Moon And Venus Quotes

I feel a little like the moon who took possession of you for a moment and then returned your soul to you. You should not love me. One ought not to love the moon. If you come too near me, I will hurt you.

I never believed in Santa Claus. None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn't afford expensive presents and they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus. Dad had lost his job at the gypsum, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one. "Pick out your favorite star", Dad said. "I like that one!" I said. Dad grinned, "that's Venus", he said. He explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant and stars twinkled because their light pulsed. "I like it anyway" I said. "What the hell," Dad said. "It's Christmas. You can have a planet if you want." And he gave me Venus. Venus didn't have any moons or satellites or even a magnetic field, but it did have an atmosphere sort of similar to Earth's, except it was super hot-about 500 degrees or more. "So," Dad said, "when the sun starts to burn out and Earth turns cold, everyone might want to move to Venus to get warm. And they'll have to get permission from your descendants first. We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. "Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten," Dad said, "you'll still have your stars.

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we’ll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.

Sun stares at Mercury. Mercury stares at Venus. Venus stares at Earth. Earth stares at Mars. Mars states at Jupiter. Jupiter stares at Saturn. Saturn stares at Uranus. Uranus stares at Neptune. Neptune stares at Moon. Moon stares at me. Me stares at Sun.

Before the use of asteroids, the only significators of the feminine in traditional chart interpretation were the Moon and Venus.

This wasn’t a way of getting over a passing crush on your older sister’s swain. This was the moon of Jupiter and the sun of Venus aligning in the sky over her head.

The last thin paring of the old moon hung over the distant mountains to the west. Venus had moved away. With dark a gauzy swarm of stars. He could not guess what they were for so many.

God know my shame as I push my mule to exhaustion, even after the moon and Venus have risen to preside over the owls and mice, because I am not going back to my family—my wife, my children—because my wife’s silence is not the forbearance of decent, stern people who fear You; it is the quiet of outrage, of bitterness. It is the quiet of biding time. God forgive me. I am leaving.

In the twentieth century, astrophysicists in the United States discovered galaxies, the expanding of the universe, the nature of supernovas, quasars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, the origin of the elements, the cosmic microwave background, and most of the known planets in orbit around solar systems other than our own. Although the Russians reached one or two places before us, we sent space probes to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. American probes have also landed on Mars and on the asteroid Eros. And American astronauts have walked on the Moon. Nowadays most Americans take all this for granted, which is practically a working definition of culture: something everyone does or knows about, but no longer actively notices. While shopping at the supermarket, most Americans aren’t surprised to find an entire aisle filled with sugar-loaded, ready-to-eat breakfast cereals. But foreigners notice this kind of thing immediately, just as traveling Americans notice that supermarkets in Italy display vast selections of pasta and that markets in China and Japan offer an astonishing variety of rice. The flip side of not noticing your own culture is one of the great pleasures of foreign travel: realizing what you hadn’t noticed about your own country, and noticing what the people of other countries no longer realize about themselves.

I saw thee once - only once - years ago: I must not say how many - but not many. It was a July midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared stir, unless on tiptoe - Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light, Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death - Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in the parterre, enchanted By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell upon the upturn'd faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight - Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! - oh, G**! How my heart beats in coupling those two words!) Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked - And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind the garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out: The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All - all expired save thee - save less than thou: Save only divine light in thine eyes - Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them - they were the world to me. I saw but them - saw only them for hours - Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition! yet how deep - How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go - they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me - they lead me through the years. They are my ministers - yet I their slave. Their office is to illumine and enkindle - My duty, to be saved by their bright fire, And purified in their electric fire, And sanctified in their elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,) And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still - two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

Imagine a man selling his donkey to be with Jesus. Now imagine him selling Jesus to get a ride on a donkey. This does happen. Jesus can transform a drunk into gold. If the drunk is already golden, he can be changed to pure diamond. If already that, he can become the circling planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon. Never think that you are worthless. God has paid an enormous amount for you, and the gifts keep arriving.

Tatiana knew that she belonged irrevocably to Alexander. She thought she could extricate herself from him, that she could go on with her life somehow, that he could go on with is. It was all a sham. This wasn't a way of getting over a passing crush on your older sister's swain. This was the moon of Jupiter and the sun of Venus aligning in the sky over her head.

To Helen I saw thee once-once only-years ago; I must not say how many-but not many. It was a july midnight; and from out A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That gave out, in return for the love-light Thier odorous souls in an ecstatic death- Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted by thee, by the poetry of thy prescence. Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses And on thine own, upturn'd-alas, in sorrow! Was it not Fate that, on this july midnight- Was it not Fate (whose name is also sorrow) That bade me pause before that garden-gate, To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses? No footstep stirred; the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh Heaven- oh, God! How my heart beats in coupling those two worlds!) Save only thee and me. I paused- I looked- And in an instant all things disappeared. (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!) The pearly lustre of the moon went out; The mossy banks and the meandering paths, The happy flowers and the repining trees, Were seen no more: the very roses' odors Died in the arms of the adoring airs. All- all expired save thee- save less than thou: Save only the divine light in thine eyes- Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. I saw but them- they were the world to me. I saw but them- saw only them for hours- Saw only them until the moon went down. What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres! How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope! How silently serene a sea of pride! How daring an ambition!yet how deep- How fathomless a capacity for love! But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight, Into western couch of thunder-cloud; And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. They would not go- they never yet have gone. Lighting my lonely pathway home that night, They have not left me (as my hopes have) since. They follow me- they lead me through the years. They are my ministers- yet I thier slave Thier office is to illumine and enkindle- My duty, to be saved by thier bright light, And purified in thier electric fire, And sanctified in thier Elysian fire. They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope), And are far up in heaven- the stars I kneel to In the sad, silent watches of my night; While even in the meridian glare of day I see them still- two sweetly scintillant Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

If you catch a glimpse of this brightness, you will set sleep afire: for by night-faring and servitude Venus became the companion of the moon گر بو بری زین روشنی ، آتش به خواب اندر زنی / کز شبروی و بندگی زهره حریف ماه شد

You are Venus, and I am your Moon I am the secret that you will never tell the best secrets are the most bent forever your lover, never your man.

Whenever you feel lost, stop for a moments. get your bearings. You need to take a look at yourself, and accept what you see, before you can take a single step forward. - Venus

If we do not require a calendar to be geared to a tropical year (earth's orbit), but only that it be geared to some part of the celestial clock, then the Maya calendar was more accurate than the Julian calendar, more accurate than the Babylonian (solar-lunar) calendar; it intermeshed the "gear wheels" of Sun, Moon and Venus, and was based on a more accurate "gear ratio" than the other calendars, repeating itself only once in 52 years.

This year there will be an eclipse of the Moon on the fourth day of August.9 Saturn will be retrograde; Venus, direct; Mercury, variable. And a mass of other planets will not proceed as they used to.10 As a result, crabs this year will walk sideways, rope-makers work backwards, stools end up on benches, and pillows be found at the foot of the bed;11 many men’s bollocks will hang down for lack of a game-bag;12 the belly will go in front and the bum be the first to sit down; nobody will find the bean in their Twelfth Night cake; not one ace will turn up in a flush; the dice will never do what you want, however much you may flatter them;13 and the beasts will talk in sundry places.

KIRASUKU MALIBUKU WEEBEE WIZE UN YUBEE KUKU! ¡ALIPENDA KAKAMENDA PANTZ FORLDUN IFNO SUSPENDA! ¡FUNIKIKA KANDERIKA WEEBEE STRONGA YUBEE WEEKA! ¡POPOKOTA BORUMOKA VERI RISKI YU PROVOKA! ¡KATIKATI MOONS UN STARS FANFANISHA VENUS MARTE! El

...Counting stars by candlelight all are dim but one is bright the spiral light of Venus rising first and shining best from the northwest corner of a brand-new crescent moon crickets and cicadas sing a rare and different tune Terrapin Station...

On Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the moons of Jupiter, human beings were more free—free to found their own petty nations and ruin their own lives their own way. But

The planetary powers were as follows: sun for illumination; Moon for enchantment; Mars for growth; Mercury for wisdom; Jupiter for law; Venus for love; Saturn for peace.

