Alan F. Alford - Exploded Planet Hypothesis of Myth

Exploded Planet Hypothesis of Myth

The ‘exploded planet hypothesis’ of myth first appeared in Alford’s book The Phoenix Solution, and was followed up in his subsequent books When The Gods Came Down and The Atlantis Secret.

In The Phoenix Solution, Alford noted various Egyptian texts which appeared to describe ‘the fall of the sky’ and the ensuing fertilisation of the earth. Drawing on the controversial work of astronomer Tom Van Flandern, he interpreted this mythological drama (which is well known also in Sumerian mythology) as a theorised (but not observed) planetary explosion which took place millions of years in the past. Much of Egyptian mythology, he claimed, was based on the imagined ‘death and resurrection’ of this long-lost planet, which was personified as a kind of creator-god.

In When The Gods Came Down, Alford extended the scope of his study to Mesopotamian and biblical mythology. In this book, he separated his own exploded planet hypothesis of myth from Van Flandern’s exploded planet hypothesis of science. He argued that the Sumerian religion had been an ‘exploded planet cult’ and that its central myth had been encoded in tales of the gods coming down from the sky – of the deluge and the creation of man – of the wars between gods of heaven and earth – and of the sacred marriage of the god and the goddess. One of his most controversial claims was that the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ allegorised the fate of the heavenly planet, and that Jesus in all probability never existed unless as the lead actor in an ancient Passion play.

In The Atlantis Secret, Alford underlined the importance of cataclysms in ancient Greek myth and suggested that the Greek gods had inherited many characteristics from the older Mesopotamian deities. He cautioned, however, that the ancients’ belief in exploded planets did not require an actual explosion. Instead, he drew on the work of Victor Clube and Bill Napier to suggest that comets, fireballs and meteorites had been closely observed at the dawn of civilisation, and that the ancient sages had deduced an exploded planet, correctly or incorrectly, from first principles; the sages had then attributed the great cataclysm to the beginning of time. It should be noted, here, that there is an implied criticism of Velikovsky’s historicist interpretation of cataclysm myths.

Critics of Alford’s theory say that it is atheistic, that planets do not explode, or that the ancients did not even understand the concept of a planet. More pertinent are the critics who suggest he is wrong to see the exploded planet as a monolithic explanation of all myth.