The Imagined Sky - Cultural Perspectives - Darrelyn Gunzburg
Comets and Meteors: The Ignored Explanations for Myths and the Apocalypse
The Imagined Sky - Cultural Perspectives - Darrelyn Gunzburg
Patrick McCafferty
Universität Leipzig
Description
In their attempts to understand the origins of humanity’s corpus of otherworldly tales, scholars of mythology have recognised deities of the sun, moon, planets and stars. Comets and meteors have been largely ignored, however, despite their importance in human culture, their obvious parallels with many aspects of myths, and their known physical effects. Of all the celestial bodies, comets and meteors have the greatest ability to inspire the imagination, leaving us with myths of monsters and dragons, of thunderbolt-throwing deities, of fallen angels wielding swords of light, and of battles between forces of good and evil in the heavens. Comets and meteors are clearly important contributors to the development of mythology (the Cometary Paradigm). When we consider myths in the light of the Cometary Paradigm, important conclusions are reached about the role of comets and meteors in human culture, the value of mythology to modern society, the origins of apocalyptic fears, and humanity’s role on this planet.