They call it the “Devil Comet” because that’s what, until very recently, it used to look a bit like: a fiery bolide with two horns.

It’s thought this (up to July) was due to ejecta from a notch of ice or rock in this comet that’s the size of a city (ten miles wide), and three times the size of Mount Everest.

While it no longer sprouts those double plumes,the space traveler has been erupting since, an unusually bright comet in a solar system that tallies tens of millions of comets, asteroids, and planetoids (most beyond Neptune; an estimated sixty-five million).

And it will be visible at the time of the solar eclipse on April 8.

The juxtaposition of eclipse and comet has fanned the flames of prophecy.

Perhaps with good reason.

For it is a time of darkness. It is a time in which many expect a preternatural dark, one day soon. It is a time of occultism.

Notes a site called APP: “It’s a scene that will strike many as magical or ominous. For some, it will also be highly spiritual. Across Northern New Jersey and throughout the world, many Wiccans, Pagans, and Druids view 2024’s eclipse as a source of powerful energy that can bring about personal transformation and healing. Although witches have traditionally viewed the solar eclipse as a bad omen, many say they will attempt to harness the energy of this latest version toward positive change in the world.”

Perhaps they have reason to celebrate: The number of Americans who identify with Wicca or paganism rose from 134,000 in 2001 to nearly two million in 2021, notes the site. The growth of TikTok witches and others on social media suggests that the numbers identifying as witches in America keep growing.

And so, perhaps no surprise: at a time when occultists, who always focus on astronomical, along with astrological, events, particularly the moon, there will be this “devilish” light in the sky; this time when occultism rises on earth.

The last time the comet came around was 1954. Nothing apocalyptic that year, but it was the year during which Indonesia was partitioned — leading to the war in Viet Nam.

The comet’s appearance before that, in 1884, was more interesting, even dramatically so. For this was the same year the great Pope Leo XIII had his famous vision in which he heard the devil request extended power for a century, which God granted as a test for humankind.

The vision occurred on October 13, 1884, precisely thirty-three years before the sun miracle at Fatima, Portugal.

And the appearance or perihelion before that: 1812.

That was the year of the War of 1812 — and also the year of the New Madrid quakes, the most powerful temblors ever recorded in these United States.

The “path of totality” for the coming April 8 eclipse passes right over the fault, intersecting with the path of a total eclipse in 2017, as did eclipses shortly before the devastating New Madrid quakes. (More on this Monday.)

Curious also: scientists have a second nickname for 12P/Pons-Brooks (its technical moniker), and that’s “Mother of Dragons,” for the object, erupting for the first time in sixty-nine years, is thought to be the parent body of the small “kappa-Draconids” meteor shower.

Here was a headline last summer in Live Science:

City-size comet headed toward Earth ‘grows horns’ after massive volcanic eruption

It will make its closest approach to the sun on April 21, when it will be its brightest and closest to the earth on June 2 (visible to the naked eye).

Perhaps those dates should be watched as much as April 8.

[resources: Michael Brown retreat, St. Augustine, Florida, and Pilgrimage to Fatima, September]