In ancient astrological tradition, the region of Taurus stars is related to the organs of speech in the human being, including the eustachian tubes and the larynx. And while the constellation of the starry bull is connected to the organs of speech, it was the planet Mars that actually imparted the capacity for speech to the human being, and this week, we can see them together as Mars moves among Taurus stars, high in the West about two hours after sunset.
When we look at the constellation Taurus in the night sky, we can imagine bull’s horns as representing the eustachian tubes in human anatomy, while the triangular form in the constellation that is usually considered the bull’s face or forehead can be imagined as the larynx. In Egyptian art, the bull’s horns atop the head indicated, in part, how ancient cultures regarded true speech a gift from the divine.
The highest form of speech in these cultures was always poetry, so this week I would like to share these lines from Irish poet Eavan Boland, which perfectly fit the night sky overhead this week:
The Poets
They, like all creatures, being made
For the shovel and worm,
Ransacked their perishable minds and found
Pattern and form
And with their own hands quarried from hard words
A figure in which secret things confide.
They are abroad: their spirits like a pride
Of lions circulate,
Are desperate, just as the jewelled beast,
That lion constellate,
Whose scenery is Betelgeuse and Mars,
Hunts without respite among fixed stars.
And they prevail: to his undoing every day
The essential sun
Proceeds, but only to accommodate
A tenant moon,
And he remains until the very break
Of morning, absentee landlord of the dark.