THE BIRTH OF ATHENA

Ev Cochrane
Velikovskian research into the "cometary birth" thesis

 

There are also stars that suddenly come to birth in the heaven itself. The Greeks call them comets.1

By all accounts the birth of Athena from the head of her father was a tumultuous occasion. "Athena sprang from the skull of Zeus with an earth- shattering battle-cry, so that the heavens shook and the mother earth.2 The account in the Homeric Hymn of Athena is of a comparable nature:

And before Zeus the aegis-holder she sprang swiftly from his immortal head, brandishing a sharp-pointed spear. Great Olympos quaked dreadfully under the might of the gray-eyed goddess, as the earth all about resounded awesomely, and the sea moved and heaved with purple waves.3

The spectacular nature of Athena's birth has long intrigued scholars and with good reason. Not only are the physiological details of the goddess' birth patently absurd, the cataclysmic imagery attending her epiphany is difficult to imagine under any but the most abnormal conditions. Yet as Walter Burkert observes, the birth of Athena continues to exert a strange fascination upon modern readers in spite of these incongruities: "This birth myth is as popular as it is puzzling.4

There have been numerous attempts to explain the bizarre circumstances attending Athena's birth. Indeed there are as many explanations of this particular myth as there are of myth itself, ranging from socio-cultural to meteorological to psychoanalytic. Jane Harrison, for example, dismissed the myth as a patriarchal fiction: "The outrageous myth of the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus is but the religious representation, the emphasis, and over emphasis, of a patrilinear structure.5 Harrison's interpretation was subsequently adopted by Robert Graves, the most popular modern writer on Greek mythology.6

In the past century it was common for scholars to interpret Athena's birth in terms of a nature-allegory. Roscher, for example, compared the epiphany of Athena to a thunderstorm, seeing in the goddess a personification of the lightning.1 F. M. Muller sought an explanation of Athena's birth in the circumstances attending the daily birth of the sun, identifying Athena with the Vedic goddess Ahana (the Dawn):

That Athena or Athana was originally a representative of the light of the morning, then of light and wisdom in general, born from the head of Dyaus [the sky], and that her name is the same as the Vedic Ahana, is as certain as anything can be in comparative mythology.2

More recent scholars have been reluctant to accept a "naturist" interpretation of Athena's birth.3 Farnell's criticism is typical of the modern position on this matter:

Whether Athena is regarded as the thunder or the lightning, the aether or the dawn, she can leap from the head of Zeus with equal appropriateness. But let any one take whichever he pleases of these various hypotheses and then work it out rigorously through point to point of the myth, and he will stumble on hopeless inconsistencies.4

The truth is, however, that neither Farnell nor any other scholar has been able to improve upon the various "naturist" theories of the past century, much less to provide a satisfactory explanation of the circumstances attending Athena's birth. Not only is there widespread disagreement over the original significance of Athena's birth, the numerous explanations which have been offered are all addressed to isolated elements of the myth and thus little attempt has been made to account for it as a whole. The various explanations which have been proposed, moreover, are mutually exclusive and seldom amenable to further analysis and/or verification.

That there remains no satisfactory explanation of Athena's birth—arguably the single greatest mythical image bequeathed to us by the ancient Greeks is a tell-tale sign of just how far we are from achieving a real understanding of Greek mythology.

Velikovsky's Athena

Perhaps the most novel explanation of Athena's birth was that offered by Immanuel Velikovsky, who saw in the myth an ancient cataclysm associated with the planet Jupiter (Zeus), one in which the planet Venus (Athena) was born from the giant planet in comet-like form. Velikovsky's thesis, presented in 1950 in the book Worlds in Collision, inspired an extensive and often vitriolic debate, one which shows little sign of abating.5

At first sight Velikovsky's hypothesis hardly inspires confidence, nor would it appear to represent an improvement upon those offered by classical scholars. Upon closer examination, however, it can be seen that it possesses several decided advantages—at least from a theoretical standpoint. A singular advantage of Velikovsky's hypothesis is that it conforms to Occam's law inasmuch at it accounts at once for the identities of Athena and Zeus (Venus and Jupiter respectively), and traces the cataclysmic circumstances of the goddess' epiphany and war-like behavior to disturbances occasioned by the appearance of a great comet.

An additional advantage of Velikovsky's thesis is the fact that it is subject to rejection upon a score of tests. For example, if Velikovsky's scenario is valid one would expect to find evidence in the ancient sources that Venus recently bore a comet-like appearance or moved in a different orbit than its present one; evidence that planets figured prominently in ancient systems of religion; and physical evidence of recent upheavals involving the planets Venus and Jupiter (in the case of Venus, for example, one might expect to find internal sources of heat, a volatile geology, an unstable and perhaps still escaping atmosphere, etc). Should Velikovsky's thesis fail any of these decisive tests it should rightfully be rejected.

A good deal of evidence has already been adduced with regards to the first two propositions, with much of it being favorable towards Velikovsky's hypothesis. 1 With regard to the physical evidence bearing on this issue particularly that which has been gathered by astronomers and the various space probes the picture is far from clear. Perhaps it is fair to say, in lieu of further revelations, that a decisive verdict is not yet available.2

Equally important, and eminently more amenable to analysis at the present time, is the question as to whether Velikovsky's hypothesis of a comet-like Athena/Venus is supported by ancient mythology. Until recently this question had scarcely been addressed.3 It goes without saying, however, that if Velikovsky's reconstruction of the events surrounding the birth of Athena is valid other cultures can hardly have failed to witness the same celestial events and thus one might expect to find confirmation of Venus' "infancy" and cometary past in the mythology of other peoples, particularly in the traditions surrounding the great goddesses. Despite repeated claims to the contrary, there is mounting evidence that Velikovsky may have been on the right track after all.4

We seek at the outset of our investigation some indication that Athena was associated with cometary imagery. We begin with a consideration of several epithets of the great goddess, it being well known that such epithets frequently retain archaic elements of cult which have otherwise been lost or obscured with the passage of time.

Pallas Athena

One of the most popular epithets of Athena was Pallas. Indeed the greatest of all Greek goddesses could sometimes be invoked under this name alone, a fact which prompted Guthrie to remark: Pallas Athene is so familiar a title of the goddess from Homer onwards that this second name seems to acquire more than the quality of an epithet. The one is as much her name as the other.1

Pallas is generally referred to an ancient Greek word meaning "maiden" or "youth.2 The Latin word pellex and the Hebrew word pallesh/pillegesh, both meaning "young girl or concubine," would appear to trace to the same root.3

Any discussion of Pallas Athena must take into consideration the peculiar traditions surrounding the palladium. According to the unanimous testimony of the Greeks themselves, the palladium was an image of the goddess as warrior (the word palladium is the diminutive of Pallas) said to have fallen from heaven as a meteor-like object.4 Palladia formed sacred objects in various ancient cities, their presence allegedly vouchsafing the security of the city, as in the famous legend surrounding Troy. Of the palladium Nilsson observed:

It is hidden in a secret place in the interior of the citadel or palace and is the pledge of the welfare and existence of the town, which cannot be conquered, so long as the palladium is not carried away.5 If the palladium symbolized Pallas Athena, how then are we to understand the report that the image/goddess fell to earth as a meteor-like object? That this is no incidental element of Athena's cult is obvious. All of the various palladia mentioned by Greek writers were said to have fallen from heaven, as was the sacred image of Athena Polias.6 Indeed, a tradition as old as Pherekydes (c. 5th century BCE) explained the palladia as palta, "things hurled or cast down from heaven."7

Could it be that these archaic traditions hint that Pallas Athena was once believed to have fallen from heaven as a falling star of some sort? Was Velikovsky right after all? Velikovsky himself observed that heaven-hurled images were conspicuous in the worship of the great goddesses. Stones said to have fallen from heaven formed prominent objects in the sacred shrines of the Cyprian Aphrodite, Tyrian Astarte, Phrygian Cybele, Ephesian Artemis, and Taurian Diana.1

Meteor-like objects are also present in ancient rituals associated with the great goddesses. The following is one scholar's description of a Phoenician rite commemorating Astarte's celebrated fall from heaven:

It was believed that once a year the goddess descended into the pool as a fiery falling star, or that on solemn feast days, when people assembled in the shrine, a fire-globe was lit in the vicinity of the temple and probably rolled down into the pool.2

What is implicit in the Greek legend of the fall of the sacred image of Athena is here made explicit: it is the goddess herself who falls from the sky as a comet-like object. Nor is Astarte the only goddess about whom such traditions are preserved. On the other side of the Atlantic the Iroquois reported that the goddess Nokomis—the famed grandmother of Hiawatha—likewise fell from heaven as a comet.3

The fall of the goddess from heaven, in fact, is a widespread mythological motive.4 In Mesoamerica, for example, it was reported that Xochiquetzal—the Aztec Aphrodite—was expelled from heaven and fell to earth in demon-like form. 5 The Phrygians, similarly, related the fall of Semele.6 In India it was the fall of Durga/Kali that occurred under cataclysmic circumstances.7

Noteworthy here is the fact that numerous epithets and attributes of the great goddesses—hitherto mysterious and unexplained—receive immediate clarification if indeed the cataclysmic fall of the great goddess occurred in the form of a comet-like object. An epithet of Semele, tanuetheira—"with the stretched out hair"—has an obvious significance if a comet was the source of reference.8

The myth of the goddess' fall from heaven—like most great myths—becomes subject to rationalization at the hands of poets and chroniclers. The setting is localized and the goddess humanized to the point where the celestial source of the imagery is scarcely recognizable. The tragic leap of Aphrodite in the wake of the death of Adonis is an example of this development.9 A similar tale is associated with Aglauros, an alter-ego of Athena, who is said to have gone mad and leapt to her death amidst the mysterious circumstances attending the birth of the divine child Erichthonius.1

Attempts to rationalize the fall of the goddess notwithstanding, it is still possible to find evidence of the goddess' original celestial nature amongst these later accounts as well. Consider Hyginus' account of Electra, where the cometary nature of the falling goddess is stated in unambiguous terms:

But after the conquest of Troy and the annihilation of its descendants… overwhelmed by pain she separated from her sisters and settled in the circle named arctic, and over long periods she would be seen lamenting, her hair streaming. That brought her the name of comet.2

It is Electra's intimate relation to the Trojan palladium, however, that warrants our attention. Some chroniclers make the palladium her gift; others state that during the fall of Troy Electra clung to the celebrated image.3 Yet another tradition has Electra cast down to earth from Olympus together with the palladium.4 Such traditions, in all likelihood, reflect an attempt— only minimally successful —to distinguish between Electra and the comet-like palladium. In the original myth the goddess and the comet-like palladium were one and the same.

