and crackpot in the extreme despite his credentials, and the fact that Albert Einstein was his backer. It was only later when several of his predictions were substantiated by later scientific advancements that he started gaining the respect he deserved. He died a few years after his rehabilitation.
As I said above, the book has a deeply personal connotation for me. I shall share this with you. I live in a "traditional" tribal Islamic society, characterised by repression and compulsion as far as beliefs and expression are concerned. Here, if by the age of seven a kid doesn't start parrotising and doing the numerous and laborious prescribed Islamic rituals, then according to the doctrine his guardians are duty bound to see to it that he starts - even if this means using physical punishments, coercion or threats.... and a lot of kids are terrorised that God will "cause the roof to fall in on them" or they will be visited at night by monsters that will gobble them up if they don't learn their so-called prayers.... It was similar treatment by my late father and teachers that made me hate Islam as a kid. And my own intelligence told me that it was nothing but a bunch of silly, backward legends for which I was being tortured. You can imagine then the secret joy, consolation and the resulting inner strength I felt when I came across "Worlds in Collision" that "X-rayed" and explained these silly legends and revealed rationally the true nature of this frightening religious horror to me. Of course, I didn't argue about this publicly with my "elders" then, because I would have been beaten up for "blasphemy"....

The abuse that has been heaped on Velikovsky at least since 1950 can be seen in remnant form today in the occasional backhand and unscholarly disrespect, usually no more than a sentence or paragraph. Even scientists with good ethics have done this, perhaps proceeding from their mistaken faith in uniformity and gradualism. Fringe writers tend to be even more vicious, and even less informed about the content of Velikovsky's writings and character, relying on pseudoscientific drivel by certain celebrities best left nameless.

"Worlds In Collision" was published first of Velikovsky's books -- essays, and a couple of booklets preceded it -- yet it was the last product of a line of research which began with his study of Freud's "Moses and Monotheism". Had the publication been delayed, it is possible that "Ages In Chaos" would have been better received, and the catastrophic background referred to without being revealed until years had passed. It is perhaps the greatest scholarly "what if" of the 20th century.

Accordingly, I would recommend reading "Ages In Chaos" and the related volumes, as well as "Earth In Upheaval" and "Stargazers and Gravediggers" before reading "Worlds In Collision". Avoid synopses, and don't believe most of what you've read about the book or the author. The reason for the reading of the revised chronology first is to understand the framework better. Velikovsky himself made the mistake of accepting the supposed massive eruption of Thera as the source of the Atlantis legend, as well as its place in the conventional chronology (Edwin M. Schorr pointed this out in a letter to KRONOS years ago).

If you enjoyed Sitchin, Bauval, and certain other writers, you will not only enjoy "Worlds In Collision", you'll probably rid yourself of those others' works.

See also Velikovsky's other works (new and used), Ryan and Pitman's "Noah's Flood", Mary Settegast's "Plato Prehistorian", and Robert Schoch's "Voices of the Rocks".

I am amazed to see so much controversy around this book. I can't see how one can accept or deny the theories exposed in this book just like that. Provoking it certainly is. Flawed, perhaps. But totally erroneous, I don't think so. I understand that many of Velikovsky's hypotheses have been proven totally or partially correct by science since it was published in 1950. It must be said that Velikovsky's may be controversial, but absolutely not pseudo-science, even if it contains mistakes. It should never be included in the same cathegory of Von Daniken and other lunatics and conspiracy theorists. The first thing obvious to the reader is that, before writing the book, Velikovsky did his homework, his research. And it is simply impressive. He takes sources from every civilzation known, from China to Yucatan, from Polinesia to Finland, and of course the Jews, Sumers, Babilonians, Greeks, Romans and Persians. He seems to have double-checked everything before risking a theory.

Here's, briefly, what he says: In the XV century B.C., what is now the planet Venus, a comet coming from Jupiter, passed near the Earth, changing its orbit and axis and causing innumerable catastrophes that formed the early mythologies and religions of the world. 52 years later, it passed near again, stopping for some time the rotation of the Earth, with the ensuing added catastrophes. Then, in the VIII and VII centuries B.C., Venus and Mars almost collided near the Earth, which caused a new round of disturbances and disasters. After that, the current "celestial order" was established, we don't know for how long.

It is simply breathtaking to know the impressive coincidences and similarities in myth and religion of the whole world. The coincidence of deities, symbols, explanations. It is simply impossible that all that may be simply the product of chance, of people from unconnected lands imagining, out of the blue, the same things. I remained in awe throughout my reading, and I must say that I am a total enemy of easy, conspiracy-minded explanations. I think a healthy skepticism is always good to understand the world. But the research is massive and astonishing. I am sure Velikovsky didn't get everything perfectly. But scientific evidence has been recently going closer and closer to the theories he advanced fifty years ago, when man hadn't even set foot on the Moon and researching technology was far from what we have now.

