Interface by New Alchemy Press

Interface Astronomical essays for Astrologers By Nick Kollerstrom, MA Cantab., PhD,FRAS

Interface Foreword by Melanie Reinhart Prologue: A time for synthesis

Imagination and reality

Space probes & planetary images

Venus, the rose and the heart

A thirteenth sign?

The galactic alignment

Our mathematical moon

The star-zodiac

Neptuneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s discovery

Pluto demoted

108

10.

Galileo as astrologer

116

11.

What Kepler believed

133

12.

Keplerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chart

150

13.

Towards dialogue

160

Appendices

178

FOREWORD by Melanie Reinhardt The essays in this book provide challenges and opportunities, taking the reader on a journey of intuitive discovery which weaves together old and new in a rich tapestry of images and anecdotes, based on a mosaic foundation of little-known facts: historical and astronomical. The extraordinary leaps of technological progress during the past few decades have made possible a re-visioning of the Universe which parallels in the importance the discoveries of Galileo around the turn of the 17th century. It is important for us as Astrologers to keep abreast of this new information, to incorporate it creatively into our internal vision of, and connection with the cosmos we inhabit, for the verity of our interpretations rests partly on this. In order to honour the resonance of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;as above, so belowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, we have to allow new information to create adjustments in our understanding of the external world of Creation, so that our inner relationship to it can be deepened through the imagination. As Nick himself says "for me, astronomy and astrology are two sides of the same coin, the abyss between them a mere deficiency of perception." We are gradually growing beyond the divided world-view that has dominated our thinking over the past few centuries, but it has had unfortunate results in both astronomy and astrology. The astronomer may find himself dealing with a plethora of new information, without any permission to engage his imagination in order to see the meaning of it, in personal or transpersonal terms. On the other hand, I'm sure that many astrologers are, like myself, drawn to the art because of their natural intuition and capacity to respond to symbols. In astrology we hope for a solid interpretive framework within which this can flower. However, also like myself, many astrology students virtually ignore astronomy, only learning the rudiments, and often not understanding them very well. I had already been working professionally for several years before the importance and, indeed, pleasures of studying astronomy were awakened in me. Culturally, there has been a kind of philosophical stand-off, and it is up to us, as astrologers, to put our own house in order, and correct our own 'deficiency of perception', To indulge in feelings of superiority or inferiority vis a vis the scientific mode means we risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater of scientific materialism.

Interface The true imagination of astrology helps us discriminate between our own fantasies and projections, and another order of truth which may be seeking to present itself. This true imagination is greatly assisted by familiarity with the larger vision of the cosmos, as inscribed contemporaneously. And for us, now, that means incorporating the scientific. For while each of us is based at one level in our personal reality, and strongly influenced by the inner world of our own past which we carry around with us, we also participate in larger realities which cannot be grasped entirely with the logical mind, but require another gear of apperception to be engaged with the process of understanding. This is the doorway to making real one of the central metaphors within astrology--that the known universe, within which our little Solar System functions as an island of relative order, is surrounded always by the unknowable vastness of deep space. Perhaps precisely because this unknowable quality reminds us of the sacred ground of all being and becoming, we have collectively suffered from a fear of making the unknown known, a prohibition oddly reminiscent of the dictates of the church against the new astronomical discoveries of Galileo and others. To persist in this fear is to fall into the very idolatry which the church was ironically seeking to uphold. For given that humans have projected on to the Heavens the qualities of order, divine will, inspiration, and a host of other powerful attributes, it is in the work of withdrawing those projections that we can discover a progressively deeper relationship with our long and honourable tradition, which predates existing written records. To be true to this, we must allow our 'factual' basis to grow and evolve along with the maturing of intuitive wisdom. Depth psychology has brought into our awareness the phenomenon of projection, and we know that projection is at work when a high dgree of irrationality permeates our reactions to something. To free our consciousness requires that we explore this, and understand how we either bring the past into the present as a filter which interrupts clarity, or invest our inner potential somewhere outside us. With Pluto in Scorpio, we were given an opportunity to experience and witness this happening on the emotional level, where unresolved feelings will surface inappropriately into the present. Now, perhaps, the transformative thrust of Pluto in Sagittarius is bringing a chance to review our old collective

belief systems and prejudices, in order that we can eliminate what obstructs new growth. Nick's work opens the door on the world of symbols and correspondences elucidated through connections old and new, We find here the Heart of the Sun, eulogised by the alchemists, beating in a fourfold rhythm in accord with solar winds, as quantified by the latest scientific discoveries about the structure of the sun. We puzzle at the combination of mathematical exactitude and confusing speculations which characterise the Moon's relationship with the Earth, and we chuckle at the Trickster Mercury, fooling the scientists, and slipping through rigorous net of the Gauquelin research. We discover Venus, Goddess of Love, calms geomagnetic storms when at Inferior Conjunction. We visit the forbidding landscape of Mars, the warrior; we thrill to the turbulence of storm tossed Jupiter, and stand in awe of the delicate precision of Saturn's rings. In his account of how Lowell predicted the details of Pluto's orbit, and indeed the timing of its discovery, we see at work a hidden order of synchronicity congruent with the Lord of the Underworld. It is perhaps now well-known that Galileo was also a practising astrologer. Here Nick lifts the veil of historical censorship, revealing a new perspective on the great man, as well as pointing out an intriguing current of synchronicity involving the supernova or 'Kepler's Star', which appeared in 1604 conjunct the Galactic Centre, in the constellation Ophiuchus, again recently the subject of controversy. This Sagittarian area of the tropical zodiac is thus shown exhibiting the revolutionary qualities of expanded vision that we traditionally link with the sign, expressed for posterity in the 'sacred frenzy' that Kepler experienced when receiving the visions that became the basis of his laws of planetary motion. We are also shown the synastry between Kepler's horoscope and that of Newton, born one Jupiter cycle later, revealing the winding thread of the development of the historical ideas for which these men were individual carriers. In the manner of Galileo's work Dialogue Concerning Two World Systems , published in 1622, Nick treats the reader to a dramatised discussion between 'Astronomy' and 'Astrology'. the two main characters are personified as Bart Bok, the arch-sceptic who launched the world renowned Objections to Astrology in the Humanist magazine, in 1975, and Hypatia, a renowned world teacher within the Neoplatkonic

Interface Academy in Alexandria, in the 4th century A.D.. who was killed by the Christians. In 1622, Uranus was transiting early Leo, and now it is in early Aquarius. For Leo, when infected with over-personalisation, there can only be one way, one truth, one valid perspective, which excludes differences that do not conform to the central authority. However, within the airy expansiveness of Aquarius, the many, the varying and the different can be contained and honoured. Hypatia's final phrase presents the central challenge of this book: "Isn't it time for a fresh start?" Read, enjoy, and allow the all-encompassing nature of Nick's thinking to spur you on to a fresh start. Oh. . .and test your astrological wits on the quizzes in the text!! Melanie Reinhardt, 3 January 1997

Prologue

PROLOGUE : A TIME FOR SYNTHESIS This is a book about reconciliation and coming-together, about a new synthesis between astronomy and astrology. We are the heirs to a tragic and schizoid breach between these two that has endured for three and a half centuries. The most creative cultures in the past experienced a unity between them: ...our greatest progress in planetary astronomy came precisely during the periods when astrology was most part of the cultural zietgeist - the Hellenistic era, the high Middle Ages, and the Renaissance,1 to quote Professor Richard Tarnas. In this new millennium, a re-vision is required, to heal the split and discern the new unity. The whole subject is deeply gender-polarised in our culture, so that (usually) only a small proportion of men attend astrology meetings, while only a far smaller proportion of women attend astronomy groups.2 Astronomers are guided by the three immortal laws of planetary motion found by Johannes Kepler, while astrologers are more concerned with the three new celestial aspects he discovered (concerning the division of the circle by five and ten, aspects that don’t ‘fit’ into the zodiac). An educated person ought, I suggest, to take an equal interest in both of these. Kepler appealed to astronomers not to ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’ by rejecting the essential kernel of truth in astrology, on the title-page of his 1610 ‘Tertius Interveniens’3 – third man in the middle, as the great rift between these two was opening up, the art and

