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The night sky in the lives of amateur and professional astronomers

by Jessica Heim

This paper explores the nature of amateur and professional astronomers’ attitudes towards and relationship with the night sky. This research uses a mixed method approach, utilizing both interviews and questionnaire responses. It examines how respondents feel about the night sky, what it means to them, and their thoughts about light pollution. It was found that a high percentage of individuals surveyed expressed that they have an emotional attachment to and feel as sense of connection with the night sky. Many elaborated on why being able to view the night sky is important to them and enriches their lives. Respondents also frequently noted seeing increasing levels of light pollution, and several expressed concern about how lack of access to dark skies could affect future generations. This paper finds that for the population surveyed, the ability to experience the dark night sky is essential for wellbeing.

Introduction

Tim Ingold argues that since contemporary humans live so much of their lives indoors, they have lost their connection to the world outside of enclosed spaces, the outdoors.^[1] However, Campion argues that all civilizations have felt a sense of awe about the sky.^[2] This paper aims to examine whether contemporary people still experience a sense of connection to the sky. Specifically, it explores the nature of amateur and professional astronomers’ attitudes towards and relationship with the night sky. It endeavours to look into how these people feel about the night sky, their place in the universe, and issues relating to the night sky, such as light pollution. This work builds upon previous research in this area. This includes the work of William Kelly, who developed the ‘Noctcaelador Inventory,’ a list of questions designed to discern individuals’ degree of connection to the night sky.^[3] It also references Jarita Holbrook’s findings on individuals’ relationship with the sky based upon her ‘The Sky in Our Lives’ survey.^[4] In addition, it connects to the work of Ada Blair, whose research focused upon the role of the sky in the lives of people living on the Dark Sky Island of Sark.^[5]

This project uses a mixed method approach as suggested by Monique Hennicnk, et al.^[6] It uses a combination of semi-structured interviews and an online questionnaire distributed to individuals interested in the night sky, many of whom were members of local amateur astronomy organizations. It was found that the majority of people surveyed do indeed have a strong connection to the night sky, and many shared detailed explanations of how viewing the night sky has affected their lives in a positive way.

Literature Review

In his paper, ‘Earth, Sky, Wind, and Weather,’ Ingold argues that due to so much of their time being spent indoors, contemporary people think differently from those from societies in which more time was spent outdoors. He believes that all this time indoors creates ‘difficulty in imagining how any world we inhabit could be other than a furnished room.’^[7] However, Campion has a different perspective, stating that there is no ‘society that does not express at least some fascination with the sky and its mysteries.’^[8] He argues that such ‘awe of the heavens’ can be seen to ‘be a universal human attribute.’^[9] Thus for Campion, the sky holds a place of importance in the lives of ancient and modern peoples alike.

There has not been a great deal of research done on the relationship of contemporary humans with the night sky. In particular, there is a dearth of research on astronomers’ relationship with the night sky. Jaritia Holbook has done some of the pioneering work in this area. She has used her ‘The Sky in Our Lives’ survey to examine attitudes and beliefs toward the sky of professional and amateur astronomers.^{^[10]} Among some of her preliminary findings were that contrary to popular conceptions of astronomers, in the population she studied, she did not find the majority of astronomers to be agnostics and atheists.^[11] Regarding the purpose of her research, Holbrook states, ‘as with ancient people, contemporary people have a relationship with the night sky. However, we do not know the details of that relationship,’ hence her continuing research on this subject. ^[12]

Ada Blair has also chosen to study the relationship between contemporary humans and the night sky, albeit a different group, residents of the Dark Sky Island of Sark. In her research, she interviewed people from Sark to uncover the ways in which having continual access to a dark night sky impacts their lives. There has been much more research done, as Blair observes, on the importance of interaction with nature in maintaining wellbeing than on studying similar effects resulting from access to a dark sky. For example, Richard Louv, a journalist who has written extensively about the benefits of regular contact with nature for children and communities, coined the term ‘nature-deficit disorder’ to describe negative consequences of lack of contact with the natural world upon physical, mental and emotional health.^[13] Blair concludes that interaction with dark skies, like other parts of nature, has a positive effect on wellbeing.^[14]

Psychologist William Kelly has developed the ‘Noctcaelador Inventory’ (NI), a list of ten questions intended to provide a means of measuring individuals’ interest in the night sky. In this inventory, respondents are asked to rank the extent of their agreement with each of the ten statements on a one to five scale, ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Kelly and Bates found that when comparing the NI scores of astronomical society members to those of controls, the astronomical society members scored significantly higher, thus providing support for the effectiveness of this scale in measuring connection to the night sky.^[15]

There is also some nature writing which touches upon issues of light pollution or lack thereof and its relationship to society. For instance, Paul Bogard has written on the subject of increasing light pollution and how the abundance of artificial lighting at night has detrimental effects on the health of both humans and ecological systems.^[16] In addition, in his guide to astronomy in the U.S.’s national parks, Tyler Nordgren discusses reasons why dark skies should be preserved and voices his concerns about the negative consequences which may result if they are not.^[17] Both argue that losing the night sky would be a great loss to humanity and argue for changes to the way people light up their cities and neighborhoods.

Methodology

This project uses a combination of questionnaire responses and semi-structured interviews. Henneck et al suggest using a mixed method approach, as does Alan Bryman, who gives examples of research involving both questionnaires and interviews.^[18] As Judith Bell observes, though there are benefits to interviews, such as the ability to ask the interviewee further questions and to clarify responses, there are also downsides, such as the amount of time it takes to conduct and transcribe interviews and increased difficulty in analysis.^[19] Thus for this research, I decided to design an electronic questionnaire, which would be my primary data collecting instrument and also do three interviews.

Though the individuals I interviewed all expressed an interest in astronomy and the night sky, they each came from a different background. One of the interviewees, Annette Lee, is a professional astronomer and university professor in her 40’s. The second interviewee, Ian Bernick, is a very avid amateur astronomer in his 30’s, and the final interviewee, Jessica Bernick, also in her 30’s, is Ian’s wife. She indicated that I would get a ‘layperson’s perspective’ from her, as while she enjoys the night sky, she does not share the same level of enthusiasm for it as her husband does. Thus I felt that the individuals I interviewed were representative of the spectrum of perspectives I was aiming to examine in my research.

In designing my research questions for both the questionnaire and interviews, I have based many of my questions on those used by Holbrook and Blair in order to facilitate an easier comparison of my findings with theirs. Both my questionnaire and interview questions can be found in appendices at this end of this paper. For the questionnaire, Google Forms was used in order to facilitate ease of completion by respondents. I distributed the questionnaire to individuals on the general e-mail list of a large astronomy society in my state (Minnesota) as well as posted it on their online forum. In addition, it was distributed to members of the smaller, regional astronomy club in my area. I also e-mailed the questionnaire link to a number of individuals I know personally who are very interested in viewing the night sky, and some of these people forwarded the survey link to other night sky enthusiasts they knew. A total of fifty individuals, including the three interviewees, completed the questionnaire.

The questionnaire consisted of five sections and contained a combination of list, multiple choice, Likert scale, and open questions. Though, as Bell observes, open questions can prove more challenging to analyze, I felt it was important to include a number of these in order to enable respondents to better share their stories and other personal experiences relating to the night sky.^[20] The first section of my questionnaire gathered demographic information, while the second asked about respondents’ activities in relation to the night sky, such as whether they have used or own a telescope. The third section consisted of Kelly’s ten NI questions, section four asked respondents about their thoughts and feelings about the night sky, and section five focused upon respondents’ thoughts and attitudes about dark skies and light pollution. It was estimated that the questionnaire should take approximately fifteen minutes to complete.

Reflexive Considerations

I have been a planetarium educator for about five years, presenting astronomy education programs to school groups and the general public. I greatly enjoy learning about new discoveries in astronomy, and I also have a strong interest in observing the night sky, typically viewing it nightly. Being able to observe the night sky is extremely important to me, and I find the rapidly increasing levels of light pollution where I live to be quite distressing.

I would consider myself somewhat of an insider to my target groups. The individuals I interviewed are people I know and interact with frequently. I am also a member of both of the astronomy organizations to which I distributed my questionnaire. In addition, I know a number of the amateur astronomers who received my survey. Yet, I would also consider myself an outsider to these astronomical organizations, as I have not been a member of either of them for long (less than one year), and thus, I have not met the majority of the people who completed my survey.

Ethical considerations

All individuals receiving the questionnaire were provided an explanation of the nature and purpose of this research. They were informed that by completing the questionnaire, they were consenting to their data being used in my research and were assured that they would be anonymous. In order to begin the survey, respondents had to first click, ‘I agree’ to this statement. Interviewees were likewise informed as to the nature of the research, and they each signed a release form. They opted to have their actual names used in this paper. Thus I have used pseudonyms to refer to all questionnaire respondents but have used the real identities of my interviewees in this paper.

Findings/Discussion

I found that a high percentage of respondents were white, male, and highly educated, with nearly half having a Masters degree or higher. They also tended to be older, with the median age being 57, and all but five lived in Minnesota. Some lived in more urban areas, while a much smaller percentage lived in the country. The majority indicated that they were amateur astronomers, though eight marked ‘None of the Above’ when asked to indicate their connection to astronomy. Given the methods I used of distributing the survey, regardless of how respondents described themselves, all had an above average interest in the night sky.

Population	Number of People
Male	38
Female	11
Blank	1

Figure 1: Population

Ethnicity	Number of People
White/Caucasian	42
Mixed Race	3
Indian	1
Pakistani American	1
Blank	3

Figure 2: Ethnicity

Astronomy Connection	Number of People
astronomer	4
Amateur astronomer	37
Astronomy Grad student	1
None of the Above	8

Figure 3: Astronomy Connection

Age	Number of People
20-29	5
30-39	4
40-49	4
50-59	12
60-69	13
70-79	7
80-89	1
‘Old’	1
Blank	3

Figure 4: Age

Figure 5: Highest Level of Education Attained

As expected, it was found that the majority of people in this study regularly engaged with and felt a sense of connection to the night sky. Fifty-eight percent indicated that they took time to view the night sky one or more times a week, with an additional 20% percent saying that they typically do this several times a month. Every respondent had used a telescope to view celestial objects, and seventy-two percent owned one or more telescopes (many owned several). Likewise, the results from Kelly’s NI questions showed that many respondents showed a strong connection to the night sky. For example, 84% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they ‘feel an emotional attachment to the night sky,’ and 78% agreed or strongly agreed that they ‘somehow feel connected with the night-sky.’ So it appears that for this group of people, a personal connection to the night sky is indeed important, and in the remainder of this paper, I will explore the nature of this relationship in more detail.

Figure 7: Frequency of Viewing the Night Sky

Figure 8: Emotional Attachment to the Night Sky

Though a few respondents indicated that experiences as an adult, such attending a star party, sparked their interest in night sky observation, the vast majority of respondents indicated that their connection to the night sky began in childhood, and many shared memorable experiences with the sky from their early years. For instance, Samuel, a 25 year old physics graduate student shared, ‘I come from rural India and it’s very common to sleep outside under the night sky in summer days. I remember my grandparents telling fascinating stories about constellations while pointing them to me during those times.’ Similarly, James, a 52 year old Minnesotan, indicated that his earliest memories of the night sky were from looking up from his backyard ‘as a WEE tot.’ He went on to share a memorable experience from his early teens:

I received my first telescope on Christmas Eve at age 14 … I put it together and took it out into the cold Minnesota night: jammies, parka and boots. It was 2 am. I found the brightest thing in the sky and pointed at it … it was Jupiter. I could see the cloud belts and the Galilean moons. I couldn’t believe I was seeing it with my very own eyes! I ran inside and woke my mom; told her she had to come and see it. She was incredulous. “I can’t believe it,” she shrieked and giggled with delight. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. That night changed my life.

The correlation with being able to engage with the night sky as a child and lifelong interest in both observation and in astronomy is noted by Nordgren, as he observes, ‘Nearly every astronomer I know, can point to a transformative moment as a child, be it a first look through a telescope, a meteor shower, or the sight of the Milky Way on a night spent camping under the stars.’^[21] Nordgren points to the importance of firsthand observation in igniting an interest in the night sky and astronomy.^[22] This was a theme that came up repeatedly in my research. When describing what inspires him to look through his telescopes, Ian noted, ‘you can see it firsthand, and I think that’s kind of special.’ Thus it appears that, though photographs taken by space telescopes are certainly engaging and can perhaps engender further appreciation of the wonders of the universe, it is the personal, firsthand experience with the night sky, particularly as a child, which has the deepest and most transformational effect upon a person and creates a sense of connection to the cosmos.

