Once upon a time, a long time ago, our earliest ancestors looked up at the night sky. We can hardly imagine the splendor of the sky in those days, before light pollution, before air pollution. The Milky Way extended across the sky as a wash of light, too dense for individual stars to appear within it. Even on nights with no moon, the starlight was bright enough to see by, bright enough to cast shadows on the earth.
Our ancestors must have felt, at first, as we still feel when we look up at the stars: insignificant. The heavens are so glorious and so impassive. No matter what beauty or horror is taking place below them on the earth, they wheel indifferently overhead.
But the longer our ancestors watched, the more they must have felt comforted, too, by the order and predictability they found. They learned to mark the changes in the seasons by the patterns of stars that rose on the horizon opposite the setting sun, a new star cluster appearing with each waxing and waning cycle of the moon. Each constellation became associated with its own part of the cycle. The thrusting orgy of early spring growth (Aries) gave way to the season of birth (Taurus), followed by that of helpless naked things in nests and burrows growing fur and feathers and becoming whatever they were born to be (Gemini), followed by the season of families and plentiful food growing everywhere (Cancer), followed by the season of foolish individuals, when all the young animals venture out of nests and dens (Leo), and then gradually learn to fend for themselves (Virgo). Then came the season of rut, all the young males jousting against each other, and coupling everywhere you turn (Libra). Then the season of protective males standing guard over their mates (Scorpio), followed by the season of migration (Sagittarius) as the stars wheeled toward the winter rains. The animals gathered together into flocks and herds, seeking safety in numbers and submitting to the leadership of the elders (Capricorn). Then came the season of rains (Aquarius), followed by the season of pools everywhere full of darting minnows and tadpoles (Pisces), and then it was back to the season of thrusting new growth.
But humans were only content for so long to be part of this undifferentiated cycle. We harnessed the power of stones, and the power of fire. The power of stones and the power of fire: how little our ancestors could have imagined that these were also the powers of the stars. With these powers we changed our fate. We alone among the other animals could make our own teeth and claws for defense and for hunting. We alone could light away the darkness, heat away the cold, impose our will and ingenuity on our circumstances instead of forever being at the mercy of them.
We existed by and within the wheel of seasons, but we also went our own way, pushing into new territories and exploring the new options we found there. Our natures didn’t move in lock step with the sky wheel the way the rest of nature seemed to.
But not all the stars followed the same program, either. The ever-changing yet ever-predictable moon was the most obvious. But looking further, five of the brightest stars seemed to set their own agendas, moving around the sky on paths they chose for themselves. Our ancestors looked up at those wanderers and identified with them. Like those heavenly renegades, we, too, stood out against the backdrop of our world, and chose our own ways.
Just as the wheel of the sky had to do with the turning of the seasons, so the wandering individuals, the planets, had to do with us. The movement of the stars was the movement of life. This had always been true, as one reflected the other. And so, when we claimed the wandering stars as our own, we claimed their meaning and purpose for ourselves as well.
We learned to read them, and in so doing, we learned to read ourselves.
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