ASU Research E-Magazine: Fear of Lightning Grounded in Myth

Summer lightning streaks across the evening sky before lurching earthward with an ominous crackle. Among modern people, the phenomenon earns more respect than fear. Randy Cerveny says it was different for people of ancient cultures. They were grounded in a fear of lightning.

“In the ancient world, lightning controlled lives and defined entire cultures,” says Cerveny, associate professor of geography and director of ASU’s laboratory of climatology. A weather historian, Cerveny regularly publishes his studies of meteorological lore in Weatherwise, the magazine of the American Meteorological Society.

“Persians believed that lightning manifested divine wrath,” Cerveny says. “In his incarnation as Typhon, the Egyptian god Seth created lightning with an iron spear.”

Zeus, supreme god of the ancient Greeks, used lightning to decide the Trojan War. And the Romans believed that Jove was a master of lightning who served up thunderbolts to punish the wicked and warn the empire of its errant behavior.

“Scandanavian mythology also stresses the meteorological whims of its gods,” Cerveny says. “Lightning was Thor’s province. The red-haired Norse god sent sparks flying when he hurled his magic hammer earthward.”

The oak tree was particularly sacred to Thor. It was revered as the “thunder tree.”

“In many places, the oak was thought to insure safety from lightning. Many learned to their misfortune that this was a false belief,” Cerveny says. “However, it does explain the early Sussex rhyme: ‘Beware the oak. It draws the stroke.’”

During medieval times, people often kept oak branches in the house, especially branches from trees struck by lightning. They believed the oak would ward off dangerous natural forces.

“Eventually, acorns replaced the branches,” Cerveny explains. “A vestige of this tradition lingers today with the acorn-shaped knobs found at the end of some window shade cords.”

During the Middle Ages, people slowly began to shake their fear of lightning. Some believed that ringing church bells would disperse lightning. Many medieval church towers actually bore the inscription Fulgura frango which means, I break up lightning.

Testing that theory could be dangerous to the bell ringer. Cerveny recounts the findings of a treatise on the subject by a medieval scholar. The work is titled “Proof that the ringing of bells during thunderstorms may be more dangerous than useful.” Cerveny says the study revealed that over a 33-year period, a total of 386 lightning strikes on church towers killed 103 bell ringers.

“Also, consider the plight of the 325-foot bell tower on Campanile of St. Mark’s Church in Venice, Italy. The tower took its first lightning hit in 1388,” Cerveny says. “It was completely destroyed in 1417 and in 1489 by lightning strikes. More strikes were recorded in 1548, 1565, and in 1653. And in 1745, a bolt brought the whole structure crashing down.”

Finally, in 1766, churchmen installed a lightning rod designed by Benjamin Franklin. The tower has escaped damage ever since.

Ever the weather historian, Cerveny says that despite the legend, it is doubtful that Ben Franklin actually flew a kite during a thunderstorm with a metal key attached to demonstrate that lightning is electricity. Franklin never wrote about the incident.

“However, Franklin did propose such an experiment and some were conducted in France in 1752,” Cerveny says. “Though silent on kite flying, in 1753, Franklin instructed readers of his Poor Richard’s Almanac that the experiments in France proved that lightning rods could be used to protect buildings.”

Always quotable, Franklin said that “some people are weatherwise, but most are otherwise.” He must have been a tad off center himself one Christmas Day. He nearly electrocuted himself—not by flying a kite, but by trying to cook a holiday turkey with current from a pair of charged glass jars.—John Matthews