A new comet

from David Adams

Comet NEOWISE [technically called “C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE)”] was first spotted by NASA’s NEOWISE satellite space telescope on March 27,  326 miles above the earth’s surface. The comet went around the sun, passing within 25.7 million miles of the sun on July 3, and will reach its closet point to Earth in its orbit next week. The comet will be visible to the naked eye through July. From California it is mostly visible in the northeast or, soon, in the northwest sky, a little above the horizon. It is recommended to first use binoculars to spot it. Here is a site that guides one how to see it and offer as few more photos, etc.:
https://earthsky.org/space/how-to-see-comet-c2020-f3-neowise

I stayed up very late and viewed it last night from our back deck (about 4 am), both with my naked eye and binoculars, and its striking form showed up very clearly. Including its vertically dropping “split” tail, it is rather large, perhaps equivalent to the size of 7-8 stars in a row, but not quite as bright as large stars. Supposedly, Comet NEOWISE might be visible again from Earth, but not until around the year 8,786! 

Here’s a couple of significant anthroposophical quotations about the meanings and tasks of comets, mostly sent by Kathleen Fenton (a topic I am also trying to research further):

From Elizabeth Vreede:

“Comets represent an element that does not wholly enter the usual sphere of cosmic law, although they still contain a trace of the direct working of spiritual powers, indeed, of the very highest — the Seraphim and Cherubim. Before ordinary law may be broken through, the very highest power and insight is required. The various comets, indeed, are agents of a very special nature in our planetary system, their polar antithesis being in the moons. Just as the moons are a kind of corpse which the planetary system trails along with it, so, on the other side, the comets may be spoken of as constant purifiers of the spiritual atmosphere within the solar system. In earlier times men thought of them as the ‘scavengers of God,’ and many superstitions have gathered around them.

“To the eye of Spirit, the mission of the comets is perpetually to expel impure astral forces from the Cosmos or to introduce new impulses.”

Also there is this little summary by Kathleen Fenton of some of the things Rudolf Steiner said about comets in Lecture 4 of The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric:

He says “All the regularity of the ordinary round of earthly life is connected with the lunar influence; the entry of an elemental impulse, which always incorporates something new, is related to the influence of comets. So we see that these seemingly erratic heavenly wanderers have their proper place and significance in the structure of our universe.”

He says that individual comets have specific tasks and dissolve once they have completed them. Each comet impresses “its own particular essence on human nature, so that this essence and human nature take a step in the development of the human ‘I’ whenever the comet approaches the earth.” In the case of Halley’s, “this step leads the ‘I’ outward to physical concepts,” an influence RS says we need to resist, as it mitigates against the spiritual perspective needed now. He says when Halley’s returns (which it does every 75 years or so, though I believe he was referring to April 1910, the month following his lecture), it could prove an “evil guest…”

Speaking more generally he says: “whenever the human ‘I’ takes a step forward, the physical and ether bodies must be transformed in a corresponding way so that the whole human being evolves. . . . Comets work on the human physical and ether bodies in such a way that they actually create organs, delicate organs suited to further development of human I-being, especially as it has developed since the Christ impulse was integrated with the earth.”

Here’s a further Steiner statement about comets and Michael: “You are, of course, familiar with the phenomenon of sunspots, which appear with a certain regularity. Dark spots are observed on the Sun. These sunspots and their meaning are the cause of much dispute in material science, but a more accurate research would reveal the following. A constant impulse arises from within the Sun to throw out Sun-substance into the universe through these dark portals. And the sun-substance thus thrown out appears within our solar system in the form of comets, meteors, and shooting stars. Now it is particularly in our age that the beings who rule over the universe from within the Sun are casting forth these comets, meteors, and shooting stars. . . . In our time it is the impulses contained in the iron thrown out from the Sun that have special significance for human beings. And these impulses are used by him whom we know as the Michael Spirit, in the service of the spiritual in the cosmos. . . . This cosmic iron, in its spiritual nature, makes it possible for the Michael Spirit to meditate between the supersensible and the material on earth. . . . When a person crosses the threshold with supersensible sight and instead of directing their gaze to maters which concern them personally turns their attention to the great affairs of the universe which underlie our whole civilization, then they see warfare and battle, spiritual battle. There is strife, there is war and conflict in the spiritual, behind the veils of existence. And the iron which, even to the point of physical manifestation, is thrown out by the Sun Spirits into the cosmos – with this iron Michael arms himself for his task in the cosmic war. For Michael has the task of helping humanity to go forward in the right way in face of these powers of strife behind the veils of civilization.”

Rudolf Steiner, Supersensible Man, 2nd ed. (London: 1961), p. 62 (Nov. 17, 1923);  (This quotation continues with relating iron in our blood and the cosmic iron to maintaining human freedom.)