Whenever we stumble in life, the most important thing is to really know ourselves — and I don’t just mean in the astrological sense. - Venus (Persian Cat)

The lilac moon came high an altitude from mine to clasp its beauty,yet next to my bosom hide, lies she,like ten thousand silver moons illumine;and her soul’s music showered words as she spoke wide.

In 1960, for example, the Committee for Long Range Studies of the Brookings Institution prepared a report for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration warning that even indirect contact—i.e., alien artifacts that might possibly be discovered through our space activities on the moon, Mars or Venus or via radio contact with an interstellar civilization—could cause severe psychological dislocations. The study cautioned that “Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they have had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior.

The starry sky began to shine,when assigned night spread with its ‘moon lamp’ for all of the wistful thoughts,lay below the tormented Earth’s nocturnal light and those splendid visions caught my pounding spirits.

Sparks come from the very source of light and are made of the purest brightness—so say the oldest legends. When a human Being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the darkness of outer space, then through galaxies, and finally, before it falls here, to Earth, the poor thing bumps into the orbits of planets. Each of them contaminates the spark with some Properties, while it darkens and fades. First Pluto draws the frame for this cosmic experiment and reveals its basic principles—life is a fleeting incident, followed by death, which will one day let the spark escape from the trap; there’s no other way out. Life is like an extremely demanding testing ground. From now on everything you do will count, every thought and every deed, but not for you to be punished or rewarded afterward, but because it is they that build your world. This is how the machine works. As it continues to fall, the spark crosses Neptune’s belt and is lost in its foggy vapors. As consolation Neptune gives it all sorts of illusions, a sleepy memory of its exodus, dreams about flying, fantasy, narcotics and books. Uranus equips it with the capacity for rebellion; from now on that will be proof of the memory of where the spark is from. As the spark passes the rings of Saturn, it becomes clear that waiting for it at the bottom is a prison. A labor camp, a hospital, rules and forms, a sickly body, fatal illness, the death of a loved one. But Jupiter gives it consolation, dignity and optimism, a splendid gift: things-will-work-out. Mars adds strength and aggression, which are sure to be of use. As it flies past the Sun, it is blinded, and all that it has left of its former, far-reaching consciousness is a small, stunted Self, separated from the rest, and so it will remain. I imagine it like this: a small torso, a crippled being with its wings torn off, a Fly tormented by cruel children; who knows how it will survive in the Gloom. Praise the Goddesses, now Venus stands in the way of its Fall. From her the spark gains the gift of love, the purest sympathy, the only thing that can save it and other sparks; thanks to the gifts of Venus they will be able to unite and support each other. Just before the Fall it catches on a small, strange planet that resembles a hypnotized Rabbit, and doesn’t turn on its own axis, but moves rapidly, staring at the Sun. This is Mercury, who gives it language, the capacity to communicate. As it passes the Moon, it gains something as intangible as the soul. Only then does it fall to Earth, and is immediately clothed in a body. Human, animal or vegetable. That’s the way it is. —

If I could, I would hold conversations with the moon. I would ask Venus about loneliness and Mars about anger. I would tell the black hole that I know what it feels like. I would write letters to the cosmos; and when the stars wrote back, they would say the most dazzling and necessary things.

It is well to understand how empty space is. If, as we have said, the sun were a ball nine feet across, our earth would, in proportion, be the size of a one-inch ball, and at a distance of 323 yards from the sun. The moon would be a speck the size of a small pea, thirty inches from the earth. Nearer to the sun than the earth would be two other very similar specks, the planets Mercury and Venus, at a distance of 125 and 250 yards respectively. Beyond the earth would come the planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, at distances of 500, 1806, 3000, 6000, and 9500 yards respectively.

To fill the days up of his dateless year Flame from Queen Helen to Queen Guenevere? For first of all the sphery signs whereby Love severs light from darkness, and most high, In the white front of January there glows The rose-red sign of Helen like a rose: And gold-eyed as the shore-flower shelterless Whereon the sharp-breathed sea blows bitterness, A storm-star that the seafarers of love Strain their wind-wearied eyes for glimpses of, Shoots keen through February's grey frost and damp The lamplike star of Hero for a lamp; The star that Marlowe sang into our skies With mouth of gold, and morning in his eyes; And in clear March across the rough blue sea The signal sapphire of Alcyone Makes bright the blown bross of the wind-foot year; And shining like a sunbeam-smitten tear Full ere it fall, the fair next sign in sight Burns opal-wise with April-coloured light When air is quick with song and rain and flame, My birth-month star that in love's heaven hath name Iseult, a light of blossom and beam and shower, My singing sign that makes the song-tree flower; Next like a pale and burning pearl beyond The rose-white sphere of flower-named Rosamond Signs the sweet head of Maytime; and for June Flares like an angered and storm-reddening moon Her signal sphere, whose Carthaginian pyre Shadowed her traitor's flying sail with fire; Next, glittering as the wine-bright jacinth-stone, A star south-risen that first to music shone, The keen girl-star of golden Juliet bears Light northward to the month whose forehead wears Her name for flower upon it, and his trees Mix their deep English song with Veronese; And like an awful sovereign chrysolite Burning, the supreme fire that blinds the night, The hot gold head of Venus kissed by Mars, A sun-flower among small sphered flowers of stars, The light of Cleopatra fills and burns The hollow of heaven whence ardent August yearns; And fixed and shining as the sister-shed Sweet tears for Phaethon disorbed and dead, The pale bright autumn's amber-coloured sphere, That through September sees the saddening year As love sees change through sorrow, hath to name Francesca's; and the star that watches flame The embers of the harvest overgone Is Thisbe's, slain of love in Babylon, Set in the golden girdle of sweet signs A blood-bright ruby; last save one light shines An eastern wonder of sphery chrysopras, The star that made men mad, Angelica's; And latest named and lordliest, with a sound Of swords and harps in heaven that ring it round, Last love-light and last love-song of the year's, Gleams like a glorious emerald Guenevere's.

Somebody’s killing the moon, the goddess; some woman has apparently taken on the—what would the word be—goddess-hood and somebody’s killing her. I think it’s too late for her, and I don’t know the circumstances, but she’s got a child, a little girl. An infant, in fact, to judge by how close Venus was to the moon when we saw it.” Here

Finer feeling, which we now wish to consider, is chiefly of two kinds: the feeling of the *sublime* and that of the *beautiful*. The stirring of each is pleasant, but in different ways. The sight of a mountain whose snow-covered peak rises above the clouds, the description of a raging storm, or Milton's portrayal of the infernal kingdom, arouse enjoyment but with horror; on the other hand, the sight of flower strewn meadows, valleys with winding brooks and covered with grazing flocks, the description of Elysium, or Homer's portrayal of the girdle of Venus, also occasion a pleasant sensation but one that is joyous and smiling. In order that the former impression could occur to us in due strength, we must have *a feeling of the sublime*, and, in order to enjoy the latter well, *a feeling of the beautiful*. Tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime; flower beds, low hedges and trees trimmed in figures are beautiful. Night is sublime; day is beautiful. Temperaments that possess a feeling for the sublime are drawn gradually, by the quiet stillness of a summer evening as the shimmering light of the stars breaks through the brown shadows of night and the lonely moon rises into view, into high feelings of friendship, of disdain for the world, of eternity. The shining day stimulates busy fervor and a feeling of gaiety. The sublime *moves*, the beautiful *charms*.

TELLUS: Why, she is but a woman.
 ENDYMION: No more was Venus. TELLUS: She is but a virgin.
 ENDYMION: No more was Vesta.
 TELLUS: She shall have an end.
 ENDYMION: So shall the world. TELLUS: Is not her beauty subject to time? ENDYMION: No more than time is to standing still. TELLUS: Wilt thou make her immortal? ENDYMION: No, but incomparable

I will tell you, as it was taught to me, the four spirits and the seven bodies, by order, as I oft heard my Master name them. The first spirit is called quicksilver, the second is arsenic, the third is sal ammoniac, and the fourth is brimstone. The seven bodies, lo, are here anon: the Sun is gold, the Moon is silver, Mars is iron, Mercury is quicksilver, Saturn is lead, Jupiter is tin, and Venus is copper.