This book definitely deserves a read. It not only doesn't discredit any religion; on the contrary, his theories assume that the writers of holy texts were not mad hallucinators, but accurate conveyors of real events, long living in peoples' minds, due to the catastrophic consequences they brought to humanity. Read it, think about it, and you will never read the Bible or watch a starry sky with the same mind.

Unbelievers in Velikovsky's theory are one in expressing amazement over how his book Worlds in Collision remains popular up to the present. The only explanation to this is that it has passed the test of truth, i. e. persistence. While we continue to read of so-called "established scientific doctrine" being discarded one after the other, the basic theories first set forth by I. Velikovsky in his 1950 book Worlds in Collision not only have remained largely uncontested, they have become accepted science. About a decade ago, scientific circles scoffed at the idea of a heavenly body falling to earth to snuff out lifeforms prevalent at the time. Now, they talk of asteroids as the probable cause of the destruction of the dinosaurs. To appreciate Velikovsky's theory properly, one needs to dissociate it from truly pseudo-scientific books such as Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods. These are two different planets. Worlds in Collision is not for conspiracy theory enthusiasts, nor is it for people who glory in possessing esoteric knowledge. Worlds in Collision is for the seekers of truth and knowledge, for those with minds open enough to seek intellectual satisfaction outside the feeble boundaries set by "established science." One probable reason why Velikovsky's book has been generating rabid reactions is because it reminds us of our vulnerability as inhabitants of this planet. People take recourse to science because it is supposed to give them a feeling of security or even a sense of superiority over untold generations of humankind. Reading Worlds in Collision is such a jarring experience, the normal reaction is to deny its validity altogether. But of course truth if its really the truth just won't go away, and regardless of what its detractors say, Worlds in Collision will always be out of print, contrary to what happened to other trashy theories that used to be popular during their times.

Dr. Velikovsky published Worlds in Collision about 1950, after surviving an attempted boycott of his book by the scientists of the day. His goal was to demostrate that much of what appears in the Old Testament and other historical documents and archeological evidence is far more literally true than has been commonly supposed. He didn't do this to prove a religious theory; rather, he did this because he felt that the people who were alive in ancient times probably had a better idea of what happened to them than scientists from a distance of 3,000 years.

For example, Dr. Velikovsky believed that the ten plagues on Egypt reported in the Old Testament actually happened, and suggested how this might have happened. He points out that the "hailstones" that whacked an army of enemies of the Israelites were actually "fiery rocks" in Hebrew, i.e. meteorites (which makes more sense). He even gives an explanation of why so many ancient cultures have an old fear of comets.

The problem, of course, is that Dr. Velikovsky suggests that many of these events were caused by several near collisions of the planets Venus and Earth. Needless to say, this is difficult for even scientists of today to accept, much less those of 50 years ago. To be fair, however, modern scientists have come to accept that the Earth and Universe are much less calm and stable than previously thought. People today don't find the theory that some of the ten plagues were caused by the explosion of a volcano at Thera so implausible...such an explosion would make perfect sense in Velikovskydom.

This book is for people who can ask themselves the question, "Just what were our ancestors talking about anyway? Did they really make up all that stuff out of thin air?" Even though prominent scientists (Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov, for two) have poo-poo'd large parts of the theory, all the way through the book, you will find yourself asking, "What really happened that caused these people to write about this stuff?"

Oh, another scientist - Albert Einstein (whom Velikovsky knew) - was quite interested in the theory...

The title of Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision while foreshadowing the amazing conclusions presented in his book is also an apt metaphorical description of the controversy Velikovsky's methods and theories have ignited in the scientific community and the effect it may have on your own world view.

By correlating the ancient traditions and writings of geographically separated cultures, Velikovsky amasses an amazing body of evidence for world-wide catastrophes that struck the earth within the history of man. According to Velikovsky these cataclysms caused the downfall of entire civilizations and, in an instant of geological time, fundamentally altered the state of our planet.

By invoking catastrophism to explain the evidence, Velikovsky's theories fly in the face of establishment science which holds the uniformitarian view that geological and astronomical changes only occur slowly over millions of years by the same processes we see acting today. What further enrages the scientific community is Velikovskys working hypothesis that some ancient oral and written traditions, including parts of the Bible, are potentially based on interpretations of real events as opposed to being pure flights of imagination or metaphorical teachings.

Apart from presenting an intriguing reconstruction of human history with far reaching philosophic and scientific implications, Worlds In Collision is also a must-read starting point for an intellectual journey that will treat the reader to a fascinating view of a potential scientific revolution in progress. Charles Ginenthal's Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky is a great follow up read to Worlds In Collision that describes the established scientific community's flawed and failed attempts to discredit Velilkovsky's work. Readers of Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions will recognize in the actions of Velikovsky's detractors all the dirty little machinations and the seamy underside of the scientific establishment when it is threatened by new ideas and its members behave more like religious zealots than objective scientists.