Richard Tarnas, interview in The Mountain Astrologer Dec 1995 p.25. The world’s largest astronomical society is the IAU, the International Astronomical Union, which has nine thousand members. 12% of these are women, and that is one member in 8. For comparison, Britain’s Faculty of Astrological Studies has nine hundred members, and 16% that is one in 6 of these are men. That is a staggering polarisation between two professions that were once one. 3 A complete translation of Kepler’s Tertius Interveniens was published by Ken Negus and Valerie Vaughan in 2008 (Earth Heart, US) 2

Interface the science. Four centuries later, let us place ourselves in that middle position, and here continue what Kepler then endeavoured! After the times of Kepler and Galileo, astronomers went on to develop their sternly logical, left-brain approach to the majesty of the heavens Once there were creatures of light leaping across the firmament, and the pattern of their movement filled the heavens. But the creatures soon fled and in their place appeared great spheres of crystal which turned within each other, their song vibrating through all the strings of the world. These harmonies were too lovely to last. A clock was ticking in the pale hands of God, and already it was too late. Yes. The wheels of the mechanism began to turn4 - so that astrology was banished from the universities of Europe.5 But now, all of the gruelling, positional-astronomy calculations have vanished into the computer, and who can remember them any more? A more imaginative approach is called for, to bring some healing into our fragmented society. We are all suffering from the ‘objective’ approach of the male, deductive-empirical 'astronomy,' which looks at that which is out there, millions of miles away, and which receives the state funding, even though hardly anyone can understand it any more. On the other hand, there is the more ‘subjective’ feminine, intuitive-spiritual astrology, concerning what is fated here, as a baby is born, which ordinary people do tend to prefer hearing about. It used to be the ‘royal art’ but it has now sold out into newspaper sun-sign columns. We need a coming together of these two sides, letting an electric current flow between inner and outer, fact and intuition. Surely a blossoming of our culture could take place, if only this 'sacred marriage' could happen. The ‘logia’ or ‘logos’ of the word ‘astro-logy’ is supposed to be the very principle of rationality; and ‘rational’ ought properly to mean, having a proper ratio of proportion, as in the trine aspect for example (one-third of a circle, 120°) which in this sense is ‘rational’ and as opposed to the ‘irrational’ which is discord. For such a dialogue to take place one would need to hold onto proper definitions of language, where ‘rational’ would not 4 5

Peter Ackroyd, First Light 1989, p.3. See Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early modern England (1989).

Prologue need to mean, for example, having a mechanical explanation. A dialogue on this subject took place between the eminent British philosopher Rupert Sheldrake and two of his colleagues. It is good to hear a modern philosopher discussing this major fault-line running through our culture. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dip into it. Sheldrake: 'Oddly enough, even professional astronomers often don't know that much about the sky as we actually experience it, although they've got a lot of equations about the life cycle of stars, about the nature of pulsars, and other strange mysteries in the heavens. I was having dinner a couple of years ago with a professor of astronomy in Britain. We went out after dinner. It was a beautiful starlit night. There was a group of stars I didn't know and I said, 'What are those stars?' He said, 'Oh I haven't a clue, don't ask me' He learned astronomy from books, from computer models, not from looking at the sky... 'By contrast with the astronomers, astrologers have retained a sense of the heavens as meaningful, related to what happens on earth, but astrology has become detached from the actual sky. There's no point asking the average astrologer if you see a bright star in the sky or planet, 'What's that?' Most of them don't look at the sky any more than other people. Its all done from computer programs and books. I was particularly struck, in 1987, by the massive supernova in the southern hemisphere, the biggest since the one observed by Galileo and Kepler in 1604, which played a major part in the scientific revolution. All through history these supernova exploding stars in the sky - have been regarded as major omens of the greatest importance. I asked my astrologer friends 'What do you make of this?' The answer was they didn't make anything whatever of it because it wasn't in the ephemeris or in their Macintosh computer program. Astronomers on the other hand took great interest, but saw it with no meaning. I think a great move forward will happen when astronomy and astrology link up again [Hear, hear!]. 'I think much good will come from recovering a sense of the life of the heavens. We are coming so see the Earth, Gaia, as alive. I think we also have to take seriously the idea that the sun is alive and conscious. If one wants a scientific rationale for this, it comes ready to hand through the discoveries of modern solar physics. We now 11

Interface know that the Sun has a complex system of magnetic fields, reversing its polarity every eleven years, associated with the sunspot cycle. With this underlying rhythm of magnetic polar reversals are a whole series of resonant and harmonic patterns of magnetic and electromagnetic change - global patterns over the surface of the sun of a fractal nature; patterns within patterns, highly turbulent, chaotic, sensitive, varied and complex. As electromagnetic patterns within our brains seem to be the interface between the mind and the nervous system, here we have a parallel in the physical behaviour of the sun. Its perfectly possible that the sun has a mind which interfaces with 'The solar system itself is an organism. This is largely what astrology has concerned itself with. We also recognise that the sun is part of a galaxy, the Milky Way, which includes all the stars we see in the night sky. Like other galaxies, our own has a galactic centre, a nucleus, of unknown nature which emits enormous amounts of radiation. We could think of galaxies as organisms as well...â&#x20AC;? By way of advocating an experiential approach, he added: ' ... in order to contact extra-terrestrial intelligences, it may help to direct these efforts towards particular parts of the heavens. There are traditional beliefs about the qualities of particular stars, and these might provide a guide as to what to expect. Regulus, for example, in the constellation Leo, was considered a star of good omen. Looking at it, going into an altered state having invoked its spirit, making the appropriate prayers and preparations, could result in a form of directed mind travel that would go beyond random journeying. This would be a new frontier for space exploration that can be done on a very low budget. It could open up a great range of possibilities.... 'We can start nearer home with the sun, of course. At sunrise and sunset in many traditions people have communicated with the sun. In India a traditional part of the daily ritual is to greet the sun as it rises in the morning, in order to form a conscious relationship with it.' Ralph Abraham (a chaos theorist and psychedelic mathematician) commented: 'I think we should reconsider the moon. The lunar sphere, among the nine celestial spheres, is somehow the most important to us, as it's the membrane for our kind of life. The traditional idea was that everything inside the lunar 12

Prologue sphere decays and dies, and everything outside the lunar sphere is eternal. The moon was somehow always seen as the boundary of mortal life. Furthermore, everyone loves to look at it, and probably love and the emotional structure of the human and mammalian system has evolved by moonlight. The moon might be our likeliest possibility for actually having a conversation and renewing our contact with the living and intelligent universe. Sheldrake: 'I myself don't expect the moon to have a great deal of intelligence or life. It's the most inert heavenly body we know. Venus, on the other hand, is a turbulent system with plenty of scope for chaotic perturbations and shifting systems of order. Jupiter has this extraordinarily turbulent surface. Saturn has delicately poised and no doubt oscillatory rings, many of them sensitive enough to pick up fleeting changes and act as interfaces between the physical and mental realms. The moon seems rather lacking in all of these respects. Abraham: 'Okay, maybe the moon is dumb. I'm not willing to concede that, but I see some people would rather put their money on a different number...â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The debate concluded with Sheldrake advocating a workshop: 'This is a fascinating research project and can be done for next to nothing by networks of people sharing their results. This information, channeled from different stars and communicated in this way, could help to bring about a new synthesis of astrology and astronomy. A weekend workshop of astronomy for astrologers would be an elementary beginning.'6 One must regret that this merry group of philosophers will meet no more, due to the demise of one of its members, Terence Mackenna (We cite him, from this same work, in Chapter 6). Perhaps the message from this trialogue debate is summed up by the words of Gary Zukav: There is not one planet that lacks a level of active consciousness, some of which is akin to our human form, and some of which does not come close to our form, but

The Evolutionary mind, Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable, Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna & Ralph Abraham, CA 1998 p.146 ff.