Two Lovers And A Beachcomber By The Real Sea" Cold and final, the imagination Shuts down its fabled summer house; Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation Dwindles in the hour-glass. Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair Tangling in the tide's green fall Now fold their wings like bats and disappear Into the attic of the skull. We are not what we might be; what we are Outlaws all extrapolation Beyond the interval of now and here: White whales are gone with the white ocean. A lone beachcomber squats among the wrack Of kaleidoscope shells Probing fractured Venus with a stick Under a tent of taunting gulls. No sea-change decks the sunken shank of bone That chucks in backtrack of the wave; Though the mind like an oyster labors on and on, A grain of sand is all we have. Water will run by; the actual sun Will scrupulously rise and set; No little man lives in the exacting moon And that is that, is that, is that. Sylvia Plath, Mademoiselle, August 1955.

Venus, the first star, has appeared, another child is born and the stream runs on. Water must be a celestial element for it has neither time nor history stamped upon it and is as constant as the tides of the sea or the rising of the Moon. I long for such constancy, be it in life or in comradeship. Memory is a great deceiver; it embroiders until naught is left but the glory and the pleasure. I have a noble spirit but I want to live. Tell me how to live and who to live for. I fear I shall surrender too much in love and then survive to regret it.

Just as in the microcosm there are seven ‘windows’ in the head (two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth), so in the macrocosm God has placed two beneficent stars (Jupiter, Venus), two maleficent stars (Mars, Saturn), two luminaries (sun and moon), and one indifferent star (Mercury). The seven days of the week follow from these. Finally, since ancient times the alchemists had made each of the seven metals correspond to one of the planets; gold to the sun, silver to the moon, copper to Venus, quicksilver to Mercury, iron to Mars, tin to Jupiter, lead to Saturn. From these and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets is necessarily seven... Besides, the Jews and other ancient nations as well as modern Europeans, have adopted the division of the week into seven days, and have named them from the seven planets; now if we increase the number of planets, this whole system falls to the ground... Moreover, the satellites [of Jupiter] are invisible to the naked eye and therefore can have no influence on the earth, and therefore would be useless, and therefore do not exist.

i wish i was a little less virgo moon a little more gemini rising i don’t mind being a scorpio sun but i wish it hurt less to be vulnerable and that my cancer mars at twenty-six degrees made me less likely to be angry but not talk about it then blame myself i wish my mercury in sagittarius would stop saying things that are rude but true and i would happily swap my venus in capricorn for taurus or anything a little less analytical i wish my pisces midheaven had a little more self-resolve and my chiron in leo didn’t try to sabotage my success all i’m asking is to switch some signs shift the sky i just need a little change

was I Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world of ours.—I wish I had been born in the Moon, or in any of the planets (except Jupiter or Saturn, because I never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them (though I will not answer for Venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,—which o’ my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, I take to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest;——not but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could anyhow contrive to be called up to public charges, and employments of dignity or power;—but that is not my case;——and

When You Reveal Those Rose-Colored Cheeks Ghazal 1711 1941 When you reveal those rose-colored cheeks (of yours),you make the stones whirl2 from joy. Put (your) head out from the veil once again, for the sake of amazed lovers-- So that knowledge may lose the way, (and) the intellectual may shatter (his) learning; So that water may become a pearl3 from your reflection, (and) fire may quit war. 1945 With (the presence of) your beauty, I don't desire the (lovely full) moon or those few little hanging lanterns (in the heavens). (And) with (the presence of) your face, I don't call the ancient rusty sky a "mirror." You breathed into and created this narrow world4 in another form once again. O Venus,5 make that harp melodious again, in desire for his Mars-like eyes!

A barometric low hung over the Atlantic. It moved eastward toward a high-pressure area over Russia without as yet showing any inclination to bypass this high in a northerly direction. The isotherms and isotheres were functioning as they should. The air temperature was appropriate relative to the annual mean temperature and to the aperiodic monthly fluctuations of the temperature. The rising and setting of the sun, the moon, the phases of the moon, of Venus, of the rings of Saturn, and many other significant phenomena were all in accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks. The water vapor in the air was at its maximal state of tension, while the humidity was minimal. In a word that characterizes the facts fairly accurately, even if it is a bit old-fashioned: It was a fine day in August 1913.

I was a lonely nightwalker and a steady stander-at-corners. I liked to walk through the wet town after midnight, when the streets were deserted and the window lights out, alone and alive on the glistening tramlines in dead and empty High Street under the moon, gigantically sad in the damp streets by ghostly Ebenezer Chapel. And I never felt more a part of the remote and overpressing world, or more full of love and arrogance and pity and humility, not for myself alone, but for the living earth I suffered on and for the unfeeling systems in the upper air, Mars and Venus and Brazell and Skully, men in China and St Thomas, scorning girls and ready girls, soldiers and bullies and policemen and sharp, suspicious buyers of secondhand books, bad, ragged women who’d pretend against the museum wall for a cup of tea, and perfect, unapproachable women out of the fashion magazines, seven feet high, sailing slowly in their flat, glazed creations through steel and glass and velvet.

It Is the Rising That I Love" As long as I struggle to float above the ground and fail, there is reason for this poetry. On the stone back of the Ludovici throne, Venus is rising from the water. Her face and arms are raised, and two women trained in the ways of the world help her rise, covering her nakedness with a cloth at the same time. If this continues, she, goddess of beauty and love will have accomplished the earth where I stand. She from water to land, me from earth to air as if I had a soul. It is the rising I love, in no matter what element, to the one above. As I ascend, helped by prayers and not by women, I say in all my sexual glamor, see my body bathed in light and air. See me rise like a flame, like the sun, moon, stars, birds, wind. In light. In dark. But I never achieve it. I get down on my knees this grey April to see if open crocuses have a smell. I must live in the suffering and desire of what rises and falls. The terrible blind grinding of gears against our bodies and lives.

The priestly hierarchy ran to seven grades or stages of initiation. One became successively Raven, Bridegroom or Newly-wed (Nymphus), Soldier, Lion, Persian, Heliodromus or 'Messenger of the Sun' and finally Father. Each of the mystae attaining these titles wore the costume appropriate to his office, and the frescoes of Sta Prisca give us some idea of them. They were respectively under the protection of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the Moon, the Sun and Saturn. The Raven served the guests, the Nymphus gave them light. Marked on his forehead (perhaps branded), the Soldier who had been consecrated by the rite of a crown proffered on a sword-point (Tert., Cor., 15, 3), in his turn put candidates for initiation to the test. The Lion, who was purified by having honey instead of water poured on his hands, looked after the fire. The Persian was the 'guardian of the fruit' (Porph., Antr., 16). In the sacramental meal, the Heliodromus represented the Sun beside the Father representing Mithras. The Raven and the Lion wore masks suitable to their name.

Johannes Kepler, who was one of the first to apply mathematics to the motion of the planets, was an imperial adviser to Emperor Rudolf Il and perhaps escaped persecution by piously including religious elements in his scientific work. The former monk Giordano Bruno was not so lucky. In 1600, he was tried and sentenced to death for heresy. He was gagged, paraded naked in the streets of Rome, and finally burned at the stake. His chief crime? Declaring that life may exist on planets circling other stars. The great Galileo, the father of experimental science, almost met the same fate. But unlike Bruno, Galileo recanted his theories on pain of death. Nonetheless, he left a lasting legacy with his telescope, perhaps the most revolutionary and seditious invention in all of science. With a telescope, you could see with your own eyes that the moon was pockmarked with craters; that Venus had phases consistent with its orbiting the sun; that Jupiter had moons, all of which were heretical ideas. Sadly, he was placed under house arrest, isolated from visitors, and eventually went blind. (It was said because he once looked directly at the sun with his telescope.) Galileo died a broken man. But the very year that he died, a baby was born in England who would grow up to complete Galileo's and Kepler's unfinished theories, giving us a unified theory of the heavens.

The model favoured by Schreck, one that had been in existence for some forty years, placed the planets in orbit around the sun, and the sun and moon in orbit around the earth. Complex though this was, it appeared to a majority of astronomers the one that best corresponded to the available evidence. There were some, however, who preferred an altogether more radical possibility. Among them was a Czech Jesuit, Wenceslas Kirwitzer, who had met Galileo in Rome, and then sailed with Schreck to China, where he had died in 1626. Prior to his departure, he had written a short pamphlet, arguing for heliocentrism: the hypothesis that the earth, just like Venus and the other planets, revolved around the sun.24 The thesis was not Kirwitzer’s own. The first book to propose it had been published back in 1543. Its author, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, had in turn drawn on the work of earlier scholars at Paris and Oxford, natural philosophers who had argued variously for the possibility that the earth might rotate on its axis, that the cosmos might be governed by laws of motion, even that space might be infinite. Daring though Copernicus’ hypothesis seemed, then, it stood recognisably in a line of descent from a long and venerable tradition of Christian scholarship. Kirwitzer was not the only astronomer to have been persuaded by it. So too had a number of others; and of these the most high profile, the most prolific, the most pugnacious, was Galileo.

