Doomsday Deferred

The day of astrological doom passed this week without global disaster. It was not even a good heavenly show. Seven planets bunched, as predicted, in the same small part of the sky, but since the sun was one of those "planets," its dazzling rays spoiled the spectacle. The moon, also a planet by astrological reckoning, got into the act too, but when it covered the sun's face, the resulting eclipse could be seen only on the watery Pacific side of the earth, where there were relatively few spectators.

Invisible or not, the great planetary conjunction chilled superstitious souls all over the world. For weeks Indian soothsayers had been predicting floods, earthquakes and several other forms of calamity (TIME, Jan. 19). Some of the doomsayers saw only two days of danger; some warned that the world could not relax for five nervous years. In Sikkim, the scheduled marriage of the maharajah's son to New York Post-Debutante Hope Cooke was put off until 1963. The ill-omened year 1962, said the royal astrologers, was no time for a princely wedding.

Arizona Refuge. The orgy of superstition was not peculiar to Asia. Even sophisticated New York had its worriers, some of whom called the Hayden Planetarium for reassurance. In Southern California, western capital of cockeyed cults, local astrologers did their best business in years. Like their Indian colleagues, they predicted natural and unnatural disasters. One woman repaired to a vacant lot and pitched a tent furnished with a time capsule containing, among other necessities, a ten-dollar bill. A group from Santa Cruz fled to the Arizona mountain hamlet of Cleator, sure they had chosen one of the twelve places on earth that would be spared by the onrushing disaster. In Los Angeles, radio station KNX scheduled a 55-min. program on the earth's astrological peril. Said Producer Sydney Omarr: "People are taking astrology seriously nowadays. What goes on upstairs has an effect down here.''

Fact is, people have been taking astrology seriously for at least 5,000 years. Stone Age man noticed that the height of the sun's daily passage controlled the seasons and therefore man's food supply. He realized that the moon had an influence on the tides. Many primitive priesthoods concluded that the five visible planets--Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn--must have their effects too. This faith has never died. Astrology has had its ups and downs, but even in the modern age of science, millions of otherwise rational people believe that the motions of the planets have profound control over human affairs. So many people try to read the future from the stars that even the Vatican weekly, Osservatore della Domenica, was moved to warn that serious belief in astrology is a "grave sin." The astrological faithful attach special importance to conjunctions,* which bring two or more planets close together. On the rare occasions when all seven huddle close, astrologers believe (or say they believe) that the end of the world is near.

Astronomers, on the other hand, pay close scientific attention when a planet passes behind the moon or across the face of the sun. For such events permit them to check the orbits of heavenly bodies. An eclipse of the sun by the moon is observed eagerly because the sun's faint corona is clearly visible during the few minutes when the sun's direct glare is shadowed. But astronomers get no scientific benefit from a close grouping of the planets, and since they are certain that the planets have no appreciable effect on the earth--in any arrangement--they pay little attention to planetary huddles.

Crisis in 1186. Even astronomers were willing to admit that this week's close grouping of planets was unusual. At one time, all seven planets (counting the sun and moon) were within 16DEG of each other. According to Astronomer Jean Meeus of the Kesselberg Observatory, Belgium, this was closer than they had come since September A.D. 1186, when they bunched within 12DEG. No recorded disasters occurred on that ancient afternoon, but astrologers explain that in that 12th century conjunction the moon did not completely cover the face of the sun.

Astrologers will surely find a way to explain why the world also survived this week's crisis. Then they will begin preparing for A.D. 2000, the next time that the seven heavenly bodies will huddle closely. But the world will have to get over another hurdle first. According to some interpretations of the famed 16th century astrologer Nostradamus, the earth will be destroyed in 1999.

*To astronomers, conjunction is the passage of one body through the longitude of another. To astrologers it is merely a close approach.

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