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CONTENTS
PAGE
Author's Preface vii PROLOGUE
Chapter 1 8
In an Immense Universe'The Celestial Harmony-The Origin of the Planetary System • The Origin of the Comets
Chapter 2 16
The Planet Earth-Ice Ages "The Mammoths-The Ice Age and the Antiquity of Man • The World Ages • The Sun Ages
PABT I
VENUS
Chapter 1 39
The Most Incredible Story-On the Other Side of the Ocean
Chapter 2 47
Fifty-Two Years Earlier-The Red World-The Hail of Stones • Naphtha • The Darkness •
Earthquake • "13"
Chapter 3 67
The Hurricane • The Tide-The Battle in the Sky-The Comet of Typhon-The Spark-The Collapsed Sky
Chapter 4 91
Boiling Earth and Sea-Mount Sinai • Theophany • Emperor Yahou
Chapter 5 105
East and West • The Reversed Polarity of the Earth • The Quarters of the World Displaced •
Changes in the Times and the Seasons
Chapter 6 126
The Shadow of Death • Ambrosia • Rivers of Milk and Honey • Jericho
Chapter 7 141
Stones Suspended in the Air • Phaethon • Atlantis • The Floods of Deucalion and Ogyges Chapter 8 153
The Fifty-Two-Year Period • Jubilee • The Birth of Venus • The Blazing Star • The Four-Planet System • One of the Planets is a Comet • The Comet Venus
Chapter 9 168
Pallas Athene • Zeus and Athene • Worship of the Morning Star • The Sacred Cow • Baal Zevuv (Beelzebub) • Venus in the Folklore of the Indians
Chapter 10 194
The Synodical Year of Venus ¦ Venus Moves Irregularly • Venus Becomes the Morning Star pabt n MARS
Chapter 1 207
Amos • The Year —747 • Isaiah • The Argive Tyrants • Again Isaiah • Maimonides and Spinoza, the Exegetes
Chapter 2 227
The Year -687 • Ignis e Coelo • March 23rd • The Worship of Mars • Mars Moves the Earth from Its Pivot
Chapter 3 244
What Caused Venus and Mars to Shift Their Orbits?' When Was the Iliad Created? •
Huitzilopochtli • Tao • Yuddha • The Bundahis • Lucifer Cut Down
Chapter 4 261
Sword-God • Fenris-Wolf • Sword-Time, Wolf-Time • Syn-odos • The Stormer of the Walls Chapter 5 279
The Steeds of Mars* The Terrible Ones-Samples from the Planets • The Archangels • Planet Worship in Judea in the Seventh Century
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Chapter 6 298
A Collective Amnesia • Folklore • Of "Preexisting Ideas" in the Souls of Peoples • The Pageants of the Sky • The Subjective Interpretation of the Events and Their Authenticity Chapter 7 312
Poles Uprooted • Temples and Obelisks-The Shadow Clock-The Water Clock-A Hemisphere Travels Southward
Chapter 8 330
The Year of 360 Days • Disarranged Months • Years of Ten Months • The Reforming of the Calendar
Chapter 9 360
The Moon and Its Craters • The Planet Mars • The Atmosphere of Mars • The Thermal Balance of Mars • The Gases of Venus • The Thermal Balance of Venus • The End
EPILOGUE Facing Many Problems 379
Index 391
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PROLOGUE
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CHAPTER 1
In an Immense Universe
Quota pars opens tanti nobis committitur?
—Seneca
IN AN immense universe a little globe revolves around a star; it is the third in the row—
Mercury, Venus, Earth—of the planetary family. It is of a solid core covered over most of its surface with liquid, and it has a gaseous envelope. Living creatures fill the liquid; other living creatures fly in the gas; and still others creep and walk upon the ground on the bottom of the gaseous ocean. Man, a being of erect stature, thinks himself the prince of creation. He felt like this long before he, by his own efforts, came to know how to fly on wings of metal around the globe. He felt godlike long before he could talk to his fellow-man on the other side of the globe.
Today he can see the microcosm in a drop and the elements in the stars. He knows the laws governing the living cell with its chromosomes, and the laws governing the macrocosm of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. He assumes that gravitation keeps the planetary system together, man and beast on their planet, the sea within its borders. For millions and millions of years, he maintains, the planets have rolled along on the same paths, and their moons around them, and man in these eons has arisen from a one-cell infusorium all the long way up the ladder to his status of Homo sapiens.
Is man's knowledge now nearly complete? Are only a few more steps necessary to conquer the universe: to extract the energy of
3
4 WORLDS IN COLLISION
the atom—since these pages were written this has already been done —to cure cancer, to control genetics, to communicate with other planets and learn if they have living creatures, too?
Here begins Homo ignoramus. He does not know what life is or how it came to be and whether it originated from inorganic matter. He does not know whether other planets of this sun or of other suns have life on them, and if they have, whether the forms of life there are like those around us, ourselves included. He does not know how this solar system came into being, although he has built up a few hypotheses about it. He knows only that the solar system was constructed billions of years ago. He does not know what this mysterious force of gravitation is that holds him and his fellow man on the other side of the planet with their feet on the ground, although he regards the phenomenon itself as "the law of laws." He does not know what the earth looks like five miles under his feet. He does not know how mountains came into existence or what caused the emergence of the continents, although he builds hypotheses about these, nor does he know from where oil came— again hypotheses. He does not know why, only a short time ago, a thick glacial sheet pressed upon most of Europe and North America, as he believes it did; nor how palms could grow above the polar circle, nor how it came about that the same fauna fill the inner lakes of the Old and the New World. He does not know where the salt in the sea came from.