Respondents elaborated on why viewing the night sky is meaningful for them. For many, there was the joy of learning and of sharing with others. Some said viewing the night sky brought about feelings of connection to the universe, and others mentioned it was beneficial for their psyche. As James explained, ‘It’s good for my soul. It centers me.’ Similarly, Julia, a 22 year old graduate physics student, noted, it ‘allows me to experience emotions that I rarely experience elsewhere.’ Thus it seems to be a combination of the excitement of learning, connecting with the world beyond the earth, and the emotions this engenders which draws many to observe the night sky.

Respondents were asked to specify their religious or spiritual tradition. Because this was an open question, I got a great variety of responses. Some were challenging to neatly classify into a particular category. For example, one individual said that he was ‘Protestant, but heading towards Buddhist;’ another stated he was ‘between Catholic and atheist.’ Notwithstanding, I found that more respondents declared religious or spiritual traditions than did not. In addition, more than half of respondents indicated that religious and spiritual concepts were important components of their interest in the night sky, and many chose to elaborate upon the reasons why. Julia indicated her belief in God as creator of the universe and noted, ‘That’s one of the reasons I chose to study physics in college. I’ve always feel that by learning how nature works, I’m also learning the mind of God.’ Similarly, Dave, a 50 year old Minnesotan, noted that he finds that looking at the sky ‘strengthens religious belief.’ Thus for such individuals, viewing the sky, understanding the workings of the universe, and deepening spiritual beliefs go hand in hand. Also, several people who identified themselves as agnostic or atheist indicated that their spiritual/religious beliefs played a role in their interest in the night sky. For example, Sally, a 62 year old secular humanist, indicated that she experiences ‘transcendent feelings’ and that she is ‘a part of the universe’ when she is in nature or looks at the night sky, while Derek, an agnostic 71 year old, notes that he considers himself to be a spiritual person and states that in observing the night sky there is ‘a possible connection to a higher and lasting spirit.’ Thus, for many respondents, there was definitely a ‘spiritual’ component relating to their interest in the heavens.

Religious Tradition	Number of people
Christian or specified a specific denomination	17
Baha’i	2
Messianic Jewish/Hebrew roots	1
Muslim	1
Spiritual, but non-aligned, lifelong seeker, Pagan, etc.	6
Currently between traditions	3
Raised Christian, but not very religious	2
Atheist and/or agnostic	13
None	2
Blank	3

Figure 10: Religious Tradition

Figure 11: Consider Self to be a Religious Person?

Figure 12: Consider Self to be a Spiritual Person?

Figure 13: Spiritual/Religious Beliefs Influence Interest in Night Sky?

These results support Holbrook’s observation, based upon her research with astronomers, that not all interested in astronomy are atheists, and indeed, many such people do claim a religious tradition.^[23] Holbrook also mentions that she received strong criticism from some atheist astronomers regarding her findings.^[24] In my research, I likewise encountered a few individuals who were quite upset to be asked anything about religion. Though most were more than happy to discuss their thoughts about religion and spirituality, regardless of what these beliefs were, a couple were not. Josh, a 64 year old atheist, inquired, ‘Why does religion have anything to do with this survey.’ Similarly, when asked to indicate his religious or spiritual tradition, Mike, a self described ‘old’ individual, exclaimed, ‘religion when we’re talking about science? didn’t religion say that the earth was the center of everything?’ Thus by bringing up the topic of religion in the context of astronomy and the night sky, like Holbrook, I encountered some opposition.

A high percentage of respondents had noticed an increase in light pollution over time, and many also noted diminishing viewing conditions where they lived. Additionally, though 72% could see the Milky Way from where they lived as a child, only 50% can see it from where they live now. One might wonder whether this could be explained by a childhood in the country followed by a move to a city as an adult, yet there were respondents who discussed how much darker the skies were in places they frequented in years past than those same locales are today, and some described relatively urban locations as having quite good viewing conditions when they were younger. Though this is certainly a marked decrease, the fact that half of those surveyed can still see the Milky Way at all where they live, indicates that the overall light pollution levels in Minnesota may not be as high as elsewhere in the country, as according to Fabio Falchi, about 80% of North Americans cannot see the Milky Way from where they live.^[25] Eighty-six percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that ‘Light pollution is a major problem in Minnesota’s skies.’ So it is evident that these individuals are keenly aware of changes in the night sky.

Figure 14: Observation of Light Pollution Increase

Figure 15: Observation of Light Pollution Increase Where One Lives

Figure 16: Visibility of Milky Way when a Child

Figure 18: Light Pollution is a Major Problem in Minnesota?

When asked how the increase in light pollution made them feel, ‘sad’ was by far the most common response. Some were angry, and one man said increasing levels of light pollution where he lived made him feel ‘disappointed’ and ‘robbed.’ Nearly all indicated that they found light pollution to be upsetting. Ninety-four percent agreed or strongly agreed that ‘Having a dark sky and being able to see many stars at night is important to me.’ To give an example of this, Ian shared that before purchasing a home, he examined dark sky maps to assist him in choosing a location with good viewing conditions. Similarly, Annette indicated that if she moved, she would try to go somewhere the sky was darker. So it is clear that for many respondents, the prospect of an impaired view of the night sky was upsetting indeed.

Respondents were asked to describe how they felt when viewing a very dark night sky and contrast this with a light polluted view. Many gave vivid descriptions of their experiences with a dark sky, and it was clear that for a lot of people, viewing such a sky not only provided more interesting and beautiful views, but brought about radically different emotions. When viewing a dark sky, respondents reported feeling, ‘in awe,’ ‘happy,’ and ‘exhilarated.’ In contrast, emotions felt when looking at a light polluted sky included, ‘feelings of loss and disappointment’ ‘indifferent,’ and ‘frustrated.’ Several described viewing the dark sky as a much more tactile experience. In describing the sky in a remote area, Ian noted it ‘just seemed like you could almost touch it.’ Henry, a 28-year-old physics graduate student, gave a similar description, ‘It’s a completely different world. When you’re in a location with a truly dark sky, you feel like you’re being sucked into the sky.’ Bogard describes the feeling of falling into the stars, termed ‘celestial vaulting,’ and notes that such an experience is only possible in a truly dark sky.^{^[26]} Thus viewing a dark sky enables a vastly different experience than observing from a light polluted area.

Many respondents lamented the loss of darker skies, but a few were particularly poignant in their descriptions of how important access to a dark sky is to them. Annette shared, ‘It’s like the difference between eating junk food, and using that to sustain you, or eating a really good, high protein, nutritious, good healthy meal. The dark sky is like the healthy meal. The junk food is like being in a light polluted area.’ She likened lack of access to a dark sky for an extended period of time to being a boat without an anchor, getting thrown about by the waves. When asked what prompts her to look skyward, she responded, ‘I think it would be like saying, “What prompts you to breathe?” ‘ For Annette, it is clear that regular access to a dark sky is essential for health and wellbeing. The feelings shared by her and other respondents about how differently dark and light polluted skies make them feel offer strong support for Blair’s conclusion that dark skies do indeed benefit wellbeing.^[27]

Though there was much agreement about the existence of light pollution and the fact that it was upsetting, there was less consensus about whether this state of affairs could be altered.

Only 32% agreed or strongly agreed that ‘I can do something to substantially decrease light pollution.’ However, 63% disagreed or strongly disagreed that ‘Little can be done to halt the spread and extent of light pollution.’ So while nearly two thirds believed that something can be done to stop light pollution, about half as many thought that they personally could create change. Those who shared their experiences trying to educate city officials about dark sky friendly lighting expressed frustration. Remarks included, ‘Politicians are idiots’ and ‘It’s tough to do anything about it because people think you’re a tree hugging nut job.’ Perhaps feelings of defeat resulting from trying to make a change in lighting could be responsible for fewer people thinking that they can do something to effect change, yet this seems unlikely to be the major reason, as many more people disagreed that they could do something than indicated they had actually tried. So it appears that the prevalent belief is that there is a problem, but somebody else will solve it.

Figure 20: Ability to Reduce Light Pollution

Figure 21: Can Anything be Done to Stop Light Pollution?

Several people expressed concern about negative consequences for society resulting from a loss of contact with the sky. George, a 53 year old Minnesotan, observed that the ‘majesty of dark sky was common experience for most of human history,’ and he pondered the effect the loss of it will have on humanity. Similarly, Jane, a 27 year old mother of three, was concerned about whether future generations will know and appreciate the sky, and suggested ‘more outreach programs for children,’ as if ‘children were introduced to astronomy like I was at a young age there would be a better appreciation for what is being lost.’ Nordgren likewise expresses concern about what will happen if the night sky is obscured for most of humankind. ‘With no night sky to fire the imagination of potential young Einsteins or Sagans, where do the new scientists come from?’ he asks.^[28] He argues that without the ability to experience the night sky first hand, ‘public interest in astronomy will simply fade away. After all, how do you convince someone to care about a forest wilderness who has never wandered in a meadow, climbed a mountain, or even seen a tree?’^[29] This is exactly the argument Louv makes, that if children grow up without contact with the natural world, they will not care to protect it.^[30] Thus it is suggested that not only does the loss of dark skies have the potential to diminish individual wellbeing, it may also create negative social consequences as well.

Conclusion

The aim of this research was to explore the nature of amateur and professional astronomers’ relationship to and feelings about the sky. It was found that my interviewees and questionnaire respondents do indeed have a strong interest in and connection to the night sky. Thus for at least this particular subset of contemporary people, contact with the sky is still an integral component of their lives. Respondents reported viewing the night sky on a regular basis, and most indicated strong emotional connections to the sky. In addition, many noted spiritual or religious aspects relating to their interest in the night sky. It was also found that, for many people, contact with a dark night sky brings about a sense of wellbeing while conversely, light pollution brings about feelings of sadness and loss. Nearly all agreed that light pollution is a problem in Minnesota, and though there was less consensus as to whether light pollution could be reduced, concerns were voiced that if light pollution continues to increase, the loss of the night sky will be a major loss for humankind. Campion neatly sums up these concerns: ‘Light pollution cuts off our heritage, reduces our wellbeing and deprives us of contact with a huge part of our natural environment.’^[31] Perhaps further research and public knowledge of both the negative effects of light pollution as well as the benefits to be had from dark skies will eventually bring back the night sky for millions of people who have never seen a truly dark sky and will allow future generations to continue to marvel at the wonders of the universe.

Bibliography

Bates, Jason and William Kelly, ‘Criterion-Group Validity of the Noctcaelador Inventory Differences Between Astronomical Society Members and Controls ,’ Individual Differences Research, 3 (3), Hogrefe Publishing, (2005), 200-203.

Bell, Judith, Doing Your Research Project: A guide for first-time researchers in education, health and social science, 5th edn (Berkshire, England: Open University Press, 2010).

Blair, Ada, Sark in the Dark: Wellbeing and Community on the Dark Sky Island of Sark (Ceredigion, Wales: Sophia Centre Press, 2016).

Bogard, Paul, The End of Night: Search for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light (London: Little Brown and Company, 2013).

Bryman, Alan, Quantity and Quality in Social Research (London & New York: Routledge, 1988).

Campion, Nicholas, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions (New York & London: New York University Press, 2012).

Campion, Nicholas, The Dawn of Astrology: A Cultural History of Western Astrology, Volume 1: The Ancient and Classical Worlds (London & New York: Continuum Books, 2008).

Campion, Nicholas, Preface to Sark in the Dark: Wellbeing and Community on the Dark Sky Island of Sark, by Ada Blair (Ceredigion, Wales: Sophia Centre Press, 2016) pp. xvii – xxvii.

Falchi, Fabio, Pierantonio Cinzano, Dan Duriscoe, Christopher C. M. Kyba, Christopher D. Elvidge, Kimberly Baugh, Boris A. Portnov, Nataliya A. Rybnikova and Riccardo Furgoni, ‘The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness,’ Science Advances, 2 (6), American Association for the Advancement of Science, (2016).

