In August the Milky Way is like the brilliantly beaded belt of a sparkling garment woven out of stars and flung across the night. This week, the starry garment appears in evening array with Venus and the Moon hemming its western edge, while at dawn, Mars and Jupiter adorn the eastern edge, rising two hours before the Sun between the horns of the bull, Taurus.
All of this is a fitting set up for what’s happening in the calendar right now, where, in the Christian festival cycle, the Feast of the Transfiguration is observed (August 6 each year). In the New Testament story, the mystery of Transfiguration occurs about eight days after the feeding of the multitude with five loaves and two fishes, which also bear a beautiful relationship to the stars of this season. The loaves are related to the constellation Virgo, depicted with a shaft of wheat in her arms when she is seen in her grain goddess aspect.
Opposite Virgo is the constellation Pisces, the fishes. The constellation Pisces rises as Virgo sets, and between them, they mark the sacred axis of dawn and dusk, of the mystery that lives in the twilight time before the sun has risen, and after it sets, where there’s a sense that for a moment, we’re moving between mighty worlds.
From the poem The World by Henry Vaughan (1621-1695),17th century Welsh poet:
I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.
~Mary and the Meteors
Hear this episode of The Storyteller’s Night Sky on Interlochen Public Radio Monday, August 5, 2024, and on podcasts everywhere, whenever and wherever you listen. Cover image of Milky Way over the Cecil Bay of Lake Michigan by Patrick Hoorigan. Note that I’ll be narrating three Midnight Meteor Shower Crises with Shepler’s Ferry Service from Mackinaw City, MI the week, August 10, 11, and 12. Get your tickets here!