Rotation Stoppage

The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive
[Quoted by Immanuel Velikovsky in Worlds in Collision, 1950].

1.The aborigines of British North Borneo, even today, declare that the sky was originally low, and that six suns perished, and at present the world is illuminated by the seventh sun. [Worlds in Collision, p.52]

2. And he said in the sight of Israel. Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. So the sun stood still in the midst of the heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day (Joshua 10: 12-13). [Worlds in Collision, p.55]

3. The quotation in the Bible from the Book of Jasher is laconic and may give the impression that the phenomenon of the motionless sun and moon was local, seen only in Palestine between the valleys of Ajalon and Gibeon. But the cosmic character of the prodigy is pictured in a thanksgiving prayer ascribed to Joshua: 'Sun and moon stood still in heaven.' [Worlds in Collision, p.59]

4. In the Mexican annals it is stated that the world was deprived of light and the sun did not reappear for a fourfold night. [Worlds in Collision, p. 62]

5. Sahagun, the Spanish savant who came to America a generation after Columbus and gathered the traditions of the aborigines, wrote that at the time of one cosmic catastrophe the sun rose only a little way over the horizon and remained there without moving; the moon also stood still. [Worlds in Collision, p.62]

6. In the manuscripts of Avila and Molina, who collected the traditions of the Indians of the New World, it is related that the sun did not appear for five days, a cosmic collision of stars preceded the cataclysm; people and animals tried to escape to mountain caves. 'Scarcely had they reached there, when the sea, breaking out of bounds following a terrifying shock, began the rise of the pacific coast. But as the sea rose, filling the valleys and the plains around, the mountain of Ancasmarca rose too, like a ship on the waves. During the five days that this cataclysm lasted, the sun did not show its face and the earth remained in darkness.' [Worlds in Collision, p.76]

7. According to the Lapland cosmogonic story ...the angry God spoke, 'I shall reverse the world, I shall bid the rivers flow upward; I shall cause the sea to gather itself up into a towering wall which I shall hurl upon your wicked earth-children, and thus destroy them and all life. ...(Jubmel) with one strong upheaval, made the earth-lands all turn over.' [Worlds in Collision, p.88]

8. The Finns tell in their Kalevala that the support of the sky gave way and a spark of fire kindled a new sun and a new moon. [Worlds in Collision, p.103]