Hennick, Monique, Inge Hutter, and Ajay Bailey, Qualitative Research Methods (London: Sage Publications, 2011).

Holbrook, Jarita, ‘How Odd is Odd? Studying astronomers,’ (paper presented at the Conference of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture, Lubljana, 2012).

Holbrook, Jarita, ‘Sky Knowledge, Celestial Names and Light Pollution,’ (unpublished MS, University of Arizona, 2009).

Ingold, Tim, ‘Earth Sky, Wind, and Weather,’ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13 (2007), 19-38.

Kelly, Willam, ‘Development of an Instrument to Meausure Noctcaelador: Psychological Attachment to the Night-Sky,’ College Student Journal, 38 (1), Project Innovation, (2004), 100-103.

Louv, Richard, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005).

Nordgren, Tyler, Stars Above, Earth Below: A Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks, (Chichester, UK: Praxis, 2010).

^[1] Tim Ingold, ‘Earth Sky, Wind, and Weather,’ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13 (2007), 19-38, (p. 29).

^[2] Nicholas Campion, The Dawn of Astrology: A Cultural History of Western Astrology, Volume 1: The Ancient and Classical Worlds (London & New York: Continuum Books, 2008), p. 5.

^[3] Willam Kelly, ‘Development of an Instrument to Meausure Noctcaelador: Psychological Attachment to the Night-Sky,’ College Student Journal, 38 (1), Project Innovation, (2004), 100-103.

^[4] Jarita Holbrook, ‘Sky Knowledge, Celestial Names and Light Pollution,’ (unpublished MS, University of Arizona, 2009).

^[5] Ada Blair, Sark in the Dark: Wellbeing and Community on the Dark Sky Island of Sark (Ceredigion, Wales: Sophia Centre Press, 2016).

^[6] Monique Hennick, Inge Hutter, and Ajay Bailey, Qualitative Research Methods (London: Sage Publications, 2011), pp. 52-58.

^[7] Tim Ingold, ‘Earth Sky, Wind, and Weather,’ p. 29.

^[8] Nicholas Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions (New York & London: New York University Press, 2012), p. 1.

^[9] Campion, The Dawn of Astrology: A Cultural History of Western Astrology, p. 5.

^[10] Jarita Holbrook, ‘Sky Knowledge, Celestial Names and Light Pollution,’ (unpublished MS, University of Arizona, 2009).

^[11] Jarita Holbrook, ‘How Odd is Odd? Studying astronomers,’ (paper presented at the Conference of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture, Lubljana, 2012), p.4.

^[12] Holbrook, ‘ How Odd is Odd? Studying astronomers,’ p.3.

^[13] Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005), p. 34.

^[14] Blair, Sark in the Dark, p. 147.

^[15] Jason Bates and William Kelly, ‘Criterion-Group Validity of the Noctcaelador Inventory Differences Between Astronomical Society Members and Controls ,’ Individual Differences Research, 3 (3), Hogrefe Publishing, (2005), 200-203, (p. 202).

^[16] Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light, (New York: Little Brown and Company, 2013).

^[17] Tyler Nordgren, Stars Above, Earth Below: A Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks, (Chichester, UK: Praxis Publishing, 2010).

^[18] Monique Hennick, et al, Qualitative Research Methods, pp. 52-58; Alan Bryman, Quantity and Quality in Social Research, (London & New York: Routledge, 1988), pp. 371-139.

^[19] Judith Bell, Doing Your Research Project: A guide for first-time researchers in education, health and social science, 5th edn (Berkshire, England: Open University Press, 2010), p. 161.

^[20] Bell, Doing Your Research Project, p. 141.

^[21] Nordgren, Stars Above, Earth Below, p. 426.

^[22] Nordgren, Stars Above, Earth Below, pp. 424-426.

^[23] Holbrook, ‘How Odd is Odd? Studying astronomers,’ p. 6.

^[24] Holbrook, ‘How Odd is Odd? Studying astronomers,’ p. 6.

^[25] Fabio Falchi et al, ‘The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness,’ Science Advances, 2 (6), American Association for the Advancement of Science, (2016), p. 1.

^[26] Bogard, The End of Night, pp. 269-271.

^[27] Blair, Sark in the Dark, p. 147.

^[28] Nordgren, Stars Above, Earth Below, p. 426.

^[29] Nordgren, Stars Above, Earth Below, p. 426.

^[30] Louv, Last Child in the Woods, p. 157.

^[31] Nicholas Campion, preface to Sark in the Dark: Wellbeing and Community on the Dark Sky Island of Sark, by Ada Blair (Ceredigion, Wales: Sophia Centre Press, 2016), p. xxvii.

Moon meets Sun and Sun meets Moon: A sky journal research report

Nicole Montag-Keller

This paper reports on what ‘Moon meets Sun and Sun meets Moon’ means to the researcher, noted in a sky journal from end of May till mid July, 2017 at a location in North-Western Switzerland. Qualitative, phenomenological and reflexive research was conducted with a focus on ‘Verstehen’. The methodological approach rendered to exhibit in depth perceptions, thoughts and feelings, showing how factual clarity and intuitive sensations belong to the broad dualities of materiality and spirituality. The research gave way to the understanding of individual identity formation, personal development and self-realisation informed through biography and lived experience. The report offers an expression of a personal cosmology, world-view and attitude by addressing the interrelatedness of a meaning making process: between sky objects, landscape and the researcher at a certain time in a certain place.

Introduction

The aim of this research is what ‘Moon meets Sun and Sun meets Moon’ means to me and how, as a result of the observation of Moon and Sun, I was influenced, affected and shifted in my lived experience. Since my last name is Montag, I feel emotionally connected to the Moon, but I understand that the sky objects moon and sun express also my understanding of materiality. Additionally, the Moon and the Sun hold symbolic meaning for me, which is highlighted in the course of my own path of life, which this report means to be an expression of the developmental changes and transformation I underwent as a consequence of observing and relating to the Moon. I look into how I construct, what Nicolas Campion termed an ‘individual’s worldview or meaning system’, my personal cosmology, and I also assess whether my research confirms what Freya Matthews suggested, that ‘cosmologies may be self-affirming or not and are conditioned by various aspects of the culture in which they develop’.^[1] I conducted qualitative, phenomenological and reflexive research, referring to Charlotte Aull Davies, that ‘informed reflexivity is compatible with, indeed is essential for, both a realist ontology and a commitment to social scientific knowledge in the sense of knowledge that is based in, and can inform us about, a real social world and that is public and open to critical analysis.’^[2] Using the content of my sky journal entries, I looked to understand how being me, a person at a certain time in history at a certain place on earth and how relating to Moon and Sun shaped my personal experience as well as my world-view. This view is informed by Terry Eagleton’s definitions of nature and culture, where ‘the word culture shifts from the natural to the spiritual’ giving way to the unification of outer and inner worlds for arriving at what Eagleton suggests is ‘self-realisation’, knowing oneself by understanding oneself.^{^[3]}

Academic rationale

Since I was born with the last name ‘Montag’, translated as ‘the day of moon’ according to the Oxford Dictionary, the Moon represents my ancestral identity.^[4] Next to having an emotional and genetic-material family link, I also refer to the Moon as a material sky object nearest to the Earth, which is put forward by Martin Rees who wrote, that the Moon is ‘1.2% of the Mass of Earth, …, geological activity has long since ceased, so it is a lifeless, dusty, and dead world.’^[5] Furthermore the Moon also holds symbolic meaning for me, which is put forward by Hajo Banzhaf (1949-2009), a German astrologer, who attributes to the Moon the heavenly and the earthly mother figure.^[6] Additionally I perceive the Moon’s nature as an indicator of time, described by Caryad, Thomas Römer and Vera Zingsem, where exterior life cycles are governed from full moon to full moon, called a sidereal month seen from earth (27.3 days) and a synodic month of 29.5 days in going round the sun.^[7] Not only does the Moon indicate time, but is the heavenly body expressing constant change, which has a further impact on inner life cycles such as menstruation and influences on the psyche. As Hajo Banzhaf suggested in his book about the path of life, the Moon’s rhythm throws a shadow on the sun, called sun eclipse, translated into psychological terms that the repressed unconscious traits of a person come to the surface triggered by the Moon’s cyclical nature.^[8] In addition to the Moon I also looked into the role of the Sun in astrological-archetypal and psychological terms. The Sun represents the individual which is on a journey to becoming oneself, by uniting the unconscious with the Ego, as described by Banzhaf, referring to Carl-Gustav Jung’s, model of the three stages for becoming Self.^{^[9]} Additionally I put forward Erik Erikson’s, psychological model of eight developmental stages in identity development, which need to be experienced in order to develop ‘a stable, consistent and reliable sense of who we are and what we stand for in the world that makes sense for us and for our community’ introduced by Ann Phoenix in a chapter on embodying identities in order to show, that models vary, but that stages of psychic development need to be undertaken.^[10] In contrast I could, how Nicolas Campion expressed it, be a follower of ‘utopianism’, ‘the universal impulse to become one’s self, to live one’s unrealized potential’ instead of living in the present without an idealised future.^[11]

In summarising I refer to the Moon expressing my emotional, material, psychological and cyclical aspects of my personality and I refer to the Sun as a symbol of a pathway for becoming one with myself, having consciously developed and integrated my shadows into my identity.

Methodology

The primary source in this paper is the Moon and the Sun in the sky, which is observed from my study room. For better understanding of how the hillside appears to me, I refer to a snapshot taken in Google Earth (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Nicole Montag-Keller, Snapshot from Google Earth depicting the hilly landscape to the North-West, where the ‘Gempen’ marks the hilltop of the landscape and marks the reference point of my observations, 2017.

As suggested by Sarah Pink, I was using a notebook, called a sky journal, as an auto ethnographic instrument. The research I undertook is qualitative, placing an emphasis on my observations and perception what had happened to my outer and inner worlds.^[12] The journaling phase of the project commenced on Thursday, 25^th May 2017, a Christian holiday called Ascension Day, and ended 55 days later on Tuesday, 18^th July, 2017. I took several pictures with my iPhone camera, and incorporated some pictures taken earlier. I also drew how I saw the Moon and the Sun. These Moon and Sun images capture moments that made an impression on me and unique events such as consciously recognising the morning star Venus for the first time or eye-witnessing the fall of a comet touched me deeply. I will never forget these feelings of joy.

In order to understand how the two sky objects, the Moon and the Sun were observable and what the expression ‘the Moon meets the Sun and the Sun meets the Moon’ meant to me I used reflexive ethnographic research through observation, listening and noting my thoughts, perceptions, feelings and reactions. The chosen methodology bears two issues as Charlotte Aull Davies, author of Reflexive Ethnography, writes ‘that it is self-indulgent and narcissistic, telling us about the ethnographer, not about the social and cultural phenomena that are the proper subject matter of ethnography…’ and that the approach ‘represents a particular Western literary genre, the Great Man tradition, …used to describe individual achievements based on a linear and goal-oriented interpretation of what constitutes a meaningful life.’^[13] Aull Davies highlights what could be a serious downside to this research due to my biographical approach, the Sun’s or Hero’s conscious journey towards becoming self. To me, the only resolution of these two issues means that I maintain a constant awareness of my judgemental and self-centredness, both being involved but also detached towards this research as Powdermaker expressed put forward by Aull Davies.^[14] Furthermore my primary focus of the research was on Verstehen, that is, I looked into understanding my own perspective, subjectivity, individuality, world-view and cosmology while I was in contact with the research objects, the Moon and the Sun.^[15]

Reflexive considerations

I am a white female, in my forties, being home in North-Western Switzerland for more than ten years. I grew up in the Northern part of Baden-Wuerttemberg and moved to the South of Baden-Wurttemberg to pursue third level education and also lived in the nearby Alsace, France. Through the experience of living in different locations and contexts, I express my understanding and awareness of cultural differences.

I studied psychology as an undergraduate degree, because I wanted to understand human behaviour. In the course of these studies, I realised, that I am deeply enmeshed being a co-dependent person. That is, according to Sharon Wegscheider Cruse, a family therapist, I am role-playing ‘The Hero’, meaning that I ‘keep negative feelings to myself, not to make someone angry; express a lot of positive feelings, for winning approval; not talking to outsiders about what happens in the family, because no one would like me, if they knew the truth and because my family affair is just something we don’t talk about’.^[16] Through the experience of observing Sun and Moon, I express my understanding of me becoming more myself.

