|
Chapter 6 There is a figure in the heavens who wrestles with a serpent. For the Sumerians of old this was Nu-tsir-da, 'Prince of the Serpent,'1 then later for the Greeks he became Ophiuchus, or Serpentaris the serpent-bearer. His left foot steps onto the Scorpion. He is located in that rather mysterious part of the heavens where the Milky Way intersects with the Zodiac, having the right half of his body in the Milky Way. His right foot is upon the point we now recognise as the Galactic Centre. The figure of Ophiuchus the serpent-bearer is associated with the figure of Asclepius, the demi-god who taught the art of healing on the island of Cos, where the ruins of his temple still remain. Astrology percolated into Greece via that island, brought there by a Chaldean in the third century BC. According to the legend, Asclepios grew unduly proficient in his healing art and started to raise the dead, whereupon Pluto complained, averring that it was spoiling his business. In response Zeus smote down Asclepius, but then immortalised him, raising him up into the stars as a constellation. We may feel however a certain lack of credibility in this Greek story, since the serpent in the sky is larger than Ophiuchus, and too big to resemble those used by the Greeks in their healing temples.
It was always accepted that there were just twelve zodiac constellations. The overlapping zone, where Ophiuchus steps onto the Scorpion, was traditionally understood as belonging to the Scorpion. These twelve constellations on the ecliptic, unequal in size, corresponded to the twelve 30° signs of the zodiac. The former were as given in Ptolemy's Almagest, for astronomers, while the latter as given in his Tetrabiblos were for astrologers.2 The Ophiuchus Supernova Nearly four centuries ago, the constellation Ophiuchus became a major focus of scientific interest. A supernova lit up there and inspired Galileo and Kepler. The latter wrote 'On the New Star in the Foot of the Serpent-bearer' about it in 1606, and there discussed the relation between astrology and astronomy. The nova became known as 'Kepler's star', though he wasn't the first to see it: 'The nova appeared in the foot of Ophiuchus 32 years after the appearance of 'Tycho's Star' in Cassiopeia. The appearance of two spectacular novae within such a short space of time is extraordinary. Nothing comparable to either of them has been seen since. The drama of the nova's appearance was highlighted by its proximity to a spectacular planetary alignment. Jupiter and Saturn had just made their initial 'great conjunction' in the fiery triplicity, in Sagittarius near the fixed star Antares. Mars had moved into conjunction with them. Kepler's Star flared up in the middle of this portentious configuration. When asked for his opinion of its astrological significance, Kepler could only suggest that people examine their conscience, acknowledge their sins, and repent!'3 The position of the nova in the foot of Ophiuchus is within the zodiac and a mere three degrees from the ecliptic. It is also just a few degrees of the Galactic Centre. The latter lies below the foot of Ophiuchus, in between the tip of the arrow of Sagittarius and the sting of the Scorpion. Galileo first saw the new star on the 10th of October, 1604, and Kepler first saw it on the 17th. A court official at Prague had seen it on the 9th and notified Kepler the next day, but the skies clouded over so it could not be viewed for a week. This nova stimulated Galileo's first public lectures on the new sun-centred Copernican theory. At the university of Padua where he taught, the excitement was such that a hall holding hundreds of people was hardly large enough for the crowds who came to hear about the new star.4 Boundaries Fixed In the twentieth century, astronomers decided that they wanted to place boundaries around the constellations, so they could say where each star belonged. No-one had ever done this before. In 1928, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) performed this bureaucratic exercise in star-classification.5 This body represents the official voice of modern astronomy. Perhaps wishing to distance itself from the framework used by astrologers, the IAU assigned nineteen degrees of the ecliptic to Ophiuchus, from 8° to 25° of Sagittarius, leaving a mere six degrees to the Scorpion. Astronomers in this century have thereby effectively changed their mind, increasing the number of constellations across the ecliptic from twelve to thirteen.
