Catastrophists in Collision:Velikovsky vs Beaumont

[justjohn]

Comyns Beaumont
& the Keys to World History

Catastrophists in Collision:
Velikovsky vs. Beaumont
by Robert C. Stephanos

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In 1970, after labouring for eight (successful) years to promote recognition of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s work, I came upon the work of the British catastrophist writer, Comyns Beaumont.

I was puzzled that his name had not come to light during my many talks with Dr. V. Nor did it appear while I was president of Cosmos and Chronos: Study Groups for Interdisciplinary Science, a Velikovskian campus-oriented effort. Nor did it show up in the many activities and debates on V’s behalf.

It wasn’t until I was cast free of the Velikovskians, and pursued my own studies of catastrophism, that I accidentally came upon The Riddle of the Earth, the first of Beaumont’s five books of a new catastrophism.

Its title was the attraction, but its contents proved to be even more magnetic. The book is written in the form of theses (over 100 of them), summarizing his thoughts on cometary catastrophe. Written in 1925, it read like the 1950s bombshell Worlds in Collision.

One of Beaumont’s central propositions took my fancy – that geography had been falsified in the fourth century, and the Old Testament holy city, Jerusalem, was really Edinburgh, Scotland. This falsification was a deception promulgated by Constantine the Great in 325 AD, at the Church Council of Nicea. The Church then carried on a conspiracy to protect the deception in order to guarantee its dictatorial rule over the Empire, and built a new city of Jerusalem in the Mediterranean.

The Role of Saturn

Another shocker for me was the role Beaumont assigned to the planet Saturn, as the key to world history. Thoroughly intrigued, I searched for the true and the false in his basic ideas.

Beaumont’s books, unlike V’s, however, were long relegated to library morgues, and it took much persistence to acquire them. After considerable transatlantic correspondence and telephoning, I located one of Beaumont’s daughters and a real treasure trove of information – an unpublished manuscript that Beaumont completed before his death…Beaumont was ahead of his time – and ahead of Velikovsky – with his provocative conclusions and his unorthodox views on history. According to Beaumont, a large comet threatened Earth in the 14th century (1322 BC). Its debris (meteorites) caused a cosmic catastrophe that devastated early civilization, then centred in the Atlantis of antiquity – the British Isles.

Plato’s story of Atlantis, and the Biblical account of the flood of Noah, were special attempts to record this disaster. The catastrophe so shattered the cradle of humankind’s earliest civilization that it immutably altered the religious beliefs of its survivors, who fled to the global Atlantean colonies in sunnier climes, themselves to become nations.

Beaumont was an improbable heretic. In the years before and after WWI, he was a top-flight journalist, editor, and publisher on London’s famed Fleet Street, dealing primarily with politics, the arts and society. he was well connected in these fields due to his early work as assistant to publisher-diplomat James Gordon Bennett. As private secretary to America’s U.S. Ambassador to Germany, John G. A. Leishman, he traveled to many countries, acquainted himself with their customs and histories.

He was confident and brother-in-law to the British playwright and theatrical producer Gerald Du Maurier. Beaumont was the first to recognize and publish the fiction of his talented niece, Daphne Du Maurier.

A consummate establishment insider, Beaumont passionately pursued a parallel maverick career, developing ideas that challenged orthodoxy without relying on any of the divine intervention that is the backbone of contemporary Creationism and Biblical catastrophism. His ideas challenge accepted views of ancient history, its chronology, and its geography.

The Effects of Comets

The crux of Beaumont’s schema is that the history of our planet, and the solar system within which it exists, is largely the product of cometary intrusions and their effects. Its social life (civilization) arose with the Celts in the north, especially in the British Isles and Scandinavia – the Atlantis of myth.

Although there was no actual sinking of Atlantis – Britain, some of its western areas were permanently submerged and the island was ravaged by electromagnetic waves of cosmic energy, exploding volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricane storms, and tidal waves. As a result of the catastrophe, the temperature dropped. Beaumont identifies the main agent of this historical event as the planet Saturn (Zeus-Chronos) becoming a comet, in myth, the serpent of the sky, and Phaeton, the terror of the skies. Its ravaged body produced a son, a new planet = a new sky god, Jupiter (a new Zeus), to rule a renewed Earth.