Interface remains consciousness as we understand it.7 The life of the heavens? (Sheldrake - 'I think much good will come from recovering a sense of the life of the heavens’) That could mean various things. For example, I noted on Amazon Books one for sale on ‘The Rings of Saturn’ for three pounds, and next to it was one of ‘The Ringmakers of Saturn’ for eight hundred pounds. The latter claimed to discern formative processes in the rings from NASA photographs, and noted how for example gaps between the rings would vary over time. The present work will endeavor to give you the impression that the heavenly bodies of our solar system are more alive than you would gather from astronomers, in other words you might want to call this a ‘vitalistic’ treatise. People don’t just want ‘hard facts’ any more and are seeking for more by way of meaning and formative processes.

Figure: The edge of a sunspot, showing granulation on the surface of the sun. Note the biological 'feel' of this image. (Swedish solar telescope on Canary Islands, 2002, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)

The Sun is now (2013) at its sunspot maximum, so that its huge, North7

Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul, Rider 1990 p.182

Prologue South magnetic field is flipping over, reversing. This is, by any standards, an awesome event, and we are the first generation to be able to understand it, as least in some degree. The magnetic field of Earth, for comparison, reverses every ten thousand years or so. If astronomers could communicate that this was, as it were, the biology of the pulsating heart-centre of the solar system that we were discovering, then she would be able to hold the attention of viewers a lot more readily. She wouldn't just be talking about dry 'facts' but about their inner meaning. We can now watch Youtube videos showing video-sequences of the solar corona erupting, and of the granulated solar surface moving around as theSun rotates. Chapter One considers some words of Galileo concerning in what manner the Sun was alive, how it was animate. Astronomers have now discovered the marvelous four-stage systolediastole process of the sun’s 22-year cycle, but they are not able to apprehend its significance: only the astrologers can do that. As a science historian I have been fascinated by suppressed astrological material concerning Galileo, which we published in a special dedicated issue of Culture andCosmos.8 That expands upon the chapter contained here. The generation of mathematici or astrologers/ astronomersof Galileo’s time were the last to take for granted that their profession was supported, i.e. they were paid, for doing horoscopes. No figure in the history of science has been more censored in this regard, and evidence for his belief and practice of astrology has been edited out of all of his biographies! But today we want to find a more integrated approach to this vivid, polemical character. Sitting in the big library at Florence, turning over the actual horoscopecharts which Galileo prepared for himself and others, his daughters and his closest friend, four centuries ago, was a thrilling experience. Galileo actually made astrological predictions which worked – or, so we are led to believe by his correspondents, who related to him how the predictions he had made had turned out. Ditto for Kepler – though his were probably rather more historically important. Galileo composed his horoscopes around the time when Kepler composed his Tertium Inerveniens, an appeal to ‘physicians, theologians and astronomers’ not to throw the baby out with the bathwater by rejecting the essential kernel of truth to 8

Culture and Cosmos, A Jnl. of the hist. of Astrol. & Cultural Astron., Ed. N. Campion, Bath Spa U., Spring 2004. http://www.cultureandcosmos.org/abstracts/7-1Kollerstrom.html

Interface be found in astrology. But, maybe that had to happen, the great divide had to open up, whereby a male, left-brain knowledge of ‘hard facts’ had to develop, and come to dominate our world, losing all understanding of human destiny. Can a synthesis now happen, which would be a Sacred Marriage, of that which is more imaginative and symbolic, with this ‘dry’ and ‘hard’ factual realm? As a science historian I have been ethically-damned of late (in the pages of Isis the prestigious US history of science journal) for being ‘an astrologer’ – so, watch out! In our lifetime there have been maybe two astronomers that the public cared about: Fred Hoyle and Carl Sagan. But now, partly due to losing their Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1999 (due to a swing from Margaret Thatcher’s handbag), it’s hard for British astronomers to find any narrative that concerns the public. As their instruments grow more powerful, so their focus becomes ever more distant, then they become upset when the public prefer astrologers. I now and then attend astronomy lectures, without greatly understanding them, and am not here recommending belief in the cosmology which they assume. One modern cosmologist I like is Halton Arp.9 At 27° Sagittarius, at the center of our galaxy, in Arp’s view, there is a white hole - not a black hole: the majestic Milky Way galaxy is mysteriously emerging from its centre and is not spiralling inwards like water going down a plughole, towards the oblivion of a ‘black hole’. Persons into Arp’s views tend not to be astronomers, but people of more alternative, aesthetic or metaphysical persuasion. There are plenty of enthusiastic web-discussions of Arp’s views - as could be said of no other modern astronomer! Fred Hoyle endorsed Arp’s views, especially in his final, posthumous work. The question of whether it is worth getting out of bed in the morning could depend on whether there is a Black Hole or a White Hole at our galactic center. (N.B., My natal Mars is conjunct the Galactic Centre, which could be why I get going on this issue). Empirically, I believe that astronomers cannot detect which way all the stars of our galaxy are moving, whether they are spiralling towards or away from the Galactic Centre, its too slow, so it’s down to your personal choice. My suggestion here is, don’t believe the experts (NB, this is probably my Sun-Uranus opposition kicking in here). Are we all in a huge vortex being pulled 9

Halton Arp, Seeing Red Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science Apeiron, Quebec, 1998.

Prologue inexorably towards a centre of nothingness? Maybe not! The Hubble telescope has produced wonderful pictures of galaxies, and if one shows these to ordinary people, and ask them, they tend to see the galaxies as growing out from the nucleus of a centre. Astronomers and physicists, with their fixed, materialistic dogmas about what matter is able to do, have a dreary, hope-killing vision, of dust condensing randomly out from space to somehow form galaxies, while a dark seed of nothingness grows at its centre. (See Appendix six for a review I did about Arp.) The Galactic Centre (as we’ll see in Chapter 5) was more closely defined and pointed to by the ancient constellations than any other spot in the heavens, apparently without anyone knowing it was there. The Arrow of the Archer points straight at it, so does the Sting of the Scorpion, and the Foot of Ophiucus hovers just above it. If astronomers want the public to sit up and listen, then my suggestion would be that they engage a spokesperson who can in some degree apprehend the more mythic or ‘astrological’ realities behind the phenomena, because these exist in a more permanent manner than the transient facts and images which the astronomers deal with. She would more be able to engage the interests of the public. Astronomers need to get in touch with their feelings a bit more. Suppose some women get together for a few days, and their periods synchronise: if they stayed together, they would tend to discover that this synchrony was lunar, i.e. it would probably be between 29 and 30 days in duration. Could the astronomer please comment upon this? No? Well, let’s try a historical approach, going back to the way Isaac Newton used the word ‘menstrual’ and his use was as you might expect entirely ‘dry’ i.e. it was only about time and the Moon, it was about something ‘out there’ – definitely not about blood flowing, which is today its only meaning. Some women feel better if they synchronise with the Moon in their period, others can be treated by having a night-light on to simulate the light of the Full Moon, that helps get their periods regular.10 Is this ‘just’ a coincidence? I suggest it isn’t just anything, and that pondering it does actually give us some rather deep insights into the nature of the universe we inhabit. The astrologer views the Moon is ‘moist’ and ‘feminine’ in its nature, can these millennia-old adjectives still find a place in our modern world? 10

Chris Knight Blood Relations, Menstruation and the Origins of Culture, Chapter 10 The Hunter’s Moon.