At this point the question arises: Granted that the Greeks chose a meteoric stone the palladium—to symbolize Athena, why is it that the palladium was said to represent the goddess as a warrior?

Athena: Warrior-Goddess

It was Hesiod who described Athena as "dread rouser of battle-strife, unwearied leader of the host, a mistress who delights in the clamorous cry of war and battle and slaughter.5 Far from being an isolated element, Athena's unusual proclivity for war is fundamental to the numen of the goddess. Homer likewise depicts Athena as a great warrior. Indeed on more than one occasion within the Iliad she even bests Ares in battle, and after one such encounter Homer makes the humbled war-god refer to Athena by the epithet of Aphron, "crazed, frantic".6

Vital to the proper interpretation of the myth of Athena's birth is the datum that she assumed a war-like form immediately upon expulsion from Zeus' head. Kerenyi emphasized this point in his essay on Athena: "It was precisely at her epiphany from the head of the father that her quality as a Goddess of war came to the fore.7

According to the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, it was Stesichorus who first reported that Athena was born dressed with the full panoply of war.8 While this account has unfortunately been lost, the Homeric Hymn to Athena presents the same general picture: "And before Zeus the aegis-holder she sprang swiftly from his immortal head, brandishing a sharp-pointed spear."1 Athena's bellicose inception is also apparent in Pindar: "Athena sprang from the skull of Zeus with an earth-shattering battle-cry, so that the heavens shook and the mother earth.2

That incongruities abound with every aspect of this scenario is obvious and thus it is understandable that some commentators have been disinclined to attempt an explanation of the imagery, opting instead to dismiss it as poetic metaphor.3 Athena's manner of birth is quite impossible from an anatomical standpoint, of course, a fact which would be readily apparent to any culture, however primitive. Why then would one of the most civilized of cultures preserve such a prepostrous tale about their greatest god and goddess?4 Nor are females of much use as warriors, particularly so newborn babes. One can only be dismayed as to why a people as proficient at war as the Greeks would relate such a ludicrous tale about their favorite goddess.

It is probable that the Greeks were trying to describe via the medium of myth what was for them an ineffable reality, a fundamental cosmological truth. It is, after all, the very essence of religion that sacred "truths" take precedence over day to day reality and common sense. It is the Sumerologist Thorkild Jacobsen, perhaps, who has written most eloquently upon this aspect of ancient religion:

Basic to all religion…is we believe, a unique confrontation with a power not of this world. Rudolf Otto called this confrontation 'Numinous' and analyzed it as the experience of a mysterium tremendum et fascinasum, a confrontation with a 'Wholly Other' outside of normal experience and indescribable in itsterms; terrifying, ranging from sheer demonic dread through awe to sublime majesty; and fascinating, with irresistable attraction, demanding unconditional allegiance. It is the positive human response to this experience in thought (myth and theology) and action (cult and worship) that constitutes religion.5

It is while searching for a clue to the numinous nature of Athena's epiphany that Velikovsky's thesis of a comet-like Athena becomes of the utmost relevance, for it is undeniable that the appearance of a comet has an unusually powerful effect upon the human mind, unrivalled, perhaps, by that of any other natural phenomenon. Jacobsen's criteria of fascination, terror, and dread are all equally appropriate as descriptions of the behavior which may be occasioned by the appearance of a brilliant comet. To take but one well-known example, as recently as 1528 a learned doctor could report of the appearance of a comet: "The comet was so horrible and vulgar that some died of fear and others fell sick.6

Athena's appearance as a comet-like body, moreover, is inherent in the imagery of the goddess as warrior. Consider Athena's debut epiphany in the Iliad:

Like a blazing star which the lord of heaven shoots forth, bright and scattering sparks all around, to be a portent for sailors or for some great army of men, so Pallas Athena shot down to earth and leapt into the throng.1

Note further that the appearance of Athena's fiery star, according to Homer, is said to portend war, a superstition specifically associated with the appearance of a comet by peoples throughout the ancient world.

Is it possible that the occasion commemorated in the myth of the birth of Athena was the spectacular "birth" of a great "comet", and that the peculiar imagery of the Greek myth—the shaking of heaven and earth, etc. preserved a literal account of man's confrontation with a "power not of this world"? A comparative analysis of the myth of the war-goddess suggests that such was indeed the case.

Inanna, Ishtar, and Astarte

Athena's appearance as a warring goddess, bizarre and wholly unnatural as it is, conforms to a universal archetype. This fact has rarely been appreciated by scholars despite the fact that nearly every ancient goddess of comparable stature to Athena was described in like manner.2 In Greece alone Hera, Hekate, and Aphrodite were represented as armed warriors.3

The ancient Near East provides a wealth of goddesses distinguished by their propensity for war. Kapelrud offered the following summary in his study of the war-goddess:

Both the Amarna letters and the Ras Shamra texts, together with numerous material of different kinds, show that a great, violent goddess, who was at the same time goddess of war and battle and goddess of sexual love, was a dominating figure in worship all over the Middle East, from Anatolia in the North to Egypt in the South, from Mesopotamia in the East to Phoenicia in the West. In the East this goddess was Ishtar, who represented both the Sumerian Inanna and the Semitic Ishtar. She was also found in other parts of the territory, but in the West, and especially in the North-West, Anat was dominating. In addition came Ashtart, while Asherah was more similar to the ancient Sumerian Inanna. This is only a rough sketch of the situation; in details the picture was much richer and more varied.4

The Sumerian Inanna, as we have documented elsewhere, offers an especially vivid portrait of the warring goddess. Witness the following description from an early hymn:

Loud Thundering Storm You make the heavens tremble and the earth quake. Great Priestess, who can soothe your troubled heart? You flash like lightning over the highlands; you throw your firebrands across the earth. Your deafening command splits apart great mountains.1

As this passage illustrates, a recurring motive finds the rampage of the warring goddess to be accompanied by widespread destruction. Such is the case in The Exaltation to Inanna for example:

Devastatrix of the lands, you are lent wings by the storm…you fly about the nation. At the sound of you the lands bow down. Propelled on your own wings you peck away at the land. With a roaring storm you roar; with Thunder you continually thunder.2

Sumerologists have documented that Inanna's war-like nature is present in the oldest examples of her cult, as is her identification with the planet Venus.3 No attempt to connect the warrior-aspect of the goddess with the celestial body has yet been made however.4

Inanna finds a close analogue in the Semitic goddess Ishtar, an early epithet of whom was sa melultasa tuquptu, she "whose delight is battle.5 An Akkadian hymn attests to the fear inspired by this formidable goddess:

Ruler of weapons, arbiter of the battle! Framer of all decrees, wearer of the crown of dominion! O lady, majestic is thy rank, over all the gods is it exalted! Thou art the cause of lamentation, thou sowest hostility among brethren who are at peace!…Thou art strong, O lady of victory, thou canst violently attain my desire. O Gutira, who art girt with battle, who art clothed with terror…Terrible in the fight, one who cannot be opposed, strong in the battle! O whirlwind, that roarest against the foe and cuttest off the mighty.6

A Babylonian hymn to Ishtar invokes her as the torch of heaven: "O brilliant one, torch of heaven and earth, light the battle, O firebrand which is kindled against the enemy, which brings about the destruction of the furious, O gleaming one, Ishtar, assembler of the host.7 Explicit here in the guise of the torch of heaven is Ishtar as a personification of the planet Venus.8 The description of Ishtar as assembler of the host, moreover, recalls Hesiod's description of Athena as "unwearied leader of the host, a mistress who delights in the clamorous cry of war and battle and slaughter.9

Generally considered to be a Canaanite counterpart to Ishtar, the far-reaching cult of Astarte is best known, perhaps, by scattered references in the Old Testament.10 Of her war-like nature there can be no doubt, Astarte being represented as a warrior in Egyptian and Ugaritic iconography alike.1 Astarte's bellicose nature is also discernable in Ugaritic myth, where—in the battle between Baal and Yam it is she (Ashtart) who is associated with the splitting of Yam's skull.2