There is a sense that people of the Middle Ages did not feel space in the same way we do, as an empty expanse through which we move, or as a box in which we are contained. In Saving the Appearances (1957), Owen Barfield suggested that medieval man did not feel he was within space as if it were a container. Rather, for Barfield, medieval man wore the world like a garment. Medieval man, Barfield suggests, saw the world quite differently than we do. For him the air was “filled with light proceeding from a living sun, rather as our own flesh is filled with blood from a living heart.” The night sky was not a “homogenous vault pricked with separate points of light, but a regional qualitative sky . . . from which . . . the great zodiacal belt . . . the planets and the moon . . . are raying down their complex influences on the earth.”16 Barfield says that although he may not have heard it, medieval man believed in the music of the spheres and he took for granted the correspondences between things on Earth and those above: the moon’s correspondence with growth, the sun’s with gold, Venus’s with copper, that of Mars with iron, and Saturn with lead. For Barfield, this meant that our medieval ancestors lived in a much more “participatory” relationship to the world than we do. They were “in” the world in a way that we are not, much more like figures in a painting than objects in a box. There was, we can say, a felt continuity between themselves and the world around them.

The Sumerian pantheon was headed by an "Olympian Circle" of twelve, for each of these supreme gods had to have a celestial counterpart, one of the twelve members of the Solar System. Indeed, the names of the gods and their planets were one and the same (except when a variety of epithets were used to describe the planet or the god's attributes). Heading the pantheon was the ruler of Nibiru, ANU whose name was synonymous with "Heaven," for he resided on Nibiru. His spouse, also a member of the Twelve, was called ANTU. Included in this group were the two principal sons of ANU: E.A ("Whose House Is Water"), Anu's Firstborn but not by Antu; and EN.LIL ("Lord of the Command") who was the Heir Apparent because his mother was Antu, a half sister of Anu. Ea was also called in Sumerian texts EN.KI ("Lord Earth"), for he had led the first mission of the Anunnaki from Nibiru to Earth and established on Earth their first colonies in the E.DIN ("Home of the Righteous Ones")—the biblical Eden. His mission was to obtain gold, for which Earth was a unique source. Not for ornamentation or because of vanity, but as away to save the atmosphere of Nibiru by suspending gold dust in that planet's stratosphere. As recorded in the Sumerian texts (and related by us in The 12th Planet and subsequent books of The Earth Chronicles), Enlil was sent to Earth to take over the command when the initial extraction methods used by Enki proved unsatisfactory. This laid the groundwork for an ongoing feud between the two half brothers and their descendants, a feud that led to Wars of the Gods; it ended with a peace treaty worked out by their sister Ninti (thereafter renamed Ninharsag). The inhabited Earth was divided between the warring clans. The three sons of Enlil—Ninurta, Sin, Adad—together with Sin's twin children, Shamash (the Sun) and Ishtar (Venus), were given the lands of Shem and Japhet, the lands of the Semites and Indo-Europeans: Sin (the Moon) lowland Mesopotamia; Ninurta, ("Enlil's Warrior," Mars) the highlands of Elam and Assyria; Adad ("The Thunderer," Mercury) Asia Minor (the land of the Hittites) and Lebanon. Ishtar was granted dominion as the goddess of the Indus Valley civilization; Shamash was given command of the spaceport in the Sinai peninsula. This division, which did not go uncontested, gave Enki and his sons the lands of Ham—the brown/black people—of Africa: the civilization of the Nile Valley and the gold mines of southern and western Africa—a vital and cherished prize. A great scientist and metallurgist, Enki's Egyptian name was Ptah ("The Developer"; a title that translated into Hephaestus by the Greeks and Vulcan by the Romans). He shared the continent with his sons; among them was the firstborn MAR.DUK ("Son of the Bright Mound") whom the Egyptians called Ra, and NIN.GISH.ZI.DA ("Lord of the Tree of Life") whom the Egyptians called Thoth (Hermes to the Greeks)—a god of secret knowledge including astronomy, mathematics, and the building of pyramids. It was the knowledge imparted by this pantheon, the needs of the gods who had come to Earth, and the leadership of Thoth, that directed the African Olmecs and the bearded Near Easterners to the other side of the world. And having arrived in Mesoamerica on the Gulf coast—just as the Spaniards, aided by the same sea currents, did millennia later—they cut across the Mesoamerican isthmus at its narrowest neck and—just like the Spaniards due to the same geography—sailed down from the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica southward, to the lands of Central America and beyond. For that is where the gold was, in Spanish times and before.

Comus. The Star that bids the Shepherd fold, Now the top of Heav'n doth hold, And the gilded Car of Day, [ 95 ] His glowing Axle doth allay In the steep Atlantick stream, And the slope Sun his upward beam Shoots against the dusky Pole, Pacing toward the other gole [ 100 ] Of his Chamber in the East. Mean while welcom Joy, and Feast, Midnight shout, and revelry, Tipsie dance and Jollity. Braid your Locks with rosie Twine [ 105 ] Dropping odours, dropping Wine. Rigor now is gone to bed, And Advice with scrupulous head, Strict Age, and sowre Severity, With their grave Saws in slumber ly. [ 110 ] We that are of purer fire Imitate the Starry Quire, Who in their nightly watchfull Sphears, Lead in swift round the Months and Years. The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove [ 115 ] Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move, And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves, Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves; By dimpled Brook, and Fountain brim, The Wood-Nymphs deckt with Daisies trim, [ 120 ] Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love. Com let us our rights begin, [ 125 ] Tis onely day-light that makes Sin, Which these dun shades will ne're report. Hail Goddesse of Nocturnal sport Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame [ 130 ] That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the ayr, Stay thy cloudy Ebon chair, Wherin thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend [ 135 ] Us thy vow'd Priests, till utmost end Of all thy dues be done, and none left out, Ere the blabbing Eastern scout, The nice Morn on th' Indian steep From her cabin'd loop hole peep, [ 140 ] And to the tel-tale Sun discry Our conceal'd Solemnity. Com, knit hands, and beat the ground, In a light fantastick round.

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast, His place was taken by a family of chickadees; At noon a flock of humming birds passed south, Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala. All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain, The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them Over the face of the glacier. At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion, The Great Bear kneels on the mountain. Ten degrees below the moon Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley. Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall. Now there is distant thunder on the east wind. The east face of the mountain above me Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora. It is storming in the White Mountains, On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks; Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada. Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud, Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal, Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope. Frost, the color and quality of the cloud, Lies over all the marsh below my campsite. The wiry clumps of dwarfed whitebark pines Are smoky and indistinct in the moonlight, Only their shadows are really visible. The lake is immobile and holds the stars And the peaks deep in itself without a quiver. In the shallows the geometrical tendrils of ice Spread their wonderful mathematics in silence. All night the eyes of deer shine for an instant As they cross the radius of my firelight. In the morning the trail will look like a sheep driveway, All the tracks will point down to the lower canyon. “Thus,” says Tyndall, “the concerns of this little place Are changed and fashioned by the obliquity of the earth’s axis, The chain of dependence which runs through creation, And links the roll of a planet alike with the interests Of marmots and of men.

