7:16am
I
got up a few minutes after 5:47 this morn. The chart for that moment
showed the old crescent moon a couple degrees above the horizon, so I
knew it would be visible soon. It was below freezing and I really
didn’t want to go out, though I knew the sky was clear. Then I
remembered that the moon in Capricorn rises a good 20 degrees south
of east and I could probably see it from my south facing (not exactly
south, about 30 east of south) front door window. There are 3 small
panes of glass right around eye level for a 5ft8in adult. Well, I
looked and looked. It seemed time for the old queen to enter stage
left. Finally I went outside, crossed the street and there it was, on the other side of
the giant canvass of dark foliage spreading like a thick fan above
the trunk of a live oak, one of the few not yet turned into wood
chips in the park my house faces.
7:20
break to check for sunrise.
Not
showing yet, bout 15 more minutes. This morning I woke up thinking,
among vague memories of a dream and other forgotten stuff, about a
note I came across recently: Hercules wakes up in January.
I’m guessing I came across it in studies of ancient philosophy. I
wondered how much later in the year Hercules reappears in the morning
sky now-a-days. Or if Hercules 'wakes up' a bit earlier. Guessing the fourteenth hour would be near the MC I
picked up my little phone and did a chart. You can see the MC for
5:47 this morn in Raleigh was at the end of Libra. Libra goes from
about 12hours to 14 hours. Every sign extends about 2 hours along
the equator, more or less. It’s that more or less that makes each
sign special, unique, for reals as in real estate that surveyors
measure and map, but this is heavenly real estate, which still
belongs to all of us, since aren’t we all children of God and isn’t
that where God lives? I might be using slippery logic there.
7:37
the Sun is up
It
is a degree above the naked trees. I was waiting to confirm, to get
a good sense of the actual body, as opposed to the little white
circle on Stellarium, or the symbol in the chart, that the Sun would
come up a few degrees north compared to the old Capricorn Moon. A
handwidth to the left (since I live in the northern hemisphere* and
face south to view the planetary highway, aka ecliptic) of this
morn’s Moonrise. I treasure, literally, the way Silas Marner
counted the rolling coins when he was living in exile from the
Christians that banished him from their community – I treasure the
ability to guesstimate where a planet will appear on the eastern
horizon. It doesn’t seem so important on a map, every thing is on
the same page; all we have to do is scan the symbols to find what
interests us, which is especially easy when we’re familiar with
what those symbols (or the planets they represent) do. An electronic
engineer, familiar with the language, can tell where the voltage
increases or decreases in the map of a circuit; an accountant can
review financial records and tell where a company is losing or
gaining capital; an astrologer, knowing how fast each planet moves
and the directions of various intersecting cycles can quickly locate
her target on a chart.
But
the actual sky is sooo much bigger! It is the difference between
reading the little guidebook for the Appalachian Trail that describes
where the next spring is; a hundred paces beyond the hairpin turn in
the trail, take a right at the opening in the rail fence. Follow the
blue blazes 500 yards. The spring is on the left. When the Nalgene
bottles are all empty the faith in those directions is sorely tested.
But testing those directions is what we do. And when we get
confused and take a left where it said take a right, or somehow miss
some little detail, and have to go back and check, and do it all
over, and wonder, did the people writing this guide know what they
were doing? And look! There it is! Cool water hopping over little
rocks and pebbles! Something we would surely have passed over on the
trail had we not put faith in that guidebook, had we not put it to
the test.
It
is sweet indeed, as water from a cool spring, when we are hot and
thirsty, carrying food on our back and a bag to keep us warm when we
lay down under the stars at night. It is sweet to have a guide to
where we are in heaven as well as where we are on earth.
Thirty
years ago I had know idea where or when to look for the Moon on any
given night. Now I do. I don’t have to use timeanddate.com or
even my romantic old timey charts, they only confirm my estimate and
provide easy access to extremely accurate pinpointing. The real
logistics are now well germinated in my mind. My mental map of
heaven is almost as comprehensive as the mental map of my body.
I
know if the Sun is entering Aquarius, the old sliver of a crescent
Moon will rise in Capricorn. The nature of Capricorn is that it
always comes up right before Aquarius, that it always appears most
southerly on the eastern horizon, and always makes the lowest ark
across the sky. The secret, in the days of Pythagoras and Plato, was
that we saw it low in Capricorn because we were in the highest part
of our daily revolution on tilted Earth, or Gaia. Gamma eta. The
word at the root of Genesis and generate. We see any planet low on
the horizon in the sign of the goat, because we are as high as we can
get with respect to the celestial equator.
We
won’t see the sliver moon rising this low until next year. We can
see the not quite so old, or skinny Capricorn Moon rise Feb 18, but
we’ll have to get up 2 hours earlier (3:57am) to catch it. The
charts and east coast astrologers will say it’s in Sagittarius.
But here is where numbers help. In Raleigh the Moon will be at 29
Sagittarius when it rises, which is closer to the low tropic than 3
Capricorn where it rose this morn.
For
Van in Memphis TN that translates to 3:35am. And check out who it
will be near! Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn. A nice parade of
planets traveling through the lower tropic of the ecliptic! We all
get to see that, not at once, we have to wait our turn on the giant
carnival ride.
Well,
I have a new job, not sure when I start. Canvasser for Power Up NC.
Who knows how this will affect my vice of blogging.
I
guess that’s why I started this post. Thinking about Hercules
coming out of hibernation, seeing it rise in the early morning sky
after months of being obscured by the Sun, and how the ancients
called it ‘waking up.’ I didn’t actually look for Hercules, I
saw the Big Dipper over Polaris, so I knew it was in the north east.
I also knew since the 14th hour was crossing the meridian,
the !6th-18th hours were rising in the east.
Hercules is a northern
constellation stretching from the !6th to the 18th
hour. But like I said I didn’t look for Hercules; instead I ran
over to the parking lot looking for the show stealing Moon hidden
behind that massive old live oak. I’ll spot Hercules tomorrow morn.
I can probably see it without even leaving my front yard. I’ve
been missing the night sky, falling asleep early, or reading under
blankets instead of stepping outside. I’m getting a blog post and
a few nighttime glimpses in before my work week gets busier.
10:04am
Wed Jan 22, 2020
*I’m
thinking about folks in southern hemisphere. After all it is part of the same planet. I usually imagine someone viewing
the sky from Valdivia Chile, since that’s about the same longitude
as Brooklyn NY. They would see the skinny old Moon rising way north
of east (Cancer the Crab – from the southern hemisphere the same
stretch of the ecliptic that we see low appears high in the sky!) Also they are facing north instead of south to see the ecliptic, so
they see the Moon rising on their right. That, to me, is like the midnight Sun in Alaska - hard to believe without actually seeing. This link shows how I alter astrodienst charts to look more like the actual sky in the southern hemisphere
10:17am
12:54pm at public library
Inserted the images, made a few changes and now going to post. Gotta go clean a big old house for some big hearted customers.
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