Interface I was at an IAU symposium for the transit of Venus in June 2004, around Manchester. I was giving a paper about a young Englishman Jeremiah Horrocks, who with his friend William Crabtree observed a transit of Venus for the very first time, and thereby kick-started British astronomy – somewhere not far from Manchester.11 The IAU, International Astronomical Union, is the world’s largest association of astronomers.(and by the way it has 6% women in its membership). One session had a learned exposition of why Venus-transits happened in pairs, eight years apart. The speaker covered the blackboard with equations no-one could understand, then later on I got into a conversation with a radio-telescope astronomer whose group had actually found the rotation of Venus. This was some decades earlier, at Jodrell Bank the UK astrophysics centre. I explained to him about the pentagram formed by Venus in the sky every eight years – see chapter three – and its intersection with the node-axis of Venus which produced the solar transits: in other words, I gave him a visual, equation-free way of comprehending the matter. He freaked out whenever I did this, he just could not handle it. Eventually he broke off the correspondence. You could say I was bringing to him a right-hemisphere more visual approach. Alas I fear he will never appreciate the marvelous meaning of the rotation-period of Venus he had discovered – described in Chapter 3, (or see my ‘Venus the Path of Beauty.’12) I there argue that anyone trying to appreciate the motion of Venus needs the concept of perfect harmony – which is not easy, in this day and age. One might want to say something like, the archetypal meaning of Venus is expressed in the patterns it weaves, in space and time. Astronomers don’t have any means of comprehending the quantum-interval of Venus namely its eight-year period: because that does not derive from the kinematic-dynamic concepts they used, it comes rather from the realm of harmony and proportion. Humour me, reader, by imagining a late-night TV program, which wants to set up a dialogue between these two sides. The astronomers issue a statement that they will be happy to participate, provided only that the astrological group’s members do not write Sun-sign columns. 11

N.K., ‘William Crabtree’s Venus transit observation’, in Transits of Venus: New Views of the Solar System and Galaxy,Proceedings IAU Colloquium No. 196, 2004, Ed Kurtz, p.34-40. 12 www.newalchemypress.com

Prologue The astrologers reply, that they too will be glad to join in such a debate, provided the members of the astronomical society are funded by sources which do not accept military contracts. Neither side is able to comply, a climb-down takes place, and the debate begins …Such a debate is imagined in Chapter 13, between the astronomer Bart Bok and ‘Hypatia.’ Or, let’s picture a couple in love, who are having some difficulty in communication. Brad, a celestial mechanist, likes going out in skywatching evenings with a telescope. He says things like, ‘Yes, Uranus’ perturbation by Neptune is larger than any other in the solar system. It’s their 2:1 resonance, y’know.’ She, Elouise, is thinking, ‘Oh no, do I have to listen to this stuff?’ She says things like, ‘My progressed Moon is reaching your Saturn so we’d better watch out!’ Brad would like to correct her views with ‘cold logic’ and ‘hard facts’, but something tells him that, with too much of these, her beauty might fade away. Can they stay together, have they got any hope?13 This book aims to assist them, in enjoying some conversations together.

I have in mind here the Culvers: US astronomy professor Roger Culver was co-author of the hard-hitting, sceptical critique ‘The Gemini Syndrome, A Scientific Evaluation of Astrology’(1984) which debunked the whole subject. During a public debate on the topic the spark of love struck with his astrological opponent, Gail, and they became happily married. They are alas unwilling to part with their birth-data. They were married in a California Planetarium, and have featured on the Oprah show.

1. IMAGINATION & REALITY Composed for the 360th anniversary of the death of Johann Kepler, 15 Nov. 1630 As Voyager II flew past the rings of Saturn, it viewed their strangely regular patterning, seemingly defying the laws of physics. Astronomers had hypothesised that ‘shepherd moons' must exist nearby, which could somehow aid the rings to sustain their entropy-defying symmetry: especially programmed to detect these, Voyage II could not find any more. Outrageously, the ‘spoke' patterns continued to appear as an outradiating pattern through the various ring-layers, as if superimposed upon them. "We are now at the point where we had hoped not to be and are looking desperately at other solutions," said the head of the Voyager II imaging team.1 Others would say that they had then arrived at a most desirable position, from which the very being of Saturn/Chronos could be appreciated. Each of the planets has such a mystery, an astronomical mystery. For me, astronomy and astrology are two sides of a coin, the abyss between them a mere deficiency of perception. That mystery is something which the astronomer hopes to ‘solve' one day. But, say it is not soluble. Say the absolutely regular patterning of Saturn's rings remains as baffling to astronomers as the Red Spot of Jupiter. Then what? Circles only exist in one place in the solar system, and that is around Saturn. Take another astronomical fact, that the angle between the magnetic and rotational axes for Saturn is negligibly small, a mere 1. Astronomers theorise about this, however the astrologer can (I suggest) perceive what is really involved namely the signature of the planetary being as Paracelsus used the term. By using the imagination one perceives what really exists. We see the being of Saturn in the astounding symmetry of those rings and in the firm right-angle between the axis of revolution and the ring system. 1

New Scientist, 27th August 1981.

Imagination and reality The poor astronomer by contrast merely analyses the ammonia and methane in the atmosphere, and bleats about more research being needed. The wonderful significance of his discoveries of the continuous lightning flashes all around Jupiter or the iron-pink skies of Mars bypasses him completely. His machines have discovered and analysed these phenomena, but his training tells him he is not to use his imagination and so he cannot see the meaning. In 1960 a radio telescope managed to penetrate the dense mists of Venus and for the first time ever we gained information about the rotation of Venus. It turned out to be rotating backwards, in the reverse direction to what it should be if the planets had condensed from a large vortex around the Sun, and its period turned out to be exactly linked in with the Sun and Earth, so the same part of Venus faced Earth at each inferior conjunction. "Resonance", the astronomers said. Resonance means an energy transfer between two systems oscillating at the same frequency, for example if a tuning fork is twanged it will sound louder if placed on the piano. No-one could explain how any such energy transfer (such as has supposedly caused the Moon to face Earth) could here be operating. It was further known that a fairly exact ratio existed between 5 inferior conjunctions of Venus every 8 years. What I am saying is that the astronomer is never going to be able to apprehend the significance of these number-ratios within the terms of his science. Science, as it came to birth in the seventeenth century involved, to quote the science historian Koyré, … the disappearance or the violent expulsion from scientific thought of all considerations based on value, perfection, harmony, meaning and aim, because these concepts, from now on being merely subjective, cannot have a place in the new ontology.2 Francis Bacon, prophet of the new science, explained how the imagination had to be tied down and suppressed in favour of abstract reasonings involving number and weight. He did end up favouring a sobered-down or ‘rationalised' astrology,3 however on that stony ground 2 3

Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian Studies, 1965, p.7. Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power, 1989, p.61.

Interface

the poor thing could hardly be expected to flourish. In "Venus, the Heart and the Rose" we will examine the marvellous significance of the patterns woven by Venus against the stars, as they emerged from the astro-researcher's computer screen. One might suppose that this would be a matter of keen interest to astronomers: but, wait a minute: this concerns pattern and harmony, is that astronomy? Here's a fine 19thcentury account of Venus' motion: Venus is not to be seen at all times, and to those who are not acquainted with her movement she seems to come and go as she pleases. For months altogether the Star of Evening is hidden from mortal eyes. But every movement of the seemingly capricious planet is known to those who study the almanacks. Each step of the Queen of Beauty is given with prosaic detail as she moves along her path, but to those who do not pay much attention to astronomy there is undoubtedly a charm in the way she suddenly makes her appearance as the leading lady in the celestial drama. It is a beautiful clear evening, the Sun has just set, and in the golden glory of the western sky a beauteous gem is seen to glitter. A few weeks later the Queen of Beauty has risen higher above the horizon and rides, an even more brilliant object in the sky, long after the shades of night have descended. She only occasionally attains her full splendour, but at such times she outshines even Sirius more than twenty times. Then again she draws near the Sun and remains lost to view for many months, until she enters upon a new cycle of changes after an interval of a year and seven months.4 That interval of a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;year and seven months' is the period over which Venus traces out one of the five â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hearts' in its mandala, which form a complete â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;rose' every eight years. One performing this sidereal dance would revolve just 12 times in that 8year period, coming to face Earth at each nearest approach. The Venus mandala image would make a fine flowergarden, with a brass pagoda, or Venusimage in bronze, at its 4

Mary Proctor, The Book ofthe Heavens, 1924, p.98.