Beaumont Predates Velikovsky

Those familiar with the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky might well lock onto certain key features in Beaumont’s corpus and conclude, perhaps with a dismissive yawn, “Oh, Beaumont agrees with Velikovsky.” But “agrees with” is hardly the case.

Note that Beaumont’s primary work in catastrophism, although under the pseudonym Appian Way, was published in 1925. He used his own name in 1932 on his second book, the keystone to his catastrophist theories. The book’s contents are aptly summed up by its subtitle: “The Origin, Building Up and Destruction of Worlds by Means of Cometary Contacts.”

By the end of WWII (he was then in his 70s), Beaumont’s journalism career was over and he began work on distilling his theories of catastrophism and even more revolutionary conclusions about history and geography.

Beaumont’s next to books, the first and second volumes of his trilogy, followed rapidly (1946, 1949). Neither were commercial successes. Beaumont completed the third volume before his death in 1953.

Again note that all but the last of these books were published before V’s Worlds in Collision made its impact on this side of the Atlantic in 1950.

In the years I was closely associated with V (roughly 1961-1969), he never mentioned Beaumont or gave him so much as a credit in a footnote in any of his books.

The similarities between Beaumont and Velikovsky are too strong to be coincidental. It is Saturn’s role in earliest history that provides Beaumont a “smoking gun” for this judgment.

Velikovsky Knew of Beaumont

There are, however, a number of cases of parallel development of ideas on record. Perhaps the most famous is that involving Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, who both independently developed the main features of what has become known as the Theory of Evolution in the nineteenth century.

It therefore came as a shock when I finally discovered that V did indeed know of Beaumont’s earlier work. The disclosure came with the publication of Cosmic Heretics by Alfred deGrazia in 1984.

DeGrazia was long one of V’s closest collaborators and friends, and a continuing acquaintance and correspondent of mine dating from my own contact with V.

In his book, deGrazia wrote:

Too many of Beaumont’s conclusions are the same to explain them as sheer coincidence…A note exists in his archive, mentioning having read Beaumont’s 1932 book (The Mysterious Comet); the note dismisses the work. Yet V expresses his wonder whether Beaumont had gotten his (V’s) ideas by telepathy.

DeGrazia tries to ameliorate the situation with a tenuous explanation:

During the 1940s, V met with the (Beaumont) books at Columbia University Library where he spend thousands of hours in research on his own books. The Columbia University Library possessed of Beaumont’s relevant works only The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain which was published in 1946. By this time Worlds in Collision had been written.

DeGrazia also wrote:

Velikovsky never mentioned or cited Beaumont. Could Velikovsky have read and forgotten Beaumont’s books? His method of proof is entirely different; practically everything – style, format, language, method, and evidence – is different, only conclusions are the same.

DeGrazia’s candor in revealing the link is admirable, but his apologetics leave a lot to be desired in terms of credibility. Telepathy? I wonder if that happy thought crossed Darwin’s mind. Forgotten? Everyone who knew V, deGrazia included, has attested that V had a remarkable memory.

What about the claim that V’s research haunt, the Columbia University Library, contained only Beaumont’s 1946 book, and that the manuscript for Worlds in Collusion was already complete at that time.

Even deGrazia admits that there was a note that V had read Beaumont’s seminal 1932 book. And V was well known as the last-minute tinkered with his manuscripts.

Plagiarism and Predecessors

I am not claiming there is actual plagiarism involved, other than influence and interplay of ideas. (Advocates of cometary catastrophe in historic times all owe a dept to earlier pioneers such Ignatius Donnelly and William Whiston.)

Let us also admit that, like many from academia, V had an elitist mindset, hindering him from appreciating the work of the amateur. Enough here, at least, to withhold credit and precedence.

This much is certain. Beaumont’s ideas on the importance of comets in humankind’s history were in print before Velikovsky’s – although in a foreign country and without achieving the temporary popular success that was to be Velikovsky’s. Especially apparent, thanks to deGrazia’s revelations, is that V was aware of Beaumont’s work.

V’s belief in his own originality was so firmly rooted that he speculated that telepathy was enabling Beaumont to rush into print – by decades in some cases.

There is an even more intriguing possible reason for V’s failure to acknowledge the existence of Beaumont. This is not the similarities but the many dissimilarities between the writers. Why call attention to a contemporary (until his death in 1953) who not only precedes you in areas of agreement but disagrees with you on many other points? But that is speculation.

