READING THE FIXED STARS: some extracts from John’s next book.

Once, long, long ago, in a land far away, a small group of our ancestors wandered out into the desert. Equipped only with a large bag of herbs, some cigarette papers, and a primitive CD player, they sat beneath the clear night sky. After a while, as the herbs began to take effect, one leaned back on his elbows, gazed into the heavens, and exclaimed in wonderment, ‘Wow! You see those stars up there? They look just like two fish, swimming in opposite directions.’
‘Oh, yeah, Man! And look: they are tied together with a length of ribbon.’
‘Far out! And hey: look at those over there. They look like a woman sitting in a chair.’
‘I don’t get you, Man. I can’t see that.’
‘Ah! She’s upside down. You’ll have to stand on your head to see it.’
‘Oh! How cool is that?’
After a while, as the bag was emptied and the night air turned chill, our intrepid proto-scientists had found that almost all the stars arranged themselves into such pictorial groups. Only a few lost stars remained, strung across the sky without apparent connection. ‘Can we go home now, I’m cold,’ one of our forebears grumbled.
‘But what about those last few stars?’
‘Oh, what the hell? We’ll call them ‘the river’. Let’s go home, I fancy some chocolate.’
This, of course, never happened. In the whole of history and even prehistory, not one person has ever looked at the sky and thought the stars of Pisces resemble two fish, their tails tied together with a ribbon, swimming in opposite directions, or those in Cassiopeia are like a woman sitting in a chair, upside down. Yet while the idea that they do is obvious nonsense, I am sure that my reader has heard this explanation of the shape of the constellations many times, often told you by those who claim to knowledge.
As so often, what we are taught is the exact opposite of truth. Rather than seeing pictures in the sky, then giving the stars meanings according to those pictures, our ancestors understood the individual nature of the various stars and choose a suitable picture to embody and convey that meaning. Each star has its own character, just as each human being has its own character, and it is possible to perceive this character in a star just as we read character in a person, realising that this man is friendly while that man is better avoided. With stars as with people, the violent one from whom I would usually prefer to keep clear can be the very friend I need in a difficult situation.
Another common illusion is that the meanings of the stars were discovered empirically. Over time, the story goes, sky-watchers noticed that whenever this planet passes that star the king falls off his horse. This too is not so. A moment’s reflection will reveal the quite improbable amount of sky-watching that must have taken place for even one or two such meanings to be revealed, while even at its simplest, astrological judgement is sufficiently complex that no one testimony in the skies could ever be convincingly blamed for any one event on earth: there is always far too much going on. To pin meaning to star in this way is like a policeman looking at a crowd of demonstrators, trying to guess which of them threw the stone that knocked off his hat.