Imagination and reality centre. Digressing, there is one artist whose paintings always remind me of Venus and its metal copper, and that is Maxfield Parrish. Glorious copper hues irradiate his images and the hair of his Venusfigures. At noon on his birthday (25.7.1870) Venus was conjunct the Moon and Mars (both 1ď&#x201A;°) and in opposition to Saturn. What I call Mercury's rock-and-roll sunrise, whereby the Sun rises over Mercury, stops, sinks down again below the horizon, and then again rises and moves against the sky this shows or at least points to its mutable, quicksilver nature. Day and night blend and blur curiously together. Mercury has no business having a day at all, it should be wholly phaselocked into facing the Sun all the time, if there is truth in the theories of astronomers as to how the Solar system came into being, however it turns out to have a day of a period which interacts curiously with its year. The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;terminator', the line separating day and night, reverses direction owing to the fierce accelerations to which Mercury is subject. The mystery of Mars: perhaps not so deep as those of the other planets, but it's still there. Mars is without any magnetic field, yet totally covered with iron. How could it have managed that? The Moon is said to lack any magnetic field because it has no nickel-iron core, being rather light and small. The next planet out, Jupiter, has so vast a magnetic field that it would appear the size of the Moon in the sky if it were visible. Its huge magnetic storms reverberate across the solar system, and that's without even having an iron core. So how come Mars missed out on the action? Galileo wrote of the Sun that: ...it is rather like the heart of an animal, in which there is a continual regeneration of the vital spirits, which sustain and give life to all its members.5 Satellite data supports Galileo's opinion. The cycles of the Sun's pulsating activity, as its plasma circulates around the solar system, these 5

Letter to Monsignor Pietro Dini of March 1615, quoted in Astrology in the Renaissance, Eugenio Garin, 1982, p.11. The rather neo-Platonic quote continues: "... just as the Sun, while nourished from without, sustains the source from which this light and prolific heat continually emanate, which gives life to all the bodies which surround it." For Galileo, the Sun was the centre of the universe.

Interface

are cardiac in their nature. A fourfold structure thereby appears as within the Sun. Or, what about the grandiose reversal of the solar magnetic field every 11 years, in its 22year cycle? Solar physicists talk about their magneto-hydrodynamic model, which is their way of saying they haven't a clue as to how the solar magnetic field can keep flipping over in this periodic manner. These facts are the stuff of obscure specialist journals, until we perceive them with the eye of imagination as revealing wondrously the functioning of the heart-centre of our solar system. Incidentally, astrologers should distinguish between what astronomers really know about the Sun and what they merely surmise. Its corona is hot, at tens of millions of degrees centigrade, whereas the photosphere beneath is relatively cool, around 5000C, and looking into a sunspot its dark centre is cooler still, around 4000C. That is a temperature gradient. If you want to believe that it reverses and becomes much hotter again inside the Sun, thatwould be speculation. Astronomers have struggled with the question of whether very hard-to-detect particles (neutrinos) are actually being emitted, from the centre of the Sun. If you believe that they are, then that is about the only real bit of evidence for a nuclear fusion reaction going on inside the Sun. This isn't the place to follow the strange theories of modern astronomy. What is important for astrologers is that when Tom Shanks reanalysed the Gauquelin data on his San Diego computer, he found the trait ‘lyrical' for eminent persons born at sunrise.6 Sons of the dawn tend to be lyrical! William Blake would have understood perfectly: Apollo with his lyre. When I look up at the Full Moon I exclaim, "Ah, those titanium-dark lava seas!" The ‘man in the moon' is made up of huge frozen lava seas, billiard-table smooth and charcoal-dark, packed with high-melting point heavy metals like iron, uranium and titanium. Titanium was very fashionable a few years ago for iridescent earrings and jewellery, but its main use is in alloys for supersonic aircraft requiring a high melting point. So, how could a little Moon have acquired enough heat to fuse 6

Tom Shanks has not published this, but reported it at an astro-research conference in London, as being the one trait adjective he had found significant for the Sun, in his extensive analysis of the Gauquelin data.

Imagination and reality those lava seas? Worse, why didn't those heavy metals gravitate inwards to form a core if they were molten, why stay on the outside, right on the surface? They found up to 10% titanium in Luna's lava seas, while on Earth one hardly finds above 0.5% concentration of titanium in the soil. Then, what about the marvellous coloured beads they found, glassy and of different hues, scattered about the surface?

Aristarchus crater with its eerie glow. It is often photographed with such â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Transient lunar phenomenaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (translation: no-one knows what is happening). This one was taken by the Galileo spacecraft on December 7 th, 1992. (Search for: The living moon, Aristarchus crater)

We are really much further from having a credible theory of the Moon's origin and formation than we were before the Apollo missions. Directly opposite theories seem equally credible, or inadequate. Its surface is a surreal dreamscape on which rational explanations can find no foothold. It continues to glow in acharming manner, red or purple, or 25

Interface

sometimes brilliant white for amoment, and teams of amateur astronomers patiently log the glows as they shimmer across its surface.7 One is reminded of William Blake's land of Beaulah, "A soft, Moony realm where Contraries are equally True." The Moon's long, silvery ray patterns stream out from craters, but sometimes just touch the crater edges tangentially, thereby ensuring that their presence remains a complete mystery. The craters continue to look unlike anything which should have resulted from either impact or volcanic theories. No doubt the Red Queen would have explained it to Alice in a few words. Planetary energies express themselves in and through their physical being, not just in some spiritual limbo to which astrologers have access. Let us hope that astrologers and astronomers can learn to communicate on this matter. There is after all only one sky above us.

Ruby-red glows spread across crater floors. Lunar Section members of the British Astronomical Association keenly log these, and call them 'transient lunar phenomena:' www.baalunarsection.org.uk/

2. SPACE PROBES & PLANETARY IMAGES Then again, the pictures coming across the monitors speak directly to the imagination. Not fiery, chaotic and psychedelic like those of Jupiter, they look cool, ethereal and from a distance orderly enough to have been drawn with a celestial compass Voyager 1 at Saturn, National Geographic, July 1981 A REMARKABLE VINDICATION of the Hermetic maxim, "As above, so below" has been appearing in data supplied by interplanetary reconnaissance craft - an unexpected source, maybe. From their graphic images, over the last two decades, each planet has been portrayed in a different and distinct manner. The astronomer has thereby acquired all sorts of gee-whiz data, but he is hard put to say what it means. The person holding the keys of meaning is, I suggest, the much-derided astrologer. It would appear that there is a relation between the being or essence of a planetary sphere, and the empirical data that satellites have gathered. A scientist might well view this as unwarranted dreaming or reverie, beyond the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hard facts' established by his discipline. Here, we try to develop a more right-brain approach to the phenomena. Today's science, which has taught people to seek fate in the coils of a molecule, views Venus for example as signifying a rock-strewn planet aswirl with sulphuric acid vapour, and that is all. If the astrologer claims that this sphere does somehow symbolise a love-goddess, then she is liable to be cast as not living in the real world, or unable to look facts straight in the face, or burdened with an outdated belief, and having her symbolic meanings (whatever symbolic means) separated by an impassable abyss from physical reality. The problem here is that scientists are not adequately using their imaginations. To try and express the meaning of that statement, I

Interface

searched through books on philosophy, but found nothing to the purpose. Eventually I found a remark in an alchemical text of the sixteenth century, which says what I mean: Let thy imagination be guided wholly by nature...And imagine this with a true and not with fantastical imagination.1 This (anonymous) text further added that 'Nature performeth her operations gradually; and indeed I would have thee do the same,' so we should not hurry in forming these real and proper imaginations. Jung, commenting on this text, explained that the latin word imaginatio is to be contrasted with phantasia which meant a mere conceit in the sense of insubstantial thought. We now review some pertinent facts about our solar system, seeking to use what the alchemist called a true and not fantastical imagination. The Voyager II spacecraft was launched in 1977, reaching Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in ‘81, Uranus in ‘86 and Neptune in ‘89, after which epic journey, it became evident that the resemblance between character as traditionally conceived by astrologers and function as observed by pilotless space vehicles could no longer be regarded as coincidental. The vivid ‘National Geographic' accounts of these discoveries may be recommended, as they emphasise the visual images, and capture what the persons monitoring the flights actually felt while it was happening, instead of the mere abstract ‘facts' of an astronomy textbook.