Astarte's identification with the planet Venus is well-known, of course, and is not unexpected given her relationship to the Akkadian Ishtar.3

Anat

One of the most gruesome figures in Ugaritic myth is the warrior-goddess Anat, whose cult spread throughout much of the ancient Near East as attested by Biblical references to her cult (it was Anat who was invoked by Jeremiah as "Queen of Heaven.") 4 In one of the Ras Shamra texts Anat was described as
follows:

Behold, Anat battles in the plain…She slaughters the people of the sea shore. She destroys the people of the sunrise…She ties the heads around the back [of her neck]. She binds the hands in her girdle. She wades up to her knees in the blood of soldiers, up to her waist in the gore of heroes.5

Still more repulsive is the myth in which Anat is represented as cannibalizing her brother Baal.6 Yet another prominent episode depicts Anat's slaughter of Mot:

With a sword she doth cleave him. With fan she doth winnow him, with fire she doth burn him. With hand-mill she grinds him. In the field she doth sow him. 7

As was the case with regard to the epiphany of Inanna, the appearance of Anat is associated with widespread destruction. The battle-dance of the goddess, for example, is said to have shook the foundations of the earth: "The Maiden Anat rejoices, stamps with her foot so that the earth quakes.8

Kapelrud summarized the cult of Anat as follows:

She was a goddess who ravaged in blood, who was the sign and symbol of battle, fighting, blood and death. This is so intensely emphasized in the passages translated above that the intention of the poet must surely have been to give the impression that this was the dominating feature in the goddess. And writing so he did not allow himself any poetical freedom, he did not paint the picture of Anat according to his own will and wish. He was in the service of the cult and belief of Ugaritic men, and wrote only what was known by them all and common traditions and belief. This was how they knew the goddess Anat, triumphantly laughing when wading in blood.9

Kapelrud's observations on the sanctity of the traditions of the war goddess are well taken, and might be applied with equal force to the Greek traditions of the birth of Athena, or to Homer's comparison of the warring Athena with a comet-like object.

Anat, significantly, was identified with Athena in Cyprian inscriptions dating from the fifth century BCE.1 This identification confirms that the early Greeks recognized the close affinities pertaining between the respective war- goddesses. That Anat has been identified with the planet Venus by leading scholars is also relevant to the discussion at hand.2

Kali

The Hindu Kali offers a particularly powerful example of the warrior-goddess.3 Descriptions of the goddess are almost uniformly repulsive:

Although Kali is sometimes said to be beautiful…Hindu texts referring to the goddess are nearly unanimous in describing her as terrible in appearance and as offensive and destructive in her habits. Her hair is disheveled, her eyes red and fierce, she has fangs and a long lolling tongue, her lips are often smeared with blood, her breasts are long and pendulous, her stomach is sunken, and her figure is generally gaunt. She is naked but for several characteristic ornaments: a necklace of skulls or freshly cut heads, a girdle of severed arms, and infant corpses as earrings.4

The name Kali, although first attested in the sixth century A. D., would appear to be but an epithet of Devi/Parvati.5 Being separated from the cult of Athena by about a thousand years and from that of Inanna by several thousand years, it is not surprising that the cult of Kali reflects a certain degenerative specialization, her demonic aspect almost completely displacing any positive or maternal elements. In this respect Kali might be compared to the Greek Hekate, whom in ancient times was a multidimensional goddess comparable to Athena, yet whom eventually became relegated to a goddess of witches and ghouls.6

Archaic motives can be discovered about Kali nevertheless. Thus Eaton points out that Kali wears a necklace of skulls and a girdle of severed hands, reminiscent of Anat's attire in Ugaritic lore.7 And Kali's dance, like that of Anat, shakes the foundations of the world:

The dread Mother dances naked in the battlefield. Her lolling tongue burns like a red flame of fire. Her dark tresses fly in the sky, sweeping away sun and stars. Red streams of blood run from her cloud-black limbs. And the world trembles and cracks under her tread.8

It is curious that no one seems to have considered the possibility that the respective dances of Kali and Anat could have had the effects described; i.e., that they threatened the very foundations of heaven and earth. Can it be a coincidence that the same tumultuous effects distinguished the epiphany of Athena? Recall again the account of Pindar: "Athena sprang from the skull of Zeus with an earth-shattering battle-cry, so that the heavens shook and the mother earth.1

That Athena's epiphany did in fact constitute a war dance is attested by the report of ancient chroniclers who credited Athena with having invented the pyrrhic, a much celebrated war dance.2 Legend has it that Athena danced this dance immediately upon her birth from Zeus.3

Athena's earth-shaking dance upon deliverance from the head of Zeus—however it is to be interpreted — offers a striking analogue to the battle dances of Kali and Anat.4 But we need not rest content with this observation, one which, after all, many conventional scholars might accept. The fact is that the cataclysmic imagery associated with the goddess' dance finds a ready explanation in the imagery of the comet, the latter being specifically associated with earthquakes and world-threatening disaster throughout the ancient world.5

Note, finally, the recurring emphasis in the Hindu texts on the disheveled hair of the warring goddess.6 When it is reported that Kali's "streaming tresses hang in vast disorder," or that her tresses blacken the skies, is it not apparent that the imagery of the comet is once more upon us?7 Can it be coincidence that streaming hair and a tendency to cause eclipses were associated with the appearance of a comet by ancient peoples the world over?

The Primeval Conflict

In order to understand the myth of the warring goddess it is necessary to answer the following question: Against whom or what is the goddess' belligerence directed? This question, rarely asked, is directly related to another: Was the goddess associated with war simply because she was favored by a war-like people? Or does the goddess' bellicose character stem from her participation in a particular war, a particular event(s) in time? The wealth of evidence bearing on this issue supports the latter interpretation.

A widespread motive, and one which has yet to receive sufficient attention from comparative mythologists, is the frequency with which the warrior- goddess' anger is directed at her father or consort, often identified as the King of the Gods. Kali, for example, is commonly represented as trampling upon the prostrate or "dead" body of Shiva.8 This motive appears in the provacative portrait of the goddess offered by the Yogini Tantra of the 16th century:

Charming with rows of skull-necklesses, with flowing hair…with lolling tongue, with dreadful voice, with three eyes all red…with corpses as ear ornaments… girdled with thousands of dead men's hands, with smiling face, whose countenance is flecked with streams of blood dripping from the corners of her mouth, whose four arms are adorned with sword with blood-decked body mounting upon the corpse of Shiva having her left foot upon the corpse.1

While this particular account is relatively recent, the conflict of Kali and Shiva goes to the very foundations of Hindu religion. Ions summarizes their primeval confrontation as follows:

Once she gave free rein to her blind lust for destruction nothing could stop her. On one occasion Shiva himself had to mingle among the demons whom she was slaughtering and allow himself to be trampled underfoot in her dance of victory, as this was the only way to bring her to her senses and save the world from collapse. She was in this sense said to have subdued her own husband, and to this she owes her name, Kali, 'conquerer of Time.' Devi, goddess of fertility, had conquered Shiva, who as the invincible destroyer was equated with Time.2

The murder of Shiva is implicit in the Tamil cult of warring-goddess as well.3 Shulman summarized these myths as follows: "The Tamil myths of Mahisasura [i. e., Shiva] clearly describe a violent confrontation between the dark goddess and her husband, in the course of which the male is slain."4 Indeed, according to Shulman, the myth of the goddess' conquest of Shiva/Mahisasura constitutes "the archetypal myth of the goddess in India.5

Near Eastern Parallels

Violence also characterizes the relationship of the great goddess and her father/consort in Near Eastern mythology. In Ugaritic lore, for example, Anat threatens her father El—the King of the Gods with physical violence should he fail to comply with her demand to punish Aqhat:

[With] the might [of my] lon[g hand, I'll verily smash] thy pate. Make [thy gray hair] flow [with blood. The gray hair of] thy [beard] with gore.6

That the same threat is directed at El in another context attests to its formulaic character, and hence, presumably, to the antiquity of this motive:

He will listen to me, El [my father]. He will listen to me and I'll trample him like a lamb on the ground, I'll make his gray beard flow with blood. His gray beard with gore.7

Sumerian tradition likewise finds the warring-goddess threatening the King of the Gods. There Inanna is reported to have directed some form of assault at her father An:

She was making heaven tremble, the earth shake. Inanna was destroying the cowpens, burning the sheepfolds, crying 'Let us berate An, king of the gods'.8

Notice here that Inanna's assault of An—like Kali's dance upon the corpse of Shiva—is marked by a shaking of the foundations of heaven and earth.