I grew up with a Roman-Catholic faith and though not being a member of any church, I call myself a Christian. In the process of accepting my co-dependency, I learnt to deal with my own pain by addressing a higher spirit.^[17] After I moved to North-Western Switzerland, I encountered anthroposophy, a strand of theosophy, which I define as a philosophical framework for the development of spirituality with an emphasis on Christianity. As a consequence I started studying the works of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. I understand that my Christian belief system and anthroposophical world-view have an effect on how I arrive at meaning in the course of my research.

In concluding I express how my social and cultural surrounding, but also my interest in spirituality shapes my meaning making processes and understanding.

Literature review

The sky journal was my primary source. In order to arrive at meaning and understanding of my simultaneously material and spiritual world-view I drew on Nicolas Campion’s work for how I arrived at my personal cosmology, drew on Freya Mathew’s approach to the ecological self for understanding whether my cosmology self-affirmed or did not self-affirm on how I am shaped by the culture I am part of.^[18] The research was informed methodologically by Charlotte Aull Davies, using her approach for doing phenomenological and reflexive ethnography and further focusing my methodological research on Verstehen as suggested by Monique Hennink, Inge Hutter and Ajay Bailey.^[19] In constructing my understanding I categorised my research into the broad dualities of materiality and spirituality as put forward by Terry Eagleton. Additionally I referred also to astronomers, astrologers, psychologists and psychoanalysts to inform my research.^[20]

Field work and discussion

My sky journal analysis overview (figure 2) revealed 499 entries, which were subdivided into 15 categories. Eighty-five entries (18%) linked to ‘Erkenntnis / insight’. Followed by ‘feeling’ seventy-four times (15%), then sixty-two times (12%) ‘foto/art’ and fifty-seven times (11%) I allocated ‘question’ to my entries. ‘Unique’ was selected fourty-seven times (9%), ‘Dream’ thirty-seven times (7%), closely followed by ‘knowledge or wisdom’ thirty-six times (7%). ‘Sky, Moon, Sun’ were categorised twenty-eight times (6%), followed by ‘Ordnung/structure’ and ‘meditation’, both twenty times (4%). Two percent of my entries were coded with ‘library’, ‘moral/ethic’ and ‘wish’ and one percent were allotted to ‘thankfulness’ and ‘worries’ respectively.

Figure 2: Nicole Montag-Keller, Quantitative Keyword Analysis of sky journal entries, indicated by weekday and overall summation, 2017.

Figure 3: Nicole Montag-Keller, Word cloud on key word entries stemming from my sky journal, 2017.

The word cloud depicted in figure 3 exhibits the most frequently used words by depicting them larger than other key words, which are derived from coding my sky journal in order to find my themes (figure 2). It becomes clear, that my main engagement with the sky was first the Moon, then the Sun, followed by the hilltop ‘Gempen’ reference point, having taken photos of the Moon, having referred to the day itself, having mentioned shadow, having written about reflection and shadow.

Moon and clouds and Moon as transformer of repressed feelings

On 7^th July 2017 I took pictures of the changing expression of the Moon behind clouds (figure 4a) and sketched how I saw the moon (figure 4b) ending up with a note, that ‘the clouds tell the story – they model shapes which turn to associations in my mind!’(figure 4b). The clouds acted like a cloth and made the Moon become an actor on stage. Much in the same way Alexandra Harris put it, when she described Shakespeare who perceived ‘the mind is a theatre, like the sky, in which whole cities can be built up’ or transforming the Moon to an actor.^[21] Moreover for the first time I had written my perception into a drawing, which, on reflecting my experience, might have given way accepting to express my feelings openly for the first time. In retrospect this night represented a turning point in my sky journaling, because on 8^th July 2017, at 04:12 a.m. I saw Venus to the East for the first time. I was deeply touched by this encounter and felt a stream of warmth flowing through the upper part of my torso. In the language of the chakra system, I would have termed this an activation of the heart chakra (an invisible energetic vortex over the heart), as put forward by Anodea Judith, being perceived as the energetic centre of the balanced inner female and male Jungian archetypes.^[22]

Figure 4b: Nicole Montag-Keller,Montag-Keller saw the Moon through clouds on 7^th July from 22:26-22:36h with red arrow indicating the Gempen, 2017.

Figure 4a: Nicole Montag-Keller, Photo of the Moon behind clouds on 7^th July 2017 at 22:32h, around with red arrow indicating the Gempen, 2017; Figure 4b: Nicole Montag-Keller, Artistic expression of how Nicole Montag-Keller saw the Moon through clouds on 7^th July from 22:26-22:36h with red arrow indicating the Gempen, 2017.

The observation of the Moon represented a core focus of my sky journaling exercise and a question coming up repeatedly was, ‘what does the moon reflect?’ as written on 1^st, 3^rd, 4^thand 6^th July 2017. Answered from a rational and material point of view, the Moon reflects the Sunlight, but answered from a spiritual point of view, the Moon reflected my feeling of sadness as written on 4^thJuly 2017 ‘Sadness is here’.^[23] As I have written in my reflexive considerations, expressing negative feelings was a challenge to me, but acknowledging them in this report could point out, that on my journey towards becoming myself, the embracing of this shadow side of my personality is a step on my way trending towards a more united experience of my moon aspect related to the female personality attributes and my sun related male attributes as was put forward by Hajo Banzhaf.^[24] Accepting my sadness meant that I could experience an inner healing, as a consequence of embracing this shadow, according to Banzhaf and additionally that I could feel less burdened more in peace with myself.^[25]

In summarising my reflections on the expression of my feelings as a consequence of observing the Moon and asking constantly what the moon reflected to me, as well as sketching the moon on paper as I saw it added by a unique encounter of observing the Venus as a morning star, triggered the release of my repressed feelings. Being persistent in asking what the moon reflected and waiting patiently for the answer, made me feel relieved.

Weather as an experience of the sky

My feelings mostly related to the weather, expressed by noting my annoyance with high temperatures and my thankfulness about clouds. I did not expect, that I was affected by weather conditions in the way I expressed them. Figure 5 displays the day and night temperatures throughout my sky journaling project, where +25°C mark the beginning of discomfort and any temperatures higher than +30°C were experienced as distress. Overall, I felt discomforted for 19 days and distressed for 21 days. Commenting on my feelings due to the heat, read like ‘warm-hot’ on 10th June, ‘waking up unmotivated’ on 13^th June, ‘hot day’ every consecutive day from 16^th till 22^nd June, ‘having woken bad tempered, because it is far too hot in the room’ and ‘hot-humid’ on 8^th July. On 12^th July I wrote ‘the sun builds up so much heat, sedating me, benumbing me, making me angry, because I am slowing down. The heat makes me feel depressed. It is impossible to escape that heat.’^[26]

Figure 5: Nicole Montag-Keller, Day and night temperatures throughout sky journaling project, where discomfort starts at +25°C and distress at +30°C, 2017.

Reflecting upon my experience I agree with Alexandra Harris’s statement written in ‘Weatherland’, that ‘our thoughts will be affected by the kind of weather we’re in.’^[27] I felt the sun’s power as much as Crusoe mentioned in Weatherland, who ‘found on his island, that heat went straight to the head and disrupted his work.’^[28] On 9^th July I noted ‘it started to rain, thank God’ which made me aware that I referred to a supernatural entity, a God, who I felt was in charge of rain, bringing relief from the heat.^[29] I developed this thought further and found that I unconsciously might have referred to Jupiter, ‘the highest God of the Greek pantheon’, male ‘emperor over the sky, rain god and cloud baler’ as described by Jean Shinoda Bolen in her book ‘Gods in every man’.^[30] And by weaving rain and sun together I thought, that the excessive heat might have exhibited the sun God Apollo’s dark side, nature’s destructive quality ascribed to a sky God ruling over nature, which I found also mentioned in Bolen’s book.^[31]Interestingly I did not make an association with Thor, the equivalent of Jupiter in Nordic mythology put forward by Banzhaf in his introduction to Astrology pointing out, that my astronomical-cultural reference system is more tied to Greek-Roman mythology.^[32]In the night of 1^st June 2017 I noted ‘The thunder which came out of the depths of the evolving weather occurrence was very powerful. That was alive. There was something that was angry.’^[33] The experience of comparing my bodily experience with having had an encounter with the Thundergod is a vivid memory, because I was walking inside our home, when a bolt came down the sky and I was actually feeling a sizzling voltage going through my body and in my journal I wrote ‘Thunder night and I was being permeated by the bolt’.^[34] With my rational mind, I would argue, that there is no such thing as a God who sends bolts from the sky. Instead I would explain how zones of high and low pressure mix and mingle in the troposphere of the earth.

In summarising my reflections on the weather, I cite Nicolas Campion who put forward, that ‘for pre-modern cultures, the cosmos was interior as much as exterior; it was inside as much as outside us.’^[35] My experience with the ongoing high temperatures and feeling as if an angry sky good was sending thunder and bolt towards earth, confirms, that that to me, Sun and Jupiter are not only sky objects, but living entities and that I have a relationship to these rulers of the sky.

Moon as tool for measuring the sky and attributing meaning to a landscape

On 2^nd June 2017, while taking pictures of the Moon, I understood, that I needed to stand at exactly the same spot for being able to find differences of the Moon’s pathway in the sky’.^[36] Comparing my pictures from March till May (Figures 6a,b,c) and from June till August (Figures 7a,b,c), for the first time I realised, that the Moon’s rising point shifts on the horizon.

Figure 6a: Nicole Montag-Keller, Moon to the East of the Gempen hilltop (red arrow) on 10^th March 2017 at 18:20h, 2017

Figure 6b: Nicole Montag-Keller, Moon to the East of the Gempen hilltop (red arrow) on 11^th April 2017 at 21:33h, 2017

Figure 6c: Nicole Montag-Keller, Moon to the South of the Gempen hilltop (red arrow) on 9^th May 2017 at 20:22h, 2017.

Figure 7a: Nicole Montag-Keller, Moon to the South of the Gempen hilltop (red arrow) on 8^th June 2017 at 21:15h, 2017

Figure 7b: Nicole Montag-Keller, Moon to the South of the Gempen hilltop (red arrow) on 6^th July 2017 at 22:23h, 2017

Figure 7c: Nicole Montag-Keller, Moon to the South of the Gempen hilltop (red arrow) on 7^th August 2017 at 21:40h, 2017.

From March till May 2017 the Moon rose to the East of the Gempen in comparison to the months of June till August when the Moon rose South of the Gempen hilltop. Upon discovering this phenomenon, I asked myself whether I had found a pattern, which would put the Gempen hilltop into the centre of my personal cosmology. I was even inclined to promoting the Gempen into a sacred landscape, which is put forward by Edwin Bernbaum in his paper on ‘Sacred mountains: themes and teachings’.^[37] Bernbaum writes, that ‘as sacred expressions of some deeper reality, mountains have become associated with the deepest and highest values and aspirations of cultures and traditions throughout the world.’^[38] Since I singled out the peak called ‘Gempen’, I felt, that I had found a particular place of tradition and sanctity. Unfortunately I could not source literature about the Gempen hilltop in the University library of Basle, but for future reference I will need to figure out how to access the archive of the Canton’s archaeology department for being able to make any definitive statements about the Gempen. In order to support my personal cosmology of the sacredness of the Gempen a little further, I added a picture from September 2016 (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Nicole Montag-Keller, Moon on top of the Gempen hilltop on 14^th September 2017 at 19:32h, 2017.

Figure 8 shows, that on 14^th September 2016, the Moon rose over the Gempen hilltop, but I abstain from any further conclusions, because as the astronomer Wolfgang Held wrote in his booklet called ‘Sternkalender’ (star calendar), ‘no monthly run of the Moon is similar to the next’.^[39]

In summarising my reflections on the Moon as a tool for measuring the sky and attributing meaning to a landscape I plan to stick with my observations in order to better understand where and when the Moon appears in different stages of its phases over the Gempen hill ridge.