Sol: Heart-Centre of the Solar System In 1960 the Imp satellite mapped out the solar magnetic field in the ecliptic, and found a remarkable fourfold ‘rotating sector structure' of thesolar wind. Astronomy textbooks don't often describe this pattern,2 because astronomers can in no way comprehend how the Sun can have an inner structure differentiated by sectors, as is implied by such; 1

Rosarium philosophorum, Secunda pars alchimiae de lapide philosophico vero modo praeperando...' Frankfurt 1550, quoted in C.G.Jung, Psychology and Alchemy 1953, 1993, p.167. 2 See K.Frazier, Our Turbulent Sun, N.J. 1982, on how the solar wind is ‘divided into roughly four sectors' p.151.

Space probes and planetary images should we compare this to the four ventricles of the human heart? Solar wind flows out along one sector, then back again into the Sun via another. Does not the remarkable symmetry of sunspots above and below the solar equator, and the way magnetic flux streams out of the Sun from one sunspot and back in again through another, compare with the arterial and venous system of the blood? The circulation of plasma out beyond Pluto and then back again into the Sun, forms an analogy

with the circulation of blood around the body. Figure: the aura of Mother Earth. The solar wind activates the Van Allen radiation belts. Courtesy of NASA 2013: an ‘electron proton telescope was used,’ discovering an outermost third ring of the Van Allen belts which is not always there, it comes and goes..

Patrick Moore described Sol as ‘in some ways a variable star.' It is the fiery, pulsating heart-centre of the solar system, which is something more than the burnt-out ‘yellow dwarf' as astronomers regard it. Just as cardiac fibre has a periodic contraction built into it, so likewise the Sun's surface has a self-reversing magnetic field within it, which flips every eleven years. The word ‘plasma' refers both to the fluid of the bloodstream, and to the solar matter which streams out along with the

Interface

solar wind, bathing the Earth. At a sunspot maximum, the solar magnetic field becomes stretched out around the equator. We could say it is in a highly stressed condition. Sunspots are gradually pulled nearer to the solar equator by this stretching process. The magnetic-field tubes emerge through a sunspot, then re-enter the Sun by another. This field at the equator flips over at each sunspot minimum. In contrast, the solar magnetic field at its poles reverses at each sunspot maximum. Without pretending to understand this, we can acquire a feeling for the heart-like functioning of that tremendous solar magnetosphere.

Elusive Mercury Mercury zips about - 'like a demented bee' in Bernard Eccles' phrase, alluding to one of Joachim Schultz's diagrams. These show Mercury's apparent movement with respect to the Sun, during a year.3 Just imagine, if you could only see the tips of those erratic curves, as was the case a few centuries ago. No wonder that, in the time of Kepler and Galileo, the errors of Mercury's position were far larger than for anything else, in a horoscope. Kepler at the start of his career had to admit: 'Certainly this is the one planet which most of all disgraces the reputation of astrologers, and confounds the whole theory of things on high.'4Basically, no-one knew where it was. In that time, their Mercury tables could be out by up to ten degrees. Early in the 20th century, the plane of Mercury's orbit was found to keep shifting from where it should have been, it wouldn't stay put. It was an anomaly within the Newtonian gravity theory, defying its principles. Eventually it was accounted for by Einstein's theory. We may be reminded of what Michel Gauquelin found: how his well-known researches failed to show up anything for Mercury. Its liquid essence 3

Joachim Schultz, Rhythmen der Sterne, 1963, English translation Movement and Rhythms of the Stars,1986, 2008, p.142. His diagrams show Mercuryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s motion with respect to the plane of Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s equator, being constructed using the astronomical coordinates of Right Ascension and Declination: see Appendix 6 on co-ordinates. 4 Kepler, The New Astronomy, trans. Donahue (Green Lion Press, Santa Fe), 1605, 1992, Ch.XIX p.191.

Space probes and planetary images passed through his statistical webs without leaving a trace, being the only (traditional) planet to do so. Likewise, Mercury's orbit would not fit into the common-sense Newtonian world-view.

Figure: Plot of one year 2006 of [Mercury â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Sun] co-ordinates of Right Ascension and Declination i.e. their motion with respect to the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s equatorial plane (See Appendix 5), after Schultz. Periods of its visibility are shown,twice in the evening, after sunset in the East (left-hand side), then twice in the morning before sunrise in the West (right-hand side).

Three decades ago, Mercury startled astronomers by having a rotation on its own axis, independent of the Sun. According to the accepted theories, it should have become locked into having the same side constantly facing the Sun, on account of the intense gravity pull. If it were once semi-molten, as is assumed, then an independent rotation should have generated huge tides on its surface, until it became locked into facing ever sunwards. It turned out not to be phase-locked, as our Moon is towards Earth nor, on the other hand, to have an independent rotation, but something curiously in-between. Its day is two years! An observer on Mercury would see the Sun go round once in the sky, while it goes twice round

Interface

the zodiac. Rephrasing that, it spins on its axis twice for every three rotations around the Sun. This is a subtle and elusive matter! The periods here are 58.6 days and 88 days, so: 3 x 58.6 = 2 x 88 days Astronomers surmised that the twist it received from solar acceleration, in its highly eccentric orbit, was sufficient to flip it into this rather odd day-to-year ratio. Do you believe that? Whatever the explanation, 1 day = 2 years = 3 sidereal rotation periods for Mercury!5 This is the kind of thing one struggles hard with, and may finally comprehend, then the next day one has forgotten it! For comparison, the Venus day is phase-locked into a relationship with the Earth (See next chapter). Astronomers had erroneously believed for nearly a century that Mercury had no day of its own distinct from its ‘year', mainly it seems because they noted that the same surface markings returned to the sunlit side every two orbital revolutions. ‘Thus, astronomers could have been fooled, because looking at Mercury after two of its orbital periods they would see the same markings on the sunlit side and would find no disagreement with the 88 day period ... Thus, half the telescopic observations that led to the 88-day interval were actually correct, but many of the conflicting observations were ignored or missed.'6 We can compare Kepler’s view with the comment which Copernicus made about Mercury: ‘This star tormented me, with its many twistings and toilings, in trying to explore its motion’ (De Revolutionibus, Ch.30). I wrote a letter to the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 2006, 116, p.271: ‘Seeing Mercury’ (online ) about this, showing a Schultz diagram for the year 2006. I constructed this by plotting Right Ascension and Declination co-ordinates, subtracting [Mercury-Sun], then adding in times of Mercury-visibility (see image). I helpfully explained: ‘In the Northern Hemisphere one never gets to see Mercury below the level of the Sun in this diagram.’ I used German data for visibility, but expressed the hope, that one might obtain some 5

These integer Mercury-rotation ratios are ‘certainly no accident, but due to spin-orbit coupling of tidal origin…’ Zdenek Kopal, The Realm of the Terrestrial Planets, 1979, p.103. 6 Lang & Whitney, Wanderers in Space, Exploration and Discovery in the Solar System, CUP 1991, p.63.

Space probes and planetary images comparable British data, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;on the timespans over which town or country dwellers could see Mercury. What new tricks, we can only wonder, will Mercury have up its sleeve?

Tempestuous Mars Mars is a desolate world whose silence is broken by the roar of winds, the hiss of dust, the rumble of mammoth landslides and possibly by volcanic outbursts. The red planet is internally active and has towering volcanoes that used to erupt, larger than any on Earth. Huge storms of red dust swirl about, covering all its surface, and as these gradually subside, the first things to become visible are the tops of these huge volcanoes. Mars' atmosphere has no oxygen but its dust is all ferrous oxide, as if its combustion processes all took place long ago. It has two irregular-shaped, meteor-battered moons, one of which will crash upon its surface, in due time.

