Restoring Order

4,000 years ago, the people of Egypt knew that the sun was a great ship, a barge, that travelled daily across the sky, and then descended into the underworld. Aboard the ship were the righteous dead, along with a collection of gods and goddesses, all led by the great sun-god Ra. Each night the ship was attacked by a great serpent, enemy of Ra, who must be repelled by the crew. This would ensure that Ra was) not be killed by the Serpent, and the sun would arise again in the morning. Priests and their congregations would engage in rituals to assist Ra and help protect the ship from the Serpent 

The name of the great Serpent was 'Apophis', emblem of darkness and chaos, associated with earthquakes, thunder, storms, and death. In some of the Egyptian creation myths - which are somewhat similar to the Judeo-Christian myths in Genesis - Apophis "swam in the dark waters of undifferentiated chaos" before the moment of creation. The Serpent is, in fact, the antithesis of creation, differentiation, the distinction between light and darkness, land and sea, male and female; its dearest wish is to obliterate all order and return to the chaos before time

Some bright spark thought 'Apophsis' would be a good name for an asteroid that, when it was first discovered twenty years ago, seemed to have a non-zero chance of hitting earth when it drops by on (read this carefully!) Friday 13th April 2029. Apophis is an elongated shape around 450M by 170M and weighs 40-60 million tonnes. If it hits us, that's game over. The chance of a collision was soon shown to be a false alarm but, until 2006, there remained the possibility that earth's gravity in 2029 would divert Apophis into a lethal path on which it would return, incredibly, exactly seven years later on April 13, 2036. Apophis would prefer that, as it is a Sunday! 

We are told it's OK, there is no chance of this happening, but it is coming so close that it is only 10% of the distance to the moon, within the orbit of some communication satellites. It will be easily visible to the naked eye. I can't help feeling there must be some unpredictability there. Has the Smart-Alec who came up with the name not heard of 'tempting the gods of fate'? 

After another charming interlude of thunder and storms, the sky cleared over the brewery stables, but the still-angry clouds provide a dramatic backdrop to the serried ranks of scaffolding poles - a fine symbol of the restoration of order from the undifferentiated chaos caused by the fire