Moon Meets Saturn in Scorpio

The old moon is up, a lovely large crescent still low enough on the eastern horizon that I can see it through the naked tree limbs.  I am washing dishes now that I am reenergized from an after dinner nap, and my kitchen window faces slightly east of south.

Tonight the lawsuit against teenagers for cyberbullying was up first on my attention grabbing Yahoo homepage, offering an inspiring example of moon meeting Saturn in Scorpio.  The planet associated with responsibility and consequences has been in the sign of secrets since Oct 2012.  By Dec 2014 it will have shed lots of outgrown skin and be ready for the next step in its 28 year cycle, the Sagittarian search for ….something.  What is the seed looking for when it travels on the wind?  A better life?  Or just a different one?  A fresh start?  Anyway, Saturn will still be in Scorpio for 10 more months, so there will be 10 more moments like this where the moon comes through and brings the protective gravity of nurturing parents into karma’s treatment of secrets.

I spotted Mercury tonight at least 20 minutes after sunset.  It has taken me over two years to catch that little bugger at sunset.  Earth Sky News had a headline about it being visible a few days ago so I went out tonight expecting another failure, but there it was, actually rather high on the western horizon, twinkling faintly above the lights of South Saunders Street. 

Now that I have gotten familiar with the movements of our neighbors in the solar system I am venturing a bit further…I studied the maps of our sun in the Orion Spur- and now imagine us on winter nights not just at the bottom of our daily cycle of revolution, but also facing away from the center of our galaxy as I look at the sword in Orion’s belt and recall the pictures of the Horsehead Nebula.  It has been a long road from elementary school wondering how people could possibly see hunters and crabs in the patterns of the stars to now feeling like I could go back in time and actually have intelligent questions to ask ancient astronomers about how they perceive the universe.  

In my internet surfing this week I landed for the second time on a wikipedia article ‘The Myth of the Flat Earth’; the article refers to Washington Irving’s ‘A History of the Life and Voyages Christopher Columbus’ and Thomas Jefferson’s ‘Notes on the State of Virgina’ as two recent promulgators of the myth.  Washington Irving was the author of the popular ‘Tales of the Alhambra’, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’.