Again, truth is the reverse of what we are told. Understanding of the meaning came first. Observation of events showed only how that meaning is likely to manifest in certain situations. The understanding of meaning came through intellection. Turning our attention for a moment from stars to stomach shows how this was done. Those who tell us that ancient man saw pictures in the sky are also prone to tell us that our ancestors discovered which foods are good and which not through a process of trial and error. As long as we think only of plums or oranges, this is a plausible theory. When we imagine our investigative forebear taking a bite out of a chilli pepper and thinking ‘Mmm, delicious! I must take this home and put it on my dinner’, the theory seems a little less plausible. Less still if we consider meringue.
Meringue has been known since ancient times. There are two possible explanations for its discovery. One is that somebody, from curiosity, separated some egg whites from their yolks, without leaving any of the yolk behind, then, filled with the spirit of discovery, spent half an hour beating the whites with a bunch of twigs, just to see what would happen, then put the resulting foam into a slow oven. The other explanation is that through a process of intellection, somebody sufficiently understood the nature of egg white to have a good idea of what would result if it were whisked and slow baked. The latter explanation, which rests on the assumption that our ancestors possessed some creative intelligence, seems the more likely. If you have ever tweaked a recipe to your own design you will know how this process works.
Our astrologer forebears understood the nature of individual stars in the same way that our ancient chef understood the nature of egg white. They realised that, like people, stars have their families. As humans have the Frawleys and the Lillys, stars have the Leos and, their next-door neighbours, the Virgos. As with human families, some stellar families live close together – the Aries family, for example, clustered close as if eager for each other’s company. Others are scattered far apart: Serpens and Eridanus sprawl across the sky with no apparent unifying factor. Despite this lack of visual unity, our forebears recognised their family connections, just as my sister is still my sister whether we live in the same village or on opposite sides of the world.
Not that families share the same nature, whether starry or human. Not all Frawleys are astrologers, while a family of thugs can produce its gentle scions. So with the stars. Most of the Eridanus family, for example, take after Saturn in their behaviour, though the head of the family, Achernar, is quite different, taking after Jupiter. Nonetheless, they are related.
It is this perception of which stars belong to which family that led to the division of the sky into constellations. It also explains such things as the huge differences in size between the constellations: families differ. It would have been quite possible for our ancestors to impose uniformity on the heavens, dividing the sky, perhaps, into squares of equal size. Once the families had been distinguished, a suitable myth was chosen to explain each one’s nature. The picture of the central figure of that myth was then arranged around the main stars of the constellation in such a way as would reveal the individual nature of each star, that nature being shown by the exact position held by that star within the picture. For example, with Leo we have the picture of a lion. If we learn to think in the language of myth, we quickly understand the differences between the star in the lion’s heart, that in his mouth, his back, his tail, and so forth.
An education in thinking in this way, thinking mythically, is to my mind one of the most exciting gifts astrology has for us. Not only does it bring the stars vividly to life, with all the immediacy that is given by understanding them directly for oneself, rather than the second-hand understanding gained by looking them up in a textbook, but it also enriches our engagement with art, literature and scripture, places where this mythical form of thinking is found in abundance. If the authors of such works deliberately use it, it behoves us to try to understand it.
Myth must be grasped with the imagination, not the reason. Myths are not codes, to be translated point by point. Were that so, there would be no need of myth: the writers could simply have said what they meant. Myth is perpetually pregnant with meaning. If ever that pregnancy were exhausted, that particular myth would die, becoming no more than an empty and trivial story. It is this pregnancy that is the important thing. This is why myth never has a standard form: the stories vary with the teller, as each writer finds within that myth a particular meaning relevant to his own context. Yet there are guidelines: the myth cannot validly be reframed at will to suit whatever axe its current expositor wishes to grind. Imagination too has its rules, its pathways and signposts. What I am attempting in this book is to show some of these signposts.