It is in the Egyptian sources where the rampage of the war-goddess Hathor is directed against her father Re that this motive finds its clearest expression. There, however, there is an interesting twist: the warring goddess takes the form of a fire-spewing Eye of serpentine form! Best known, perhaps, is the passage in an Egyptian tale known as the Destruction of Mankind, where Ra dispatches Hathor to wage war upon his enemies:

Let go forth thine Eye, let it destroy for thee those who blaspheme with wickedness, not an eye can precede it in resistance when it goeth forth in the form of Hathor. Went forth then this goddess, she slew mankind on the mountain.1

That the goddess' wrath was also directed against the King of the Gods is confirmed by several passages in the Coffin Texts: "What is the Sacred Eye at the time of its wrath?…It is the right eye of Re when it was wroth with him after he had sent it on an errand.2 Other passages speak of the hair raised from the Eye, a striking image if the reference was to a comet: "I raised up the hair from the Sacred Eye at the time of its wrath.3

Egyptian ritual likewise found Hathor invoked as a warring Eye, the liturgical instructions of which offer explicit testimony that the goddess emerged from the body of Ra: "The cobra-snake of Re…who came forth from him…who burns the enemy of Re with her heat…The Eye of Re She is the flaming goddess.4 A similar invocation is the following: "Hathor, great lady…the Eye of Re, lady of heaven, mistress of all the gods, the daughter of Re, who came forth from his body.5

Most significant, perhaps, is the tradition that the departure of the Eye- goddess signalled disaster for the sun-god and his celestial kingdom. This tradition is the basis for numerous passages in the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, where the departure of the Eye constitutes a world-threatening cataclysm: "I am the fiery Eye of Horus which went forth terrible, Lady of slaughter…I am indeed she who shoots.6 Other passages recount the fire and devastation which accompanied the Eye's rampage: "The great fire has gone forth against you from within the Eye;7 "Its flame is to the sky.8

Anthes has commented on this curious aspect of the mythology of the Eye: "The characteristic of the Eye appears to be that its removal from the highest god means disturbance, while its return means pacification and the restitution of order.9

The talismanic significance of the Hathorian Eye, needless to say, bears a striking resemblance to Greek superstitions surrounding the comet-like palladium.

The Death of Zeus

Athena's war-like epiphany, as we have seen, exactly parallels the destructive rampages associated with Inanna, Anat, and Kali. Inasmuch as Athena's rampage accompanied her birth from Zeus, one would expect to find hints that she, too, directed an assault upon the King of the Gods in this case her father precipitating, perhaps, his death. More than one scholar, in fact, has arrived at this very opinion. Burkert, citing the tradition whereby Zeus' head was first split with an axe to allow for the delivery of Athena, notes that this alone implies the death of the King of Gods: "This never expressed — element of patricide in the birth myth leads back to the apocryphal Pallas myth.1

Here Burkert is referring to the curious tradition preserved by Clement of Alexandria and other early chroniclers whereby Athena is said to have murdered her father, there called by the name of Pallas.2 Described as a winged goatish giant, Pallas met his demise while attempting to ravage his more famous daughter. Isolated fragments, unfortunately, are all that remain of this intriguing myth.

Several scholars, Kerenyi among them, have expressed the opinion that the Pallas traditions preserve archaic elements of Athena's cult. Of such traditions he observed:

They contradict the Homeric religion and the whole classical tradition so decisively that they cannot be rejected as groundless. They must rest on archaic elements of the Athene religion that have been transmitted to us only through accidental utterances.3

Another of these "accidental utterances" maintains that Athena stripped Pallas of the aegis, a goat-skin with marvelous powers (such as the ability to generate lightning) that was to become one of the standard symbols of Athena.4 In Homer, however, the traditional bearer of the aegis is Zeus.5 This fact, if nothing else, should alert us to the possibility that Pallas was but a pseudonym for Zeus himself, and his strange murder at the hands of his daughter merely a degenerative version of the archetypal myth of the war- goddess which Greek chroniclers later saw fit to censor.

On the Birth of Venus

Our discussion of the myth of the war-goddess has confirmed the insight of Velikovsky that the imagery associated with the birth of Athena referred in some manner to a celestial disturbance occasioned by the appearance of a comet-like body. That that body was in fact the planet Venus during a comet- like phase is deducible from Athena's resemblance to the various war-goddesses of the ancient Near East, most of whom were explicitly identified with that planet. This evidence alone offers substantial support for a significant portion of Velikovsky's thesis in Worlds in Collision.

A central theme of Worlds in Collision held that the myth of Athena's birth commemorated the physical birth of the planet Venus from the giant planet Jupiter, an event Velikovsky believed to be reflected in ancient myths the world over. Until recently, however, this point was to remain unsubstantiated, at which time it was to receive some support by the finding that a nearly identical story existed in both Egypt and Mesoamerica whereby the planet Venus suddenly appeared (i.e. was "born") in the wake of cataclysmic circumstances associated with the death of the ancient sun-god (In Egypt the dying god was Osiris, in Mexico Quetzalcoatl, and the circumstances surrounding their tragic deaths formed the focal point of the religions of the respective cultures).1 The Mesoamerican scholar Nigel Davies, upon acknowledging that this was the original significance of the myth of Quetzalcoatl's death and transfiguration, nevertheless objected that such an interpretation is hardly to be entertained:

"At some point in the account, history ends and legend begins, unless one is really to believe that the planet Venus was actually formed from his body and had not previously existed!"2

This was not the only puzzle to emerge from our study of the sacred traditions of Egypt and Mexico, however. A common and seemingly inexplicable belief of both ancient cultures identified the new-born Venus with the "soul" or "heart- soul" of the dying god.3 Brundage summarized the Mexican tradition of the apotheosis of Quetzalcoatl's heart-soul as follows: "The god's heart, like a great spark, flies up to become a new and splendid divinity, the Morning Star. 4

While the astro-physical details of the circumstances attending the mythological "birth" of the planet Venus are subject to debate and further clarification, this much is clear: (1) the birth of Venus does indeed occupy a
central position in the sacred traditions of more than one ancient people; (2) the identification of Venus as the "heart-soul" of the ancient sun-god forms a fundamental motive in the curious mythology surrounding this planet.5 It stands to reason, therefore, that if the birth of Athena actually had to do with the "birth" (or initial appearance) of the planet Venus, as Velikovsky maintained, a logical question to ask at this stage of our inquiry is whether Athena's "birth" is understandable as the departure of the "heart-soul" of Zeus?

The Kore

That Athena was intimately associated with early Greek conceptions of the soul is indicated by several lines of evidence. One notes, for example, the ancient tradition that Athena had provided the soul to the men created from clay by Prometheus.6 Hesiod, similarly, credits Athena with having first breathed "soul" into men.7

The most conclusive evidence bearing on this issue comes upon analysis of the word kore, an archaic epithet applied to Athena.8 The antiquity of the word seems assured by its appearance in the names of rivers, lakes, and other features of landscape, often in conjunction with the worship of Athena.1 The same conclusion is supported by the appearance of kore in the nomenclature of Greek rituals.2

Numerous scholars have expressed the opinion that the numen of the kore however it is to be understood—is fundamental to the mystery of the cult of the great goddess.3 The most common meaning of kore is "maiden" or "girl", typically understood as signifying the youthful aspect of Athena, in contrast to her maternal aspect, apparent elsewhere.4 Such an interpretation is no doubt part of the story, being in complete accordance with the image of Athena as the warrior-maiden, the goddess elsewhere being invoked by the epithets Parthenos and Pallas, words of similar meaning.5 It is possible to penetrate still further into the original significance of the epithet Kore, however.

An important clue comes from the fact that in modern parlance the word core connotes the "heart" or innermost part of an object, as in the core of an apple or the core of the earth. That this meaning was inherent in the ancient Greek conception of the goddess as kore is made probable upon consideration of several related words. For example, a Homeric term for "heart" is ker.6 The root ker, in turn, is found in the Greek word kardia, which, like the Latin word cor, means "heart". It is from the latter word that the English word core apparently derives.7

That there was in fact a Greek goddess by the name of Ker would seem to prove beyond all doubt that the goddess as a personification of the heart was a religious reality, and renders it likely that the words kore, ker, and cor are related. The goddess Ker, significantly, appears as a harbinger of death and destruction, and is represented as haunting the battlefields while dressed in blood-drenched garb, all of which suggests that the spectre of the war-goddess is once more among us.

Now it is impossible to dissociate the concept of the goddess as the heart from her relationship to the soul. The Greek word ker preserves both meanings, "heart" and "soul", for example.8 Nor is the phenomenon whereby one word signifies both heart and soul peculiar to the Greeks, many ancient peoples using the same word to connote the heart as well as the soul.1 Here Gaster reports: "In many cultures, the heart is believed to be the seat of the 'soul' or vital essence.2

Also relevant here is the word kar, signifying "lock of hair.3 Locks of hair, as is well-known, formed a common offering in Greek cult in general, and in funereal cults in particular.4 Athena herself was the recipient of such offerings at Arcadia and Crete, where she was invoked as Koria and Koresia respectively.5

That kar is cognate with ker "heart", "soul" is obvious and is reminiscent of the widespread belief whereby a lock of hair signified the soul or vital powers.6 That similar beliefs existed among the early Greeks may be deduced from several peculiar myths which have survived, more than one of which attributes the murder of a great king to the removal of a lock of hair wherein resided his soul (and/or vital powers).

The best known example of this motive features the traitress Scylla, who secures the death of Nisus by stealing the purple lock of hair upon which his life and kingdom depended.7 A similar deed is elsewhere attributed to the goddess Aphrodite here provided with the epithet Comaetho who is said to have brought about the demise of Pterelaus by stealing the lock of hair which contained his soul.8 Vestiges of this motive are discernable in the mythus of Athena as well, witness the Tegean tradition that Athena presented one of their ancient kings with a lock of Medusa's hair which rendered that city impregnable (in the original myth, according to leading scholars, Athena was the Medusa).9 The talismanic significance here accorded the lock of hair is identical to that accorded the comet-like palladium.