Figure: Mars in June 2001, then months later its whole surface was hidden by a furious dust-storm in September. Image courtesy of

Interface

NASA.

NASA has a picture of Mars during what seems to be its biggest storm on record, during July/August of 2001, as was still in full swing during the cataclysm of 9/11,7 with the whole planet glowing red. It had ‘engulfed the entire planet for the last three months’ a BBC report stated, in the beginning of October. For the Planet of War one can’t help feeling how that seems appropriate: a doom for our new millennium. Mars drew nearest to us in recorded history in 2003, as Mars' solar opposition fell upon its perihelion (around Capricorn/Pisces boundary), which is not far from Earth's aphelion, that made it extra-close. Mars grows brightest in the sky every two years and two months, its synodic cycle, at its solar opposition. It shines brightly when opposite the Sun in the sky, and then draws nearest to us. Journeys to Mars will have to use this synodic interval for the timing of its flights. Mars' orbit is far more elliptical than that of Earth. For comparison, perihelion is closer than its aphelion by: Venus 1%, Earth 3%, Mars 20% , to the Sun, Moon (perigee/apogee) 11%, to the Earth, Thus, eccentric Mars comes some twenty percent closer, while Venus has a nearly circular orbit. Earth comes three percent nearer to the Sun in midwinter (around January 3rd) than in midsummer, and Luna draws 11% closer at perigee than at apogee. Its two satellites are called Phobos and Diemos (fear and terror) named after the section in Homer's Iliad where Mars is preparing to emerge onto the battlefield: And he ordered Phobos and Diemos to harness his horses, While he himself donnned his sparkling armour. Phobos, due to its low orbit, is destined to disintegrate, doomed to destruction, calculated to crash. There is a huge gash across the equator of Mars, Valles Marineris, looking as if hewn with a giant axe, ten times bigger than the Grand Canyon - the largest valley in the solar system. Its huge volcano 7

BBC, ‘Giant Storm shrouds Mars’ 11.10. 2001

Space probes and planetary images Olympus Mons is the largest mountain in the solar system. Deep chasms are testimony to the torrents of water than must have gurgled there once, and prolific mudflats and gullies indicate water-activity. Somehow, it all disappeared, along with the oxygen that must have been in the atmosphere. Seams of iron here on Earth turn red at the surface. Mars has three times more iron on its surface than does Earth, all in its red, oxidised condition. Mars' atmosphere has white clouds of water-ice, yellowish dust clouds, bluish limb hazes and bright surface frosts. Water-ice clouds hover around the giant volcanoes. Mars is more earth-like than any other planet, having four seasons thanks to its axis being similarly tilted to Earth's, and a day only forty minutes longer. Each year the Martian polar ice caps thaw and vaporise. The ever-changing colours of Mars are not due to vegetation as was often believed. Recent, convincing evidence tells how water once flowed on Mars: its dried-up water channels run for hundreds of kilometers, indicating that Mars was once warmer and wetter. One feels that Life tried hard to emerge on Mars, but just didn’t quite make it. Whilst negotiating the descent of the Viking spacecraft onto the sands of Mars in 1976, Carl Sagan and his team in Pasadena were frustrated by a dust-storm enduring for several weeks, prohibiting the gathering of any data from the probe. They noted that surface temperatures decreased somewhat, owing to the obscuration of sunlight by the dust-storms. From this cooling effect on Mars came Sagan's ‘nuclear winter' theory of the icy cold which would follow a nuclear exchange, after dust swirling in the upper atmosphere obscured the light of the Sun. Thus arose a final Martial warning - from Mars. There have been three dozen missions to Mars – yes, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? And two-thirds of them have failed. Now that is an awful lot of failures. Is there some Mars gremlin that gets to them, or is it just the unpredictable and stormy atmosphere and rocky surface? Whatever the reason, all these failures have knocked the stuffing out of hopes of Man getting to Mars in our lifetime. Some wish to alter Mars to make it suitable for life, called ‘terra-forming.’ The first step in this would involve manufacturing global-warming type gases on its surface, and very slowly these would warm up Mars. Then, after maybe a century, plants would be introduced and they, feeding on the carbon dioxide, would start to produce oxygen. Once oxygen built up, an ozone 37

Interface

layer would (with a bit of luck) start to form, and this would protect organic life from UV radiation. Does this strike you as a mad waste of time and energy? Or, does it represent the future, when humanity gets to colonise other planets? Maggie Zubrin, who co-runs the Mars Society in America, says: I feel very excited about terra-forming. I think it would be a blessing for humans to give such an atmosphere to Mars, where life could thrive. Those little Martian microbes, if they’re still existing, could develop their potential as well.

Jupiter, Wielder of Thunderbolts Whirling round at a great speed, once per ten hours, Jupiter generates an immense magnetic field. So vast is it that Saturn enters into the tail of its magnetosphere each time it comes into conjunction with Jupiter. The astrologers' archetypal ‘expansion' image is borne by a planet larger than all the others put together. In 1955, radio interference due to a Jupiter magnetic storm was first detected, it was first assumed that this was due to a nearby car motor, as it seemed impossible for such powerful radiation to come from a million miles away. Jupiter's radio energy normally occurs in a series of short bursts: "to many radio astronomers, it almost sounds like the kind of radio noise made by lightning storms on earth."8 Jovian storms are related to the small inner satellite, Io. When Io is in a direct line between Sun and Jupiter, emissions are five times weaker than when Io is 90 off the Sun-Jupiter line.9 Storms maximise at Sun-Io square! How little Io does this remains a mystery. The Voyager I spacecraft set off in 1977 and reached Jupiter in 1979. It was constructed to be able to function perfectly well within the enormous magnetic and high-energy electric fields of Jupiter, and would even "...be able to detect bursts of radio waves from single lightning 8

The New Astronomies, Ben Bova (1973) p.80 Ibid, p.80

Space probes and planetary images strokes in the Jovian atmosphere."10

Figure: Jupiter and his moons, thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org.

The Voyager data on Jupiter came in, majestic and beyond expectation: Windswept clouds churn and seethe in Jupiter's colorful atmosphere. Huge storms larger than the Earth in size swirl across Jupiter, while giant cyclones create continent-sized spots. Smaller spots chase each other, whirling and rolling about, and even devouring each other. Zones and belts race around the huge planet, driven by hurricane-speed winds. 10

New Scientist, Aug 18 1977, p.401

Interface

Lightning bolts illuminate the Jovian night sky with enough energy to vaporise a city. Everywhere there is stormy weather as clouds billow, churn and surge above a vast sea of hydrogen. The colorful spots, zones and belts are weather patterns. In fact, nearly everything we see on this awesome planet is a storm cloud.11 Jove's brilliant coloration came from continuous lightning discharges in the atmosphere: The dark side of Jupiter also revealed intense lightning storms all over the place... these may be responsible for Jupiter's fantastic coloring12 The storms block out radio function on Earth, and volcanoes erupt on Io from the stresses and strains of its role. The data collected surpassed everyone's expectations, indeed it had been some time since anything made astronomers feel so jovial. The groups of Jupiter moons give us an expansive and optimistic image, yet held in a perfect balance. The four ‘Galilean’ moons are the big ones, shown here in blue, the second group out from the center: Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. These were seen by Galileo in 1609, when he named them the ‘Stella Medici.’ Isn’t it a shame they are no longer called by this name? The outer groups of moons swing round majestically in different directions. We feel confident that Jupiter can cope with all of this.