What is clear is that forty years after his death, Beaumont deserves a wider audience in an era when fresh evidence for catastrophism is steadily accumulating.

An important element of Beaumont’s work that will endure and serve to remind us is that the pursuit of knowledge is not the exclusive of the expert. The amateur can contribute significantly to that pursuit.

For the last twenty years I have accumulated evidence to support Beaumont’s perspective of ancient history as truer than the consensus version or Velikovsky’s.

- (Article in Fate Magazine, March 1994)





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Relevant Websites

Immanuel Velikovsky: Bonds of the Past Documentary
Velikovsky: Worlds in Collision
Velikovsky: Earth in Upheaval
Velikovsky: Ages in Chaos
Velikovsky: Oedipus and Akhenaton
Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky
Comyns Beaumont: The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain
Comyns Beaumont: The Mysterious Comet
Comyns Beaumont: Britain: The Key to World History


Go here :
www.irishoriginsofcivilization.com/appendices/beaumont.html

[JustJohn or JJ]

Some interesting reading for our beleaguered minds.



His books were all published in the mid-1950's and early 60's, and were the subject of the most bizzare uproar among "scientists" since the inquisition. Even tho his first published book "worlds in collision" was a national best seller in no time, it was abruptly pulled from publication in the US, and even today the mere mention of his name among 'scientists' draws disdain immediately. (try it sometime in the Astronomy club folders) They were subsequently published in Great Britain, but not in nearly the volume they deserved. As a result, most of his works are no longer available from any source except a used book store if you are lucky enough to find them. I have managed to obtain four of the five in my forays.

What follows is a fragmentary scenario based on three of Immanual Velikovsky's five books,

"Worlds in Collision" "Earth in Upheaval" and "Ages in Chaos".


"Global catyclysms fundamentally altered the face of the earth more than once in historical times. The terrestrial axis shifted. Earth fled from it's established orbit. The magnetic poles reversed. In great convulsions, the seas emptied onto continents, the planets' crust folded, and volcanoes erupted into mountain chains. Lava flows up to a mile thick spilled onto vast areas of the earth's surface. Climates changed suddenly, covering lush vegetation with ice, while green meadows were transformed into deserts. In a few awful moments, civilizations collapsed. Entire species were exterminated in continental sweeps of mud, debris, sea and ice. Tidal waves of water and rocks crushed even the largest of beasts, tossing their fragmented bones and meat into heaps tangled with splintered trees into valleys and rock fissures, preserved to this day in Alaska and Siberia. in frozen limbo.... Mammoths in Siberia were instantly killed by great bolts of electric discharge, quick frozen and buried with their last meal undigested in their bellies. The surviving generations of people recorded these events in detail by every means available to them. They recorded them in myths, legends, temple constructions and drawings, monuments to the planetary gods, precise charts of the heavens, sacrificial rites, astrological canons, detailed records of planetary movements, as well as tragic lamentations amid the fallen cities and destroyed institutions.

Aware of some link between the circuit of heavenly bodies and the catastrophic ruin of previous generations, the ancients tirelessy watched the planetary movements. Their traditions recalled that when old epochs dissolved, the new "age" or "sun" was marked by different celestial paths. Astrologers and Seers, the most important office in a kingdom, watched diligently for any change which might portend approaching destruction and the end of an age.

Prior to 2000 BC, the ancient Hindu records spoke of four visible planets, and excluded Venus. The Babylonians, meticulous in their observations, likewise excluded Venus. This is very strange, since nowadays Venus is easily the brightest planet in the heavens at times. But, long before 1500 BC, Jupiter, chief among the dieties for centuries, shattered the serenity of the skies. A brilliant, fiery object, expelled from that planet, entered on a long elliptical orbit around the sun. The feared god Jupiter had given birth to the comet and protoplanet, Venus.