The Eye Goddess

An interesting use of the word kore finds it employed in the sense of "pupil in the eye." This sense of the word conforms to a widespread conception whereby the pupil is envisaged as a miniature being of some sort. This idea is most familiar, perhaps, from several Biblical passages in which the pupil is referred to as the daughter, youth, or apple in the eye.1

Egyptian sources likewise compare the pupil of the eye to a maiden or boy. The word hun-t, for example, means both "pupil of the eye" and "maiden".2 The same belief is apparent in a fascinating vignette from the Rig Veda: "The maiden was born; the eye-ball fell, and the plants sprung up through the magic deed.3

Commentators have typically sought to explain such conceptions by assuming that ancient peoples imagined a tiny girl or boy as residing within the eye in order to account for the reflection of the pupil. Mercer, for example, offered the following opinion with regard to the Egyptian symbolism:

'The damsel who is in the eye of Horus' is an example of an almost universal idea of associating the pupil of the human eye with a human being, preferably a young woman, a maiden, a damsel (cf. Latin pupilla, 'damsel'), for when one stands in the presence of another he sees himself reflected in the pupil of the eyes of the person before whom he stands. It was merely a step farther to identify the pupil as a damsel.4

It is our opinion that Mercer's interpretation only scratches the surface of the symbolism of the kore/maiden as pupil of the eye. There is abundant evidence, for example, that the pupil was associated with ancient conceptions of the soul: "Widespread also is the belief that the soul resides in the pupil of the eye.5 So wrote Theodore Gaster.

Jan Bremmer speculated that the word kore may have meant at once "maiden" and "soul":

A number of peoples have thought the free soul resided in the eye in the form of a homunculus. This idea could have existed in early Greece, but we have only two testimonies for psyche departing from the eye and they both date from the later Roman empire. However, the double meaning of kore as 'girl' and 'pupil of the eye' may be a survival of this belief.6

Kirby Smith was more adamant with regard to the possibility of a relationship between the kore/maiden and soul:

Such designations of the pupil as kore, pupa, pupula, pupilla, i.e., the little lass, the mannikin, das mannelein, though easily explained by a different theory in the wisdom of a later age, undoubtedly go back to the time when they were applied in a literal sense to the soul which was seen in the man's eye.7

According to Smith, the custom of placing coins on the eyes of the dead originated in the attempt to prevent the soul from escaping and haunting the house. Smith concluded his analysis by observing that the belief that eyes represented the windows of the soul is hardly a modern conception, "but is repeated or implied in all languages and all periods.8

The researches of Gaster, Bremmer, and Smith render it likely that there was an intimate relationship between the goddess as Kore "maiden, pupil" and the goddess as Ker "heart/soul", and suggest that Athena's epithet had a significance hitherto overlooked.

Athena Koruphagenes

Hesiod the earliest author to narrate the birth of Athena joins Pindar and the author of the Homeric Hymn to Athena in making the goddess spring directly from the head of Zeus: "And out of his own head he gave birth to the owl-eyed Triton-born."1 Vase paintings and ancient mythographers add the detail that some divinity usually Hephaestus first split the skull of Zeus with an axe to allow for the birth of Athena.2

An early epithet of Athena was koruphagenes, conventionally rendered "head- born".3 Is it possible that this epithet bears some relation to Athena's identification as the Kore; i.e., the soul? Certainly it is significant to find that the early Greeks considered the head to be a primary seat of the soul. Onians provides abundant documentation of this belief in Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, where, upon analysis of ancient Greek conceptions of the soul, it was observed: "The head was believed to contain the life-soul, the
divinity in each man, his genius.4

Closely related to this conception, according to Onians, is the widespread custom among ancient peoples of splitting or perforating the skull to release the soul.5 This practice, needless to say, offers a certain parallel to the splitting of Zeus' skull to release Athena.

Significantly, Onians goes on to document a relation between ancient ideas of the soul and comets. The most famous example of this belief occurs in the Metamorphoses of Ovid where the great poet makes the soul of Julius Caesar fly off as a comet:

Belief that the genius, the divine soul that survives, thus manifested itself in fire in the head would make easier the belief of the common people at Rome that the 'star with hair' (stella crinita, cometes), which appeared during the games celebrated soon after the death of Julius, was the soul of the latter… That the departed soul or 'head' of the emperor was believed thus to ascend to the heavens fitted the belief that the genius manifested itself in flame and the Stoic belief that souls passed at death as fire to the heavens.6

The Latins were not alone in comparing comets to souls of great kings. The fact is that ancient peoples from around the world compared comets to souls.1 American Indians, for example, compared comets to the souls of the stars.2 Among the Polynesian Islanders a comet signified the flight of the soul, in addition to the death of a king.3 Frazer, in his extensive researches into ancient beliefs, found that:

"A widespread superstition…associates meteors or falling stars with the souls of the dead. Often they are believed to be the spirits of the departed on their way to the other world.4

Excursus on Venus

If it is admitted that cometary imagery has a part to play in the earliest cult of Athena, how is it possible to reconcile this evidence with the ancient appearance of the planet Venus, if indeed Athena's cult traces to that planet? In order to answer this question and achieve thereby a satisfactory synthesis of the various motives discussed thus far it is necessary to refer briefly to a theory outlined in previous monographs in this journal. There evidence was presented that Venus only recently assumed its present orbit. Prior to that, the Cytherean planet occupied a prominent position within an unusual celestial configuration associated with the planet Saturn.5

During the period in question Venus was locked in axial alignment together with Saturn and the Earth, at some point between the two planets. From the vantage point of the terrestrial skywatcher, Venus would have appeared to rest squarely in the middle of the massive planet Saturn. It was this axial location of Venus, in our opinion, that led it to be envisaged as the innermost portion of the body of Saturn (the ancient sun-god), the smaller planet being alternatively interpreted as the sun-god's "heart", "soul", or Cyclopean eye. It is by reference to Venus' position within the configuration associated with Saturn that we would understand the original significance of Athena as the Kore: the maiden-goddess formed at once the "heart-soul" and central eye or "pupil" of Zeus (Saturn).

The birth of Athena/Venus, according to the interpretation offered here, would involve the displacement of Venus from its axial position, at which time it apparently first became visible as a planetary orb distinct from Saturn/Zeus (its "parent" body).6 For some time prior to its ultimate displacement, however, the brilliant green orb of Venus was associated with a luminous tail or plume of celestial material, interpreted (among other things) as a lock of hair. It was the severance of this comet-like "lock of hair", if the ancient myths are to be believed, which marked the ultimate departure of Venus from Saturn, thereby signalling the "death" of the King of the Gods and ushering in a period of instability associated with a warring goddess (Athena/Ker).7

The thesis outlined above, in our opinion, will explain much that is obscure about the cult of Athena. Many of Athena's leading attributes trace to the appearance of the planet Venus within the aforementioned configuration, while not a few of her mythical adventures refer to the movements of that planet upon its expulsion from the near vicinity of Saturn. A couple of examples will serve to bolster this point.

Glaukopis

Among the many hitherto obscure epithets of Athena, Glaukopis is one of the most ancient, being already a favorite of Homer's.1 Now Glaukopis can signify either "owl-eyed," or, more likely, it can refer to the sea-green color of the goddess' eyes.2 From our vantage point, the epithet is a patent reference to the brilliant green color traditionally associated with the planet Venus in the ancient sources, the same planet being compared to a celestial eye by peoples the world over.3

Talbott and I have elsewhere alluded to the curious association between the planet Venus and the color green or blue-green.4 The Venusian "heart-soul" of Quetzalcoatl, for example, was compared to a turquoise-green stone.5 An early example of this motive occurs in The Descent of Inanna, where, upon the fall of the great goddess from heaven, Inanna (Venus) is described as hanging upon a great wall and as being of a putrid green color.6

It is worthy of note, finally, that the name of Venus became synonymous with the color green in alchemical texts of the Middle Ages.7 The relationship between the planet Venus and the color green or blue-green is also attested by certain words in various Indo-European languages. Consider, for example, the Latin word venetus apparently cognate with Venus signifying sea-green or blue. 8

Athena of the Thunderbolt

As the wielder of the death-dealing thunderbolt, Zeus was feared and revered throughout the Greek world. Aeschylus has preserved for us a vivid portrait of this awe-inspiring figure: "And threats of flaming thunderbolts from Zeus with burning wrath to desolate his race, if he durst disobey.9

Several epithets of the great god refer to his capacity for hurling lightning, foremost among these being keraunos.1 Noting the antiquity of the meteorological imagery surrounding Zeus, Burkert remarks:

The thunderbolt…is the weapon of Zeus which he alone commands; it is irresistable, even gods tremble before it, and enemies of the gods are utterly destroyed when it strikes; in the face of such a manifestation of divine energy, man stands powerless, terrified and yet marvelling.2

Confronted with the imagery of Zeus' flaming thunderbolt, conventional scholars imagine that it traces to ancient man's longstanding fear of the thunderstorm and its attendant lightning. Analysis of the traditions surrounding Zeus' thunderbolt, however, suggests a more radical conclusion.

