UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Is it possible that a famous author had secret access to ancient information surrounding the planet Mars? The story I’m sharing with you today revolves around none other than Jonathan Swift, the brains behind the classic novel Gulliver’s Travels. The book was first published in 1726, almost three hundred years ago. Before we get to the matter of Swift’s strange connection to Mars, though, let’s first take a look at the story-line of his famous novel. The planned, original title of Gulliver’s Travels was Travel into Several Remote Nations of the World in Four Parts…by Lemuel Gulliver. It’s hardly surprising that with a title like that the publisher chose to trim it down a bit! As for the story itself, it tells of the adventures of the aforementioned Lemuel Gulliver. We learn that he has a long affinity for the vast oceans of our world, that he is a skilled surgeon, and that he has traveled the planet, overseeing the crews of several ships. Swift’s story sees our hero head out to a series of tongue-twisting places, including Luggnagg, Laputa, and Brobdingnag, where adventures abound.

Mars’ moon, Phobos (NASA)

Although Swift’s acclaimed novel was first published in 1726, the man himself had been working on the story as far back as 1713. It wasn’t for a full seven years later that Swift finally decided to seriously get into the writing of what was, until then, a largely stalled manuscript. Swift certainly made up for lost time, however, toiling night and day to get the book whipped into good shape. He certainly did that. On reading Swift’s work, Benjamin Motte, a London publisher, eagerly decided to publish it. It was a most wise move: Gulliver’s Travels became a distinct bestseller. It’s still a crowd-puller to this day: in 2010 a big-bucks movie version, starring Jack Black, reaped in more than $200 million in the process. Now, we come to the matter – and the mystery – of Swift’s connection to Mars.

In Gulliver’s Travels, we learn that the people of Laputa – an island that Gulliver visits during the course of his worldwide trek – have “…discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary planet exactly three of its diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the center of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies.”

We might say that there is nothing particularly strange about all of this: after all, Mars does indeed have a pair of small satellites. Their names are Deimos and Phobos. So, why there is such a controversy surrounding Swift’s words? The answer is a fascinating and tantalizing one: Mars’ two moons were not discovered until 1877 – which was approximately a century and a half after Swift’s book was published. This begs an important and glaringly obvious question: how could Swift have known of the existence of the Martian moons long before anyone else? Certainly, in the 1700s there were no telescopes around at the time that could secure a viewing of the two moons. Not only that, Swift’s descriptions of Deimos and Phobos were not too dissimilar to the reality of the situation.

Deimos: Mars’ Other Moon

(NASA)

On this issue, astronomer David Darling says:”When the two Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, were eventually found, by Asaph Hall at the US Naval Observatory, their orbits proved to be quite similar to those described in Swift’s novel. Phobos is actually 6,000 km from the surface of Mars and revolves around Mars in 7.7 hours, whereas Swift gave the values 13,600 km and 10 hours, respectively. Deimos averages 20,100 kilometers from Mars and orbits in 30.3 hours; Swift gives 27,200 kilometers and 21.5 hours, respectively.” Adding even more intrigue to the story: Swift was not the only writer, in the 1700s, to address the matter of Mars’ two moons. They pop up in the pages of an early sci-fi story, Micromegas. It was written in 1750 by Voltaire, an acclaimed French philosopher and historian. Of course, the fact that Voiltaire’s story came after Swift’s makes it very likely that Voltaire simply decided to take a degree of inspiration from the pages of Gulliver’s Travels.

There is another possibility, too. A controversial – and now rightly dismissed – theory was postulated by a German astrologer and astronomer, Johannes Kepler, who was born in 1571 and who died in 1630. Kepler’s theory was that the numbers of moons that orbited the planets in our solar system adhered to a certain concept. Kepler, as a revered astronomer, concluded that neither Venus nor Mercury had moons. He was correct. Obviously, he knew that our planet has just one moon. And, in the world of Kepler, that meant Mars would likely have two moons. And Jupiter would have three, and Saturn four. And so on and so on. Today, we know that this idea has no merit to it at all. Was Kepler’s concept the cause of all the controversy surrounding the Martian moons? Was the whole matter a bizarre coincidence? Or, did Jonathan Swift have access to ancient secrets pertaining to a now-long-forgotten Martian race? They are questions that offer us a great deal of food for thought. So far, however, the questions remain unanswered.

