2 Exodus 8 : 17. s Exodus 8 : 24. * Philo Vita Mosis i. 23.
>*
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darkness was sent upon the country and 'locusts came, and caterpillars, and that without number, and did eat up all the herbs." "Their land brought forth frogs in abundance, in the chambers of their kings," and "there came divers sorts of flies, and lice in all their coasts."
The Amalekites left Arabia because of "ants of the smallest kind" and wandered toward Canaan and Egypt at the same time that the Israelites went from Egypt toward the desert and Canaan.
In the Chinese annals describing the time of Yahou, from which I quoted previously, it is said that when the sun did not set for ten days and the forests of China were destroyed by fire, multitudes of loathsome vermin were bred in the entire land. N. During their wanderings in the desert, the Israelites were plagued by serpents.5 A generation later, hornets preceded the Israelites under Joshua, plaguing the land of Canaan and driving entire nations from their domiciles.6
robin-bobin
The inhabitants of the islands in the South Seas relate that when the clouds lay only a few feet from the ground and "the sky was so close to the earth that men could not walk," "myriads of dragonflies with their wings severed the clouds confining the heavens to the earth." 7
After the close of the Middle Kingdom, the Egyptian standard bore the emblem of a fly.
^ When Venus sprang out of Jupiter as a comet and flew very close to the earth, it became entangled in the embrace of the earth. The internal heat developed by the earth and the scorching gases of the comet were in themselves sufficient to make the vermin of the earth propagate at a very feverish rate. Some of the plagues, like the plague of the frogs ("the land brought forth frogs") or of the locusts, must be ascribed to such causes. Anyone who has experienced a khamsin (sirocco), an electrically charged wind blowing from the desert,
B Numbers 21 : 6, 7; Deuteronomy 8 : 15.
• Exodus 23 : 28; Deuteronomy 7 : 20.
7 Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia, I, 45.
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knows how, during the few days that the wind blows, the ground around the villages begins to teem with vermin.8
The question arises here whether or not the comet Venus infested the earth with vermin which it may have carried in its trailing atmosphere in the form of larvae together with stones and gases.
It is significant that all around the world peoples have associated the planet Venus with flies.
In Ekron, in the land of the Philistines, there was erected a magnificent temple to Baal Zevuv, the god of the fly. In the ninth century King Ahaziah of Jezreel, after he was injured in an accident, sent his emissaries to ask advice of this god at Ekron and not of the oracle at Jerusalem.9 This Baal Zevuv is Beelzebub of the Gospels.10
Ahriman, the god of darkness who battled with Ormuzd, the god of light, is compared in the Bundahis to a fly. Of the flies that filled the earth buried in gloom it is said: "His multitudes of flies scatter themselves over the world that is poisoned through and through." u Ares (Mars) in the Iliad calls Athene "dog-fly." "The gods clashed with a mighty din, and the wide earth rang, and round about great heaven pealed as with a trumpet." And Ares spoke to Athene: "Wherefore now again, thou dog-fly, art making gods to clash with gods in strife?" 12
The people of Bororo in central Brazil call the planet Venus "the sand fly," 13 an appellation similar to that which Homer used for Athene. The Bantu tribes of central Africa relate that the
"sand fly brought fire from the sky," 14 which appears to be a reference to the Promethean role of Beelzebub, the planet Venus.
The Zend-Avesta, describing the battle of Tistrya, "the leader of
8 A change in atmospheric conditions can cause galloping germination among insects.
9 II Kings 1 : 2 ff.
i» Matthew 10 : 25; 12 : 24, 27; Mark 7 : 22; Luke 11 : 15 ff.
11 Bundahis, Chap. Ill, Sec. 12. Cf. H. S. Nyberg, "Die Religionen des alten Iran," Mitteil. d.
Vorderasiat.-agypt. Ges., Vol. 43 (1938), pp. 28 ff.
12 Iliad xxi. 385 ff. In Greek mythology, Metis, pregnant with Pallas, took the shape of a fly.
13 See Kunike, "Sternmythologie," Welt und Mensch, IX-X. "A. Werner, African Mythology (1925), p. 135.
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the stars against the planets" (Darmesteter), refers to worm-stars that "fly between the earth and heaven," and that supposedly signify the meteorites.15 Possibly it is a reference to their infesting property.
This idea of contaminating comets is found in a belief of the Mexicans described by Sahagun:
"The Mexicans called the comet citlalin popoca which means a smoking star. . . . These natives called the tail of such a star citlalin tlamina, exhalation of the comet; or, literally, 'the star shoots a dart.' They believed that when such a dart fell on a living organism, a hare, a rabbit, or any other animal, worms suddenly formed in the wound and made the animal unfit to serve as food.
robin-bobin
It was for this reason that they took great care to cover themselves during the night so as to protect themselves from this inflaming emanation." 16
The Mexicans thus thought that larvae from the emanation of the comet fell on all living things.
As I have already mentioned, they called Venus a "smoking star." Sahagun says also that at the rising of the Morning Star, the Mexicans used to shut the chimneys and other apertures in order to prevent mishap from penetrating into the house together with the light of the star.17
"^/The persistence with which the planet Venus is associated with a fly in the traditions of the peoples of both hemispheres, also the emblems carried by the Egyptian priests and the temple services conducted in honor of the planet-god "of the fly," create the impression that the flies in the tail of Venus were not merely the earthly brood, swarming in heat like other vermin, but guests from another planet.
The old question, whether there is life on other planets, has been debated time and again without much progress.18 Atmospheric and thermal conditions are so different on other planets that it seems incredible that the same forms of life exist there as on the earth; on is Zend-Avesta, Pt. II, p. 95.
16 Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Espana, Bk. VIII, Chap. 3.
«Ibid.
18 See H. Spencer Jones, Life on Other Worlds (1940) and Sir James Jeans,
"Is There Life on Other Worlds?" Science, June 12, 1942.
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the other hand, it is wrong to conclude that there is no life on them at all.
Modern biologists toy with the idea that microorganisms arrive on the earth from interstellar spaces, carried by the pressure of light. Hence, the idea of the arrival of living organisms from interplanetary spaces is not new. Whether there is truth in this supposition of larval contamination of the earth is anyone's guess. The ability of many small insects and their larvae to endure great cold and heat and to live in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen renders not entirely improbable the hypothesis that Venus (and also Jupiter, from which Venus sprang) may be populated by vermin.
Venus in the Folklore of the Indians
Primitive peoples often are bound by inflexible customs and beliefs that date back hundreds of generations. The traditions of many primitive races speak of a "lower sky" in the past, a 'larger sun," a swifter movement of the sun across the firmament, a shorter day that became longer after the sun was arrested on its path.
World conflagration is a frequent motif in folklore. According to the Indians of the Pacific coast of North America the "shooting star" and the "fire drill" set the world aflame. In the burning world one "could see nothing but waves of flames; rocks were burning, the ground was burning, everything was burning. Great rolls and piles of smoke were rising; fire flew up toward the sky in flames, in great sparks and brands. . . . The great fire was blazing, roaring all over the earth, burning rocks, earth, trees, people, burning everything. . . . Water rushed in ... it rushed in like a crowd of rivers, covered the earth, and put out the fire as it rolled on toward the south. . . . Water rose mountain high." A celestial monster flew with "a whistle in his mouth; as he moved forward he blew it with all his might, and made a terrible noise. . . . He came flowing and blowing; he looked like an enormous bat with wings spread . . . [his] feathers waved up and down, [and]