SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING ARE ENHARMONIC
August 23-24 2003
Mars Is All Right Tonight
I looked out my back window tonight at the Hoboken sky, the eastern horizon where the World Trade Center used to poke up above the row of houses and apartments in back. As usual, the city lights on the hazy air created a glow that brightened the sky and made most of the stars invisible. But there was one very bright heavenly body that immediately drew attention to itself and announced itself as Mars. I had seen articles saying that Mars would be closer next Wednesday than it has been for nearly 60,000 years. That's even farther back than World War I.When I read the reports about Mars being so close, I made a mental note to view it on that night. But I didn't expect it to practically turn up on my fire escape. There was really only about one star in the sky that was readily visible besides this great reddish yellow globe. If you squinted a bit and let your eyes adjust to the light you could see a few stars vaguely in some areas where the glare from the city was not as bright. But Mars! It just blasted right through the haze.
When the astronomers said it was really close, one hardly expected much. They are scientists talking, after all, and they speak in subtle nuances. But this is really quite dramatic.
I can't help but wonder if the planetary influences of the planet named after the god of war might have something to do with a disastrous period of savagery and carnage we on earth are experiencing. It would be comforting to think that this is the worst it's going to be for another 60,000 years. But it doesn't seem to likely. I'd be more inclined to expect the thing to come crashing down from the sky. Earth colliding with Mars -- why not? It's that kind of time.
Some good weekend reading: Emmanuel Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision. This Russian Renaissance man who was a mathematician, a psychologist, a lawyer and several other things, set out to correlate the calendars of various ancient civilizations by lining them up on the basis of incidents in their cultural histories that appeared to reflect massive disasters or cataclysms. As he began comparing, he found several versions of stories about cosmic occurrences that led him to hypothesize that there had been planetary collisions within the period of human history. Those historical artifacts are passed down as myth, but Velikovsky found correlations with the stories of many different ancient cultures and he came to believe they spoke about real cosmic events.
Venus collided with Mars and then with Earth, according to my recollection of the theory. But when you are talking about massive heavenly bodies, "colliding," it would not appear like two pool balls colliding. From an earthly view, the two bodies would not touch, but only pass close enough for their gravitational fields to act upon one another, then the polarity would switch and they would repel one another. A cosmic bounce. But on the micro level, the crust of the earth would be wrenched massively, giving rise to some of the geological formations that indicate massive upheaval and huge forces.
Worlds In Collision is a mind bender. It barely matters whether you end up thinking his theory was "right" or "wrong." Just thinking on that level expands the mind. In any case, pay your respects to Mars this week. He won't be back like this for a long time.