For example, it is known that many ancient peoples, the Greeks included, understood the phenomenon of lightning as resulting from the descent of a stone from heaven. Blinkenberg, in his classic study of ancient conceptions of lightning, observed: "The lightning, then, is produced by a stone which shoots down from heaven to earth.3 Meteors, in accordance with this belief, were identified with thunderstones throughout the ancient world.4

This primitive conception of lightning as a thunderstone or "falling star" forms a striking parallel to the Greek traditions surrounding the palladia, a point often noted by scholars. Worner, for example, in his detailed analysis of the mythology associated with palladia, suggested that the tradition of their being thrown from heaven as meteor-like objects was best interpreted as the fall of thunder-stones.5 Harrison, also impressed by the resemblance between palladia and thunderstones, and fully cognizant of the intimate relation of Athena to palladia, sought to identify that goddess with the heaven-flung weapon of Zeus:

The palladia have always one characteristic, they are sky-fallen (diopeteis). They are palta, things hurled, cast down; the lightning is the hurled fire (palton pyr). Pallas then is but another form of Keraunos the thunderbolt
hurled.6

The analyses of Worner and Harrison are most persuasive, and indeed there is much to be said for the identification of Pallas Athena with the thunderbolt of Zeus. Certainly there is no denying that Athena was very much connected with her father's weapon. Early Greek coins, for example, showed Athena (as well as Zeus) brandishing thunderbolts.7 Note also the report of Aeschylus that only Athena knew where Zeus' bolts were hidden.8

Additional support for Harrison's identification of Athena with the thunderbolt of Zeus comes from the archaic tradition that Zeus could produce lightning from his eye. This belief is apparent in the following passage of Aeschylus: "The jealous eye of God hurls the lightning down."1 The same conception is implicit in the Bacchae of Euripedes: "Unveil the Lightning's eye."2 That the thunderbolt of Zeus proceeded from that god's Cyclopian-eye is also the explanation, it would seem, of Hesiod's report that Zeus' weapon was forged by the Kyklopes, the latter being conspicuous for their central eye.3 Such traditions are most significant in light of Athena's intimate relationship to the eye, reflected in the epithets Kore, Glaukopis, Opthalmitis, Gorgopis, and others.

Numerous scholars have observed that the image of Zeus casting lightning from his eye correponds to a widespread belief.4 In Hindu tradition, for example, Shiva was said to have been capable of throwing lightning from his third eye, located in the center of his head. It is the intimate relationship of Shiva's eye to Devi/Kali, however, which strikes our attention: It is said to have been a gift of the great goddess.5

A similar tradition was met with earlier in the mythology surrounding the Egyptian Ra. There the god's weapon-like Eye was specifically identified with the warrior goddess Hathor, and analysis of the various traditions surrounding the fire-spewing Eye supports the conclusion that a comet was the source of
its peculiar imagery.6 In short, the correspondence between the respective weapons of Zeus and Ra would seem to be complete. Each is identifiable with a comet-like body which, in turn, is identifiable with a warring goddess.

It is the fundamental identification of Athena/Venus as the eye (Kore) but also as the "heart-soul" of the ancient god (Ker) that allows for the resolution of the mystery of Zeus' fiery thunderbolt. It was the god's comet- like soul which was hurled across the skies as a weapon. Hence the apparent relationship between the words ker and keraunos.

Footnotes & Sources

1 Pliny 2: 22: 89

2 Pindar, Olympia 7: 36

3A. Athanassaki, The Homeric Hymns (Baltimore, 1976), p. 66.

4W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1985), p. 142.

5J. Harrison, Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion and Themis (New York,
1962), p. 500.

6R. Graves, The Greek Myths (New York, 1980), Vol. I, p. 46.

1L. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States Vol. I (New Rochelle, 1977), p.
263.

2 Quoted in R. Brown, Semitic Influence in Hellenic Mythology (Clifton, 1966),
p. 37.

3H. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (New York, 1959), p. 108, dismisses
the naturist explanation as an aberration. A similar opinion was voiced by
Burkert, op cit., p. 142.

4 Farnell, op cit., p. 280.

5 For differing opinions on the Velikovsky debate see S. Talbott, ed.
Velikovsky Reconsidered (New York, 1976); D. Goldsmith, ed. Scientists
Confront Velikovsky (New York, 1977); and, most recently, H. Bauer, Beyond
Velikovsky: The History of a Public Controversy (Champaign-Urbana, 1984). For
an account of the controversy from Velikovsky himself see Stargazers and
Gravediggers (New York, 1983). See also the various articles in KRONOS, SIS
Workshop, and AEON.

1D. Talbott & E. Cochrane, "The Origin of Velikovsky's Comet," KRONOS X:I
(Fall 1984); "On the Nature of Cometary Symbolism," KRONOS XI:I (Fall 1985);
"When Venus was a Comet," KRONOS XII:I (Winter 1987). See also J. Sammer, "An
Ancient Name for Venus," KRONOS VI: 2 (Winter, 1981).

2 For conflicting opinions on this issue see Bauer, op cit.; and S. Talbott, op
cit. See also the valuable little pamphlet by Shane Mage entitled Velikovsky
and his Critics (Grand Haven, 1978).

3 The first scholar to address the mythological basis of Velikovsky's theory in
any depth appears to have been Dwardu Cardona, with his "Child of Saturn"
series, which appeared in serialized form in KRONOS beginning in 1981. See
also B. Newgrosh, "The Case for Catastrophe in Historical Times," KRONOS XI: 1
(Fall, 1985); A. Isenberg, "Devi and Venus," KRONOS II: 1 (1976), pp. 89-103.

4In "On the Nature of Cometary Symbolism," op cit., for example, Talbott and I
were able to document that the ancient traditions surrounding Venus and comets
overlap to a considerable extent. For example, whatever terminology the
ancient skywatchers employed with reference to comets "hair-star", "torch-
star", "beard-star", "dragon-star", "smoking-star", etc. the same terminology
was employed for Venus. This evidence alone, we suggested, offers significant
support for Velikovsky's thesis in Worlds in Collision.

1W. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston, 1966), p. 108.

2H. Liddell & R. Scott, Greek-English Lexikon (New York, 1897), p. 1114. See
also Guthrie, op cit., p. 108. Other early writers Plato among them relate
the name Pallas to the root pallo, signifying "to brandish". That there may
be something to this interpretation of the epithet is suggested by the report
of the author of the Homeric Hymn to Athena, who speaks of the goddess as
"brandishing a sharp-pointed spear" immediately upon her birth from the head
of Zeus. See also Burkert's observation: "The word Pallas remains obscure;
it was interpreted sometimes as Maiden, and sometimes as the weapon-
brandishing, but it might equally have had a non-Greek origin." op cit., p.
139.

3F. Brown & S. Driver & C. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexikon (Oxford,
1951), p. 811.

4 See the discussion in Worner, "Palladion," W. Roscher's Ausfuhrliches Lexikon
der griechische und romischen Mythologie (Hildesheim, 1965), pp. 3413-3450.

5M. Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenean Religion (New York, 1971), p. 500.

6 Worner, op cit., p. 3448; Pausanias I: 26: 6

7L. Ziehen, "Palladion," RE (Stuttgart, 1893-1940), p. 188. It is intriguing
to speculate, in lieu of the alteration of an initial p and b in certain
languages, about a relationship between the Greek words pallo the supposed
root of the name Pallas and ballo, signifying "to throw, cast, hurl," from
whence comes the word bolis, a name often applied to meteors, as in the modern
word bolide. Other meanings inherent in the word pallo are "to poise or sway
a missle before it is thrown," "to cast lots," or "to toss children." The
common denominator here as revealed also by the related words palos, "the lot
cast from a helmet;" paltos, "brandished, hurled;" and paltako, "to throw a
dart" seems to be an emphasis on something held, swung, or thrown.

1 For the various traditions surrounding these ancient shrines see H. Newton,
"The Worship of Meteorites," in Amer. Jour. of Science, 3: 13 (January, 1897),
pp. 1-14. See also the discussion in I. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision (New
York, 1973), pp. 293-295.

2M. Astour, Hellenosemitica (Leiden, 1967), pp. 115-116.

3H. Longfellow, Favorite Poems of Henry Longfellow (Garden City, 1947), p.
165. "From the sky a star is falling." It is interesting to note that
immediately prior to her celebrated fall Nokomis had been swinging from a long
vine. Compare this report with the widespread motive of the hanging or
swinging goddess, discussed at some length in E. Cochrane, "Oedipus," AEON I:6
(1988), pp. 34-36.

4 For numerous examples from the New World see C. Levi-Strauss, The Jealous
Potter (New York, 1988), pp. 133-134.

5B. Brundage, The Phoenix of the Western World (Norman, 1981), p. 40.

6 Astour, op cit., p. 170.

7V. Ions, Indian Mythology (London, 1968), p. 92.

8J. Ruskin, The Queen of the Air (New York, 1887), p. 34. See also Liddell &
Scott, op cit., p. 1525.

9 Farnell, op cit., p. 650. Here the falling goddess becomes indistinguishable
from the mourning or lamenting goddess, to be explored at greater length in a
future monograph in this series.

1K. Kerenyi, Athene: Virgin and Mother (Zurich, 1978), p. 126. For the Greek
references see B. Powell, Athenian Mythology: Erichthonius and the Three
Daughters of Cecrops (Chicago, 1976), pp. 7-9.

2 De Astronomia. Some accounts make Electra's fall occur in the wake of her
violation by Zeus. See Graves, op cit., Vol. 2, p. 261.

