This week the sky is beautifully set up for a tale from Rudyard Kipling “How the Whale Got His Throat”, because the star Mira, which marks the throat of the whale constellation Cetus, comes to its highest place in the sky now.
Kipling wrote: “In the sea, once upon a time, o my best beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes…Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small ‘Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale’s right ear, so as to be out of harm’s way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, ‘I’m hungry.’ And the small ‘Stute Fish said in a small ‘stute voice, ‘Noble and generous cetacean, have you ever tasted Man?”
The tale is analogous to the Old Testament tale of Jonah who gets swallowed by the whale, and it points to a deeper mystery concerning what ancient cultures believed about the human being’s origins. In the Classical Greek period, the philosopher Plato wrote that souls are equal in number to the stars, and after dividing the universe into its component parts, the great creator assigned to each soul a star. And it was from this star that the human being journeyed to the earth.
The idea was not only that every human being comes from a star, but that when a significant birth was about to take place, it would be indicated by the stars, or by some starry configuration. In this context, it’s possible to imagine that to be “swallowed by the whale” was codespeak for the way a soul journeys from the stars to earthly incarnation.
Just beyond the whale constellation is a region of sky known as the Pisces/Cetus superclusters, a vast region of galaxies clustered together, almost as though they were souls waiting their turn to be swallowed by the whale so they can make their journey to earth.
Cetus is low in the south at this time, where the “miracle star” at his throat twinkles from on high through season of celebrating the mysteries of birth.
Here is a link to Rudyard Kipling's tale How the Whale Got His Throat.