As extraordinary heavenly phenomena that did not appear to follow the same
regular patterns as the stars or the planets, comets were traditionally regarded as signs
of unusually important events. In Western countries in particular, they were regarded
as omens of disaster—such as plagues, famines, and war. In China, they were also tra-
ditionally regarded as omens—either good or evil. To modern people who rarely look
at the night sky—much less ever having seen a comet—this explanation appears
unreasonable. To understand ancients’ response to comets, one must empathize with
them and understand that they saw celestial events as messages from the gods. Fur-
thermore, our generation has not had the opportunity to view any truly spectacular
comets—fiery visitors that in times past lit up the night sky with a spectacle of bril-
liance exceeding the glow of a full Moon. With these considerations in mind, it is eas-
ier to understand the response of the French surgeon Ambroise Paré to a comet that
appeared over Europe in 1528: “It appeared to be of great length and the color of
blood. At its summit was visible the figure of a bent arm, holding in its hand a great
sword as if ready to strike. On either side of the tail were seen a great number of axes,
knives, and bloodstained swords, among which were hideous human faces with beards
and bristling hair.” The comet was horrible and produced such great terror among the
common people that many died of fear and many others fell sick, as noted in David
Ritchie’s book Comets: The Swords of Heaven.
Many meteors are constituted from the residue of comets. This residual matter
is drawn into Earth’s gravitational field, burns up as it passes through the atmosphere,
and occasionally creates a visible flash that we call a falling or shooting star. Less fre-
quently, enough mass is left after the journey through the atmosphere for a meteor to
actually strike the surface of Earth. In this situation, the meteor becomes a meteorite.
Despite the importance that earlier generations of astrologers attributed to
comets, modern astrologers have tended to ignore them. However, ephemeredes of
such well-known comets as Halley’s exist, so it is possible to place at least these in
horoscopes and study their influence. It is also relevant to note that Chiron—a
large planetoid orbiting between Saturn and Uranus that has been given an extraor-
dinary amount of attention by contemporary astrologers—is a comet. It is thus
entirely possible that comet studies will find a place in modern astrology in the not-
too-distant future.Sources:
Brandt, John C. Comets: Readings from Scientific American.San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and
Co., 1981.
Krupp, E. C. Beyond the Blue Horizon: Myths and Legends of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets.
New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
Ritchie, David. Comets: The Swords of Heaven.New York: Plume, 1985.COMMANDING(OBEYING)
In traditional astrology, the commanding signs were Taurus through Virgo. The comple-
mentary signs, termed obeying, were Scorpio through Pisces. The commanding/obeying
schema was a way of designating equal distances from the Aries-Libra axis, rather than
an assertion about the characteristics of the relevant signs.Commanding (Obeying)
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