Astrology Quarterly - Astronomy - Heavens Above

A S Morton

Heavens Above - May 2007

You would hardly call Mars shy and retiring, generally, now would you? So why is it that when the other four visible planets: Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are all making a nice show in the early evening skies before most people’s bedtimes (although these days when exactly is bedtime, or is there even such a thing anymore?) Mars is continuing to keep such a low profile and apparently staying out of sight for as long as he possibly can? Does he have a problem with us terrestrials or some such thing? This would seem to stem back to the time last year when there was all that debacle about Pluto and whether or not it was a ‘planet’. Well, even if a lot of people didn’t agree with the decision to reclassify Pluto as a ‘dwarf planet’ (a small planet, that is, and in a different category of solar system objects to the regular planets Mercury through to Neptune), that decision was made and you’d have thought that Mars would have been up all night ever since celebrating reclaiming all those rather intense and mysterious Scorpio-types down here. Instead he’s turned himself almost invisible, hardly seen or heard of since last autumn. What has happened to him? What is going on?

Well maybe, just maybe, this is all some clever ruse of his. Perhaps he’s become so accustomed to being more the Aries-type of Mars these days, turning up in an angry rush in our night skies every couple of years or so, giving us blazing hot temperatures, being blamed for starting forest fires or even messy wars, that he’s gone a bit rusty on the Scorpio side of things. So, he’s having to re-acquaint himself with how to be all dark and moody again. Creeping along the horizon before dawn but not showing his face, seeing all but staying hidden, checking out the lie of the land but not exposing himself too soon, these are all good personality-rebuilding exercises to be sure for a chap that’s been a bit short on subtlety of late. Give him a few more months and he’ll be putting in a re-appearance in the early hours and perhaps by then we’ll all be able to see for ourselves what, if anything, he’s got in store for us this time around. But don’t hold your breath. This is Mars, after all, and the question of ‘fight or flight’ does not necessarily produce a predictable response.

Meanwhile, however, the afore-mentioned quartet of ‘wanderers’ are obliging us with a wonderful opportunity to do some planet-spotting at a reasonable hour and at a pleasant time of the year to be outside of an evening. To view multiple planets in the same night sky is to see the noticeable differences in their relative sizes, brightness’s and colouration and you can get a feel of some of the attributes and sensibilities associated with these celestial ‘gods’ by those that came before us who evolved their astrology from observational astronomy, which is where a great deal of the basis of our craft derives from. Try it and see, you may surprise yourself with how much you can intuitively feel of what is out there.

Mercury is at superior conjunction with the Sun (far side of the Sun as viewed from Earth) on the 3rd and is therefore lost in the Sun’s glare for the first part of this month. If you look in your ephemeris you will notice that not only is MERCURY direct in motion at this time but actually travelling very fast indeed, even for him. This is of course something of a geocentric (Earth-centred) view of what is taking place out there, Mercury comes to perihelion (closest approach to the Sun in its orbit around the Sun) only a few days later on the 8th and the cumulative effect of all this is an apparent initial close embrace by the Sun, or perhaps even a private business meeting (solar system business of course) between the two, briefly, followed by an almost slingshot release as the Sun sends him off on some errand or other and the distance between Mercury and the Sun subsequently appears to increase quite rapidly.

[A handy tip: you can always spot the difference between superior and inferior (between the Sun and Earth) conjunctions between Mercury or Venus and the Sun just by looking in the ephemeris; for superior conjunctions Mercury or Venus will always be direct in motion and for inferior conjunctions they will always be retrograde.]

The upshot is that Mercury heads speedily away from the Sun eastwards towards its position of greatest elongation in early June and in the second half of this month becomes an increasingly visible evening object close to the western horizon. “Courage, Môn brave!” becomes his watchword as evening by evening he creeps ever higher and stays longer in the darkening skies. By month’s end he’s up for fully two hours after dusk frolicking about and changing his appearance in chameleon-like fashion almost on a daily basis.

Some welcome encouragement arrives just as the process commences shortly after mid-month with the very new Moon paying a passing visit, her wafer-thin crescent sliding above and to the right of playful Mercury, low down in the twilight of the 17th. Two nights later on the evening of the 19th the still young Moon is gently caressing Venus’s cheek with sisterly affection as the two meet for a gossip in the neighbourhood of those Gemini charmers, Castor and Pollux, who twinkle with curiosity from up left.

Show-stealing Venus is attracting so much attention it’s hard to notice anything much else in the evening skies. “Is it a bird, is it plane? No, it’s….” Super-Venus. Wow! Amazing! Are there any superlatives left that haven’t been used up and worn out with excessive usage over time? Mind you, she really is becoming quite spectacular as she builds towards the climax of her evening performances of recent months, setting almost four hours after the Sun, holding court and bewitching hearts as she opens up like some vibrant spring flower to display her full repertoire against the dark velvet backdrop of the western skies. She has once more truly become the shining beacon of the night skies, pure dazzling whiteness of the kind that detergent manufacturers can only dream of capturing with their products, a celestial icon even, there really is nothing to compare, nothing up there at night that can come anywhere near to competition when she is giving everything she’s got, like now. But what is this all for? Why now? Is she simply showing off or is there some purpose to this beguiling, hypnotic dance of hers?

