Aurora : Northern Lights in Mythology,History and Science

Edinburgh: Floris Press / Anthroposophic Press. Very Good/Very Good. 1985. First Edition. Hard Cover. Sm 4to 0863150209 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Green cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. Illustrated by Torbjorn Lovgren,Colour Photographs. 167 pages clean and tight. Flowing light and ethereal colour without sunlight move mysteriously over wide spaces of the northern and southern night skies, resembling nothing ever seen on earth, except perhaps in dreams. The author of this book, a Norwegian, has given years of study to the colour dynamics and mythology of the aurora. He describes the impressions made on various northern communities from early times by these celebrated lights. Following the history of their scientific descriptions from the early Greeks to the latest results of geophysics, he links the mythology with the scientist's view of the aurora as a phenomenon taking place whenever the highspeed plasma of the solar wind interacts with the elctro-magnetic field of the earth. This interaction causes the simultaneous iridescent glow of the aurora around both the Arctic and Antarctic. Gradually a new, holistic image of a radiant earth emerges, disclosing the universal potential of the planet: an image of a sunlike star, becoming self-luminous through cosmic influence. .