The Moon’s pathway in the sky and recurring eclipses

In the night of 7^th July 2017 I sketched three moon shadow movements using the window frame (marked by two orange lines) as the reference object (figure 9a). As Calvin wrote, ‘thanks to the fondness towards windows of new-world archaeoastronomers and towards steles of old-world archaeoastronomers…a plane floor can replace the evenly shaped horizon, if the room has a window or door to the East.’^{^[40]} I used a window frame facing East and sketched three open ended shadows lines; by marking the end point on a horizontal plane, I could apply Calvin’s home methodology to my observations, tracing pathways which eventually will lead me to being able forecasting moon eclipses when taking the summer and winter solstice points into account.

Figure 9a: Nicole Montag-Keller, Using the window frame (orange) to trace the moon shadow movement in the night observation of 7^th July 2017, blue shadow at 22:41h, red shadow at 22:51h, green shadow at 23:54h

Figure 9b: Nicole Montag-Keller, Applying geometry to my observations of 7^th July 2017 I am able to find, that the Moon’s pathway describes a curve, 2017.

In addition to my earlier mentioned observations, I am inclined to agree with Caryad, Thomas Römer and Vera Zingsem, who wrote in the book ‘Wanderer am Himmel / Planets in the Sky’, that ‘as soon as a group (of people) or community start observing these signs (movement of sun compared to horizon throughout the seasons and the lunar phases) systematically, …, they quickly will observe the cyclical reoccurrence of these sky phenomena and are able to build on these a time measuring system.’^[41] I disagree terming this process ‘quickly’, because as William H. Calvin wrote in ‘How the Shaman stole the Moon’, that it takes at least three times 18 years and 11 days, three times a so called ’saros cycle’ in order to predict eclipses.^{^[42]} Our prehistoric ancestors, as put forward by Ami Ronnberg in the Book of Symbols, must have feared the extinction of the sun of the light and felt, that demonic powers engulfed the sun when an eclipse occurred.^[43] Even today, sun or moon eclipses are making it to the media, such as the solar eclipse of 21^st August 2017, being labelled as ‘doomsday’ in the BBC’s internet appearance; see a snapshot in figure 10.^[44]

Figure 10: Nicole Montag-Keller, Snapshot of BBC internet appearance as of 14^th August 2017, labelling the solar eclipse of 21^st August 2017 as ‘doomsday’ and stirring fear, 2017.

In summarising my reflections on the moon’s pathway in the sky and recurring eclipses, I felt happy, when I was able to apply geometry to my shadow sketches which proved to me, that I was able to re-confirm astronomical knowledge that the moon describes a curved pathway in the sky. Additionally I understood the concept of how to arrive at the prediction of eclipses as put forward in Calvin. I am surprised, that eclipses are still perceived as negative sky events, because to me, these phenomena are occasions to observe a natural phenomena and I feel thankful for living in such a wonderful environment.

Sun addressed spiritually and as an expression of the healing aspect

Though I planned to observe the Sun as regularly as the Moon when proposing my project, I observed the pathway of the Sun in the sky in depth in the course of my student task, where I found out how to predict the time of the day by looking at the shadow’s location outside and inside my home through the location and length of the sun’s shadow. My approach for the sky journal then changed to my daily link with the Sun, while doing silent morning and evening meditations focusing my attention on greeting and thanking the sun (mornings/evenings) ‘for shining, glowing and permeating humanity’ throughout the fifty five days of journaling.^[45] This ritual has become a habit and is actually the outcome of studying some of the works of Rudolf Steiner. I felt, that this could be my spiritual contribution towards world peace, because from my point of view donating money represents only a material input. The idea of ‘worshipping’ the Sun in meditation stems from Steiner’s writing on ‘Anthroposophy as Cosmosophy’, that ‘this central spiritual being (Sun) was perceived as one with Christ by older humankind’ which is linked to my Christian belief system.^[46] Yet another example of how I related to the Sun can be seen in the photos I took from the sun shining through a tree, producing a colourful reflection (figure 11a) and how the shadow fell on my blank piece of drawing paper while I sat in the garden (figure 11b).

Figure 11a: Nicole Montag-Keller, ‘i-phone photograph of the afternoon sun and sun’s reflection through a tree on 18^th July 2017’, 2017; Figure 11b: Nicole Montag-Keller, ‘sun’s shadows falling on white drawing paper on 18^th July 2017’, 2017.

Because the sun’s shadow moved so quickly over the paper, I had to sketch quickly the contour lines resulting in darker straight lines, whereas I imagined the sun rays, dancing in curls over the paper. Finally I added the coloured sun reflection, which I could not see with my eyes, but was detected with 21^st century technology. The iPhone camera exhibited how the light was split in its spectral colours.

Figure 12: Nicole Montag-Keller, ‘Sun rays and sun’s shadows final expression on 19th July 2017’, 2017.

Set of word associations coming to my mind when contemplating on the drawing of the sun rays and the sun’s shadows on 19^th July 2017’, 2017:

Positive:
in die Erde versenkend, einströmend, eins, unteilbar, verdichtend,
geradlinig, formend, umhüllen,
erweckend, lebendig, warm,
bezaubernd, verändernd, schwingend,
immerfort in BewegungNegative:
erblindend, blendend, einbrennen,
gleissend, einstrahlend, erhitzend,
ermüdendNeutral: farbig, spektralfarbigCreative word:
verschmetterlingt

Figure 12 shows, that I described the sun light with 15 positive words or expressions in comparison to six negative words, further I noted two words referring to colour and invented a word, because a butterfly crossed my path as I was doing this artwork, making me smile. I argue, that light is the source of life, since being exhibited to less or no sunlight, might put human beings into Seasonal Affective Disorder as put forward by Jacob Liberman, who wrote a book about ‘light’ being ‘the medicine of the future’ because light has an influence on the morale of man.^[47] This is in line with my experience of excessively high temperatures described earlier but I want to add, that I also experienced the healing power of Sunlight back in the beginnings of 2000, when I went through a period of feeling thoroughly empty.

In summarising my reflections on the Sun which I address daily in a spiritual approach, I understand, that I exhibit New Age behaviour and utopian ideas, as put forward by Nicolas Campion who calls Alice Bailey and Rudolf Steiner ‘New Age Christians’.^[48] Furthermore I became aware, that I perceive the Sun as an expression for the power of uplifting and disturbing.

Final thoughts

As a final thought I express my surprise in what I have found to mean that the Moon meets the Sun and the Sun meets the Moon. I am relieved, that I was able to uncover my repressed feelings and I feel as if many presents were given to me, either by encountering Venus or a comet (17^th July around 23:00 h facing North) which can signifying something new is coming, as put forward in the book of symbols.^[49] Through the analysis of my sky journal I am now aware of how the split between the material and the spiritual runs through the expression of my inner and outer culture and therefore also my identity. I fully agree with Campion, that my cosmos is ‘as inside as much as outside of me.^[50] I am satisfied, that I learnt to use the Moon as a tool for measurement and I am still positive towards watching eclipses. I acknowledge, that I address the Sun daily spiritually, expressing an attitude of ‘if it doesn’t help, it won’t harm anyway’.^[51] This attitude leaves me to mention Ernest Naylor who wrote in his book ‘Moonstruck’, that ‘we live in an age when the reality of the Moon has been studied intensively’ and that we need to contrast technically derived sky events (moon landing) ‘with perceptions of the Moon (and Sun) by early humans, for whom cyclical changes in the size, shape, and position of the Moon in the sky had mystical properties’, which then ‘were formalized in lunar myths and legends among citizens of societies worldwide as in those of ancient Rome and Greece’.^[52] To me mythology signifies a cultural aspect of approaching the sky, as does the material approach.

Conclusion

The aim of this research project was to understand what Moon meets Sun and Sun meets Moon to me and how this understanding influenced and shifted my lived experience. My identity with the Moon, due to my last name, as well as a material and symbolic meaning making approach, highlighted that in the course of my own path of life I underwent developmental changes and transformation as a consequence of observing and relating to the Moon and the Sun. Though my individual world-view and meaning system are shaped constantly by how I perceive the world and to which cultural context I feel drawn to, I agree with Nicolas Campion, that I am the expression of my personal cosmology and I further agree with Freya Matthews, that cosmologies may be self-affirming or not.^[53] I arrived at what Eagleton suggested to be ‘self-realisation’, the knowing of myself better, by generating understanding through phenomenological and reflexive research.

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Shinoda Bolen, Jean, Götter in jedem Mann (München: Heyne Verlag, 1998).

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Steiner, Rudolf, Anthroposophie als Kosmosophie, http://fvn-archiv.net/PDF/GA/GA207.pdf [accessed 7 Aug 2017].

Wegscheider Cruse, Sharon, Another Chance – Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Family (Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Book Inc, 1989).

^[1] Nicolas Campion, Astrology and Popular Religion in the Modern West (New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 149.150; Freya Matthews, The Ecological Self (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 109.

^[2] Charlotte Aull Davies, Reflexive Ethnography: A guide to researching selves and others (London: Routledge, 1999), p.178.

^[3] Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p. 1,6.

^[4] Monday, Oxford Dictionary Online, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/monday (accessed 3 Aug 2017).

^[5] Martin Rees, Universe – The definitive visual guide (London: Dorling Kindersley Ltd., 2012), p.136.

^[6] Hajo Banzhaf, Tarot und der Lebensweg des Menschen (München: Verlag Hugendubel, 2005), p. 34, 38.

^[7] Caryad, Thomas Römer, Vera Zingsem, Wanderer am Himmel (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2015), p.116.

^[8] Hajo Banzhaf, p. 158.

^[9] Hajo Banzhaf, p. 55.

^[10] Ann Phoenix, Identities and Diversities (Milton Keynes: The Open University, 2002), p.53.

^[11] Nicolas Campion, New Age in the Modern West (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), p.22.

^[12] Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography (London: Sage, 2007), p. 24; Charlotte Aull-Davies, p.4-5.

^[13] Charlotte Aull Davies, p.179.

^[14] Charlotte Aull Davies, p.5.

^[15] Monique Hennink, Inge Hutter, Ajay Bailey, Qualitative Research Methods (Los Angeles: Sage, 2011), p.17.

^[16] Sharon Wegscheider Cruse, http://www.sharonwcruse.com/ (accessed 5th Aug 2017); Sharon Wegscheider Cruse, Another Chance – Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Family (Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Book Inc., 1989), p.106.

^[17] Anonymous Alcoholics paths to Spirituality, https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/aa-literature/p-84-many-paths-to-spirituality, (accessed 7^thAug 2017).

^[18] Nicolas Campion, Astrology and Popular Religion in the Modern West, p. 149, 150; Freya Mathews, p. 109.

^[19] Charlotte Aull Davies, p. 178; Monique Hennink, Inge Hutter, Ajay Bailey, p. 17.

^[20] Terry Eagleton, p.1, 6.

^[21] Alexandra Harris, Weatherland (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 2016), p.14.

^[22] Anodea Judith, Eastern Body, Western Mind – Psychology and the Chakra System as path to the Self (Berkley: Celestial Arts Publishing, 1996), p.240.

^[23] ‚Traurigkeit ist da.‘ trans . Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[24] Hajo Banzhaf, p. 177, 182.

^[25] Hajo Banzhaf, p. 177.

^[26] ‘Die Sonne erzeugt so viel Wärmestau, es sediert mich, lähmt mich, macht mich wütend, da ich langsamer werde. Heruntergedrückt. Unmöglich, der Hitze zu entkommen.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[27] Alexandra Harris, p.14.

^[28] Alexandra Harris, p 176.

^[29] ‚Es fing Gottseidank endlich an zu regnen.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[30] Jean Shinoda Bolen, Götter in jedem Mann (München: Heyne Verlag, 1998), p.70, 71.

^[31] Jean Shinoda Bolen, p.173.

^[32] Hajo Banzhaf, Astrologie (München: Hugendubel Verlag, 2003), p. 9.

^[33]‚Der Donner der da aus der Tiefe des Wettergeschehens kam, war sehr mächtig. Das hat richtig gelebt. Da war irgendetwas wütend.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller

^[34] ‘Donnernacht und ich wurde vom Blitz durchdrungen.’ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[35] Nicolas Campion, Cosmology and Religion – Measurement and Meaning (New York: New York University Press, 2012), p.6.

^[36] ‚Beim Fotografieren fiel mir auf, dass ich genau am selben Ort stehen muss, um Unterschiede in der Mondlaufbahn am Himmel zu finden.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller./

^[37] Edwin Bernbaum, ‘Sacred mountains: Themes and Teachings’, Mountain Research and Development, Vol. 26, No 4, 2006, p. 304-309.