This created something of a paradox, in that the first-magnitude red star Antares, 'Heart of the Scorpion', five degrees away from the ecliptic, was thereby placed within Ophiuchus in terms of its ecliptic longitude. The bulk of the Scorpion constellation became displaced away from the ecliptic, so that it lurked out on the edge of the zodiac belt. No picture of a scorpion in the sky can be drawn in accord with the new divisions, or I have never seen such attempted. In the Sidereal zodiac of antiquity, it has been suggested that the Babylonian astronomer/priests located Antares at the centre of the 30° sidereal sign of the Scorpion - directly opposite Aldebaran, the first magnitude star of 'the Bull's Eye'. The newly-fixed magnitudes along the ecliptic together with the corresponding dates for the Sun's transit across these constellations thereby became:
Here we distinguish between the ecliptic and zodiac: thirteen constellations lie across the ecliptic, but there are several more falling within the zodiac, either side of the ecliptic, for example the fin of Cetus the Whale is adjacent to the fishes. The IAU boundaries made Cetus just touch the ecliptic, without crossing it. After that decision of the IAU, modern astronomers found it far from easy to give up two millenia of tradition concerning the notion of twelve constellations. Thus, Patrick Moore alluded to the 'twelve Zodiacal groups' of constellations6. A modern guide to the constellations explained how the sign of Sagittarius covered three constellations: 'namely Scorpius, Ophiuchus (which now covers the greater part of the sign though it is not considered a zodiacal constellation) and Sagittarius,'7 Figure 1 is taken from the Flammarion textbook, which simply left an empty space for Ophiuchus. Prior to 1995, it would have been hard to find any astronomy book which stated that there were thirteen constellations which lie across the ecliptic. In this respect, the IAU decision was far from being widely appreciated. The International Astronomical Union formally approved its new boundaries for the constellations on 13th July, 1928. After this decision, Ophiuchus was designated as a separate 13th constellation in the Sun's yearly path, breaking the mould of antiquity. Few got to hear about this decision however, so that it was not generally appreciated until 1995. There was one planet in Ophiuchus when this decision was taken: Saturn. For the establishing of boundaries, this is clearly the relevant planet. We shall see how the position of Saturn at the fixing of Ophiuchus's boundaries in 1928 was close to its position centuries earlier at the Ophiuchus supernova called, 'Kepler's star' (Table 1). A Thirteenth Sign?
The notion of a 'thirteenth sign' of the zodiac re-emerges from time to time, to challenge the symmetry of the twelve; echoing the way thirteen months are required for any lunar-based calendar system, to keep it in step with the solar year (every third year or so, a thirteenth month is 'intercalated' in such calendars). In 1995 a claim for a 'thirteenth sign' produced newspaper headlines around the world. The story was cast as a 'discovery', as if some astronomers had discovered a new sign. The little-noticed decision of 1928 by the astronomers became news... On the morning of January 20th, 1995 a front-page headline of The Daily Telegraph proclaimed: 'The signs of the zodiac are all wrong, according to the Royal Astronomical Society. The dates governing each sign are wildly inaccurate and there is a 13th sign of the zodiac that is not commonly used, according to scientists.' This brilliantly successful muddling up of signs and constellations proved unstoppable, and achieved global coverage. That evening the BBC's nine o'clock news averred that: 'An extra sign of the zodiac has been announced by the Royal Astronomical Society', concluding with the quip: 'Is there any future in horoscopes?' The news story travelled across the whole of Europe, as well as being broadcast right across America on the NBC national news, all on the same day. Absurd headlines such as 'Astronomers Discover 13th Zodiac Sign' burgeoned. The story reached Australia and South America. When the librarian of the RAS arrived for work on that morning of the 20th, she found thirty media inquiries waiting for her. The Telegraph article had averred: 'Dr Jacqueline Mitton will outline the accurate zodiac in the third program of Heavenly Bodies, a six-part BBC series...' Dr Mitton is the RAS's Public Relations Officer, and has had an asteroid named after her, so she is clearly a person of some authority. The BBC series referred to turned out to have no hint of any '13th sign' or constellation - it just alluded, briefly, to the precessional shift between signs and constellations. Where had the story come from? One tends to expect that a BBC news announcement will have some factual basis. The story appeared self-generating, as if by some spontaneous combustion process. One is tempted to call it the most successful press release which the Royal Astronomical Society has ever released, except that they denied having put one out. Could a Telegraph journalist really exert such an effect, like something out of Evelyn Waugh's 'Scoop', where journalists created the news? Dr Mitton had exercised her role as Public Relations Officer in a rather creative manner. Writing to the Royal Astronomical Society, an astronomer from Canada wondered what all the fuss was about: 'Much has been made in the media recently of the supposed 'discovery' of a thirteenth zodiacal sign. Some reporters seem to be under the impression that astronomers recently trained their telescopes on the heavens and lo!, there was a new constellation that they had not noticed before.'8 Ten days after the Telegraph story, the UK's Astrological Association put out their reply to the media, which was ignored completely. Claiming to be the victim of a campaign of disinformation, and to be setting the record straight, it explained, 'Ophiuchus...is just another constellation, quite close to the Sun's apparent path.' It had missed the point, that there were thirteen and no longer twelve designated ecliptic constellations.