Stern Saturn The Saturn images by contrast were of measure and precision. Saturn is a grey planet. One report spoke of its 'translucent, marble-like surface graced with diaphanous rings.' Its rings formed exact circles, the only such in the solar system. They were level as though held on a glass 11 12

Op. cit. (26) p.176 New Scientist, April 5 1979, p.22 "Jupiter's Enigmatic Variations'

Space probes and planetary images plate, and detached from one another. Multi-hued, they all seemed to know their places, and some were ‘plaited' together. The rings turned out to be made of thin, separate lines: ‘when the Voyager cameras zoomed in on the main rings, they appeared to break up into countless rings - almost without limit. Thousands of tiny ringlets appeared...some of them making a complete circle around Saturn'.13 The overall thickness of the rings could be just a few metres deep. In the immensity of space, what established these rings, so ordered and symmetrical, and what sustains them? What astronomers call ‘Shepherd moons' were noted, which somehow helped the rings to stay in place, but even so the astronomers were baffled. ‘Spokes' of light and dark rays passed through the different ring layers, even though they were moving round at different speeds. Here is Dava Sobell, explaining how the rings of Saturn work: "When the Cassini spacecraft reached Saturn in the summer of 2004, it trumpeted its arrival by soaring up through the gap between the F and G rings, skimming across the broad expanse of the ring plane, and then diving back down through the far side of the same gap, where it emerged unscathed. "The most notable resonance effect in the rings of Saturn is the Cassini division - the three-thousand mile-wide separation between the A and B rings. The Division derives from its 2:1 resonance with the moon Mimas, orbiting more than 40,000 miles away. Ring particles within the Cassini division travel twice around Saturn to Mimas's once, and so they repeatedly overtake the slower-moving moon at precisely the same two points in their orbit. There they gravitate towards it. Eventually the pull of the moon, boosted by rhythmic repetition, boots the particles out of the resonant orbit, clearing the gap. A similar but narrower gap near the outer margin of the A ring, called the Encke division (for Johann Encke. a former director of the Berlin Observatory), shares a 5:3 resonance with Mimas and a 6:5 resonance with another moon. Also, the decorative scalloped border on the outer edge of the a ring owes its six petal-like lobes to a 7:6 resonance with two small satellites that occupy a single

Op. cit. (26) p.203.

Interface

orbit and may once have been a single object."14 The magnetic axis was the same as its axis or rotation (a problem because the magnetic field of a planet is supposed to be generated by the angle between the two), emphasising the strongright angle between this axis and the rings lying on the equatorial plane.

Figure: The retrograde loops of Saturn over eight years. Earth is at the centre of this big circle,. While moving retrograde, approximately four and a half months each year, Saturn draws nearest to us at its â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;solar oppositionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Because the Sun is then opposing Saturn in the sky, it then looks brightest - itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reflecting more of the Sun's light, so it is easiest to see. Moving further out, the planets spend more of their time being retrograde

(Music: 'Shepherd Moons' song by Irish musician Enya 1991)

Eccentric Uranus In 1986, Voyager arrived at Uranus, obtaining pictures of this eccentric and mysterious sphere, with its surface glowing ultra-violet, and nine 14

Dava Sobell, The Planets, 2005 p182.

Space probes and planetary images dark rings surrounding it. It rotates in a retrograde direction, lolling on its side as if it had never heard of the ecliptic plane. Its magnetic axis protrudes at about latitude 40, and does not even pass through the planet's centre. Its moons were found to have a strangely patched-up appearance. The moon Miranda reflected as one scientist said, ‘all the strange places of the solar system rolled into one.' It looked like ‘a pile of spare parts.' Astronomers were puzzled by the bit missing from the bottom of the Miranda moon photo, on its edge. And then, ‘If Miranda was bizarre, the other large moons of Uranus upheld the family's eccentricity and lack of harmony.' The head of Voyager's imaging team Brad Smith concluded, ‘To create a historical scenario for what Voyager saw at Uranus, we need more miracles than any thinking person will accept.'15 After managing so well their precision hardware for the Voyager mission, the astrophysicists ought now turn to (gasp) the astrologer, and she would be able to help them appreciate what it all means. Otherwise, they will merely be left with a lot of gee-whiz data that cannot be pieced together - and which the public will soon forget.

Neptune the Dreamer The next sphere out is entirely different in quality: Neptune, the ‘divine dreamer’. When Urbain Le Verrier proposed the name of ‘Neptune’ and its symbol the Trident, on September 30th, 1846, several days after its discovery, no-one had any inkling of its colour. Through all the heated debates over its name that year and the next, no-one ever suggested that it seemed to be a blue or sea-green hue! How did astrologers infer the qualities which they regard as so distinctive, and how did an astronomer

National Geographic August 1986, ‘Uranus,' p.194.

Interface

Figure:The loops of Neptune. Neptune’s retrograde loops overlap so that it criss-crosses up to five times, over a single Zodiac-longitude position, as it moves around.

confer upon it a name which astrologers regard as so appropriate? The use of anaesthesia from ether synchronised within days of Neptune's discovery, which is relevant to the first of these questions. The viewpoint of astronomers is that their theories ‘suggest that a deep sea of liquid water makes up the bulk of the planet's interior,' so that in hindsight its name was quite appropriate.16 What did the Voyager spacecraft find after sojourning through the depths of space, in 1989? It arrived at a glorious clear sphere, across which there scudded small white clouds. Neptune has one large moon, Titan, covered with pink snow, with white geyser-fountains that erupt periodically...Questions of chemical composition should be secondary compared to the images conveyed by this data.

Pluto’s Shrinking Act Of course it’s a planet! It is spherical in shape, big enough that someone could walk on its surface, has three moons, plus it has a decent orbit around the Sun with a proper radius given by Bode’s law. So, what’s the problem? Let’s start by looking at how it was first predicted and then found. Estimates of Pluto's size kept shrinking throughout the 1970s, to the extent that the prospect of its total disappearance became a standing joke amongst astronomers. The circumstances of its discovery from the perturbation of the orbit of Neptune had to be dismissed as a mere computation error. Its mass was far too small to have caused any such disturbance. It was on the verge of being dismissed as a mere lost moon of Neptune, when in 1978, as it entered the orbit of Neptune, it appeared with a suspiciously large moon, one half of its own diameter. 16

Op. cit. (26), p.229.

Space probes and planetary images As Neptune's discovery was a powerful vindication of the law of gravity, having its position exactly predicted thereby, Pluto's discovery was hailed in the same terms: The Orbit, now that we know it, is found to be so similar to that which Lowell predicted from his calculations fifteen years ago, that it is quite incredible that the agreement can be due to accident, intoned the Scientific American (December 1930). Such would indeed be incredible, as Lowell's predicted orbit was within five degrees of zodiac longitude, and three degrees for perihelion position! Also, he had predicted a steep inclination of the orbit to the ecliptic, though not quite as steep as was actually found. Subsequent events showed the prediction as rather a celestial mockery of the rigorous deductive process that had been claimed. Percival Lowell, who set up the observatory that discovered Pluto, had become famous for his espousal of the canals on Mars he claimed to have seen, and described in great detail as showing intelligent life there. His reputation collapsed as these evaporated, and his quest for Pluto was the attempt to restore his reputation. All his detailed predictions of Pluto's position turned out to be just as baseless as his Mars canals, the single difference being, that in the latter case he was right. Instead of demonstrating the power of deductive logic, its discovery demonstrated equally profoundly the Jungian concept of synchronicity, which Jung described as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;an acausal connecting principle.' With its steep inclination to the ecliptic, Pluto only comes close to it for a comparatively short period. It crossed the ecliptic in September of 1930, that being the only period in which the Flagstaff Observatory's quest could have been successful. It was in the one part of its orbit when it was amenable to being discovered by the methods then used, ie it was discovered at its node. In mythology, Pluto was the underworld god who could wear a helmet of invisibility. We are reminded of this by the way in which, at the position in space where one says that Pluto is located, there is nothing present, just empty space. The planet and its extra-large moon are both orbiting continually around this central point, which is their centre of gravity.

Interface

************************ Buy Interface here (hard copy) or here (Kindle), see Web-page here.