^[38] Edwin Bernbaum, p. 304.

^[39] Wolfgang Held, Sternkalender, Ostern 2017 bis Ostern 2018 (Dornach: Verlag am Goetheanum, 2016), p.133; ‚Es gleicht kein Monatslauf dem nächsten.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[40] William H. Calvin, Wie der Schamane den Mond stahl (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1996), p.187, 189; ‘Dank der Vorliebe der Neuwelt-Archäoastronomen für Fenster und jener der Altwelt-Archäoastronomen für Stelen… ein ebener Fussboden kann praktisch den gleichförmigen Horizont ersetzen, wenn der Raum ein Fenster oder eine Tür nach Osten hat.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[41] Caryad, Thomas Römer, Vera Zingsem, p.4.; ‚Sobald eine Gruppe oder Gemeinschaft diese Zeichen systematisch beobachtet – …-, wird sie schnell die zyklische Wiederkehr dieser Himmelsereignisse beobachten und kann darauf eine Zeitrechnung aufbauen.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[42] William H. Calvin, p.39-40.

^[43] Ami Ronnberg, Das Buch der Symbole (Köln: Taschen GmbH, 2010 ), p. 32.

^[44] Solar Eclipse on BBC internet appearance, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170811-why-do-we-associate-eclipses-with-the-end-of-the-world, (accessed 14^th Aug 2017).

^[45] ‚Ich danke der Sonne, die Menschen durchscheint, durchleuchtet und durchdringt.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[46] Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophie als Kosmosophie, http://fvn-archiv.net/PDF/GA/GA207.pdf (accessed 7 Aug 2017); ‚Dieses zentrale Geistwesen empfand die Menschheit als eins mit dem Christus.‘ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[47] Jacob Liberman, Light, Medicine of the Future (Rochester: Bear and Company, 1991), p.125; Nicolas Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the Worlds Religion (New York: New York University Press, 2012), p. 164.

^[48] Nicolas Campion, New Age in the Modern West, p.22.

^[49]Ami Ronnberg, p. 34.

^[50] Nicolas Campion, Cosmology and Religion – Measurement and Meaning, p. 6.

^[51] ‘Hilft es nicht, so schadet es nicht.’ trans. Nicole Montag-Keller.

^[52] Ernest Naylor, Moonstruck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. x-xi.

^[53] Nicolas Campion, Astrology and Popular Religion in the Modern West, p. 149, 150; Freya Mathews, p.109.

Exploring personal cosmologies: a qualitative investigation into cosmogony, astrology, and perceptions of the universe

by Christopher Layser

This qualitative investigation into contemporary cosmology utilized an online questionnaire and semi-structured participant interviews with a targeted group of twenty respondents in the American Northeast as its primary methodology in exploring factors contributing to the development of personal cosmologies. Cultural factors such as religious and secular education plus the influence family, friends and society- whether positive or negative- proved paramount in the formation of worldviews. Informants with varying religious, scientific, and philosophical engagement to the subject matter applied their respective methodologies in conveying beliefs as to the origin of the cosmos, ranging from creation narratives to emerging theories based upon observational astrophysics. The question of astrology and its application were posed, and the topics of cosmophobia and cosmophilia were introduced in order to explore the target group’s general perception of the Universe and their opinion of humankind’s place within it.

Introduction

The aim of this research is to explore the personal cosmologies of a small group of participants in the American Northeast using qualitative methods of data gathering. Through semi-structured interviews and questionnaire data, this investigation into deeply held beliefs and the comparative cosmologies of the informants will attempt to reveal important insight as to how and perhaps why individuals perceive the cosmos in the ways in which they do. Themes explored in this project include the factors contributing to the development of these personal cosmologies, narratives concerning the origin of the cosmos, beliefs surrounding the application of astrology, perceptions as to the nature of the universe and the importance of humankind’s place within it.

In modern discourse the term cosmology has come to describe two very distinct yet related disciplines. The first finds its home in astrophysics and is defined by Norris S. Hetherington as ‘the science, theory or study of the universe as an orderly system and the laws that govern it; in particular, a branch of astronomy that deals with the structure and evolution of the universe.’^[1] The second finds its home in the humanities. Nicholas Campion considers this second use of the term as a ‘meaning system’ which ‘deals with mythic narratives, ways of seeing the sky, and the manner in which human beings locate themselves in space and time’.^[2] Yet John North demonstrates how theses disciplines converge when he notes that ‘throughout the long history of theorizing about the universe…there have always been considerations of simplicity, harmony, and aesthetics, often masquerading under the name philosophy, and often directed by strongly held religious beliefs’ and thus ‘we cannot discount the place of the human psyche in modern cosmology.’^[3]. Freya Mathews contends that these ‘cosmologies are not of course pulled out of the air to suit the convenience of the communities to which they are attached…they are conditioned by many and various historical, environmental, technological, psychological and social factors.’^[4] This rationale can serve to focus the discussion of cosmology down to a very personal level, whereby the choices and beliefs to which one adheres begin to develop into one’s own personal cosmology.

Methodology

The target group of this research does not define any particular cohesive community other than it represents a sample of friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances of the researcher, with additional individuals invited to participate based upon their professional engagement with the subject matter. The participants reside in various locales of the American Northeast- including parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Maryland. They ranged from thirty-one to seventy-six years of age with seventy percent identifying as male and thirty percent as female.^[5] My own position in field could be defined as varying degrees of insider status: I am a white male; my age is nearly the mean of the target group; my religious affiliation is Christian and I am closely acquainted with much of the target group.

All participants were asked to engage in an online Google Forms questionnaire. The questionnaire introduction addressed ethical considerations informing participants that all data would be collected anonymously, remaining so until its destruction after the completion of this project. Twenty individuals completed the survey, although not all respondents answered all questions. Eltica de Jager Meezenbroek and colleagues suggest that ‘a questionnaire that transcends specific beliefs is a prerequisite for quantifying the importance of spirituality among people who adhere to a religion or none at all.’^[6] Furthermore, Judith Bell writes that a well-designed questionnaire ‘will give you the information that you need, will be acceptable to respondents, and will give no problems during the analysis and interpretation phase.’^[7] This questionnaire attempted work within these guidelines, posing carefully crafted questions intent on exploring beliefs concerning the origin and the nature of the cosmos.

In addition, five informants, chosen for their professional or religious engagement with the subject matter, were asked to participate in semi-structured interviews to gain deeper insight not attainable from a questionnaire. These five informants are referenced in this paper as the astronomer, the astrologer, the pastor, the Buddhist, and the psychologist. The interviews were conducted in person, with one exception, and were recorded with the explicit consent of the interviewee for later transcription. Monique Hennick, Inge Hutter, and Ajay Bailey suggest using interviews as a methodology aids in seeking ‘information on individual, personal experiences from people about a specific issue or topic’^[8].

Influences on the Development of Personal Cosmologies

In the past, cosmology has ‘been closely intertwined with religious belief,’ explains Ernan McMullin, and ‘only within the last half-century or so has a specialized science of cosmology developed that makes no mention of God.’^[9] In this study, when asked if they believed in God, twelve respondents answered yes.^[10] When asked if they hold similar religious beliefs to one or both of their parents, eleven answered yes.^[11] Nine identify as Protestant/Evangelical Christians.^[12] It can be surmised from analysis of this data that many respondents adhere to a belief in God that had been conditioned from a familial ‘Christian’ culture in their formative years. The breakdown of religious affiliation can be seen in the chart in figure 1.

Figure 1: Question number four results- Religious affiliation of the target group revealing the largest breakdown as Protestant/Evangelical Christian, Buddhist, or Agnostic. Chart obtained from Google Forms, 2017

All interviewees revealed that at an early age they were raised in a religious environment, taught a creation narrative, and were heavily influenced by a particular family member. For the pastor, a fascination with the sky was introduced by his mother, while his ‘traditional Christian’ upbringing greatly influenced his worldview and eventual vocation.^[13] The astrologer confided

the one person who shaped [my own personal cosmology] would have been my great uncle…an avid lover of physics, and avid student of the Bible and also a practicing astrologer … a lot of things that ended up sticking to the wall were based upon my relationship with [him].^[14]

These early Christian teachings developed into deeply held worldviews for the pastor and the astrologer. From similar beginnings, the other informant’s personal cosmologies developed along vastly different trajectories. The astronomer, while raised with ‘pretty strict religious influences’, now approaches everything from a purely scientific outlook without adopting a ‘specific set of beliefs.’^[15] The Buddhist relates that his personal spiritual journey started with a loss of faith in the Judeo-Christian tradition based upon observed hypocritical behaviours of a grandparent, which set off a long investigation into all things esoteric. ‘From Shamanism, I went to Daoism’, he recalls ‘and from Daoism I went to Buddhism, and that’s where I stayed.’^[16] He recalls a college friend who ‘was a devout Buddhist who also had grown up in the Christian faith’ who ‘helped [him] along… like a mentor.’^[17] The psychologist’s path led from a similar rejection of an early Catholic upbringing- likened to a rejection of Greek myths- in favour of the cosmology taught to her in the public-school system. Yet as an adult, she found that, psychologically, she ‘had spiritual feelings and wanted something to do with them, and began searching for a spiritual home’.^[18] She acknowledges ‘this notion that most faiths have a creation story’ and wants to ‘combine this with what [she] thought to be true about science’.^[19] These informants’ revelations help illustrate the varied environmental, technological, psychological and social influences that Mathews claims are so influential to the development of personal cosmologies.^[20] Furthermore, this study demonstrates that from similar starting points with similar influencing forces applied, individuals’ personal cosmological views can develop along completely independent and varying trajectories.

The question of cosmogony

‘How was the universe created?’ Karen Fox asks; ‘how does it work…how unique is… mankind…with questions this big, one almost has to rely on answers from…three disciplines- religion, philosophy, and science- each of which uses a fantastically different method to find an explanation.’^[21] These are questions, not only of cosmology, but of cosmogony – a term that Hetherington defines as the subject, study, or theories of the creation or origin of the universe.^[22] Both the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview prompted participants to describe their own belief as to how the cosmos came into being. Engaging the interview informants substantiated Fox’ claim about addressing the question of cosmogony- for the religious, scientific and philosophical methodologies adopted by the pastor, the astronomer and the Buddhist respectively, are indeed quite different and ultimately contribute to the development of quite different personal cosmologies.

Nearly half of the respondents self-identified as Protestant/Evangelical Christians, most of whom believe the cosmos was- in the words of one respondent- ‘created and set into motion by a sovereign and holy God’, with variations on that theme implying causality between the edict “let there be light” and the Big Bang.^[23] Campion points out ‘Christian cosmogony is broadly… inherited from the Jewish book of Genesis, and the creation in seven days’, though acknowledges the ‘division between those who prefer to take this account metaphorically and those who believe it literally.’^[24] Although the questionnaire responses were insufficient to elucidate any real division between a metaphorical or literal adherence to the text, the implications of the pastor seems to indicate that any such differences are incidental when compared to the central theme. He finds the Genesis account- stripped of the particulars such as the ‘length of a day’ which cause such contention, to ‘a pre-existing God that create[d] the universe’- makes sense to him.^[25]In fact, even

some of what modern scientists would suggest [as a] possible means of … the existence of the universe… speaks in some way to the reality of a pre-existing supreme being that decided to make what he made.^[26]

His religious methodology is an adherence to the creation narrative in scripture. However, as Romero D’Souza explains, ‘the Bible was not intended to be a treatise on cosmology as much as the story of God’s dealings with human beings.’^[27]

Confronted with the question of cosmogony, the astronomer explains the scientific methodology used to theorize about the origin of the universe- that by observing how fast distant galaxies appear to be receding from us, cosmologists can deduce that the universe is in fact expanding.