It’s not always easy to determine the real purpose behind some of Venus’s little acts of seduction and deception, sometimes she simply can’t help herself, it’s just her nature to indulge in whatever takes her fancy at that moment, a mere whim can be sufficient cause for her to engage in some exotic and erotic escapade. But whatever this one is about it’s certainly getting the (almost) full treatment. Strangely, perhaps, the only other planetary body to have witnessed this whole episode from the outset is ageing, uptight Saturn. Mercury flits in and out of the picture, of course, busying himself with his own pre-occupations and the Moon has ebbed and flowed through the night skies on her regular monthly cycle but Saturn has patiently remained on duty throughout, solid as a rock, the lone sentinel of these long-passing nights.

Dear old Saturn has been up there for many a month now, enthralled by the nightly spectacle being played out before him, as if it were for his eyes only. It’s not exactly certain that his interest has been entirely paternalistic either. He could just be being protective, keeping a watchful eye out for any sign of trouble, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be quite like that. Planetary cycles are unfolding in the ‘heavens above’, an ancient celestial ritual is being performed up there, so ancient is it that its beginnings took root way, way before our species existed, not long after we became a twinkle in the eye of the all-pervading Uranus. Undoubtedly we are privileged to be privy to such an intoxicating night-time tradition, the mysteries of which continue to inform our passion and our art of astrology. But what does it all mean? And does it always mean the same thing? Maybe not.

You may recall that Venus and Saturn had a transitory liaison (conjunction) last summer (which they do most years but not always in the summertime). This one seemed slightly different from the norm and in some ways it didn’t quite feel complete. A new cycle began but the previous one hadn’t concluded satisfactorily for either party so this new cycle took on the nature of the previous inconclusive one. And this particular cycle has been quite quick because Saturn didn’t go anywhere; he seemed somehow to be hanging about waiting for Venus to come all the way round the zodiac one more time. He’s been observing her across the night sky all winter long but hasn’t been able to retrace his steps sufficiently to bridge the gap between them, and anyway he’s possibly somewhat reticent if not exactly a little on the shy side. I mean, Venus is a handful no matter whose hands we might be referring to.

So last month, April, opened with the closing square of this new cycle which was a particularly challenging time, partly because Venus was possibly being a bit too showy and cocky for her own good in both the tropical sign of Taurus and the constellation of the same name. Saturn promptly turned on his heels (well, actually quite slowly really – I mean, this is Saturn we are talking about here!) and started to trudge off in forward motion back towards the stars of Leo from whence he had come in the latter part of last year. But such was Venus’s forward momentum, even though she is beginning to slow down as she heads towards her position of greatest eastern elongation from the Sun next month and the potential re-enactment of last year’s odd happening gets ever closer to a possible resolution, that she was able to move to within a more amenable sextile quite quickly, well before the month’s end, and undertook a small but important damage limitation exercise. No need to cause Saturn to be any more grumpy that one needs to, eh?

Venus is glowing amongst the stars of Gemini and growing seemingly bigger and brighter as she and we on our ‘magic roundabout’, planet Earth, draw closer together. Saturn is on the cusp of the constellations of Cancer and Leo but noticeably losing vitality. He’s been a shining example all winter but now he’s tiring and the lustre is fading as he slowly drifts further out in space and the distance between him and Earth begins to widen, tempus fugit it would seem.

And then up pops ‘son of Saturn’, Juipiter no less, low down over the eastern horizon, riding the stars on the back of the Scorpion. Officially within the boundaries of the constellation of Ophiuchus (the ‘serpent bearer’) he’s only just up and to the left of the brilliant red Antares, the ‘rival of Mars’, the ‘red supergiant’ star in the constellation of Scorpius, over 400 times wider and over 10,000 times more luminous than our own Sun, and he’s certainly getting pretty full of himself at the moment. Becoming bolder and brighter as the month progresses, by mid-month he’s rising in the east just after nightfall and is commanding the night from the southern skies (no need to give yourself neck ache peering upwards for him this time around) as Saturn wearily flops over the western horizon following in the wake of the already departed Venus.

Juipiter is arriving, his bright yellow-white light shining like a torch in the night. He’s getting closer to us and growing stronger as he comes. Soon he will have the night skies to himself, which is just how he likes it really, but not quite before our other story has moved further towards a rather more fitting finale.

Uranus and Neptune are not to be seen with the naked eye but you can be sure they’re out there, lost in the early morning twilight.

© A.S.Morton – April 2007