Gods in The Lost Hero Aeolus The Greek god of the winds. Roman form: Aeolus Aphrodite The Greek goddess of love and beauty. She was married to Hephaestus, but she loved Ares, the god of war. Roman form: Venus Apollo The Greek god of the sun, prophecy, music, and healing; the son of Zeus, and the twin of Artemis. Roman form: Apollo Ares The Greek god of war; the son of Zeus and Hera, and half brother to Athena. Roman form: Mars Artemis The Greek goddess of the hunt and the moon; the daughter of Zeus and the twin of Apollo. Roman form: Diana Boreas The Greek god of the north wind, one of the four directional anemoi (wind gods); the god of winter; father of Khione. Roman form: Aquilon Demeter The Greek goddess of agriculture, a daughter of the Titans Rhea and Kronos. Roman form: Ceres Dionysus The Greek god of wine; the son of Zeus. Roman form: Bacchus Gaea The Greek personification of Earth. Roman form: Terra Hades According to Greek mythology, ruler of the Underworld and god of the dead. Roman form: Pluto Hecate The Greek goddess of magic; the only child of the Titans Perses and Asteria. Roman form: Trivia Hephaestus The Greek god of fire and crafts and of blacksmiths; the son of Zeus and Hera, and married to Aphrodite. Roman form: Vulcan Hera The Greek goddess of marriage; Zeus’s wife and sister. Roman form: Juno Hermes The Greek god of travelers, communication, and thieves; son of Zeus. Roman form: Mercury Hypnos The Greek god of sleep; the (fatherless) son of Nyx (Night) and brother of Thanatos (Death). Roman form: Somnus Iris The Greek goddess of the rainbow, and a messenger of the gods; the daughter of Thaumas and Electra. Roman form: Iris Janus The Roman god of gates, doors, and doorways, as well as beginnings and endings. Khione The Greek goddess of snow; daughter of Boreas Notus The Greek god of the south wind, one of the four directional anemoi (wind gods). Roman form: Favonius Ouranos The Greek personification of the sky. Roman form: Uranus Pan The Greek god of the wild; the son of Hermes. Roman form: Faunus Pompona The Roman goddess of plenty Poseidon The Greek god of the sea; son of the Titans Kronos and Rhea, and brother of Zeus and Hades. Roman form: Neptune Zeus The Greek god of the sky and king of the gods. Roman form: Jupiter

intelligence. This is not surprising because our present computers are less complex than the brain of an earthworm, a species not noted for its intellectual powers. But computers roughly obey a version of Moore’s Law, which says that their speed and complexity double every eighteen months. It is one of these exponential growths that clearly cannot continue indefinitely, and indeed it has already begun to slow. However, the rapid pace of improvement will probably continue until computers have a similar complexity to the human brain. Some people say that computers can never show true intelligence, whatever that may be. But it seems to me that if very complicated chemical molecules can operate in humans to make them intelligent, then equally complicated electronic circuits can also make computers act in an intelligent way. And if they are intelligent they can presumably design computers that have even greater complexity and intelligence. This is why I don’t believe the science-fiction picture of an advanced but constant future. Instead, I expect complexity to increase at a rapid rate, in both the biological and the electronic spheres. Not much of this will happen in the next hundred years, which is all we can reliably predict. But by the end of the next millennium, if we get there, the change will be fundamental. Lincoln Steffens once said, “I have seen the future and it works.” He was actually talking about the Soviet Union, which we now know didn’t work very well. Nevertheless, I think the present world order has a future, but it will be very different. What is the biggest threat to the future of this planet? An asteroid collision would be—a threat against which we have no defence. But the last big such asteroid collision was about sixty-six million years ago and killed the dinosaurs. A more immediate danger is runaway climate change. A rise in ocean temperature would melt the ice caps and cause the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide. Both effects could make our climate like that of Venus with a temperature of 250 degrees centigrade (482 degrees Fahrenheit). 8 SHOULD WE COLONISE SPACE? Why should we go into space? What is the justification for spending all that effort and money on getting a few lumps of moon rock? Aren’t there better causes here on Earth? The obvious answer is because it’s there, all around us. Not to leave planet Earth would be like castaways on a desert island not trying to escape. We need to explore the

Beginning in 2011, SpaceX won a series of contracts from NASA to develop rockets that could take humans to the International Space Station, a task made crucial by the retirement of the Space Shuttle. To fulfill that mission, it needed to add to its facilities at Cape Canaveral’s Pad 40, and Musk set his sights on leasing the most storied launch facility there, Pad 39A. Pad 39A had been center stage for America’s Space Age dreams, burned into the memories of a television generation that held its collective breath when the countdowns got to “Ten, nine, eight…” Neil Armstrong’s mission to the moon that Bezos watched as a kid blasted off from Pad 39A in 1969, as did the last manned moon mission, in 1972. So did the first Space Shuttle mission, in 1981, and the last, in 2011. But by 2013, with the Shuttle program grounded and America’s half-century of space aspirations ending with bangs and whimpers, Pad 39A was rusting away and vines were sprouting through its flame trench. NASA was eager to lease it. The obvious customer was Musk, whose Falcon 9 rockets had already launched on cargo missions from the nearby Pad 40, where Obama had visited. But when the lease was put out for bids, Jeff Bezos—for both sentimental and practical reasons—decided to compete for it. When NASA ended up awarding the lease to SpaceX, Bezos sued. Musk was furious, declaring that it was ridiculous for Blue Origin to contest the lease “when they haven’t even gotten so much as a toothpick to orbit.” He ridiculed Bezos’s rockets, pointing out that they were capable only of popping up to the edge of space and then falling back; they lacked the far greater thrust necessary to break the Earth’s gravity and go into orbit. “If they do somehow show up in the next five years with a vehicle qualified to NASA’s human rating standards that can dock with the Space Station, which is what Pad 39A is meant to do, we will gladly accommodate their needs,” Musk said. “Frankly, I think we are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct.” The battle of the sci-fi barons had blasted off. One SpaceX employee bought dozens of inflatable toy unicorns and photographed them in the pad’s flame duct. Bezos was eventually able to lease a nearby launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Pad 36, which had been the origin of missions to Mars and Venus. So the competition of the boyish billionaires was set to continue. The transfer of these hallowed pads represented, both symbolically and in practice, John F. Kennedy’s torch of space exploration being passed from government to the private sector—from a once-glorious but now sclerotic NASA to a new breed of mission-driven pioneers.

Every planet was a god, interested and vital in the affairs of men: Jupiter was Marduk, Mercury was Nabu, Mars was Nergal, the sun was Shamash, the moon was Sin, Saturn was Ninib, Venus was Ishtar.

Magellan’s sudden identification of millions of land forms fomented a crisis in nomenclature. The International Astronomical Union responded with an all-female naming scheme that evoked a goddess or giantess from every heritage and era, along with heroines real or invented. Thus the Venusian highlands, the counterparts to Earth’s continents, took the names of love goddesses — Aphrodite Terra, Ishtar Terra, Lada Terra, with hundreds of their hills and dales christened for fertility goddesses and sea goddesses. Large craters commemorate notable women (including American astronomer Maria Mitchell, who photographed the 1882 transit of Venus from the Vassar College Observatory), while small craters bear common first names for girls. Venus’s scarps hail seven goddesses of the hearth, small hills the goddesses of the sea, ridges the goddesses of the sky, and so on across low plains named from myth and legend for the likes of Helen and Guinevere, down canyons called after Moon goddesses and huntresses.

Venus draws a fivefold pattern around Earth every eight years allowing us to draw an amazing diagram. In those eight years there are almost exactly 99 full moons, nine elevens, the number of names or reflections of Allah in Islam. Jupiter draws a beautiful elevenfold pattern around Earth.

The ancient Maya were superb stargazers. Their calendar synchronized not just the Sun and Moon, byt also Venus and Mars. They worked out that 81 (or 3X3X3X3) full moons occur exactly every 2,392 (or 8X13X23) days, an astonishingly accurate gearing.

They then named one day after the Moon and another after the Sun, giving them a seven-day week. Seven was regarded as a perfect number; and the Sumerian week is of course our week, its days still named in the Sumerian fashion, though with Roman or Old English words. Saturn becomes Saturday, Sol (‘the sun’ in Latin) becomes Sunday. Luna, the moon, becomes lundi in French, or our Monday (Moon-day). Mars is mardi, though in English, thanks to a Norse god, Tuesday. Similarly, Wednesday is Wodin’s day, but Wodin was the god associated with the planet Mercury. Jupiter is jeudi; or in English, Thursday, Thor being the northern god associated with Jupiter. Venus is vendredi, or Friday. The Sumerians also developed a counting system based on the number sixty, which is divisible by eleven other numbers and so particularly handy for Bronze Age accountancy. From this we get our 60-second minutes, 60-minute hours, 360-day years and 360-degree circles.

Over billions of years, the planets exchange quite a bit of material. This is not speculation; this is fact. Planetary scientists have found pieces of Mars and the Moon here on Earth, and may have identified fragments of Venus and Mercury as well. Could life have made the journey from Earth to Mars, or vice versa? This idea has come to be called transpermia, sending life across interplanetary or even interstellar space.