Terrified, men watched helplessly as the "bright torch of heaven" traversed it's elongated orbit, and began a turn toward earth. Venus, as a Chinese astronomical text recalls, spanned the heavens, rivaling the sun in brightness. An ancient Rabbinical source records that "Venus blazes from one end of the cosmos to the other." The fears of the star watchers were justified. As Venus arched away from perihelion passage, during the middle of the 15 th century BC (ie 1450 BC), the earth approached this intruder, entering first the outer reaches of it's cometary tail. A rusty ferrignous (iron oxide) dust filtered down upon the earth, imparting a bloody hue to land and sea. The fine pigment chafed human skin, and men were overcome by sickness. Those who sought to drink, could not. Rivers stank from the rotting carcasses of suffocated fish, and men dug desperately for water uncontaminated by the alien dust. "Plague is upon the land, blood is everywhere" bewailed the writings of the Egyptian scribe Ipuwer. "Men shrink from tasting, human beings thirst after water,--that is our water! That is our happiness!! What shall we do in respect therof-- All is ruin".

Meanwhile, as recalled by the Babylonians, the blood of the celestial monster Tiamat poured over all the world.

As the earth's path carried it ever deeper into the comet's tail, the rain of particles grew ever more coarse and perilous. Soon a great hail of gravel pummelled the earth ...The author of the Exodus writes ...."there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous,such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation". Fleeing from the torrent of burning meteorites, men abandoned their crops and livestock to seek shelter. Fields of grain that was to feed great cities perished. Cried the Egyptian scribe Ipuwer..."No fruits, no herbs are found. that which was seen yesterday has vanished. The land is left to it's weariness like the cutting of flax". These things happened, say the Mexican Annals of Cauahtitlan, when the sky ...."rained not water, but fire and burning stones."

As the earth plunged still deeper into the comet's tail, hydrocarbon gasses enveloped the earth, and when contacting the earths oxygen became ignited by the falling meteorites, exploding in fireball bursts in the lower atmosphere. Unlighted streams of pure petroleum poured onto the planet, sinking into the surface, floating on the seas, and making great asphalt tar pits in many places. From Siberia thru the Caucasus to the Arabian desert, huge spills of naptha burned for years, their dark billowing smoke lending a shroud for human despair.

Earth was pursuing a near collision course with the comet. Suddenly, caught in an invisible grip, the earth rocked violently: it's axis tilted. In a single convulsed moment, cities were laid waste, great buildings of stone leveled, and populations decimated. Ipuwer writes..."The towns are destroyed...egypt has become waste...all is ruin...the residence is overturned...in a minute" Around the world, oceans rushed over mountains, and poured into continental basins. Rivers flowed uphill. Islands sank into the sea. Displaced strata crashed together, while the shifting earth generated a global hurricane which destroyed forests and swept away the dwellings of men. In China the emperor Yahou spoke "of waters which overtopped the great heights, threatening the heavens with their floods". Arabia was thus transformed into a desert by the same type of paroxysms which may have sank the legendary Atlantis beneath the ocean west of Gibraltar millennia earlier. With dulled senses, survivors lay in a trance for days, choking for breath in the smoky air. The tilted axis left part of the earth in protracted darkness, and the rest in an extended day. From the Americas to the Middle East, records tell us darkness persisted for the time equivalent of several days. On the edge of darkness, the peoples of Iran witnessed a "threefold night" and a "threefold day". Chinese sources speak of a holocaust during which the sun did not set for many days and the land and sky was aflame. Peoples and nations everywhere, uprooted by disaster, wandered from their homelands.

Led by Moses, the book of Exodus records, the Israelites fled the devastation which brought Egypt's middle kingdom to ruin. As they rushed toward the sea of passage, the glistening comet, in form like a dragon's head, shone thru the tempest of dust and smoke like a beacon.

The night sky glowed brightly as the comet's head and it's writhing serpentine tail exchanged gigantic electrical bolts. The great battle between the comet's head and the column of smoke--between a light god and a leviathan serpent--was memorialized in primary myths around the earth. Babylonians told of Marduk striking the dragon Tiamet with bolts of fire. The Egyptians saw Isis and Set in deadly combat. The Hindus saw Vishnu battling the 'crooked serpent'. The Greeks saw Zeus, in the account of Appolodorus, in a struggle with the coiled viper, Typhon.

The fleeing Israelites, having reached Pi-ha-khiroth, at the edge of the Red sea, were pursued by the pharoah Taoui-Thom (Typhon). The Red sea is perhaps so named because of the red color it inherited from the plague of iron dust. There is no logical reason to name it red sea based upon its surroundings today. It is a beautiful blue.

