Every year during the last week of July we come to a point in the annual cycle when it’s as though the mighty Being of the Year tests us to see whether we can endure the reality that things are not what they seem.
This is most acutely demonstrated by Shakespeare in his tragedy Romeo and Juliet, when, at the end, she takes a sleeping potion to feign death. Romeo comes, and thinking she is dead, he slays himself. She wakes to find him dead, and takes her life. This double-suicide is so tragic, and so unnecessary.
But why align it to this week in the cycle of the year?
Shakespeare is specific about identifying Juliet’s birth right here, on the eve of the Summer Cross Quarter day> Cross Quarter is August 1st, the eve is July 31st. The Summer Cross Quarter is about abundance and outer light. It stands opposite the Winter Cross Quarter of Imbolc or Ground Hog’s Day, which is about inner light.
And there’s another way to consider this week, that isn’t framed by tragedy, but by abundance. In the Christian tradition this is the season when the miracle of feeding a multitude of 5000 with merely two fishes and five loaves of bread is performed. The message here is clear: you can trust that you will have what you need, there is enough, all will be met.
Still, we must be mindful, lest we succumb, like Odysseus’ men, when they defy the warning of the gods and eat the cattle of the Sun. How could I help but bring The Odyssey into it?! It’s so topical right now, and this thread of the story is happening overhead this week, among the planetary gods (pictured above). This includes Helios (the Sun), Zeus (Jupiter), Hades (Pluto) and Selene, the titan goddess of the Moon. These four celestial bodies are pairing up and facing one another across the vault of heaven on Wednesday, July 29th.
And here’s what we should know!
First off, the only players that we’ll actually in this celestial opposition are Sun and Moon. Jupiter is passing behind the Sun where we can’t see it, and Pluto is too far away to be visible to the naked eye. But they’re all lining up.
First, the Moon will align with Pluto, around 6 am eastern time. A few moments later, it will set in the West, a brilliant, nearly-full orb, bearing witness to our feeling life and casting Pluto-infused light into the first heaven surrounding the Earth.
Then, two hours later, at about 8 am, Jupiter aligns with the Sun. Now we’re experiencing Jupiter-infused sunlight, urging us ever onward to a greater future.
The Moon then opposes Jupiter around 10:25 am and comes exactly Full about ten minutes later, at 10:36 am. This is pretty potent, and it’s not causal, by which I mean, it’s not going to cause anything to happen. This is all an invitation, to marvel at the cosmic harmony, to contemplate how it finds expression through the cultural arts of human beings through the ages (Homer, Shakespeare, Christopher Nolan), and to look into our own lives and see whether we are celebrating abundance, or have we succumbed to illusion, and are we mindful in our use of resources?
In Homer it goes something like this: Odysseus is warned against coming ashore on the isle of Thrinacia, where the cattle of the Sun God, Helios, graze. They land anyway, and after many weeks stuck there due to the weather, they exhaust their store of provisions and grow ravenously hungry. Odysseus wanders away and is lulled to sleep. While he’s away, his men slaughter the cows for their meat.
Helios is so angered by this that he threatens to leave the upper world with his light for the living and shine only for the dead in the underworld. Zeus convinces him to not do this, and promises to use his mighty thunderbolts to shatter Odysseus’ ship, leading to the death of his entire crew. So you could say this is Helios and Zeus, or Sun and Jupiter, facing Hades/Pluto, god the underworld, with Moon witnessing the passage of souls.
This is pretty intense stuff, but it’s filled with opportunity! And just let me say, this scene is so pivotal that it’s foreshadowed in the opening lines of the Homer’s epic (Emily Wilson’s translation):
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. . . .
It’s a call for all of us, sounding through the ages to every human being: practice mindfulness while you sojourn in the physical world, in your use of its resources, in your thoughts about the comic harmony that surrounds you. See through the illusion, celebrate abundance, and trust, in love, in the ever-present help of something greater.
~Mary
Hear this week’s episode of The Storyteller’s Night Sky on podcast here, or wherever you listen. Cover image is a sketch of the planetary gods for a perapegmata by Patricia Delisa.