The Storyteller's Night Sky

As we turn toward the final weeks of the season, my imagination as a star lore historian turns to the German folk tale of the mischievous gnome Rübezahl, who sought to entrap Summer’s beautiful princess and keep her in his love palace beneath the Earth forever.

The Full Moon closest to Equinox is the Harvest Moon, and this year it happens in October, which means the September Full Moon gets the name the Wine Moon.

Moon and Spica assume their role as guardians of the evening twilight while Venus gathers up the dawn and the star Vega reaches the zenith this week. 

This week as the Perseid Meteor Shower achieves its peak, I imagine that the thrill of seeing a falling star and making wishes comes from a deep soul memory of being in the presence of the divine, which was understood in former times as the presence of the “hidden god.”

It takes time to realize you might be caught in a love encounter that’s being cooked up by the gods!

And greatly multiplies whatever we have to offer at ceremonies of the harvest ~ take heed!

NEOWISE is visible in the evening sky this week, drifting up under the belly of the Great Bear as it gets higher each evening. NEOWISE will be closest to the Earth on Thursday, July 23rd, which will make it easier to see, but it’s moving further and further away from the Sun, so it’s getting dimmer as it goes.

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.”

So maybe you heard there was an eclipse last weekend. Did you see it? Or did you go out to look at the brilliant lunar light and wonder what everybody was talking about? Sometimes it’s like that.

The Moon is building toward a mighty crescendo this week but will then perform a sleight of hand when it arrives at Full phase and slips invisibly into eclipse in the midnight hour July 4th to 5th.

When Regulus was close to the Moon, like this week, it was understood that not only would there be qualities of true leadership, but leadership imbued with love and devotion, as opposed to leadership through power and authority. The Moon near Regulus was believed to bring out humanitarian concerns.

The word Solstice derives from the Latin  sol   for ‘sun’ and the verb sistere ‘to stop, or be stationary’ . In the cycle of the year, Solstice marks the two points when the Sun reaches its highest or lowest point in the sky at noon ~ and this year, both of these moments, Summer Solstice in June, and Winter Solstice in December, bring rare celestial phenomena.

Each month the Moon passes the two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, always at a different phase in its cycle, and always shedding either more or less light into the sky as it passes them by.  So here’s a thing to ponder while we head toward their Great Conjunction in December 2020: what’s happening each month when they’re met by the Moon?

When the goddess of love and beauty stands in square to the god of war, her would-be companion, you might think that things could get deeply challenged, but the astrological omens regarding this are that the speaking of a people or a nation can take on an enhanced quality of soul at such a time.

This last week of May, 2020 is also the last week of the year that the planet Venus will be visible in the evening sky, because she’s in her retrograde motion now and quickly falling into the arms of the Sun.

So what’s the difference between astrology and astronomy? Astrology refers to the ‘astro-logos’ or star word, that the ancients experienced in the movements of planets and stars around the Earth. The 'astro-nomia' of the scientific revolution concerned itself not with divine spiritual beings, but with the physical properties of celestial objects, and things like gravitational force or the distance...

The early 20th century Austrian philosopher and scientist Dr. Rudolf Steiner once likened the cycle of the Earth’s year to a breathing process, with an inhalation and exhalation happening in the same rhythmic regularity for the Earth as it does for the human being. The full-in breath he likened to the moment of Winter Solstice, when it appears as though the Sun stands still furthest south on the h...

Before coronavirus, there was Comet Atlas and the dimming of the brilliant star Betelgeuse, which marks the giant's shoulder. 

In January 2020 there was an unusual line-up of planets at one place in the zodiac that included the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Saturn, and Pluto. Since then, they've all moved on, but due to the varying speeds of the planets in their orbits, it will appear to us that they all make a retrograde or backward motion, which will result in another meeting of planets in the same degree of the zodiac as in Janu...

Mercury met the Sun at superior conjunction on May 4th, on the other side of the Sun from Earth, then the Eta Aquariid Meteor Shower peaks toward dawn on Tuesday, May 5th, followed by Full Moon on Thursday morning, May 7th. So, what happened for you that week?

Venus was at its brightest for the year the week of April 27, 2020, which brought Alfred Tennyson to mind for the Storyteller’s Night Sky: Her constant beauty doth inform stillness with love, and day with light.

Three of the five naked-eye planets begin their retrograde motions the week of May 10th, 2020, beginning with Saturn on Monday, followed by Venus on Wednesday, and Jupiter on Thursday. What's that all about?

There’s a New Moon on Friday May 22, 2020, and on the same day, the planets Mercury and Venus will join one another in the same region of the sky, looking west after sunset.