AURIGA: THE CHARIOTEER

The constellation of Auriga is one that, we might think, would most obviously give the lie to the claim that our ancestors saw pictures in the sky. That there are people who can credit the idea that our forebears looked at this constellation and saw a man standing in a chariot, his feet made of snakes, cradling in his arms, as is the wont of charioteers, a baby goat, makes one wonder who it is that has access to the large bag of herbs. At such times it is reassuring to know that it is we astrologers who are the gullible ones.
The role of Auriga is that of an instruction book. God put Mars in the sky and in the birthchart of each one of us. Here, He has thoughtfully provided the users’ manual, telling us how Mars should be handled.
The Charioteer is Erichthonius, king of Athens. His feet were horribly deformed, having the appearance of snakes. This is the starting-point for an understanding of this constellation. Maimonides explains that the symbolic reading of the foot is as the consequences of that person’s nature. This is because the foot leaves footprints, leaves traces in the world. What traces these are will be directly consequent upon the nature of the person who left them: think, for a moment, of the detailed information Sherlock Holmes could draw from studying someone’s footprints.
Erichthonius’ feet are deformed. They are not as feet should ideally be, but are as snakes, perennial symbol of the desire-nature (compare the snakes in the hair of Medusa). This is a more specific version of the proverbial ‘feet of clay’. The traces Erichthonius would leave in the world are not what they should be, but are corrupted by his desires – and which of us can say different of ourselves?
This foot symbolism is central to the washing of the feet at the Last Supper. Peter misunderstands, thinking Jesus is cleansing him from the pollution of the world, hence his request ‘Not only my feet, but my hands and my head as well’. Jesus replies, ‘No one who has taken a bath needs washing, he is clean all over’.(John 13:9,10). Jesus is not cleansing him from the pollution of the world, but protecting the world from being polluted by him, by his footprints, which inevitably, as he is human, carry some taint with them. So it is that the washing of the feet presages the sacrament of Reconciliation: we do not confess what the world has done to us, but what we have done to the world.
Erichthonius has wisdom enough to want to avoid leaving such traces of the inescapable corruption of his nature, so somehow he must avoid allowing his feet to come into contact with the world. He does this, being the son of Vulcan, the blacksmith god, by building the first chariot. Other possibilities would have been available. He could, for example, have ridden a horse. The significant thing in his choice of solution is that, unlike the horse, the chariot is an artificial creation. It is man-made, the product of a deliberate, conscious, effort. Applying his brain, he has seen the problem and created a solution for it.
This is a lesson for us in how to handle Mars. Mars is not simply action, or aggression: it is right action – acting in the way that is right by external criteria, not by what the corrupted dictates of our own nature tell us is right. Right in the way that climbing out of the trench and running towards the guy with the machine-gun may be right, when all our own nature wants is to dig a deeper trench. Right in the way that bravely wielding the scalpel to cut out a life-threatening disease may be right, when our corrupt nature is whispering ‘But what if I mess it up?’ Right in the way that standing up when others are oppressed may be right, when self-preservation tells us to pretend we’ve not seen a thing. The example of Erichthonius guides us towards the ability to do this.
The action in itself is not enough, however. To be ‘right’ action, the act, no matter how apparently virtuous, must be done from the right motives. Else we degenerate into the antique schoolmaster, endlessly flogging his pupils to teach them some unspecified lesson. This is why Erichthonius carries the goat.
Capella, meaning Little She-goat, is the brightest star in Auriga, emphasising that this goat, far from being the random addition to the picture that it might seem, is of the utmost importance in the understanding of this constellation. This is not any old goat, but Almathea, the goat who would, when grown, suckle the infant Jupiter. Jupiter is mercy; that he suckled on this goat shows that she had mercy on which to feed him, making her in a sense something even more merciful than mercy itself: the mother of mercy. The charioteer cradles the goat in his arms, so she is held against his heart. The meaning of this is clear: at the very heart of right action must be mercy, else it is not right action. This is reminiscent of the Arab saying that we are always enjoined to be kind, but that sometimes being kind means cutting the limb off with one stroke.
If this discussion of right action makes it seem a rare thing, something that happens only in battle or the operating theatre, we should remember that it is Mars which gives the third and tenth houses of the chart their central meanings. The tenth is the house of our profession, or our magistery – ‘that of which we are master’. The piece of the world which we conquer, whether this be half the earth, like Alexander, or a small section of a production-line. The third is our daily round, the routine business of our life: the small journeys and how we deal with those we meet along the way. Having this users’ manual to Mars written for us in the sky can help us act rightly in both profession and our daily round.
An example of Capella in action, with the extreme literalness of which the stars are so often capable, was given by a client’s birthchart. The ruler of the fourth house, the house of Father, was on a royal star of Mars nature. Dad was top of his particular tree, and that tree had something to do with Mars. On the fourth cusp was Capella, the merciful thing at the heart of right action. The client’s father was his country’s most eminent anaesthetist, the man who provides the mercy when the scalpel is wielded.