If you take that back to the beginning, where it all came from one point, which is the big bang…does anybody know? Is there any evidence what happened at that one instant in time? Absolutely not.^[28]

Using observational astronomy, cosmologists can see into the past yet ‘can’t see back beyond a few hundred thousand years after that supposed event. ‘So, was there a big universe that had collapsed and then [had been] reborn?’ the astronomer asks… ‘we don’t know.’ But he contends that the data gathered by studying cosmic microwave background radiation and particle physics of the early universe is starting to paint a cohesive picture. ‘I think we’re on to something’ he ventures. ‘but there [are] just some things that we might never be able to figure out.’^[29]

The Buddhist, on the other hand, answers simply that ‘the cosmos is, and the start of it is not an essential question I seek to answer.’^[30] The methodology he chooses to illustrate this philosophy is the paraphrasing of a Buddhist parable- that of The Poison Arrow. He poses a scenario wherein he is shot by a poison arrow but postpones treatment until all of his questions are answered – ‘Who shot it? Who made it? Where was the poison found? What venom did it come from? Why did the person shoot it?’ etc.^[31] The precious time lost in pursuit of these inconsequential facts proves fatal. ‘Where we came from isn’t really all that important to me’ he answers, ‘it’s more [about] what do I do now that I know I’m here.’^[32] The pastor, astronomer, and Buddhist informants each approach the question of cosmogony using methodologies from their respective disciplines- religion, science and philosophy. Their finding, unsurprisingly, range from a doctrinal surety to the testable hypothesis to musings on the metaphysical relevance of such beginnings.

The question of astrology

Respondents were posed with a hypothetical question: ‘if someone asked you if you believe in astrology, how would you respond?’^[33] The Buddhist replies with little more than he does ‘not really ascribe to [astrology] as [being] much of a science’, a sentiment in line with Campion’s findings that ‘Buddhist texts have little to say about astrology but can be slightly antagonistic to it, partly because it…can be seen as a distraction from the simplicity of cosmic truth and the purity of the path to enlightenment.’^[34]Likewise, the psychologist is ‘vaguely aware that some complexity exits’ in its application apart from newspaper horoscopes, but remains sceptical of its validity.^[35] The astronomer notes that

we can calculate the exact location of Mars and Venus and Saturn in the sky… exactly where these planets were … a hundred thousand years ago, and… where they’re going to be… a hundred thousand years from now. If the positions of planets in the sky has any effect on my life, or anybody’s life, I see that as being highly coincidental… you would really have to stretch the butterfly-effect idea to make me believe something as…calculatable as that would affect my life.^[36]

Similarly, Bart Bok and colleagues contend since the distances of these planets from earth have been calculated, it can be seen ‘how infinitesimally small are the gravitational and other effects produced by the distant planets’ and that ‘it is simply a mistake to imagine that these forces… can in any way shape our futures.’^[37]

Most respondents who identify as Protestant/Evangelical Christians answered the question on a belief in astrology with a single word- ‘No’.^[38] Campion points out ‘that Christianity has always struggled with astrology’, with those of a pro-astrology position ‘obliged to negotiate’ anti-astrology passages in the Old Testament, such as the prophet Isaiah’s challenge to Babylon- ‘Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you’.^[39] On the other hand, he suggests ‘scriptural support for the divine nature of celestial omens’ may ‘fatally undercut’ an anti-astrology position.^[40] For instance, the Genesis account relates that the Creator fashioned ‘the lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night’ and indicated these stars be used ‘for signs and for seasons, and for days and years’.^[41] Although divergent opinions are reflected in the questionnaire data, the pastor points out that ‘looking at the historical aspect of the Christian bible you can’t miss the fact that there is astronomical or astrological stuff going on…there’s just no getting around that… when we talk about Christian eschatology…there’re signs in the Heavens, signs in the skies.’^[42] Likewise, the astrologer argues that

the patterns in the heavens no more direct our circumstances or how we respond to them than a clock causes the sun to rise or set…time is time, and in that regard, I see the creator, God, as the master Timekeeper.^[43]

She adheres to the belief that ‘astrology is humans’ method of noticing and studying [the] timing of the perfectly created patterns in the heavens’ and that God ‘has given us free will, but that he controls the timing of everything.’^[44] Though in general most respondents did not offer even a casual endorsement of astrological belief, the most sympathetic respondents were, in fact, those of a religious leaning.

The nature of the universe and our place within it

Questionnaire respondents were asked how often they took time to watch the night sky and how important the sky was in their daily lives.^[45] In general, the respondents did spend significant time admiring the heavens and felt that was important, as shown figure 2.

Figure 2: Histograms representing the answers to questions 14 and 15, showing how regularly the target group spent time sky-watching and how important the sky was in their daily lives. Charts obtained from Google Forms, 2017

The psychologist tries ‘to look and notice the moon each day… to know where it is in its cycle.^[46] She feels very effected by sunlight, and reports feeling ‘oppression when we have a grey sky.’^[47] The astronomer agrees that

‘from just a purely aesthetic point of view the sky is extremely important, but from the point of view of my profession…I’m an observational astronomer [and] we have a telescope here on campus that we’ve used to… discover some exoplanets… magnetic fields around other stars; I’ve used interactive binary stars… with mass transferring from one to the other as natural laboratories for studying the effects of stellar evolution.’^[48]

Several questions were posed concerning the respondents’ view of the nature of the universe. The questionnaire provided a definition of cosmophobia as ‘the unreasoning fear of the cosmos’.^[49] This term was coined by David Morrison to explain feelings connected to apocalyptic beliefs such as the infamous Maya 2012 or other doomsday prophesies.^[50] Participants were asked if they had ever experienced feelings of this kind, to which five out of nineteen respondents answered in the affirmative.^[51] Campion explains that for cosmophobes, the cosmos is ‘essentially threatening, and something to be escaped…or dominated.’^[52] This sentiment is also exemplified by Blaise Pascal’s admission that ‘the eternal silence of these infinite spaces’ frightened him’.^[53] Conversely, the respondents were provided the Urban Dictionary’s definition of cosmophilia as the ‘overwhelming awe someone feels at the universe…not just how pretty it is, but the incredibly complex processes that made it what it is today.’^[54] When asked whether they ever experienced feelings of this kind, seventeen respondents reported they had.^[55] Campion, again, points out that cosmophiles are those ‘who believe that the cosmos is essentially good.’^[56] It should be no surprise then to find when asked whether they believed that the universe was essentially benign or hostile in nature, the respondents answered overwhelmingly that they felt it was benign or neither (neutral), as shown in figure 3. Mathews explains that ‘a flouring community is likely to evolve a bright, self-affirming cosmology and a languishing community is likely to see the world in darker shades.’^[57] If this assessment is correct, it can be argued this target group belongs to a flourishing culture, as the majority do not seem to believe that the universe is out to get them.

Figure 3: Histogram demonstrating that most respondents believe that the universe in neutral to benign in nature. Chart obtained from Google Forms, 2017

Additionally, questionnaire participants were asked what they believe is humankind’s place in the universe.’ Answers from the twenty respondents ranged from one extreme- humankind being ‘the center’ of the universe where ‘as God’s highest creation, we are to glorify Him’- to the other, with humankind ‘occupying a very small portion’ of the cosmos and being ‘completely insignificant’.^[58]It would appear from this data that one’s personal cosmology is generally optimistic if the individual adheres to a religious worldview, whereas a purely scientific cosmology yields a more pessimistic worldview. Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel Primack offer that

A living cosmology for 21st-century culture will emerge when the scientific nature of the universe becomes enlightening for human beings. This will not happen easily. The result of centuries of separation between science and religion is that each is suspicious of the other infringing on its turf…But a cosmology that does not account for human beings or enlighten us about the role we may play in the universe will never satisfy the demand for a functional cosmology that religions have been trying to satisfy for millennia.^[59]

It is for this reason that Mathews warns that ‘a culture deprived of any symbolic representation of the universe and of its own relation to it will be a culture of non-plussed, unmotivated individuals, set down inescapably in a world which makes no sense to them’.^[60] Fortunately, that does not seem to be the case here, as one respondent suggests it is humankind’s place ‘to improve the state of things around them and leave things better…than when they arrived’, although the psychologist voices concern that ‘we unfortunately have evolved to be capable of doing great damage in the universe and lack a common ethical system to restrain us.^[61]Many respondents felt some form of action was required of humankind.

Conclusion

In summary, this qualitative study utilized an online questionnaire and participant interviews to a targeted group of twenty individuals in the American Northeast to investigate the concept of personal cosmologies. One aim of this research was to explore factors that contribute to the development of personal cosmologies, and within this target group religious adherence, secular education, and the mentoring of family and friends proved to be the most influential forces, each weighted differently depending upon the individual. Based upon their own worldview, individual informants applied various religious, scientific, and philosophical methodologies in conveying their beliefs as to the origin of the cosmos, which ranged from divine creation narratives to the Big Bang theory, to attempts at reconciling the two. When considering the validity of astrological influences on the lives of humans, opinions were split between sharp scepticism and a belief that the heavens are encoded with insights from a divine Creator. Topics of cosmophobia and cosmophilia were explored, and it was found that the target group believed the universe to be generally a more benign to neutral environment than hostile, which according to Mathews, may be indicative of a flourishing culture. Finally, opinions concerning humankind’s place in the universe seemed to be divided along lines of religious belief, suggesting that a cosmology which accounts for human beings is ultimately more optimistic than one that does not. This point compliments Campion’s line of reasoning, that if individuals are indeed formed in God’s image, they then serve as a reflection of ‘the creative force from which the cosmos is engendered.’^[62] Such reflections, a Christian cosmology suggests, could not be devoid of meaning.

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^[1] Norriss S. Hetherington, entry for ‘Cosmology’, In Encyclopedia of Cosmology: Historical, Philosophical, and Scientific Foundations of Modern Cosmology, ed. Norriss S. Hetherington, (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1993), p.116

^[2] Nicholas Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions, (New York and London: New York University Press, 2012), pp.1-2

^[3] John North, Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 739.

^[4] Freya Mathews, The Ecological Self (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 13

^[5] Google Forms Questionnaire, questions number 1 and 2

^[6] Eltica de Jager Meezenbroek, Bert Garssen, Machteld van den Berg, Dirk van Dierendonck, Adriaan Visser and Wilmar B. Schaufeli, ‘Measuring Spirituality as a Universal Human Experience: A Review of Spirituality Questionnaires’, Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 51, No. 2 (2012), p. 336.

^[7] Bell, J., Doing your Research Project, (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2002) p.157

^[8] Hennick, Monique, Inge Hutter, and Ajay Bailey, Qualitative Research Methods, (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, and Singapore: Sage Publications, Ltd, 2011) pp.109

^[9] Ernan McMullin, ‘Religion and Cosmology’, In Encyclopedia of Cosmology: Historical, Philosophical, and Scientific Foundations of Modern Cosmology, ed. Norriss S. Hetherington, (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1993), p. 579

^[10] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 7

^[11] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 19

^[12] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 3

^[13] Interview with the pastor informant, question 1, April 10, 2017

^[14] Interview with the astrologer informant, question 1, April 12, 2017

^[15] Interview with the astronomer informant, question 1, April 17, 2017

^[16] Interview with the Buddhist informant, question 1, April 19, 2017

^[17] Interview with the Buddhist informant, question 1, April 19, 2017

^[18] Interview with the psychologist informant, question 1, April 14, 2017

^[19] Interview with the psychologist informant, question 2, April 14, 2017

^[20] Mathews, The Ecological Self, p. 13

^[21] Karen C Fox, The Big Bang Theory: What it Is, where it Came From, and Why It Works, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002), p.2

^[22] Hetherington, Encyclopedia of Cosmology, p.115

^[23] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 4

^[24] Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions, p.164

^[25] Interview with the pastor informant, question 2, April 10, 2017

^[26] Interview with the pastor informant, question 2, April 10, 2017

^[27] Romero D’Souza, Christian Cosmology: A Manual of Philosophy and Theology, (New Delhi: Christian World Imprint, 2014), p.110

^[28] Interview with the astronomer informant, question 2, April 17, 2017

^[29] Interview with the astronomer informant, question 2, April 17, 2017

^[30] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 4

^[31] Interview with the Buddhist informant, question 2, April 19, 2017

^[32] Interview with the Buddhist informant, question 2, April 19, 2017

^[33] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 16

^[34] Interview with the Buddhist informant, question 3, April 19, 2017, and Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions, p.121

^[35] Interview with the psychologist informant, question 3, April 14, 2017

^[36] Interview with the astronomer informant, question 3, April 17, 2017

^[37] Bart J. Bok, Lawrence E. Jerome, and Paul Kurtz ‘Objections to Astrology: A Statement by 186 Leading Scientists’, The Humanist, September/October 1975, <http://psychicinvestigator.com/demo/AstroSkc2.htm>, accessed April 24, 2017

^[38] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 16

^[39] Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions, p.171, and Archaeological Study Bible, New International Version, (Grand Rapids: The Zondervan Corporation, 2005), Isaiah 47:13

^[40] Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions, p.171

^[41] The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version, ed. By C.I. Scofield. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), Genesis 1:14

^[42] Interview with the pastor informant, question 3, April 10, 2017

^[43] Interview with the astrologer informant, question 3, April 12, 2017

^[44] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 16

^[45] Google Forms Questionnaire, questions 14 and 15

^[46] Interview with the psychologist informant, question 4, April 14, 2017

^[47] Interview with the psychologist informant, question 4, April 14, 2017

^[48] Interview with the astronomer informant, question 4, April 17, 2017

^[49] Cosmophobia, < http://www.cosmophobia.org/>, accessed April 23, 2017

^[50] Cosmophobia, < http://www.cosmophobia.org/>, accessed April 23, 2017

^[51] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 17

^[52] Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions, p.5

^[53] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter, (Chicago, London, Toronto, and Geneva: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952) Section III: 206.