3 Scholiast to Euripedes' Phoenissae 1136. See also A. Furtwangler, "Electra,"
in RML (Hildesheim, 1965), op cit., p. 1235; Graves, op cit., p. 262.

4 Ibid., p. 261.

5 Theogony 924

6 Iliad V:875

7 Kerenyi, op cit., p. 22.

8 Farnell, op cit., p. 281.

1 Athanassakis, op cit., p. 66.

2 Pindar, Olympia 7:36

3 This is the approach of Farnell, for example: "It is more natural to say
that, as the Greek imagination dwelt on the great epiphany of Athena, the
poets tended to embellish it with the richest phraseology, to represent it as
a great cosmic incident in which the powers of heaven and earth were
concerned." op cit., p. 283.

4 This paradox in Attic thought has often received the attention of scholars.
Price, for example, has stated: "As a logical paradox Attica and its heart,
Athens, the city of the goddess of wisdom and of the radical philosophers and
orators, is one of the districts richest in irrational beliefs and practices."
T. Price, Kourotrophos (Leiden, 1978), p. 101.

5 T. Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness (New Haven, 1976), p. 3.

6 Ambroise Pare, quoted in D. Fisher, "Halley Though History," in Halley's
Comet (New York, 1986), p. 47.

1 Iliad 4: 73-79. While this passage has been subject to varying translations
the above is W. Rouse's translation, The Iliad (New York, 1938), p. 49 several
distinguished scholars have pointed to a comet as the source of Homer's
imagery. See the discussion in W. Gundel, "Kometen," RE, op cit., p. 1145.
See also the discussion of this passage in B. Dietrich, "Divine Epiphanies in
Homer," Numen 30: 1 (July 1983), p. 56 who translates as follows: "Like a
comet which the son of Kronos, crooked in counsel, sends in a shower of sparks
as a shining portent to sailors and the widespread army of peoples."
Velikovsky, op cit, p. 178, and I. Fuhr, "On Comets, Comet-like Luminous
Apparitions and Meteors," KRONOS VII: 4 (Summer 1982), p. 54, likewise
compared Athena's descent to a cometary apparition. It was apparently Dio
Cassius 78:30:1 who first compared Athena's epiphany to a comet.

2 As an example of the general ignorance pertaining to the prominence of the
warrior-goddess in comparative mythology witness the statement of M. Nilsson,
one of the greatest classical scholars: "The real war god to whom the Greek
states and soldiers prayed and sacrificed is Athena. Other peoples have
usually assigned this function to a god, and this seems most natural. Even if
a war-goddess may be found among other peoples she exists but rarely we need
an explanation of the fact that the Greeks chose a goddess as their leader for
war." op cit., pp. 498-499.

3On the armed Aphrodite see Farnell, op cit., p. 653.

4A. Kapelrud, The Violent Goddess Anat in the Ras Shamra Texts (Oslo, 1969),
p. 25.

1D. Wolkstein & S. Kramer, Inanna (New York, 1983), p. 95.

2W. Hallo & J. van Dyk, Exaltation of Inanna (New Haven, 1968), pp. 17-19.

3W. Heimpel, "Catalog of Near Eastern Venus Deities," Syro-Mesopotamian
Studies 4:2 (1982), p. 12; E. Ebeling & B. Meissner, Reallexikon der
Assyriologie (New York, 1976-1980), Vol. 5, p. 85.

4That is, of course, aside from the analysis offered by Velikovsky. See also
the articles by Newgrosh, Cochrane and Talbott, cited earlier.

5K. Tallquist, Akkadische Gotterepitheta (Helsingforsiae, 1938), pp. 209, 337.

6A. Eaton, The Goddess Anat: The History of Her Cult, Her Mythology and Her
Iconography (Ann Arbor, 1969), p. 72.

7A. Kapelrud, op cit., p. 18.

8As several scholars have observed, it is probable that an epithet of Ishtar,
elletu "shining" appears in the nomenclature of Athena as Hellotis.
Significantly, Athena Hellotis was associated with sacred torch dances. See
Astour, op cit., p. 139.

9Theogony 924

10Judges 2:13, 10:6, I Samuel 31:10, I Kings 11:5, 33; II Kings 33:13.

1See Kapelrud, op cit., p. 15. See also Heimpel, op cit., pp. 20-21.

2Gaster, op cit., p. 154.

3W. Heimpel, op cit., p. 22.

4Jeremiah 7: 18 Both Astarte and Anat enjoyed a celebrated status in Egyptian
cult during the 18th and 19th dynasties. The Egyptians, not surprisingly,
identified Anat with Hathor. See Kapelrud, op cit., p. 15. See also Heimpel,
op cit., pp. 20-21.

5Eaton, op cit., p. 56.

6W. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (New York, 1968), p. 132.

7J. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East (Princeton, 1958), p. 113.

8Pritchard, op cit., p. 103.

9Kapelrud, op cit., pp. 52-53.

1Eaton, op cit., pp. 16, 45.

2Astour, op cit., p. 261. There Astour states: "Anath, the Queen of Heaven,
was identified with Venus (Kaukabta) and, under the name of Uzza, 'the strong
one', was worshipped by the Sinaitic Saracenes as the Morning Star."

3Citing an unpublished manuscript of M. Pope, Albright notes the striking
parallels between Kali and Anat: "In fact, the respective figures are in some
ways so similar that coincidence can scarcely be the only explanation. It may
be that major common traits spring from a substratum extending from the
Mediterranean to India before the intrusion of the Sumerians (no later than
the fourth millenium b.c.) and that minor resemblances are the result of
secondary pseudomorphism." op cit., p. 131.

4D. Kinsley, "Blood and Death Out of Place: Reflections on the Goddess Kali,"
in The Divine Consort, ed. by J. Hawley and D. Wulff (Berkeley, 1982), pp.
144-145.

5A similar assessment was offered by Kinsley, op cit., p. 119. See also the
conclusions of C. Mackenzie Brown, "Kali the Mad Mother," in The Book of the
Goddess, ed. by C. Olson (New York, 1983), p. 111.

6E. Rohde, Psyche (New York, 1966), Vol. 1, p. 297. See also the discussion
of Hekate's cult in E. Cochrane, "Venus in Ancient Myth and Language: Part
Two," AEON I:3 (1988), pp. 103-105.

7Eaton, op cit., p. 78.

8Ibid., p. 77.

1Kerenyi, op cit., p. 22.

2Farnell, op cit., pp. 298, 310.

3Lucian, for example, reported that upon her birth the goddess "leaps and
dances a war-dance and shakes her shield, and brandishes her spear." Dialogues
on the Gods, 8.

4A. Isenberg, "Devi and Venus," KRONOS II: 1 (1976), pp. 89-103, offered a
similar opinion.

5On the association of comets and earthquakes see Gundel, op cit., p. 1146.

6An epithet of the goddess Muktakesi commemorates her disheveled hair. See J.
Dowson, A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion (London, 1961),
p. 87.

7Kinsley, op cit., p. 120.

8Ibid., p. 147.

1Eaton, op cit., p. 78.

2V. Ions, Indian Mythology (London, 1968), p. 94.

3The Tamil name for Devi/Kali was Vintai. See D. Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths
(Princeton, 1980), p. 179. That this name is cognate with Venus is most
probable.

4Ibid., p. 184.

5Ibid., p. 177.

6Eaton, op cit., p. 67.

7Ibid., p. 59.

8T. Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness (New Haven, 1976), p. 137.

1E. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (New York, 1969), Vol. I, p. 392.

2R. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts (Warminster, 1973-1978), Vol.
I, p. 263.

3Ibid., p. 260. In the Papyrus of Ani, similarly, it is written: "I raise up
the hair at the time of storms in the sky…It is the right Eye of Ra in its
raging against him after he hath made it to depart." See E. Budge, The
Egyptian Book of the Dead (London, 1901), pp. 36-37.

4J. Bourghouts, "The Evil Eye of Apopis," J. of Egyptian Archaeology 59
(1973), p. 131.

5Ibid., p. 130.

6R. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts (Warminster, 1973-1978), Vol.
I, p. 238.

7Ibid., p. 85.

8Ibid., p. 193.

9Anthes, "Mythology in Ancient Egypt," Mythologies of the Ancient World
(Garden City, 1961), p. 58. In this same essay Anthes identifies the Eye of
Ra with the planet Venus.

1Burkert, op cit., pp. 142-143.

2Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, II, p. 24P; see also Kerenyi, op cit.,
p. 86.

3Ibid., p. 63.

4Iliad I:202 See also R. Graves, op cit., p. 45.

5The fact that the aegis was said to grace the falling palladium, and that it
was elsewhere reported to have spit fire, suggests the conclusion that it too
is inexplicable apart from the imagery of the comet-like Venus.

1For a more extensive discussion of these traditions see E. Cochrane, "On
Comets and Kings," AEON II:1 (1989), pp. 63-75. See also D. Talbott, "Mother
Goddess and Warrior Hero," AEON I:5 (1989). Here too, of course, both Talbott
and I were following the theoretical lead of Velikovsky, although it must be
said that our evidence was not his, and his evidence, according to our
interpretation of the ancient sources, rarely supported the conclusions drawn
by him.

2N. Davies, The Toltecs (Norman, 1977), p. 395.

3E. Cochrane, "Venus in Ancient Myth and Language," Aeon I: 1 (1988), pp. 40-
43.

4Brundage, op cit., p. 173.