The media story was cast as a clash, and experienced by astrologers as a fairly dire one judging by the various astrology journal editorials whinging in the aftermath. 'Astronomers launch a devastating attack upon the basic tenets of astrology...' claimed the Telegraph (21 Jan). Professional astrologers were besieged by calls from anxious clients demanding to know if they had been misled and asking what their 'real' sign was.9 The story burgeoned in newspapers for the best part of a week, as Jupiter's conjunction with the baleful Cor Scorpionis, Heart of the Scorpion, became exact on the 27th. The two opposing first-magnitude stars, Antares (9°40' Sagittarius) and Aldebaran (9°36' Gemini) have long been associated with conflict: of Antares a modern author has noted, '...all astrologers have noted it as an indicator of success in war.'10 Winston Churchill's Sun was conjunct Antares within a degree, an image of the warrior. So no wonder a clash was going on. The Ophiuchus Chart For the morning of January 20th, I took the time of sunrise at 8 am for the first news stories of the day. It was strongly focussed upon Ophiuchus, ie those degrees of the heavens where the foot of the Serpent-bearer steps onto the Scorpion. This zone was transiting the MC while newspapers were being perused that morning, as Thirteen was battling against the symmetry of the Twelve*. The Sun is conjunct Uranus in the Uranus-Neptune conjunction, while the Sun, Mars and Pluto are all within half a degree of sign boundaries. The latter seems appropriate for a moment when the zodiac framework seemed to be threatened. Also, Jupiter was conjunct Antares. I suggest that this is the Ophiuchus chart. Venus in the Ophiuchus chart was conjunct the two Saturn positions we looked at earlier, within half a degree of that at the fixing of boundaries. Both Jupiter and Venus in Ophiuchus were appropriate for the sense of fun and amusement in the newspaper stories, as the position-boundary concept was stated, and misconceived.
There was one individual responsible for creating the story. It is important to appreciate why one individual, and not another, brewed up the charming notion of astronomers discovering a new zodiac sign, such that it at once became imbued with the authority both of the BBC and the Royal Astronomical Society. That person was Dr Roger Highfield, the Daily Telegraph's science correspondent. To quote from an account of the drama later published by the RAS: 'The story was fabricated by the Daily Telegraph's science journalist. He wove the threads together'11. The clash was sparked by a Mars-transit. Highfield was experiencing such a transit on the day, over his natal Pluto, exact within a single arcminute12. It would be hard to imagine a more appropriate transit. Only his date of birth is known (obtained from his Telegraph office) not his birthtime, despite which it is still possible to specify that the transit was to within an arcminute. Pluto only moves very slowly, and remained at 0° Virgo 38' over the day of his birth. Mars, moving retrograde, was there as the story burst, at his moment of fame. I wondered whether, as a scientist, he would appreciate this marvellous precision, but on the whole it seemed wiser not to raise the subject. His Saturn at 21° Sagittarius falls in Ophiuchus.
A constellation thousands of years old is hailed one morning as a new discovery, indeed a news story. We can treat this event as a memory-activation, with Venus triggering the earlier positions. Such was the view of transits advocated in Kepler's De Stella Nova of 1604. It is quite appropriate to recall this in the present context, since that opus was his response to the nova known since as 'Kepler's star.' A contemporary author has recently re-worked this theory: 'This process of imprinting would occur at the degrees touched by planets at the time the events take place. Hence certain degrees may tend to re-occur in charts set for similar events, or transits to the same point may result in the repetition of similar phenomena15.' But, upon what fabric is it inscribed? The question here arises, the frighteningly deep question, as to what framework may hold such memories: sidereal, against the fixed stars, or tropical, from the Vernal Point? The Table indicates that it was the Tropical system which gave the closer alignment.
Stars of conflict It is of interest to compare this attack with a more substantial one two decades earlier, as it involved transits over just the same stellar axis. In 1975, a group of 186 eminent scientists signed a document denouncing astrology's ever-increasing popularity. This attack could not generate the catchy newspaper headlines, but in other respects was more damaging. Described by Geoffrey Cornelius as the most significant attack upon astrology in recent centuries,16 it was launched by spokespersons of science and rationalism. The US bi-monthly journal 'The Humanist' dedicated its September-October issue to:
There were eighteen Nobel Prize winners in the group, characterised by Cornelius as 'a hard science elite, chiefly in the fields of astronomy and physics'. It opened with the claim that: 'Those who wish to believe in astrology should realise that there is no scientific foundation for its tenets,' whereby its growth 'can only contribute to the growth of irrationalism and obscurantism.' The time had come to challenge 'directly and forcefully, the pretentious claims of astrological charlatans.' At the moment of this direct and forceful challenge, Mars was conjunct the Antares-Aldebaran axis on August 31st of that year. This may remind us of Gauquelin's finding of Mars as linked to eminence in science. In fact, a Mars-Neptune opposition was precisely aligned to the stellar axis, a most rare event. Mars in opposition to Neptune is highly appropriate for an attack upon what its authors perceived as illusory or deceptive. Or, was Neptune perchance indicating that their own arguments were of this nature? Their claim that 'Neither is it true that the position of distant heavenly bodies makes certain days or periods more favourable to particular kinds of action...'18 was refuted utterly by the timing of their own publication. Neptune was then within half a degree of Antares, shown in the Table.