To sum up, the tonal is the perception attached to physical matter and to our five senses. It is governed by sunlight and responsible for creating our identity and location in time and space when we are awake. Nahual comes from two words: nehua, which means ‘I’, and nahualli, which means ‘what can be extended’. In the ancient cosmology, it refers to everything that extends beyond the tonal — that is, who we really are. The tonal is solely ruled by solar energy, but the nahual is ruled by the energy of the whole universe, and mainly by the energy of the moon, Venus and the Pleiades. At a human level, we can detect this energy as a bluish-grey radiance, similar to the cold moon’s light, that is located around the navel when we are awake but moves up around the head when we are asleep or when we enter an altered state of consciousness. The nahual is the energy body that travels to the world of slumber, the one in which we dream. That’s why we perceive things differently when sleeping and dreaming. The nahual also allows us to go to the Mictlan, the land of the dead, and to other worlds. In other words, when we’re asleep, we’re very close to being what is known nowadays as a spirit.

Saturn is part of Mars and in Venus I trusted the Moon.

these states relate to the progressive age of maturation of a human being. Bala here means ‘child’; a planet in Bala Avastha will have a child-like energy to it, and like a child will not be able to exhibit the full potential of its strength. In fact, a planet in Bala Avastha displays only about one-fourth of the strength that would otherwise be predicted for it. Kumara means ‘youth’ and, like a vigorous youth, a planet in Kumara Avastha gives one-half of its results since, though strength is present, the wisdom needed to direct that strength, which is derived from experience, is usually lacking. Yuva, which also means ‘young’, indicates a young adult who has had sufficient experience to gain some of life’s wisdom. A planet in Yuva Avastha gives full results. Vriddha means ‘aged’ and indicates a planet which has entered its senior, retired years; it gives minimal results. Mrita means ‘dead’; relatively speaking, dead planets produce no results, though every planet does in some way or other give some result. Directional Strength TABLE 4.4 Directional Strength and Weakness of the Planets House Planet’s Strength Planet’s Weakness First (East) Mercury-Jupiter Saturn Fourth (North) Moon Venus Sun Mars Seventh (West) Saturn Jupiter Mercury Tenth (South) Sun Mars Moon Venus A horoscope’s tenth house corresponds to the sector of the heavens that is highest in the sky at any particular moment, while the fourth house corresponds to the sector that is underfoot, i.e. opposite the tenth house below the earth.

Tarot and astrology have always been connected. The earliest tarot decks depicted the Sun, the Moon, and the Star, alongside gods with cosmic connections like Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus.

Amidst the wreckage of these implausible suggestions, an alternative has recently emerged—that Lewis was shaped by what the great English seventeenth-century poet John Donne called “the Heptarchy, the seven kingdoms of the seven planets.” And amazingly, this one seems to work. The idea was first put forward by Oxford Lewis scholar Michael Ward in 2008.[618] Noting the importance that Lewis assigns to the seven planets in his studies of medieval literature, Ward suggests that the Narnia novels reflect and embody the thematic characteristics associated in the “discarded” medieval worldview with the seven planets. In the pre-Copernican worldview, which dominated the Middle Ages, Earth was understood to be stationary; the seven “planets” revolved around Earth. These medieval planets were the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Lewis does not include Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, since these were only discovered in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, respectively. So what is Lewis doing? Ward is not suggesting that Lewis reverts to a pre-Copernican cosmology, nor that he endorses the arcane world of astrology. His point is much more subtle, and has enormous imaginative potential. For Ward, Lewis regarded the seven planets as being part of a poetically rich and imaginatively satisfying symbolic system. Lewis therefore took the imaginative and emotive characteristics which the Middle Ages associated with each of the seven planets, and attached these to each of the seven novels as follows: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Jupiter Prince Caspian: Mars The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”: the Sun The Silver Chair: the Moon The Horse and His Boy: Mercury The Magician’s Nephew: Venus The Last Battle: Saturn For example, Ward argues that Prince Caspian shows the thematic influence of Mars.[619] This is seen primarily at two levels. First, Mars was the ancient god of war (Mars Gradivus). This immediately connects to the dominance of military language, imagery, and issues in this novel. The four Pevensie children arrive in Narnia “in the middle of a war”—“the Great War of Deliverance,” as it is referred to later in the series, or the “Civil War” in Lewis’s own “Outline of Narnian History.

At Chichen Itza in Mexico stand the ruins of a gigantic observatory that the Maya built, whose passageways are aligned with the sun, moon and stars. With this, and in conjunction with other aligned observatories, the Maya were able to predict lunar and solar eclipses with great accuracy as well as measuring the synodic cycle of Venus with a precision that has only been matched and realised in modern times.8

That’s Gippy’s natal chart, the horoscope of his birth. Now, in addition to the Sun and Moon, the planets in our solar system, including the one we’re on and starting with the little fellow closest to the Sun, are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, then Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

The hidden meaning behind the attire for weddings is that men wear black to symbolize Saturn, representing commitment, while women wear white to represent both Venus, the planet of love, and Moon, the planet of emotions. This also suggests that we all follow astrology in a way.

[...] The statement "Botticelli's Birth of Venus is stunning", for starters, is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, because there is no experiment that might show this statement to be false. Parallax method and equations conventionally determined that the average distance between the Earth and the Moon is 384 400 Km (238 855 miles). Now, if we were to conduct hands-on investigation for its validation or an audit to demonstrate its falsification, direct testing of such a distance measure would require a scientist to physically travel the space with a giant ruler to calculate the scale between the two points. [...] The problem that scientific certainty is a myth still struggles to brush past the academic prejudice of most scientists who are green on critical analysis for its alleged pedagogical irrelevance.

I much prefer the old-fashioned comparisons of the Double Liegeois, which inform you simply: the Sun is a pumpkin, two feet in diameter, Jupiter an orange, Saturn a love-apple, Neptune a black cherry, Uranus a smaller cherry, the Earth a bean, Venus a pea, Mars a large pin's head, Mercury a mustard seed, and Juno, Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas mere grains of sand. One can understand that sort of thing.

Tonight is a night of union for the stars and of scattering, scattering, since a bride is coming from the skies, consisting of a full moon. Venus cannot contain hereself for charming melodies, like the nightingale which becomes intoxicated with the rose in spring-time. See how the polestar is ogling Leo; behold what dust Pisces is stirring up drom the deep! Jupiter has galloped his steed against ancient Saturn, saying "Take back your youth and go, bring good tidings!" Mars' hand, which was full of blood from the handle of his sword, has become as life-giving as the sun, the exalted in works. Since Aquarius has come full of that water of life, the dry cluster of Virgo is raining pearls from him. The Pleiades full of goodness fears not Libra and being broken; how should Aries flee away in fright from its mother? When from the moon the arrow of a glance struck the heart of Sagittarius, he took to night-faring in passion for her, like Scorpio. On such a festival, go, sacrifice Taurus, else you are crooked of gait in the mud like Cancer. This sky is the astrolabe, and the reality is Love; whatever wesay of this, attend to the meaning. Shamsi-Tabriz, on that dawn when you shine, the dark night is transformed to bright day by your moonlike face.

Venus can be seen clearly from Earth. In fact, it is the second brightest object in the night sky, after the Moon, although it is at its brightest either shortly after Sunset or shortly before Sunrise. For this reason, Venus has also been called the Morning Star and the Evening Star.

We should not imagine that this means our fate is fixed by our planets, however. Even though each vital organ corresponds to a planet—the liver to Jupiter, the brain to the moon, the heart to the sun, the spleen to Saturn, the lungs to Mercury, the gallbladder to Mars, and the kidneys to Venus—yet the one is not governed by the other: "Saturn has nothing to do with the spleen, nor the spleen anything to do with Saturn." Rather, these correspondences are simply a manifestation of the cosmic mirror that makes man a microcosm of the universal macrocosm. The two are analogs but are not causally related. From a scale model of a building you can read the proportions and relationships of the building itself, but crushing the former does not raze the latter.

I swear, since seeing Your face, the whole world is fraud and fantasy The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf or blossom. The distracted birds can't distinguish the birdseed from the snare. A house of love with no limits, a presence more beautiful than venus or the moon, a beauty whose image fills the mirror of the heart.

