Ah, Sagittarius

Of all the signs – the seven animals (ram, bull, crab, lion, scorpion, goat, and fish), three humans (the twins, the virgin, and the water-bearer), and one pair of scales – Sagittarius is the most evocative. A centaur, half man and half beast; an archer, his arrow aimed at the bright heart of Scorpio; a constellation that contains the center of our galaxy – it’s all here.

Finding Scorpio

Unlike all the other signs of the zodiac, Scorpio really looks like a creepy little scorpion. He’s even got a red heart at the center, the bright star Antares. I wish I could pick him out, but whenever I look up all I usually find are the big dipper and my favorite, Orion.

Scorpio is opposite Orion in the sky because of that heel-biting incident (some even say he killed Orion) – so he has to forever chase the great hunter. Scorpio had another problem with the Caesars: when a comet appeared between his claws after Julius Caesar got assassinated, Augustus Caesar cut them off to make Libra.

Some clear night this winter, when Orion comes back to us in the northern hemisphere, I’ll look up, look across, and try to find Antares. A supergiant star has to be good for something.

Virgo and the Engineers

When my business partner and I started our consulting firm one of the most difficult problems was finding a name. It not only had to stand for what we did, in some way, but also had to be available, i.e. not registered, in our state.

Many mythology books later we came up with Theseus Corporation, since Theseus supposedly inspired the people of Athens to govern themselves (though we had some difficulty explaining to our organizational change workshops why we’d named our company after a serial rapist and murderer).

The corporate naming process does have some pitfalls. Take, for example, the Blackwater security company (founded by a guy aptly named Prince), named for some dark swamp water near the Dismal Swamp, with a logo of a bear claw in a rifle scope. When they ran into some image problems, they changed their name to Xe – a non-descript name if there ever was one. Except: Xe is the chemical symbol for xenon, a colorless, odorless gas which, if it replaced all the oxygen in your room, would asphyxiate you in seconds. Do they know this?

But I digress from this lovely picture of the virgin, symbol of the astrological sign Virgo. If your company were, and I quote:

a leading manufacturer of Ball Valves for Energy and Process / Industrial markets. Virgo was founded by a group of technocrats who continue to own and manage the company. In the past 5 years, Virgo has emerged to be one of the fastest growing valve companies in the world.

why on earth (or in the solar system) would you name it “Virgo Engineers”?

Leo time

It’s a little crazy, I know, to believe that personality has anything to do with astrology, but it is pretty striking that everyone seems to know what sign they were born in. And for every powerful person born in the sign of Leo the Lion, “king of the jungle” (even though lions don’t live in the jungle), ruled by the Sun, center of the solar system, I’m sure there are a bunch of weaklings.

But I still find it interesting that both Obama and Clinton are Leos, while shrubby little Bush is, like me, Cancer the Crab – the sign of home and family. No wonder he spent 490 days at his ranch.

Gemini and NASA

I see I have two neglected categories I need to get busy on: “Astrology,” and the one called “Dreams, consciousness, and weird things like that.”

The problem is that I’m just not that interested in astrology or dreams anymore. I used to write stuff about how Carl Jung believed the progression of the signs of the zodiac represented stages of personal growth and spiritual development. Well, though I’m a lot less smart, not to mention less spiritually developed, than Carl Jung, all that seems just too new-agey to me now.

So here we are in the sign of Gemini, and the most interesting thing about that, to me, is that NASA named a whole space program after it. The program’s goal was to develop a two-man spacecraft, and so they used the Gemini glyph (which sort of looks like the Roman numeral II) and the two Castor and Pollux stars as its logo. I like that.

But I’m going to have to work on these categories more, I guess, so my growth doesn’t get too stunted.

Taurus time

One spring morning, Jupiter looked down from heaven and saw Europa, the beautiful Phoenician princess, gathering flowers. He changed himself into a bull and carried her off to Crete, where they were married (at least according to him). The bull became the constellation Taurus, who looks, unfortunately, as if he’s about to be eviscerated on Orion’s sword.

We can’t see Taurus now, of course, since we’re in his sun sign – he’s traveling across the sky with the sun.

Taurus time

I just love the way the ram and the bull up there in the cosmos plant their feet and look down at their respective elements – Aries at the fiery sun, Taurus at the earth below – but remain unmoved by the joyous scene, painted in spring pastels, that unfolds beneath them. The wheel of the seasons has moved again, from fiery beginnings to the greening of the earth; the ram and the bull go round and round, ever returning.

And the people below? Their path is linear.

The creation, according to Albumassar

The world was created, said the ancient Arabian astrologer Albumassar, when the Sun, Moon, and the five planets they then knew about were all clustered in the sign of Aries. Well here’s Aries (looking like he barely has enough energy to take care of himself, much less all those planets), presiding over this pastoral scene. Aries, the sign of initiation and growth, about to take over from those cold fish.

I have no castle and no sheep, but like the peasants in this painting, I’ve pruned and plowed and gathered up the debris from the winter. Spring has finally arrived, and, slightly reluctantly, I’ve given up wishing for just one more snow.

Dreaming Pisces

Once I had a dream about dreaming – you could call it a meta-dream I guess. In this dream I somehow learned that there are three types of dreams. The first is just random processing of the day’s events, like getting rid of toxins. Most of my dreams these days are like this: I’ll wake up and find I’ve dreamt about a spool of thread, for example. It’s embarrassing.

Then there are dreams that lead to insight or understanding about one’s own life. In this category I’d put the dream I had about one of my good friends at the company where I worked. She had been my boss several years before, and had offered me a job working for her once more. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and working for her was very comforting because there was always the safety net of her intelligence. In the dream I told her I couldn’t do it; that I couldn’t be that dependent on her again. I hadn’t realized that I had moved on until I had that dream; that I was ready to trust my own safety net.

The dream I’m writing about here is an example of the third type – the ontological dream. They explain something about the nature of reality, and they’re unconnected with one’s own life. When I wrote that dream down, those many years ago, I wrote “It was revealed to me . . .” I would no longer say that: for one thing, it sounds rather narcissistic; and for another, the rationalist (or the cynic?) in me says that of course my own brain produced it. But it felt very special, and real.

I haven’t had one of those dreams in years. I’d like to try to cultivate them, if that’s possible.

Pisces, water sign of the swimming fish, linked to the unconscious, begins today. Seems like a good time to try.

My son and Pluto

In cosmic terms, Pluto had a short life as a planet. Discovered on this day in 1930, it was named for the Roman god of the underworld because it was the farthest planet from the sun. This made it great material for astrologers: from the depths of the underworld to the most distant planet in the heavens – Pluto could be transformative.

Then the bad news came: on August 24, 2006, astronomers demoted Pluto to a “dwarf planet.” Pluto the Planet, dead at 79.

This day is still special, though. Thirty years ago, my son was born.