This week, in that sacred place where the dark of night surrenders to the dawn, a mighty council of stars is taking place, as if to say: “O, humanity, if you seek remedy to your current trials, lift up your thoughts to the stars, for the powers that wait on your noble deeds have gathered and await your participation.”
The Master of Space, Jupiter, has spread his cloak across the night, standing exactly opposite the Sun on Tuesday, while the Time King, Saturn, prepares for his own opposition next week.
The goddess of dawn, Venus, stands at the flaming door of the Bull’s Eye, Aldebaran, while the warrior Mars, so recently in the company of the Moon, has delivered a message of love and compassion into the hands of the Lunar Lord, for bearing to Venus, where she whispers to an awakening humanity. The Moon will deliver this message to Venus on Friday, July 17, looking east an hour before sunrise.
Into this scene comes Comet NEOWISE, crossing the boundless ocean of stars, trailing star stuff and cosmic glory.
Now while it seems like superstition these days to attribute human faculties and experience to the benevolence to starry worlds, for the sages of old it was natural to regulate their lives according to this cosmic harmony, the same way we regulate our lives according to our watches and clocks.
So with all this amazing stellar activity, consider these words from Goethe’s Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily: “The Old Man looked to the stars and began speaking: ‘We are assembled at the propitious hour; let each perform his task, let each do his duty; and a universal happiness will swallow up our individual sorrows, as a universal grief consumes individual joys.’”