«I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance.»
Friedrich Nietzsche, From: ‹Also sprach Zarathustra – Vom Lesen und Schreiben› (Thus Spoke Zarathustra – From Reading and Writing)
In the fall of 2020, even before the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, I spoke with the naturalist Dorian Schmidt about how to understand such an astronomical event, the closest position of Jupiter and Saturn for 500 years. His most important sentence seemed to me to be that the events in the night sky were so complicated and diverse that it was difficult to get a picture of them. A single constellation – even if it is as outstanding as the great conjunction – is, I also feel, like a tone in a piece of music. It is therefore worthwhile to broaden one’s gaze in order to find further sounds of this cosmic symphony, to learn to hear. In this way, one constellation becomes an event, and one chord becomes a melody.
Where the Center and Perimeter meet
The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn occurred at the boundary of Capricorn and Sagittarius. It was a special interaction in the zodiac because the formal language of the stars was inverted. While in Sagittarius the stars fill a field and illuminate an entire district of the sky, in Capricorn, they encircle an inner area. ‹Inside› and ‹outside› are opposed in these two images. ‹Inside› and ‹outside› is also the polarity that Saturn and Jupiter together represent: Saturn radiates into itself, Jupiter rules outwardness. Two years later, an Easter dance of the planets is now taking place in the same area of the zodiac. The encounter of the big planets became a dance, especially of the earthly neighbors, Venus and Mars. For more than three months, it seemed as if the two transducers held hands and circled around each other. What is a dance? Encounter in movement or movement in an encounter! In dance, the encounter is no longer a moment but runs and deepens over time. In dance, you hold your partner while the environment seems to be flying. Thus, the encounter is new every moment because it shifts its place. This encounter in time changes again soon after Easter. From the conjunction to dance, a third act now follows when it comes to Pentecost and St. John’s. The celestial spectacle escalates into a series of all the planets in the highest order, stretching across the firmament in the morning sky. The close conjunction of Jupiter and Venus on May 1 and the no less dense encounter of Jupiter with Mars on May 29 form a framework. In the middle of the month, Uranus is added and the last missing planet, Mercury joins the row at the end of the month. Unfortunately, its height above the horizon is only just enough for a view through binoculars. Now all eight planets – if you add Pluto – are gathered in the morning sky. What a series and with what an order: From Mercury to Saturn, the planets in the arc are in their Copernican sequence, and also the trans-Saturn is there from left to right according to their order. The great conjunction took place on December 21, the day of the winter solstice, and made the rare encounter with it a solar event, an event of the spiritual sun, the winter sun. With the Easter dance of Venus and Mars, framed by Jupiter and Saturn, the celestial event focused on Earth to expand to the entire solar system.
Just as today every personal question should always include Humanity, just as the private is also the public, it seems that the encounter of Jupiter and Saturn with the Easter Dance 2022 and the subsequent planetary series in May and June to St. John’s include the vastness and universality of the planetary system. The part and the whole, as Werner Heisenberg called it, happen cosmically.
The War to the Planetary Council
But how to reconcile dying, the terrible violence in Ukraine, with this order in the sky? Yaroslava Black wrote in ‹Goetheanum› 9/2022 that the people of Ukraine are horrified not only because of the attack from kinfolk and obvious war crimes. There is also speechlessness and shock that ‹today›, that in the 21st century the archaic right of the strongest happens. Maybe that’s the key. What takes place in the three steps of encounter, dance, and union of all in the sky shows the perspective, shows the image of the one world, the one humanity beyond the abysses of imperial great power dreams. The fact that Australia is committed to peace in Ukraine, that 2000 people took to the streets in Buenos Aires, are signs that this dream, this myth of one world, does not only take place in the sky. 70 million refugees make displacement and homelessness an issue for all human beings. A climate crisis that does not stop at any border makes ecology a call to all people. A hunger that still affects more than 800 million people makes justice and waste a call to all. Perhaps the arc of all the planets that stretches from Easter to St. John’s is this celestial symbol of the one world, encouragement, this ‹call to all› to be able to hear and answer. Yes, to hear him is the Easter-ly thing, to now put oneself at the service of all people is the Pentecostal event. St. John’s is the only annual festival dedicated to a human being. To understand all human beings as humanity and to understand this call to all as a personal call, that makes the golden buckets, of whose descent and ascension Faust speaks, rise. This makes this constellation in the sky, this planetary council, an earthly event.
Article extended from: ‹Star Calendar 2022/23› (Sternkalender 2022/23)