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For millennia, we, the Human Race, have been intrigued by Mars. Indeed, a good case can be made that we have an absolute affinity to the Red Planet; an affinity that dictated the development of early religions and even the world of conflict, as NASA notes. NASA also states: “The ancient Greeks were fascinated by Mars. Its blood red color led them to attribute the planet to Ares, their god of war. When the Romans conquered the Greeks, they renamed the gods and the planet Ares became the planet Mars.” As for Mars, the god, N.S. Gill says: “Mars sired Romulus and Remus, making the Romans his children. He was usually called the son of Juno and Jupiter, just as Ares was taken to be the son of Hera and Zeus. The Romans named an area beyond the walls of their city for Mars, the Campus Martius ‘Field of Mars.'” Mars was important to the Roman Empire when it came to the matter of something that we, as a species, are all too aware of: warfare. And sacrifice, too, as Patti Wigington states: “Before going into battle, Roman soldiers often gathered at the temple of Mars Ultor (the avenger) on the Forum Augustus. The military also had a special training center dedicated to Mars, called the Campus Martius, where soldiers drilled and studied. Great horseraces were held at the Campus Martius, and after it was over, one of the horses of the winning team was sacrificed in Mars’ honor. The head was removed, and became a coveted prize among the spectators.”

Then, there’s the matter of the ties between Mars and the world of science-fiction. Take, for example, H.G. Wells’ classic sci-fi novel of 1897, The War of the Worlds. It’s a story which sees the human race up against an invasion by hostile extraterrestrials that live on the Red Planet. Moving on, there are Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic fantasy tales that chronicle the life of one John Carter. He’s a heroic, sword-wielding figure who has all kinds of adventures on faraway Mars, with the first story being published in 1912. Burroughs’ novels proved to be incredibly popular with the public of that era. They included A Princess on Mars; Swords of Mars; Synthetic Men on Mars; Thuvia, Maid of Mars; John Carter of Mars and…well…you surely get the picture.

On October 30, 1938, a radio-version of The War of the Worlds was broadcast on The Mercury Theater on the Air. It was directed by Hollywood legend, Orson Welles. So realistic was the drama, it led at least some of the listeners to believe that the Martians really were invading. In 1967, Hammer Film Productions released Quatermass and the Pit, the title of which was changed for American audiences to Five Million Years to Earth. It’s a gripping tale of ancient Martians who came to our world millions of years ago – and who genetically altered early, primitive humans. And, in a strange and very alternative way, the Martians of the movie are still wielding their strange, almost supernatural, powers in 1960s-era London, England, deep inside the tunnels of the London Underground rail-system.

In 1979, NBC broadcast a mini-series based on Ray Bradbury’s science-fiction novel, The Martian Chronicles. Mission to Mars was a big-bucks movie made in 2000 that starred Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins as astronauts who learn – to their amazement – that Mars is not the dead world that so many believe it to be. Then, in 2015, actor Matt Damon took on the role of astronaut Mark Watney in The Martian, a movie that saw Damon’s character forced to find a way to survive in the harsh environment of Mars. Moving away from the domain of sci-fi, there is the matter of the many and varied unmanned missions to Mars that have been undertaken by the United States, Russia, India, Japan, and the European Space Agency. The combined figure – of fly-bys, landings and orbits of Mars – now amounts to close to fifty. In other words, the world’s leading nations in the field of space-flight and astronomy have a deep interest in Mars. As a species, it’s almost as if we just cannot leave Mars alone, whether in mythology, history, science-fiction, or ambitious missions to the planet itself.

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