Timeless Moments

Nearly fifty years ago an obscure scientist/writer turned the scientific world upside down by suggesting that major planetary catastrophes happened thousands of years ago. Immanuel Velikovsky shook the scientific community in a manner which threatened to exceed the planetary catastrophes he described in his first book, Worlds in Collision. To claim that this book upset a few of the scientific cognoscenti is at best understatement. The righteous — despite not being right — lined up at editors’ desks like chickens spotting blood on another chicken and begging for a chance to peck Velikovsky back into obscurity. Problem was, Velikovsky wasn’t bleeding. What was bleeding was the hearts of those scientists who felt that Velikovsky’s ideas would turn the scientific establishment upside down.
On January 3-5, 1997, the Kronia Foundation (under the sponsorship of the Truth Seeker Company, Inc.) brought together more than twenty scientists to explore Velikovsky’s thesis that events of extreme planetary violence happened on Earth as recently as 6,000 years ago. One of the main events of these catastrophes was a pole shift which wreaked havoc on this planet. Each lecturer came with his unique perspective about what these past planetary catastrophes were and what might have caused them. The Kronia Foundation is dedicated to providing a forum for anyone wanting to explore past planetary catastrophes. Most of the speakers felt that Immanuel Velikovsky was right on the mark.

Kronia Foundation brought together more than twenty scientists to explore Velikovsky’s thesis that events of extreme planetary violence happened on Earth as recently as 6,000 years ago.

However, these pompous scientists of the early 1950’s claimed that Velikovsky was just too far outside the scientific paradigm. Pole shifts and catastrophes outside of the Biblical flood just didn’t appear credible. Velikovsky claimed Venus was once a comet which came into Earth’s orbit and created extreme planetary violence with Earth. These events which wiped out much of the human population with floods, earthquakes, and a shifting of the poles (this turning the world upside down very quickly). These “righteous” scientists felt that Velikovsky went too far when he claimed that the temperature of Venus would be 900 degrees centigrade if his comet theory was true. When one of our space missions finally flew by Venus and measured that exact temperature, many of the righteous had egg on their faces. Finally, some scientists began to take Velikovsky’s ideas seriously. One who took Velikovsky seriously from the start was Albert Einstein. He had Velikovsky’s book open on his desk the day he [Einstein] died.
Fortunately, a group of dedicated mavericks refused to allow Velikovsky’s ideas to die out. David Talbot, editor of the Velikovsky-oriented magazine Pense and head of the Kronia Foundation, provided a forum for those heretics who dared to think that the earth has been through many cataclysms in the past 12,000 years. Talbot also brought 27 “planetary catastrophe” oriented scientists and authors to Portland, Oregon January 3-5, 1997 for what was The Kronia Foundation’s second “Planetary Violence” conference.

The initial Friday evening session began with six speakers and ended close to midnight with the showing of David Talbot’s video Remembering the End of the World.

Saturday began two days of intense lectures beginning at 8:30 a.m., taking a lunch break, a dinner break, a couple of ten-minute breaks, and the rest being radical science backed by surprisingly good evidence. The overall theme that most every speaker could agree upon was the fact that planet Earth has been through some very violent times. Speaker C. J.. Ransom spoke of a dramatic rise in sea levels about 6,000 years ago. Author Rand Fiam-Ath mentioned in his speech that something in our ancient past caused the sea levels to rise up more than 1,200 feet, this in itself creating a catastrophe (or being the result of one).

Fiam-Ath’s book The Night the Sky Fell points out the sudden demise of the continent Atlantis. Following the lead of Greek philosopher Plato and the Egyptian historian Solon (one of Plato’s sources), Fiam-Ath concludes that Atlantis experienced a great catastrophe somewhere between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago. This extremely violent catastrophe happened so quickly that we are still finding perfectly preserved specimens of humans and animals “flash-frozen” in ice.

Other speakers like Victor Clube added their view that comets were the main creators of catastrophe. Even the dust from the comets creates enough instability to create catastrophe. Clube even went as far as to state that events like the French and the American revolutions were impacted by our archetypal response to comets and other planetary catastrophes.