Our feast, our wedding Will be auspicious to the world. God fit the feast and wedding To our length like a proper garment. Venus and the moon Will be matched to each other, The parrot with sugar. The most beautifully-faced Beloved Makes a different kind of wedding every night. With the favor of our Sultan's prosperity, Hearts become spacious And men pair up with each other. Troubles and anxieties are all gone. Here tonight, You go again To the wedding and feasting. O beauty who adorned our city, You will be groom to the beauties. How nicely You walk in our neighborhood, Coming to us so beautifully. O our river, O One Who is searching for us, How nicely You flow in our stream. How nicely You flow with our desires, Unfastening the binding of our feet. You make us walk so nicely, holding our hand, O Joseph of our world. Cruelty suits You well. It's a mistake for us to expect Your loyalty. Step as You wish on our bloody Soul. O Soul of my Soul, pull our Souls To our Beloved's temple. Take this piece of bone. Give it as a gift to our Huma*. O wise ones, give thanks To our Sultan's kindness, who adds Souls to Soul, Keep dancing, O considerate ones. Keep whirling and dancing. At the wedding night of rose and Nasrin* I hang the drum on my neck. Tonight, the tambourine and small drum Will become our clothes. Be silent! Venus becomes the Cupbearer tonight And offers glasses to our sweetheart, Whose skin is fair and rosy, Who takes a glass and drinks. For the sake of God, because of our praying, Now Sufis become exuberant At the assembly of God's Absence. They put the belt of zeal on their waists And start Sama'*. One group of people froth like the sea, Prostrating like waves. The other group battles like swords, Drinking the blood of our glasses. Be silent! Tonight, the Sultan Went to the kitchen. He is cooking with joy. But a most unusual thing, Tonight, the Beloved is cooking our Halva

You and I, Ella, we are the failures. We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents, into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind. We push the boulder.

I swear, since seeing Your face, the whole world is fraud and fantasy The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf or blossom. The distracted birds can’t distinguish the birdseed from the snare. A house of love with no limits, a presence more beautiful than venus or the moon, a beauty whose image fills the mirror of the heart.

The Sumerians plotted the movements of the five planets they could see – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – and named a day after each. They then named one day after the Moon and another after the Sun, giving them a seven-day week.

Mercury and Venus ought to show phases like the moon.

For those people who insist that the only thing that is important is that the theory agrees with experiment, I would like to imagine a discussion between a Mayan astronomer and his student. The Mayans were able to calculate with great precision predictions, for example, for eclipses and for the position of the moon in the sky, the position of Venus, etc. It was all done by arithmetic. They counted a certain number and subtracted some numbers, and so on. There was no discussion of what the moon was. There was no discussion even of the idea that it went around. They just calculated the time when there would be an eclipse, or when the moon would rise at the full, and so on.

(...)Through the ship's telescopes, he had watched the death of the solar system. With his own eyes, he had seen the volcanoes of Mars erupt for the first time in a billion years; Venus briefly naked as her atmosphere was blasted into space before she herself was consumed; the gas giants exploding into incandescent fireballs. But these were empty, meaningless spectacles compared with the tragedy of Earth. That, too, he had watched through the lenses of cameras that had survived a few minutes longer than the devoted men who had sacrificed the last moments of their lives to set them up. He had seen ... ... the Great Pyramid, glowing dully red before it slumped into a puddle of molten stone ... ... the floor of the Atlantic, baked rock-hard in seconds, before it was submerged again, by the lava gushing from the volcanoes of the Mid-ocean Rift... ... the Moon rising above the flaming forests of Brazil and now itself shining almost as brilliantly as had the Sun, on its last setting, only minutes before ... ... the continent of Antarctica emerging briefly after its long burial, as the kilometres of ancient ice were burned away ... ... the mighty central span of the Gibraltar Bridge, melting even as it slumped downward through the burning air ... In that last century the Earth was haunted with ghosts - not of the dead, but of those who now could never be born. For five hundred years the birthrate had been held at a level that would reduce the human population to a few millions when the end finally came. Whole cities - even countries - had been deserted as mankind huddled together for History's closing act.

In Mesoamerica, timekeeping provided the stimulus that accounting gave to the Middle East. Like contemporary astrologers, the Olmec, Maya, and Zapotec believed that celestial phenomena like the phases of the moon and Venus affect daily life. To measure and predict these portents requires careful sky watching and a calendar. Strikingly, Mesoamerican societies developed three calendars: a 365-day secular calendar like the contemporary calendar; a 260-day sacred calendar that was like no other calendar on earth; and the equally unique Long Count, a one-by-one tally of the days since a fixed starting point thousands of years ago.

The way we experience time has so often been entwined with our beliefs. This is evident in another part of our weekly calendar. In English, Monday is a contraction of moon and day. In Spanish, French, and Italian, days share the same basic construction. It might not sound like it in English, but Tuesday is for Mars. The romance languages make it obvious: martes (Spanish), mardi (French), and martedi (Italian). Wednesday, also known as miércoles, mercredi, and mercoledí, is for Mercury. Thursday is for Jupiter, Friday for Venus, Saturday for Saturn.

Depending on the planets Venus interacts with, this planetary influence can be lovingly compassionate or excessively hedonistic. It’s a planet that points out what you value with your money, time, and energy. Venus energy also manifests in the way that we seek pleasure, pampering, and money. Venus’s energy is feminine, but not in the same way as the moon. Where the moon’s take on femininity is about security and nurturing, Venus’s femininity is all about seduction, charm, and attraction. No matter your gender or your belief about your own ability to charm people’s socks off, Venus’s influence is present in your psychological makeup, and when you learn to work with this energy, you find a deep reserve of power and confidence. To illustrate all the ways Venusian energy influences our lives, let’s consider the zodiac signs that Venus rules. Personal Planets The planets closest to the sun including Mars, Venus, and Mercury are called “the personal planets” because their impacts are more readily felt in our lives. The luminaries (sun and moon) are also sometimes considered personal planets. All of these together form the basic energies of our charts, and their influence in our lives depends on where (which house) these planets are in.

President Pitzer, Mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, Mr. Webb. Mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen: I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion. We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far out-strip our collective comprehension. No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only 5 years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than 2 years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than 2 months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight. This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward-and so will space. William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace...

I always say that the Earth is not our home, because the term "home" has the connotation of permanent ownership. Rather, it is a dormitory where we need to learn to live together by sharing with each other and caring for one another.

Love's Great Adventure by Stewart Stafford Look out for the wandering eye, And the fervour that follows it, A jewel clasped is the first part, Guarding against theft is trickier. Surreptitious teases acted out then, The Rubicon crossed and drained, Love, blind to impediment boundaries, Prized contagion spread as lightning. Rival houses intrude to spoil it, To still the fluttering of butterflies, And the bosom of Eros heaving, Unstoppable to every homo sapien. Here, I'll act as Cupid's emissary, Whisper lovers' spells in my ear, I'll parrot them to her to the letter, So lured, she'll have me over you. Groggy from humid moon nectar, On summertime clouded visions, A second an hour, as a day a year, Arousal of fire in swelled chests. Stallions of the Venus chariot, Borne freely to the new Arcadia, Feet skimming over terra firma, The youthful mask smothers all. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Hindu astrology recognizes nine gems, called the Navaratna, meaning nine jewels, one to influence every planet: ruby for the sun, pearl for the moon, red coral for Mars, emerald for Mercury, yellow sapphire for Jupiter, diamond for Venus, blue sapphire for Saturn, hessonite for the ascending lunar node and cat’s eye for the descending lunar node.

There was no moon. The sky was black and filled with stars, with the occasional drifting cloud. Marek led them down the hill and past the burning town of Castelgard, into a dark landscape. Chris was surprised to find that once his eyes adjusted, he could actually see quite well by starlight. Probably because there was no air pollution, he thought. He remembered reading that in earlier centuries, people could see the planet Venus during the day as we can now see the moon. Of course, that had been impossible for hundreds of years.

It was initially believed that the Earth was the center of our solar system and that the Sun, the Moon, and the planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter) revolved around it. This theory is called the geocentric model (geo: Earth; centric: at the center). It was developed by Greek mathematician Ptolemy in the 2nd century, but it wasn’t widely accepted until the 16th century.