ORION

Genealogy in myth is simple. In the same way that a breeder might mate a horse that runs fast with a horse that runs for long distances, in the hope of producing a horse that runs fast for long distances, a person or creature in myth is 50% Mum and 50% Dad. If we want to understand the nature of that person or creature, looking at Mum and Dad is often a good place to start.
A hero is the child of a mortal and a god: 50% mortal, 50% divine. Just like you and me. There is nothing special about a hero: this is the normal human condition. Were it not so, there would be no point in us having these exemplars in story or in the stars, because the examples they offer would be beyond anything we might be able to achieve. The hero is the normal human being. What lacks this 50% of the divine falls below what is human. Such a creature is Orion.
Orion was not the child of a mortal and a god; indeed, was not the child of anyone. The gods created him from the hide of a bull. The bull being, since time immemorial, the symbol of matter, this shows Orion to be completely material. Compare the Bible story of the creation of Adam, where God takes a handful of dust and breathes into it, thus infusing the material with the divine. Orion is the handful of dust that has not been breathed into.
Like a bull, though – like matter itself – Orion is big and strong. He is not a hero, but he thinks he is, or fancies himself in that role. He boasts that he can destroy any creature on earth, and so, in the power and pride of his material strength, he can. This power and pride does not last, though. His boasting so irritated the goddess Artemis that she sent the Scorpion to deal with him. Artemis, identified by the Romans with Diana, was a Moon goddess. As such, the Moon being the boundary between the ‘unchanging spheres’ of the heavens and this ‘world of generation and corruption’, where things come into being then pass away, she is associated with the transitory: that nothing lasts forever.
The Scorpion, set in the sky in the constellation of Scorpio, is the tool she uses to impose this rule of the impermanence of life in this world upon Orion. Scorpio is the fixed water sign of the zodiac: the sign in which the potentials of water (the desire nature) are explored in their fullest. So it is this, the ravages the desire nature exerts upon us over time, that undoes the arrogant power of Orion. As heroes, only the 50% of us that is mortal is subject to this inevitable wear and tear; the 50% that is divine is, unless we choose otherwise, immune to whatever the Scorpion can throw at it. Orion lacked this leavening of divinity, and so was brought down by the beast, like an aging boxer who has had one too many fights.
The main stars in Orion carry similar meanings. They give power and the ability to achieve – but with restrictions. What is attempted must be a completed thing: a goal that be accomplished quickly, not something that will take a long struggle. For example, in 1939 Hitler’s progressed Sun was on Bellatrix, the bright star in the left shoulder of Orion. No one testimony can ever be read in isolation, of course, but this, all things being equal, would suggest that great achievement is possible, but that whatever is started must be brought to a conclusion swiftly. Had Hitler asked ye court astrologer about the wisdom of expanding the war in 1941, ye astrologer might have looked back at this testimony for the start of the war and advised strenuously against it.
So if the native whose birthchart we are examining is asking about climbing a mountain, the stars of Orion would be strongly encouraging: this is an action that can be completed, and quickly. If that native were asking about taking up mountain-climbing as a career, these stars would advise against it, promising early success but a sticky end. A key idea here is ‘Think short-term’. Consider: suppose you rule a country and feel the urge to go to war. Betelguese holds an important position in your solar return chart for this year – on your Midheaven, perhaps, or conjunct Mars. This would suggest that you feel able to take on any foe. Your astrologer, though, might counsel caution. Remembering that Orion did conquer many foes, he might not advise against the war, but would surely advise that it not be started unless you had a reasonable expectation of finishing it quickly. Time and its ravages will wear you down. If you ruled the country in elected office, the astrologer might judge that you would be out of office before the consequences of your actions became apparent. If you were a king, he might judge – unless it was sure this war could be finished quickly – that you would still be on the throne when the Scorpion arrived with the bill.
The idea of Orion relates to the story of Carthage. When Dido fetched up on the shores of Libya, she asked the locals to grant her sufficient land to build a city for her and her people. In mockery, they gave her the hide of a bull, telling her she could have whatever land could be covered by that. By this, they meant she was welcome to enough ground to be buried in. Dido, however, was wily. She cut the bull’s hide into a long, thin, thread, with which she enclosed sufficient land to build the city of Carthage.
Carthage became immensely powerful. But like Orion, it was made only from the hide of a bull. It lacked the 50% divine: the divine destiny, as Virgil and Dante tell, that was Rome’s. So for all its power, Carthage was doomed to crumble back into the dust of this world of generation and corruption, while Rome lives on.

A SUGGESTION AND AN EXAMPLE

I find an interrogative method is helpful in teasing out the meaning of fixed stars. This works well in lectures, guiding students to understanding, but with a little practice it also works well if used on oneself. Let us take Algenubi as an example.
Algenubi is in Leo, so will partake of the nature of the Lion. Specifically, it is in the mouth of the Lion. ‘What do we get from the mouth of a lion?’ Ferocity, tearing its prey apart.
‘Yes. And what else?’ Roaring. A lot of ferocious, intimidating noise.
‘Yes. But suppose a lion could speak. What might the King of Beasts, not known for his humility, be saying with his roaring?’ He’s the King of Beasts; he’s proud: so maybe boasting - perhaps something like ‘I’m the boss! I’m the greatest!’
Exactly. Algenubi sits on the Ascendant in the birth-chart of Muhammad Ali: ferocity; a lot of intimidating noise; boasting; ‘I’m the greatest!’ Of course, Algenubi sits on the Ascendant of a huge number of other birth-charts, whose owners do not all behave like Ali. Testimonies do not work in isolation: each testimony is only one small part of a large and complex picture. I am not suggesting that this be treated like an entry in an astrological cookbook: ‘Algenubi on the Ascendant means ….’ Taking it like that would be destructive of the very thought processes that I wish to encourage. This example is given not to be picked up and bodily transported elsewhere, but to show the power, clarity, and extreme literalness with which the stars can operate. The details of how they will operate will be conditioned by the context within which they must work, this context being given both by what is happening in the rest of the astrological chart and, most importantly, by the circumstances into which the native has been born.
Compare Zosma, another star in Leo. Zosma is in the back of the Lion. While the lion’s mouth has an obvious significance, its back is more puzzling. What is it, other than the bit that joins the head to the tail? When puzzled, we must remember that these pictures were put into the sky for a reason, constructed carefully so the exercise of a disciplined imagination could call forth their meaning. A significance might not be obvious to us, but we can trust that it is in there somewhere. If we can find the right approach, it will reveal itself.
A lion’s back seems to have no particular function, other than to join the other parts of its body together. Perhaps it’s not what the back does that is important, though. ‘What does a lion’s back not do?’ It does not carry a rider or a load. Here is the clue. The lion’s back shows that it cannot be tamed or managed; that it will not be saddled or used as a beast of burden. In different ways according to the context of chart and life, Zosma will carry this meaning.
William Lilly’s natal Mars fell on Zosma. In his autobiography, he tells that his second wife had the nature of Mars. His progressions and return charts for the time of this marriage show quite clearly that he was, in effect, marrying his Mars. With Mars on the Lion’s back, could he expect his new wife to be gentle and unassuming, deferring in all things to her lord and master? Certainly not! Nor was she. His life with her was a misery, and despite the discretion of his words about that event, his relief at her death is audible.