(Carl Gustav Jung claimed that all events in history were a part of a collective unconsciousness which he referred to as the “racial” or the archetypal mind. If Jung is correct, we have all of history within us — on a deeper level we have experienced every event, even though we might not have a personal memory of a planetary crisis or a social upheaval. )

Into this mix came author Zecharia Sitchin who claimed that extraterrestrial beings (referred to in ancient books as the Annunaki) actually pushed the Antarctic ice pack to create what the Sumerian Atra Hasis and the Hebrew Old Testament refer to as the Great Flood. In Sitchin’s first book The Twelfth Planet, Sitchin suggested and effectively supported the idea that the advanced Annunaki created the flood to “thin out the herd” of proliferating humans. While Sitchin was the only speaker to suggest thatextraterrestrials might have willingly done this, no one had a problem with the catastrophic views which Sitchin has now written about in eight books.

Into this catastrophic mix came other speakers like Robert Bass who seemingly allowed his audience to take a break from catastrophe by using computer pictures to point out that planetary orbits are not as predictable as once thought. As Bass showed slide after slide, the audience was shown what might have caused the planets to exceed their orbits and come precariously close enough to Earth to create cataclysms. What started out softly ended up mesmerizing the audience. Seeing computer projections from the past pointed out that a predicable — and even a safe — planetary orbit is wishful thinking.

What provided a firm foundation for all of these catastrophic views was Friday night’s presentation of David Talbot’s film Remembering the End of the World. Talbot began with the thesis that a Golden Age was a reality, as was planetary stability. Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars, and Earth were once in a straight line. During the evening the Sun’s reflection from Saturn would prevent nighttime from becoming dark. However, the conference is ascribed villain — Mars — eventually went out of orbit and came close enough to the Earth to create massive tidal waves, extremely violent earthquakes, severe weather changes, and those pole shifts which happen.

Humanity unfortunately interpreted these events as God’s being angry: they saw — from their perspective — Saturn teetering back and forth, along with Venus and Mars swinging out of their own orbits. For humans it was a time of terror. Millions died, violently and quickly. When Mars and Venus appeared to be going back into their orbits and Saturn appeared to be ending its raging stance, the people left alive figured that an angry God needed to be appeased in the future. This concept of an angry God and the archetypal memories of these great catastrophes impacted humanity in such a manner that we are still significantly affected today.

That concept was covered most effectively by a majority of the speakers on Sunday. Richard Heinberg, author of Memories and Reflections of Paradise, advanced the thesis that humans are in a bad psychological state today because of deep-seated memories of those terrifying times. He claimed that during the Golden Age, the time before catastrophe, men and women lived in harmony with each other and nations did not war with each other. Other speakers following Heinberg claimed that our concept of hell and an underworld did not exist until after these planetary catastrophes. Roger Wescott pointed out that even the animals lived in harmony with one another. It was not until after the catastrophes that animals — and humans — became predatory. A couple of other speakers suggested that domestic violence might be a reaction to the fact that the people on Earth were violently attacked.

What was absent from the conference was any reference to Hale-Bopp or psychic-driven promises of earth changes to come. Those motivated by Tom Van Flandern’s plug for the conference on the Art Bell show might have wanted to know if something was indeed behind the approaching Hale-Bopp comet. Many wanted to hear more about UFOs in the present and astronauts from our ancient past. However, the theme of the conference was the “Planetary Violence” in Earth’s past, and the conference stuck to its intended theme.

Four days after the conference, the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) announced that an asteroid may be heading directly for Earth. While we do not yet have enough evidence, the JPL is concerned that a possibility of impact is serious enough. Thankfully, the conference went far beyond the academic meanderings of obtuse scientists talking mainly to each other. The “Planetary Violence” conference provided a wealth of information for any interested lay person. Yet in relation to the JPL announcement, one has to wonder if this past-oriented conference may not be a preview of coming attractions.

Jack Barranger currently teaches critical thinking, literature, and composition at the College of Sequoias in Visalia, California. Mr. Barranger’s current book is Knowing When to Quit published by Impact Publishers, with an upcoming book titled Past Shock: The Origin of Religion and Its Devastating Impact on the Human Soul. He has published between 50 and 60 articles and a handful of short stories and is currently working on a book called Spiritual Tyranny.

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