Comets

Throughout human history comets have been regarded as auguries of disasters such as famine, plague, or war. The most recent outbreak of widespread concern that a comet might portend disaster occurred in 1973 when the comet Kohoutek was announced. For the first time in more than a generation, there arose the possibility that a bright comet, plainly visible with the naked eye, would be seen by the majority of people. A variety of speculations on the spiritual and prophetic implications of the comet were made, but the comet did not prove to be as spectacular as hoped, and none of the predicted changes signaled by its appearance occurred. No such speculation seems to have occurred at the time of the return of Halley's Comet in 1986.

In the past century comets have also figured in speculations about the history of the earth. In Ragnarok: the Age of Fire and Gravel (1883), Ignatius Donnelly assembled legends and religious beliefs tending to show that the earth was affected by a collision with a comet that created the Pleistocene Ice Age. In the 1950s, Immanuel Velikovsky connected the theme of a comet disaster with biblical prophecy in his book Worlds in Collision.

Sources:

Donnelly, Ignatius. Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel. New York: Harper's, 1883. Reprinted as The Destruction of Atlantis: Ragnarok. Blauvelt, N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1971.

Melton, J. Gordon. "Comet Kouhotek: Fizzle of the Century." Fate 27, no. 5 (May 1974): 58-64.

Velikovsky, Immanuel. Worlds in Collision. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1950.