"My grandchild, some of the signs have come to pass. The stars have fallen among the people, but the Morning Star is still good to us, for we continue to live. . . . The command for the ending of all things will be given by the North Star, and the South Star will carry out the command. . . .
When the time comes for the ending of the world, the stars will again fall to the earth."
In this narrative of the Pawnee Indians, elements are brought together which, as we know now, actually belong together. The planet Venus established the present order on the earth and placed the north and south polar stars in their places. The Pawnees believe that the future destruction of the world depends on the planet Venus. When the end of the world will come, the North and South poles will change places. In the past the South Star left its place a few times and came up higher, bringing about a shifting of the poles, but on these occasions the polar stars did not reverse their positions.
The change in the color of the sun and the moon was conditioned by the presence of cometary gases between the earth and these bodies; it is referred to in the Prophets of the Scriptures.
Stones falling from the sky belong to the same complex of phenomena.
The Pawnee Indians are not versed in astronomy. For one hundred and twenty generations father has transmitted to son and grandfather to grandchild the story of the past and the signs of future destruction.
The belief that the world is endangered by the planet Venus plays an important role in the ritual of the Skidi Pawnee Indians of Nebraska.
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robin-bobin
Next in rank to Tirawa (Jupiter) stands the Morning Star. "Tirawa gave most of his power to the Morning Star." 9 "Through her four assistants, Wind, Cloud, Lightning, and Thunder, she transmitted the mandates of Tirawa to the people upon earth." Next in rank to the Morning Star
"were the gods of four world-quarters, who stood in the northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest and supported the heavens. Next in rank was the North Star. Below these in turn were the Sun and Moon." "The greater part of the heavenly gods were identified with stars. The sacred bundle of each village was believed to have been given to its ancestors by one of these heavenly beings."
The ceremony of sacrifice to the Morning Star is the main ritual of the Pawnee Indians. It is a
"dramatization of the acts performed by the Morning Star." A human offering was sacrificed when Venus "appeared especially bright or in years when there was a comet in the sky." The act of appeasing Venus when a comet was seen in the sky takes on clearer meaning in the light of the present research.10
The sacrificial procedure took the following form. A captive girl was turned over by her captor to a man who would howl like a wolf. She was kept by the guardian until the day of the sacrifice.
"Her guardian then painted her whole body red and dressed her in a black skirt and robe. His face and hair were painted red, and a fan-shaped headdress of twelve eagle feathers was attached to his hair." "This was the costume in which the Morning Star usually appeared in visions."
The scaffold was erected between four poles that pointed to the four quarters (northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest). A few words were pronounced about the darkness that threatened to endure forever, and in the name of the Morning Star a command was addressed to the poles to keep upright "so that you will always hold up the heavens."
The chief priest then "painted the right half of her body red and
9 This and the following quotations are from The Thunder Ceremony of the Pawnee and The Sacrifice to the Morning Star, compiled by R. Linton from unpublished notes of G. A. Dorsey, Field Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, Chicago (1922). io See the Section, "The Fifty-two Year Period."
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the left half black. A headdress of twelve black-tipped eagle feathers, arranged like a fan, was fastened on her head."
"At the moment the Morning Star appeared, two men came forward bearing firebrands." The breast of the girl was cut open and the heart taken out, and "the guardian thrust his hand into the thoracic cavity and painted his face with the blood." The people around shot arrows into the body of the victim. "Boys too young to draw a bow were helped by their fathers or mothers."
Four bundles were laid northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest of the scaffold and were ignited.
"There seem to have been astronomical beliefs connected with the sacrifices."
These human sacrifices, as described by Dorsey, were executed by the Indians only a few decades ago. They recall the Mexican sacrifices to the Morning Star described by the authors of the sixteenth century.
The meaning of these ceremonies and their relation to the planet Venus, especially in the years of a comet, the references to the cardinal points and to prolonged darkness, the anxiety that the sky should not fall, and even such details as the black and red colors so important in the ceremonies, become understandable now that we know the role Venus played in world upheavals.
CHAPTER 10
The Synodical Year of Venus
THE PLANET Venus, at the present time, revolves around the sun in 288 days, which is the siderial year of the planet. However, seen from the earth, which revolves around the sun on a larger orbit and at a lower speed, Venus returns to the same position with respect to the earth after 584 days, which is its synodical year. It rises before the sun, earlier every day for seventy-one days, until it reaches the western elongation or its westernmost point away from the rising sun. Each morning thereafter the Morning Star rises lower and lower and for 221 days robin-bobin
approaches the superior conjunction. About a month before the end of this period, it is eclipsed by the rays of the sun, and for over sixty days it is not seen because of the sun's rays: it is behind the sun or in superior conjunction. Then it appears for a moment after the setting sun, being now the Evening Star and east of the western sun. For 221 nights it retreats from the middle point of the superior conjunction, and beginning with the evening on which it first appears as an Evening Star, each night it appears farther from the setting sun until it reaches the eastern elongation.
Then for seventy-one nights it approaches the sun. Finally it enters the inferior conjunction, when it is between the earth and the sun. It is usually invisible for one or two days, and thereafter appears west of the rising sun and is again the Morning Star.
These movements of Venus and their exact duration have been known to the people of the Orient and the Occident for over two thousand years. Actually a "Venus year," which follows the synodical
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revolution of Venus, was employed in calendars of the Old and New World alike. Five synodical years of Venus equal 2919.6 days, whereas eight years of 365 days equal 2920 days, and eight Julian years of 365/4 days equal 2922 days. In other words, in four years there is a difference of approximately one day between the Venus and the Julian calendars.
As I shall show in more detail in my reconstruction of ancient history, the Egyptians of the second part of the first pre-Christian millennium observed the Venus year. A decree published in Egyptian and in Greek by the conclave of priests which took place in Canopus in the reign of Ptolemy III (Euergetes) in —239 was intended to reform the calendar "according to the present arrangement of the world" and "an amendment of the faults of the heaven," replacing the year regulated by the rising of the star Isis—and Pliny says that Isis is the planet Venus x—with a year regulated by the rising of the fixed star Sothis (Sirius); this would make a difference of one day in four years, so that, as the decree says, "the festivals of the winter should not arrive in the summer because of the change of a day every four years in the rising of the star Isis." 2