I have stressed, and will repeat, that the testimony of a fixed star must be read as but one part of the larger picture that is the chart as a whole. Any testimony provides only potential, and that potential may be realised in many different ways, or not at all. Delineating a full chart judgement, however, would demand too much from both the space available and the patience of my reader. These comments on the nativity of George W. Bush should not, then, be taken to imply that ‘Sun on Sirius means…’ or ‘Saturn on Procyon means…’, but as examples of how the meanings of these stars can manifest in a certain context.
The Sun is especially significant in Bush’s chart, because it has not only its usual roles, but is Lord of the Ascendant, the planet in the chart that is most clearly ‘Me’. The Sun is on Sirius, the brightest star in Canis Major, the Great Dog. This Great Dog is not an amiable beast like a St Bernard, all fluffiness and affection. It is vicious. Its role in life is to bark and bite. Do we expect eloquence and careful logic from the mouth of a great dog? Far from it: we expect a lot of aggressive, threatening noise. Should a great dog hold a position of authority? Far from it: it needs to be controlled and firmly led. Nonetheless, this is the ‘Me’ of George Bush’s chart.
Saturn rules the seventh, the house of open enemies. Saturn is in its detriment: these are nasty open enemies. It is on Procyon, the brightest star in Canis Minor, the Little Dog. The dog in question is the yappy little creature that drives cattle by nipping at their ankles. If Bush’s open enemies partake of this nature, can they destroy him? No, the Little Dog lacks power to do that. But it does make a lot of noise and inflicts a painful bite.
The Sun is applying to conjunction with Saturn, almost as if the Great Dog is chasing the Little Dog across the sky. But what happens when a Great Dog chases a Little Dog – does he catch it? No, for no matter how big and powerful the Great Dog might be, the Little Dog is too fast and agile to be caught. The Great Dog can do no more than lumber after it, creating a great deal of aggressive noise about the terrible pains he will inflict when he does catch it. We have, in these two stars, the history of the ‘War on Terror’.
The fixed stars even provide detail to this history. Relocation is an art wildly over-valued in astrology today. The idea that celebrating my solar return somewhere far from home will make all my dreams come true is an empty delusion. Relocating charts does have a certain limited usefulness, however. It will not change the person’s overall destiny, but it does allow us to see how different facets of that person’s potential will manifest in different places. George Bush does not become a different person if we relocate his chart to Guantanamo Bay, but we can see which parts of his nature will be most in evidence there.
If we do shift his nativity to Guantanamo Bay, we find Saturn, his open enemies, tucked into the first house, immediately inside the cusp. His enemies are under his control in that place. On the Midheaven, hence dominating the chart, sits the star Baten Kaitos, in the constellation Cetus, the Whale. It is in the Whale’s belly. The whale, this huge beast that can swallow us without a thought, was seen as an image of the grave, its belly being where its victims were forever held. This meaning is exemplified in the story of Jonah, swallowed by the Whale and seen as presaging Christ because he emerged again, as Christ would do from the grave. How appropriate this star is to the way George Bush’s nature did manifest in that particular location.

John Frawley’s book on fixed stars will be published in the Spring 2010.