The great sea lay displaced before the Israelites, it's waters lifted into wall-like ridges by the movement of the earth and the pull of the comet's field. Crossing the dry sea bottom, the main body of Israelites escaped from Egypt. As the comet made it's closest approach to earth, Taoui-Thom was moving his armies into the dry sea bed in pursuit of the fleeing Israelites. Even before all the Israelites had cleared the sea, a gigantic electrical bolt flew between the comet and the earth, neutralizing the main body of charge which held the waters aloft. Instantly, the waters collapsed. The Pharoah, his armies and chariots, as well as those Israelites who lagged behind were cast furiously into the air, and consumed in a gigantic whirlpool.

The battle in the sky raged for weeks. A column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night, Venus meted destruction to nations large and small. To the Israelites, however, it was God's instrument of salvation. Through a series of close approaches, the comet's tail, a dreadful shadow of death, cinctured the earth, wreathing the planet in a thick gloomy haze that lasted for decades. And so, in darkness, a historical age ended.

Probably, the human race would have become extinct, except for the mysterious, life-giving substance precipitated in the heavy atmosphere-- the nourishing "manna" and "ambrosia" described in the ancient records of all peoples. It fell with the morning dew, a sweet, yellowish hoarfrost. It was edible. The ambrosial hoarfrosts were carbohydrates derived from Venus' hydrocarbons through bacterial action with earthly microbes. The aroma filled the atmosphere with sweet fragrance. Streams flowed with "milk and honey". When heated, this 'bread of heaven' dissolved, but when cooled, it precipitated into grains which could be preserved for long periods or ground between stones. It's presence allowed mankind to survive. In the new age, the sun rose in the east, where formerly it set. The quarters of the world were displaced. Seasons no longer came in their proper times. The orbital path of the earth around the sun was changed from before . "The winter is come in summer, the months are reversed, and the hours are disordered"... reads an Egyptian Papyrus. The Chinese emperor Yahou sent scholars throughout the land to locate north east west and south and to draw up a new calendar. Numerous records tell of the earth "turning over". An egyptian inscription from before the tumult says that the "sun riseth in the west".

While men attempted to determine the times and seasons, Venus continued on a threatening course around the sun. Under Joshua, the Israelites had entered the promised land, and again Venus drew near. It was while the caananites fled from before the hand of Joshua in the valley of Beth-Horon --some fifty years after the exodus, that the daughter of Jupiter again drew near, and unleashed her fury a second time. "The Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them in Azekah, and they died" The terrestial axis tilted again. Once more, the earth quaked violently. Cities burned and fell to the ground. Above Beth-Horon, the sun stood still (it's apparent movement ceased as the earth slowly tilted) for hours. On the other side of the earth, Mexican Annals recorded a a prolonged night, punctuated by a burning sky and landscape. This occurred according to the records, 50 years after an earlier destruction.

As in it's earlier encounter with the young comet, the earths surface was torn with great rifts and clefts., and hurricanes (typhoons) scourged the land. Anticipating renewed devastation after another 50 year period, nations bowed down before the great fire-goddess. With bloody orgies and incantations, they enjoined the "Queen of heaven" to spare them further misery. "Spare us, O lady of Heaven and earth", prayed the Babylonians. "We Sacrifice unto Tistyra " declared a priest in Iran "the bright and glorious star, whose rising is watched by the chiefs of understanding" Mexican high priests sacrificed virgins and young men so that they would be spared further destruction.

In both hemispheres, men fixed their gaze anxiously on the comet as for centuries, it continued it's circuit, crossing the orbits of both mars and earth. Before the middle of the 8th century BC, astrologers recorded dramatic irregularities in it's wanderings. Viewed from Babylonia, Venus rose, disappeared in the west for over nine months, then reappeared in the east. Dipping below the eastern horizon, it was not seen again for over two months, until it shown in the west. The following year, Venus vanished in the west for 11 days before reappearing in the east.

But, this time it was Mars, pulled from its orbit by a much larger planetoid, that endured a cometary jolt. It was sent from this encounter with the comet to a meeting with earth. A new agent of destruction was born in the unstable solar system.

This occurred in the days of Uzziah, King of Judah. Aware of the baleful meaning of irregular celestial motions, the prophet Amos, echoed by other observors of the sky, warned of new cosmic upheavals. Events soon proved him right.