The astronomer who conceived the idea and orchestrated the campaign was Bart Bok. Jupiter in his natal chart was conjunct Aldebaran within a degree, no doubt helping the major transit at the launch of the Objections, to bring him world-wide publicity. Nothing else in his life attracted such attention.19 Saturn's position when the constellation-boundaries were laid down in 1928 thus reaches backwards and forwards in time: back to the genesis of a galactic supernova, an explosion within the core of our galaxy, which helped to stimulate a new perspective on the universe; and forward to the date when the world was informed about Ophiuchus, with a Venus-transit over that point. In his De Stella Nova, Kepler argued that transits were analogous to the faculty of memory.20 Saturn here appears as remembering something by this point in sidereal space. Looking at the two greatest attacks upon astrology in our lifetime, in both cases the individual responsible experienced a Mars-transit at its launch. An explanation for a sudden world-wide interest in the serpent-bearer has here been advanced, involving past events associated with two points of the ecliptic, in Ophiuchus. It looked at transits to a fixed star, and to a Saturn position from earlier events, and used the notion of a transit as a memory-reactivation. Saturn's traditional association with memory made this seem quite appropriate. A translation of Kepler's discussion of the astronomy/astrology interface in his 1606 De Stella Nova would be of interest, as including a detailed discussion of this overlapping zone of the zodiac. The Galactic Centre lies nearby, at the tip of the arrow of Sagittarius. 'Kepler's star' was conjunct the main star of Ophiuchus presently at 22° of Sagittarius, a-Ophiuchus. The supernova in Ophiuchus of nearly four centuries ago stimulated both astronomical and astrological thoughts, the latter by its association with a special Jupiter-Saturn triple conjunction. No other supernova has ever been seen since that one, in the Northern Hemisphere, a fact puzzling to astronomers, but which underscores the significance of its moment of appearance in Ophiuchus. It carried the message that the heavens could change, as was also involved in the more recent events here reviewed. The path of Pluto is presently tracking along the back of the serpent held by Ophiuchus, where it conjuncted Antares in early 1999 - though with a wide orb on account of its latitude21. US author Mark Lerner characterised Aldebaran-Antares as the 'Nuclear Axis', discerning that it had been involved in nuclear power accidents.22 Historically, this axis could well have formed the prime reference for the original star-zodiac of the Chaldeans.24 It was activated in these two grand attacks upon astrology we have reviewed. Astrologers failed to notice these transits. Thus, reviewing the statement of The Humanist of 1975, Cornelius merely commented upon a square between Saturn and Uranus a month after its appearance,25 hardly of compelling relevance. I have tried to show how in both of these cases the astrologers were in possession of the ace of spades, they had the decisively winning arguments - but didn't use them. The public would really have liked to have heard such debates: the staggering manner in which the great Ophiuchus debate was launched when Venus and Jupiter both stood in that very constellation, so we all had a good laugh; and the awesome way the US skeptics chose their attack just as an opposition between the two most relevant planets became exact and precisely aligned with Antares-Aldebaran, the very 'stars of conflict.' Astrologers talk a lot about the stars but never use them in my experience. A greater awareness of the fixed-star background from which their zodiac originated could be of great constructive value in such encounters with the scientific world, quite apart from chart-readings. By way of trying to be helpful, an Appendix is here enclosed which suggests that seven stars be used by astrologers.* In the year 1995, no less than three books appeared in print concerning the notion of a thirteen-sign zodiac, only one of which featured the Ophiuchus story. They seem to have emerged fairly closely in time to the January when this story appeared, and were not in print the year before. They were based upon the illusory notion of a 28-day 'lunar' month, thirteen in a year.13 There is no need to cite the titles of these pipedreams14, but the synchrony is interesting. References
1) In Babylonian texts, what later became Ophiuchus was alluded to as Nu-tsir-da, 'Prince of the Serpent', also 'a god of Invocation' (Robert Brown Jnr., Researches into the Origins of the Primitive Constellations of the Greeks, Phoenecians and Babylonians II 1900, p.96, Ballantrae Reprints, Ontario). 'For while I persist in the belief that the tropical zodiac is the most useful for day-to-day interpretation of horoscopes, I believe that it is the ancient sky-pattern figures - the actual constellations - that reveal the fated or mytho-symbolic level of our lives...It has been my experience in counselling that the most meaningful and exciting reactions from my clients come when I describe the constellation patterns and individual fixed stars on their charts (usually at the end of a reading). There is often a profound, personal emotional response that resonates on a “life-myth“ level of being.' | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