In Latin, they run Sunday to Saturday as follows: Solis (sun/Sunday), Lunae (moon/Monday), Martis (Mars/Tuesday), Mercurii (Mercury/Wednesday), Iovis (Jupiter/Thursday), Veneris (Venus/Friday), and Saturni (Saturn/Saturday). As you can probably see, even in English, some of the planetary days remain: Sunday, Monday, and Saturday, still bearing the mark of sun, moon, and Saturn respectively in their names.

Another aspect of Aphrodite, with which the buck also must have had something to do, is expressed in such surnames as Melaina and Melainis, “the black one”, and Skotia “the dark one”. In so far as this refers to the darkness that love seeks, this aspect is connected with the aspect already described. But the black Aphrodite can equally well be associated with the Erinyes, amongst whom she was also numbered. Such surnames as Androphonos, “Killer of Men”, Anosia, “the Unholy” and Tymborychos, “the Gravedigger”, indicate her sinister and dangerous potentialities. As Epitymbidia she is actually “she upon the graves”. Under the name of Persephaessa she is invoked as the Queen of the Underworld. She bears the title of Basilis, “Queen”. Her surname of Pasiphaessa, “the far-shining”, associates her also with the moon-goddess. All these characteristics are evidence that at one time there were tales which identified the goddess of love with the goddess of death, as a being comparable to the Venus Libitina of the Romans.

anyone approaching Spadefish. Outside, the western sky was ablaze in the pinks, oranges and golds of the departing sun. The heavens darkened to a deep indigo to the east. A few stars were already starting to twinkle through the gathering darkness. Venus rose bright and bold in the east, just below the sliver of the new moon. The darker blue sea was empty, calm.

As I mentioned earlier, the sun governs the tonal. It was assigned the number 13 because a single rotation of the solar equator takes approximately 26 Earth days. So the sun, Tonatiuh, shows one of his two faces to the Earth every 13 days, and this became known as a solar wave or trecena (a period of 13 days). Thirteen was such an important number in ancient cultures that one of God’s names in the Kabbalah is the number 13 in Hebrew. According to tradition, the nahual is governed by the Pleiades, together with the moon and Venus. The Pleiades reach the same position in the sky on a particular day in November every 52 years and on that day the ceremony of the new fire is celebrated in Mexico City, at El Cerro de la Estrella. 5 Fire is the governing element of sleep, hence new fire equals new dream. That’s why the nahual was assigned the number 52.

The starry sky began to shine,when assigned night spread with its ‘moon lamp’ for all of the wistful thoughts lay,below the tormented Earth’s nocturnal light and those splendid visions caught my pounding spirits.

MODERN SCIENCE CAN SOLVE ANY TECHNICAL PROBLEM IT RECOGNISES therefore 257 THE GREAT FUTURE OF MANKIND WE CAN DOME THE CRATERS OF THE MOON AND GROW FORESTS IN THEM and then STRIP FROM VENUS HALF THE CLOUDS WHICH MAKE HER SURFACE A FACSIMILE OF ANCIENT HELL AND GIVE HER MOIST AIR RAINING AN OCEAN WHICH, STOCKED WITH PLANKTON AND WHALES, WILL COMPOSE A WARM PACIFIC PLANET WITH VOLCANIC ISLANDS WHERE SLOWLY NEW LIFE WILL TAKE ROOT and then HOLLOW THE LARGEST ASTEROIDS, LIGHT ARTIFICIAL SUNS IN THEM, ACCELERATE THEIR AXIAL ROTATION TO PRODUCE CENTRIFUGAL INTERIOR GRAVITY, BUILD HORIZONLESS GARDEN CITIES ROUND THE WALLS AND LET ADVENTUROUS GENERATIONS SAIL TO THE STARS IN THEM because WITHOUT FIGHTING OTHERWORLDLY HUNS, PLUNDERING OTHERWORLDLY AZTECS, KOWTOWING TO OTHERWORLDLY SUPERMEN, WE CAN CREATE ALL THE GOOD WORLDS WE EVER IMAGINED and thus LOVE, SEX, BIRTH, CHILDREN NEED NO LONGER LEAD TO POVERTY, FAMINE, WAR, DEBT, SLAVERY, REVOLUTION, THEY WILL BECOME OUR GREATEST GIFT TO THE UNIVERSE WHICH ENGENDERED US! However THE COST OF FERTILISING THE WASTE OF THE UNIVERSE, STARTING WITH THE MOON, IS SO GREAT THAT ONLY A RICH PLANET CAN AFFORD IT so we must EMPLOY EVERY LIVING SOUL TO FERTILISE OUR OWN DESERTS, RESTOCK OUR OWN SEAS, USE UP OUR OWN WASTE, IMPROVE ALL GROUND, NOURISH EDUCATE DELIGHT ALL CHILDREN UNTIL ALL ARE STRONG, UNAFRAID, CREATIVE, PRACTICAL ADULTS WHO LOVE AND UNDER-STAND THE WORLD THEY LIVE IN AND THE MANY WORLDS THEY COULD LIVE IN 258 GLORY RAGE RADIANCE for it is technically possible to CREATE A WORLD WHERE EVERYONE IS A PARTNER IN THE HUMAN ENTERPRISE AND NOBODY A MERE TOOL OF IT yes God we can BECOME GARDENERS AND LOVERS OF THE UNIVERSE BY FIRST TREATING OTHERS AS WE WISH THEY WOULD TREAT US AND LOVING OUR NEIGHBOURS AS OURSELVES (What happened three nights later when you went home to Denny?) FUCK OFF YA FUCKIN BASTARDING BAMPOT YE! LEA ME ALANE YE BLEEDN CUNTYE! YE ROTTN PRICKYE! Yes I’ll tell you about that but not right now. Give me a bit more time. Please. God.

Astrological Symbol of Luna, the Zodiacal Sign of Cancer, which is the House of the Moon, and the name of the First Heaven, Shamain. The name of Samael, the Angel of Tuesday, appears over his Sigil, together with the Astrological Symbol of Mars, the Zodiacal Signs of Aries and Scorpio, which are the Houses of the Planet, and the name of the Fifth Heaven, Machon. The name of Raphael, the Angel of Wednesday, appears over his Sigil, together with the Astrological Symbol of Mercury, the Zodiacal Signs of Gemini and Virgo, which are the Houses of the Planet, and the name of the Second Heaven, Raquie. The name of Sachiel, the Angel of Thursday, appears over his Sigil, together with the Astrological Symbol of Jupiter, the Zodiacal Signs of Sagittarius and Pisces, which are the Houses of the Planet, and the name of the Sixth Heaven, Zebul. The name of Anael, the Angel of Friday, appears over his Sigil, together with the Astrological Symbol of Venus, the Zodiacal Signs of Taurus and Libra, which are the Houses of the Planet, and the name of the Third Heaven, Sagun. The name of Cassiel, the Angel of Saturday, appears over his Sigil, together with the Astrological Symbol of Saturn, and the Zodiacal Signs of Capricornus and Aquarius, which are the Houses of the Planet.

The relationship between the planets and the days Sun-day and Moon-day is obvious. As for the rest, the Saxon god Tiw is the same as the Roman war god Mars, hence we call it Tiw’s-day, instead of Mars-day. The Saxon god Woden is the same as Mercury, and so we call it Woden’s-day instead of Mercury-day. Thursday was named for the god Thor, rather than for Jupiter. And finally Friff (the wife of Woden) took the place of Venus for the Saxons, and so we have Friff-day, or Friday.

When you show your face even the stones begin to dance with joy. When you lift your veil the wise ones lose themselves in awe. The reflection of your face turns the water into a golden shimmer and softens even the fire into a tender glow. When I see your face, the Moon and the few floating stars around it lose their glory. The Moon is far too old and dim to be compared with a mirror. Your breath touched my soul and I saw beyond all limits. In your presence Mars, the god of war, sits peacefully by the side of Venus.

Our best sales territories may be under our Mercury lines. Our publishers are waiting along our Jupiter lines. Saturn lines can help our children choose a university. Venus lines point to love. Moon’s lines show a woman’s best place to give birth and raise her children. Sun lines show where we can succeed, gain recognition and literally shine in the world.

Some planets naturally fall together as “soft.” They are the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and Neptune. Other planets feel “hard.” They are the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto. Mercury seems to be in a category by itself, able to take on the qualities of either type.