For the unbiased reader, Velikovsky's work allows for a new perspective on the development of religious and mythological tradition and consequently greater understanding of their importance to ancient people. The arrogance with which we often view the apparently superstitious qualities of our ancestors is easily set aside in light of the evidence that great civilizations of the past were brought to nothing, in an instant, by events absolutely beyond their control and that the memory of these events remained strongly imbedded in the psyche of our ancestors.

The importance of Velikovsky's achievement in both correlating the histories of disparate cultures and in his resultant breakthrough scientific theories cannot be overstated. Be forewarned, however, that Worlds In Collision is not always easy reading owing to the great detail of evidence presented and the many and diligent citations and footnotes. But the patient reader will be amply rewarded by a full and awesome sense of the weight of evidence supporting Velikovskys theories and of mankind's long struggle to understand and survive the colossal physical forces that have shaped our planet.

To Velikovsky goes the dubious honour of being one of the most flamed authors of popular science literature in modern history. Not half of these flamers deserved their turn. While it is highly unlikely, particularly in hindsight, that Venus several millennia ago was a comet that was sent a-drift in the inner solar system, I believe Velikovsky's Venus theory has been used chiefly as scapegoat.

What makes up the book's core and focus is the element of science and validity in ancient myth. Any modern reader who picks up the Bible and leafs to Exodus will wonder about the events being described there. If it was not a series of actual divine intervention, than what was it? The account is too similar in detail with the symptoms of a great natural disaster to be wholly fabricated.

More importantly: what caused the fairly obvious similarities in myths from all over the world? A language-like trade and distribution? Are their rough contents features of human subconsciousness common to us all? Nobody has the answer. In fact many still stubbornly persist there is no science here at all: myths are made-up stories and wishful thinking.

Velikovsky's "error" was drawing his major conclusions from myth and folklore alone. There was no geological or astronomical evidence to back him up. Instead, he called for these sciences to adapt to his theories. Nevertheless, his method had a logic and clarity that was rudely ripped aside by critics, who wanted to put him on display and eliminate another threat to mainstream scientific thought.

And thus leaving the actual question unchallenged: where is the science and the truth in myth and folklore?

In his 1950 'Worlds in Collision', Immanuel Velikovsky presented evidence from diverse ancient writings and academic disciplines that within recorded history there have been global natural catastrophes caused by near collisions between Earth and a comet-like body. Much of the evidence in this book demands scientific explanation. Velikovsky's collation of evidence in this book is valuable even if his specific cometary thesis is not correct.

'Worlds in Collision' is one of the most important books in the history of science, perhaps because of its major concepts, but at least because of the widespread misrepresentation and other unfair treatment that has been done since 1950 to discredit Velikovsky's theory in this book. Such treatment has resulted in a climate of hostility against Velikovsky within academia. Examples of such treatment are discussed in numerous works including 'Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky' by Charles Ginenthal.

One tactic by which critics of Velikovsky have contributed to the climate of hostility is to label the theory in 'Worlds in Collision' as pseudoscience. This tactic is deplorable because it creates the wrongful impression that Velikovsky's theory is not legitimate science and effectively bullies people who want to investigate Velikovsky's ideas or similar theories. For decades, the climate of hostility has given scientists reason to fear that if they openly investigate Velikovsky's ideas, their papers may be rejected from publication or they may lose their jobs. The climate of hostility has inhibited the scientific investigation of ideas of Velikovsky in this and other important works.

'Worlds in Collision' is so rich with fascinating ideas and evidence that it can be read again and again with new insights gained each time. This book inspires a love of learning and a desire to do research, and a respect for ancient traditions and writings around the world.

It is always amusing and at the same time profoundly disheartening to witness the fury of outraged orthodoxy, when its tenets are questioned, or worse undermined. One would think Velikovsky had written about nothing but Venus being `birthed' from Jupiter. We are treated to sarcasm and empty vituperation ad nauseam, but of course no mention of the vast amount of physical evidence that points to a sudden polar shift. Perhaps they forgot, or perhaps they never read the books, or perhaps they are like most self-proclaimed experts merely outraged that an outsider should attempt to meddle in their little sphere (no pun intended ;-). The reaction of many Eygptologists to the discoveries that the Sphinx is very much older than they believed or that the pyramids mirror the constellation of Orion are good examples of this kind of emotionalism. What one learns from all this is that the vast majority of the human race, no matter how `intelligent' or `educated' are driven primarily by their emotions, not by their `rational intellects'. Stir in a good dose of vanity and hubris and voila! So it seems human psychology has changed nothing from the days of the Inquisitors, space travel and supercomputers notwithstanding. Nor have human intellectual capacities changed from the dawn of human civilisation until now. Those are things worth remembering.