5The same basic idea is apparent in Akkadian tradition, whereby the word
istaru signifies the external manifestation of the "soul," this word being an
obvious cognate of Istar/Venus. See the discussion in A. Oppenheim, Ancient
Mesopotamia (Chicago, 1964), pp. 199-205.

6Farnell, op cit., p. 314.

7Hesiod, fragment 268

8Plato called Athena the Kore, for example. See Laws 796b. See also
Aeschylus, Eumenides 415. Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks (London, 1982), p.
127.

1Farnell, op cit., p. 265. Among others there is the river Koralios at
Coronea, and the lake Koresia in Crete.

2Here Farnell observes: "Now festival names belong usually to a very ancient
period of Greek religious nomenclature; it may well be that the name of Kore
was widely known and stamped upon the Greek ritual and festivals before the
Dorian invasion." op cit., p. 119. In a discussion of the cult of Demeter
Kore, Farnell observes: "We have such names of her festivals as Koreia (more
properly Koraia) in Arcadia, and Syracuse, the Koragia, the procession of the
Kora-idol at Mantinea, where the sacred house was called Koragion."

3K. Kerenyi, Athena: Virgin and Mother (Zurich, 1978), p. 26. The same
epithet, it should be noted, forms a conspicuous element in the cults of
numerous Greek goddesses.

4Athena was known in Elis by the epithet of meter, "mother", for example.
Pausanias 5: 3: 3 See Kerenyi, op cit., pp. 14, 19.

5Ibid., p. 26.

6Liddell & Scott, op cit., p. 804.

7Although the Oxford English Dictionary lists the root of core as uncertain,
it lists the Latin cor as the leading possibility. See The Compact Edition of
the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 1982), Vol. 1, p. 989.

8Liddell & Scott, op cit., p. 804.

1This was common among American Indians, for example. See A. Hultkrantz,
Conceptions of the Soul Among North American Indians (Stockholm, 1953), pp.
95, 101, 171.

2T. Gaster, Thespis (New York, 1977), p. 264.

3Liddell & Scott, op cit., p. 743.

4See W. H. Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings (Cambridge, 1902), pp. 240-245.

5Kerenyi, op cit., p. 35.

6This belief is conspicuous among the Mesoamerican Indians, as Furst relates:
"Among pre-hispanic peoples the Aztecs, among others, also regarded the top of
the head as the seat of the soul, which accounts for their custom of cutting
some of the hair from the top of the head of a corpse and preserving it in the
funerary box. Similarly, to neutralize or remove the power of an Aztec shaman
or sorcerer, his top lock was cut off." See P. Furst, "Huichol Conceptions of
the Soul," Folklore Americas 27:2 (June, 1967), p. 42.

7Graves, op cit., Vol. I, p. 309.

8Ibid., p. 300. Talbott and I have elsewhere suggested that Aphrodite's
epithet in this myth Comaetho, "firey haired" is a patent reference to the
cometary nature of Aphrodite/Venus. Ovid's account of Scylla likewise seems
to preserve a reminiscence of the goddess' cometary nature. There the
traitress is said to have been overcome by a "wild madness" and appeared with
"flowing hair." Ovid, The Metamorphoses (New York, 1958), p. 218. Of
Scylla's end Ovid writes: "She reached the stern of Minos' Cretan ship where
like a hated spirit she held fast…She seemed to fall, then sway, hovering in
the air as if she was a feather. Scylla became a bird that some called Ciris,
a name that brings to mind clipped locks of hair." Ibid., p. 219. Ovid's
brief account thus preserves a curious memento of the goddess as comet, soul,
feather, and lock of hair.

9Pausanias 8:47:5. See also G. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und
Religionsgeschichte (Munich, 1975), Vol. 2, p. 1201.

1Deut. 32:10; Prov. 7:2; Psalms 17:8

2E. Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary (New York, 1978), Vol. I, p.
471.

3Rig Veda 10: 40: 9. See also the discussion in M. Bloomfield, "Contributions
to the Interpretation of the Veda," American Journal of Philology 17:4 (1896),
pp. 399-408.

4S. Mercer, The Pyramid Texts (New York, 1952), Vol. 2, p. 52.

5In J. Frazer, The New Golden Bough (New York, 1964), p. 267.

6J. Bremmer, The Early Greek Conceptions of the Soul (Princeton, 1983), p. 17.
Note here the fact that Psyche, "soul", could also be personified as a
goddess.

7K. F. Smith, "Pupula Duplex," in Studies in Honor of B. L. Gildersleeve
(Baltimore, 1902), p. 295.

8Ibid., p. 295.

1Hesiod, Theogony 924-5.

2This tradition is found already in Pindar. See the discussion in G. S. Kirk,
The Nature of Greek Myths (New York, 1982), p. 120.

3H. Liddell & R. Scott, Greek-English Lexikon (New York, 1897), p. 835.

4R. Onians, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle: The Origins of European Thought
(New York, 1973), p. 165. See also the discussion on pp. 100-106.

5Ibid., pp. 512-513. Witness also the prehistoric practice of trephining; i.
e., the drilling of holes in the skull.

6Onians, op cit., pp. 163-164. Nor is it without interest to find that
Caesar's soul, according to several Latin writers, was identified with the
planet Venus. See Propertius IV:6:59. Talbott and I have elsewhere suggested
that the legend surrounding the soul of Julius Caesar represents a
degenerative version of the myth(s) surrounding the death of Quetzalcoatl and
Osiris. See E. Cochrane, "Venus in Ancient Myth and Language," AEON I:1
(1988), pp. 40-43. Note here that the word genius is an apparent cognate of
the Arabian jinn or ginn, meaning soul. Arabian tradition, significantly,
traces the origin of the Jinn to the Morning Star. See V. Newall, The
Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Magic (New York, 1974), p. 108. This tradition
offers a close parallel to the Latin tradition that Venus was the abode of
blessed souls. See R. Van Den Brock, The Myth of the Phoenix (Leiden, 1972),
p. 271.

1E. Cochrane, "On Comets and Kings," op cit., pp. 56-57.

2P. Brown, Comets, Meteorites and Men (New York, 1973), p. 18.

3R. Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia (Cambridge,
1933), Vol. 1, p. 127.

4J. Frazer, The Golden Bough: The Dying God (London, 1920), p. 64.

5E. Cochrane, "On Comets and Kings," AEON II:1 (1989), pp. 67-68; D. Talbott,
"Mother Goddess and Warrior Hero," AEON I:5 (1988), pp. 41-52.

6It will be recognized that the author is hereby departing from the scenario
reconstructed by Velikovsky. We intend to return to the subject of Zeus'
identity in a future essay, at which time we will also address the fundamental
thesis of Worlds in Collision at greater length. That the planet Mars also
played an integral role in this configuration has been the subject of numerous
articles by Talbott and myself.

7The severance of the sacred lock also marked a turning point in the career of
the Martian hero. We will explore this motive in a future monograph.

1Iliad I:206. That the epithet belonged to the oldest conception of the
goddess was the opinion of Dummler, "Athena," RE, op cit., p. 1990.

2K. Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks (London, 1982), p. 128. It is significant
that statues of Athena had the peculiarity that their eyes were painted green,
not unlike the figurines associated with the Ishtar-temple at Tell Brak.

3See the Mayan name for Venus, Nohoch Ich, "Great Eye", for example. The same
belief is apparent in the Polynesian Islands, where Venus was known as the
"Eye of Tane." See E. Cochrane & D. Talbott, "When Venus was a Comet," op
cit., pp. 14-16.

4D. Talbott & E. Cochrane, "On the Nature of Cometary Symbolism," op cit., p.
24. See also the discussion of this imagery in Talbott, op cit., pp. 57-59.

5W. Krickeberg, "Mesoamerica," in Pre-Columbian American Religions (New York,
1969), p. 52.

6Jacobsen, op cit., p. 57.

7See the discussion of C. Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis (Princeton, 1977),
pp. 288-289. That this association goes back to the Latin cult of Venus is
probable. See J. Puhvel, Comparative Mythology (Baltimore, 1989), p. 160, for
the association of Venus and the color green.

8F. Leverett, Lexikon of the Latin Language (Boston, 1850), p. 945.

9Prometheus Bound 670

1See also the epithets Kappotas and Kataibates. Prehn, "Keraunos," RE, op
cit., p. 270.

2Burkert, op cit., p. 126.

3C. Blinkenberg, The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore (Cambridge, 1911),
p. 32.

4Ibid., p. 13. For a similar opinion see the extensive researches of G. A.
Wainright: "In religion the meteorite and the thunderbolt are the same thing."
"Letopolis," J. of Egyptian Archaeology, 18 (1932), p. 161.

5Worner, op cit., pp. 3448-3449.

6J. Harrison, Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion and Themis (New York,
1966), pp. 87-88.

7Blinkenberg, op cit., p. 114.

8"I only of all goddesses do know to ope the chamber where his thunderbolts
lie stored and sealed." Eumenides 827

1Agamemnon 466.

2G. Murray, The Collected Plays of Euripedes (London, 1954), p. 35.

3Theogony 141

4W. Schwartz, Indogermanischer Volksglaube (Berlin, 1885), pp. 169-179.

5Ibid., p. 167.

6E. Cochrane & D. Talbott, "When Venus was a Comet," KRONOS XII:1 (Winter
1987), pp. 14-16.