As Mars drew near, the earth reeled on it's hinges. West of Jerusalem, half a mountain split off and fell eastward. Flaming seraphim leaped skyward. Men were tossed into the streets filled with debris and mutilated bodies. Buildings crumbled, and the earth opened up. These same catyclysms were associated with the founding of Rome in 747BC. And with the death of Romes legendary founder, Romulus, Ovid reports" both the poles shook" Thus, Mars, the lord of war, became the national god of Rome. Much smaller than earth, Mars could not equal the destruction caused by the earlier encounter with Venus, but earth was forced to alter its course around the sun again. The old calender with its 360 day years and 30 day months became outdated. Emperors and kings again directed their astrologers to make new calendars.

Mars and Venus now competed for the allegiance of men. Tribes moved from their homelands, confronting new enemies while petitioning Mars or Venus for a swift victory. Cities and temples were dedicated to the two planetary gods who determined the fate of nations.

The era of conflict between Mars and Earth continued until 687-686 BC. Hebrew prophets after 747 BC cried apocalyptically of upheavals yet to come. Reminding the Israelites of their passage out of Egypt, they declared once more that the whole earth would darken and quake, the moon turn to blood, the sun darken, and the earth would be engulfed yet again in blood, fire and pillars of smoke.

The catastrophe, as Mars hurtled past the earth, came in the year 721 BC, on the very day Judah's King Ahaz was buried. Under the influence of Mars passage, the earth's axis tilted and the poles shifted. Earth's orbit swung wider, and the length of the year was increased yet again. Israelites observed the sun hastening by several hours to a premature setting. Thereafter the solar disk made it's way across the sky 10 degrees further to the south. Seneca records that on the Argive plain, in central Greece, the early sunset came amid great upheaval. The tyrant Thyestes beckoned to the entire universe to dissolve. The Great Bear dipped below the horizon. In the days that followed, states Seneca, "the zodiac, which, making passage through the sacred stars, crosses the zones obliquely, guide and sign-bearer for the slow moving years, falling itself, shall see the fallen constellations".

Once a peaceful, barely noticed planet, Mars became the "king of battle". Mars was not yet finished with it's disruption on earth. In 687 BC, a powerful Assyrian army led by Sennacherib marched toward Jerusalem. On the evening of March 23, the first night of the Hebrew Passover, Sennacherib made camp outside the walls of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Mars was making one last approach to earth. A "great thunderbolt" --a "blast from heaven"-- charred the bodies of the soldiers, leaving their garments intact. The dead numbered 185,000. Ashurbanipal, Sennacherib's grandson, later recalled "the perfect warrior", Mars, the "Lord of the storm" who brings defeat. On the same night, Mar 23, 687 BC, in China, the Bamboo Books reveal a disturbance of the planets caused them to "go out of their courses. in the night, stars fell like rain. the earth shook". The Romans celebrated the occasion. "The most important role in the (Roman) cult of Mars appears to be played by the festival of 'Tubilustrium" on the 23rd of March."

The sun retreated by several hours. In certain longitudes the solar disk, which had just risen, returned below the horizon. In others, the setting sun changed it's course, rising in the sky. The Hebrews witnessed the prolonged night of Sennacherib's demise.

The Sun's retreat, due to a 10 degree tilt of the earth's axis, corrected the shift of 721 BC. "So the sun returned 10 degrees, by which degrees it had gone down", reads Isaiah 38:8.

From one continent to another, men, oppressed with the terror, watched Mars battle Venus in the heavens, speed fiercely towards the earth bringing blasts of fire and rocks, retreat and engage Venus once more. Perhaps the most startling account of this "battle of the gods" is contained in Homer's Iliad. (Velikovsky's chronology places Homer later than 747 BC). As the Greeks besieged Troy, Athena (Venus) "would utter her loud cry". And over against her spouted Ares (Mars) dread as a dark whirlwind...All the roots of many-founted Ida were shaken, and all her peaks". The river "rushed with surging flood, and the fair streams seethed and boiled". Mars was thrown out of the ring; Venus emerged a tame planet pursuing a near perfect circular orbit between mercury and earth. Where it once had ranged high in the zenith, now it became the morning and evening star, never retreating more than 48 degrees from the sun. Isaiah, who had witnessed the planets' destructive power, sang of it's disgrace: "How art thou fallen from heaven, o lucifer, son of the morning, How art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations. For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God."