^[54] Urban dictionary entry for Cosmophile, <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?defid=5784384&term=Cosmophile>, Accessed April 23, 2017

^[55] Google Forms Questionnaire, question number 18

^[56] Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions, p.5

^[57] Mathews, The Ecological Self, p.13

^[58] Google Forms Questionnaire, four responses from question number 8

^[59] Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack, ‘Cosmology and 21st-Century Culture’, Science, New Series, Vol. 293, No. 5536 (2001), p.1770

^[60] Mathews, The Ecological Self, p. 13

^[61] Google Forms Questionnaire, two responses from question number 8

^[62] Campion, Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions, p.6

Can theurgy be considered a form of magic?

by Elisabetta Castelli

This paper examines the relationship between theurgy and magic in the ancient world. It discusses what theurgy and magic are, despite the former remaining somewhat an enigma to modern scholars and the latter being notoriously difficult to define. Ancient philosophers such as Iamblichus considered theurgy a way of life, representing ‘Gods work’ rather than ‘Gods talk’ while the attitude towards magic was at best ambiguous. It is argued that the relationship between theurgy and magic can only be analysed by comparing and contrasting the practices of each, rather than their respective philosophies. What emerges is that the level of intent of the practitioner is key in differentiating theurgy from the most commonly practiced magic, as well as the inner disposition and learning of the theurgist versus the magician.

Introduction

This paper explores the question of whether theurgy can be considered a form of magic. Theurgy, literally meaning ‘gods work’ or ‘divine work,’ in Greek theourgia,was embraced by prominent Neoplatonist philosophers over a period of some 300 years beginning with the Chaldaean Oracles (second or third century AD).^[1] The Chaldaean oracles consisted of a compilation of mystical pagan oracles, which Neoplatonist philosophers such as Iamblichus (c. AD 245-c.325) and Proclus (AD 410/412-485) regarded as the sacred text of theurgy.^[2]

Iamblichus was perhaps the first Neoplatonist philosopher to expound theurgy as both a religion and philosophy, involving extensive ritual practices. For E.R. Dodds, theurgy was ‘Magic applied to a religious purpose and resting on a supposed revelation of a religious character.’^[3] Modern scholars like Dodds have used terms like religion and magic to help define the scope of theurgy and its practices. The problem, as Gregory Shaw points out, is that theurgy still represents an enigma and scholars have tended to apply their cultural values to define the subject to fit neatly into their world view. ^[4] The first part of this paper is dedicated to discussing what theurgy is, its aim, scope and practices.

The term magic is complex to define. According to Owen Davis, a social historian, defining magic ‘is a maddening task.’^[5]Many scholars often appear to dismiss magic as an irrational manifestation of primitive societies and what appears to be the problem is that attempts to understand what magic is, are often confounded by the fact that the experience of magic falls outside the field of conscious/rational human experience.^[6]Immanuel Kant commented that ‘though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience,’ and this exemplifies the difficulty in defining magic.^[7]An inclusive definition of magic requires that meaning can be applied universally to different cultures and traditions, and Davis achieves this when he states that ‘magic is far more than a venerable collection of practices. We need to understand it as a language, a theory, a belief, an action, a creative expression, an experience, and a cognitive tool.^[8] In the context of magic in antiquity all these factors may have been present and may explain their different usage, as well as, the various meanings ascribed to the term.

Part two of this paper will compare and contrast theurgy and magic with the aim of assessing their potential relationship. This essay mainly relies on Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis(DM) as the main primary source on theurgy and seeks to clarify the debate as to whether theurgy was a form of magic through an analysis of modern scholarly literature.^[9]Because of the difficulty in encapsulating the term magic in a simple definition, and because the theory of magic remains inherently elusive despite the existence of fragments of ‘magical’ texts like the Chaldaean oracles, this paper will focus more on how theurgy differs from the more profane forms of magic.

What is theurgy?

According to Crystal Addey ancient philosophers considered theurgy ‘as a way of life or, strictly speaking, as a way of being, as well as a nexus of ritual practices.’^[10]The emphasis on living and experiencing theurgy meant that it was unlike theology in the sense that it represented ‘God’s work’ rather than ‘Gods talk.’^[11]Addey suggests that it was a life-long endeavour which was experiential, subtle, as well as mysterious.^[12]Iamblichus states that theurgical questions ‘require experience of actions for their accurate understanding’ and that ‘it will not be possible to deal with adequately by words alone.’^[13]The emphasis on experience suggested a way of life in which there was individual spiritual development, a type of development that was inner rather than outer since the goal of theurgy was the soul’s union with the divine. Addey adds that theurgy involved ‘a set of ritual practices alongside the development of ethical and intellectual capacities which aimed to use symbols to reawaken the soul’s pre-ontological causal connection with the gods,’ functioning mainly through divine love and ‘subordinately through cosmic sympathy’.^[14]If the goal of theurgy was the ascent of the soul to the divine, the means by which this could be achieved was through the purification of the intellect, the attainment of moral virtues and symbols made active through cosmic sympathy. Cosmic sympathy was however in turn rendered possible by divine love.

Iamblichus stated that undefiled divine worship ‘brings the pure to the pure and the impassive to the impassive,’ suggesting the principle that “like attracts like.^{”^[15]}Thus theurgic ritual involved the soul ascending to the gods rather than the gods descending to the human/natural realm.^[16]It is also perhaps, as Gregory Shaw argues, one of the reasons why Iamblichus has often been misunderstood by modern scholars since post enlightenment culture is more attuned with the idea that the Gods reach down to men rather than vice versa.^[17]The question of ascent and descent of the gods is important when comparing theurgy to magic since the latter, according to James Frazier, often involved manipulating or constraining the gods to do the will of the goes or sorcerer, while the theurgist invoked the epiphany or manifestation of the gods. Iamblichus called the goes bidding of the gods a ‘transgression’ that reflected ‘the audacity of men.’^[18]

Although it was humans that performed theurgic rites, Shaw observes that ‘…it was the gods who directed the work’ through a subordination of human will to divine will. ^[19]Subordination suggests an abandonment of individual will to serve something greater and it can be inferred from this that for the theurgists humanity was composed of two natures, one that potentially sought to ascend to or reach the gods while the other descended or was attracted to matter. In fact, Iamblichus seemed to believe that this duality was caused by the damage the soul encountered on its descent into the material world, which would explain the dual attraction to what is above and what is below. According to Iamblichus, theurgy was the only means by which the soul could return towards God.^[20]

The cosmology and practice of theurgy

The cosmology of theurgy was based, according to Iamblichus, on three principles which included philia(divine love), the Platonic derived concept of sympatheia(universal or cosmic sympathy) and symbola(symbols). ^[21]It was, however, divine love that caused cosmic sympathy, and cosmic sympathy, in turn, charged the symbols used in theurgic rituals with divine meaning. Divine love permeated all things binding them together to form sympathetic connections that were ‘activated’ through symbols. Thus, according to Proclus ‘the wise men of old brought together various things down here with their heavenly counterparts, and brought down Divine Powers into this mortal place, having drawn them down through similarity (homoitêtos).’^[22]Proclus suggested that through the agency of sympatheia all ‘things are full of Gods’, and what connected the gods to theurgic rituals were the symbols or what Proclus called the physical expression of ‘divine chains.’^[23]The symbols could be anything in nature like stones and plants and could also be a physical object (like a statue) in sympathy with a particular god and include what Iamblichus refers to as secret names of the gods or “barbarian names”^[24]. The latter were non-Greek words invoked during theurgic rituals, but which could also be inscribed on cultic statues (telestika) and other talismans.

Was theurgy a form of magic?

The meaning of the term magic cannot be separated from the context of culture and scholars, as already stated, are not unanimous on its definition.^[25]Thus, it is more straightforward to focus on some of the practices of magic and how these potentially compare and contrast with theurgy. The Greek word for a range of magical practices was goeteia(sorcery), and these included spells, curses and the making of amulets as well as other practices more associated with sorcery. The usage of the term goetetiawas however ambiguous even in antiquity because a distinction was made and often a judgemental attitude taken, whether implicit or explicit, between the different forms that magic took. Iamblichus in DMwas concerned with distinguishing theurgy from the more vulgar goeteiaand says of the latter that ‘there are some who overlook the whole procedure of contemplation…they disdain the order of the sacred observance, its holiness and long protracted endurance of toils.’^[26]What Iamblichus indicated was that in contrast to theurgy, goeteialacked a right attitude towards the divine, potentially questioning the purity of intent of the goesor sorcerer.

Not just Iamblichus, but also some modern scholars like Addey and Shaw focus on separating theurgy from the commonly practiced and basic magical ceremonies of the time, going against the consensus which saw little difference between goeteiaand theurgy.^[27]According to Addey, theurgic rituals were old and derived mainly from the religious traditions of Greece, Egypt and Babylon rather than from magical techniques practiced at the time.^[28] Georg Luck believes that compared to magic, ‘theurgy was supposed to be grander, more exalted, full of deep religious feeling.’^[29]Two themes emerge from these observations and, will be discussed below. The first concerns the question of intent behind the practice of magic versus theurgy and the second focuses attention on the possibility that there are different levels of magic to which theurgy was potentially a higher form.^[30]

Similar to magic, theurgic rituals were performed by human beings but what theurgy stressed was that it was the gods who directed the rituals and controlled the symbols.^[31]Thus, the ceremony involved the subordination of the person performing the ritual to divine will.^[32] Iamblichus stated, ‘and do not furthermore compare the clearest visions of the gods to the images produced artificially by magic,’ once again distancing goeteiafrom theurgy.

Addey observes that there are three substantial differences between magic and theurgy. The first has to do with the receptivity and way of life of the person practicing theurgy, the second relates to the use of symbols that contain divine love and sympathy and the third, that the capacities of the theurgists are gifts from the gods.^[33] The question of the intent of the person practicing theurgy was important since according to Addey, theurgy ‘focused on an intellectual or spiritual turning upwards’ or what Iamblichus states as a ‘procedure of effective contemplation.’^[34] The intent of the theurgist versus the magician was critical in differentiating the two practices. In antiquity, the term magic attracted a negative reputation mainly due to its ubiquity and the associated qualitative decline of its practice.

The separation from religion and the commonplace nature of its activity, suggest that magic was not truly comparable to the uncontaminated/pure aspect of theurgic ritual that was defended by Iamblichus. ^[35] The unfair trial against the philosopher Apuleius (c.124 AD – c.170 AD) for purportedly practicing magic to bewitch into marriage the wealthy widow Pudentilla, was a perfect example of the mundane or banal level to which magic was held accountable.^[36]What the Apuleius case suggests is that the authorities were concerned about the spreading of magic outside the boundaries of official religion and that its practice was potentially considered self-serving, as well as, a means of preying on the weak and gullible.

The theurgist was required to be receptive and ritual practice demanded an inner/spiritual preparation, and as already stated a pure motivation or intent. Addey suggests that the theurgist had to make his or her ‘soul as similar as possible to the upper, divine realms, by assimilating himself or herself to the purity and eternal nature of the gods.’^[37]Contemplative practices allowed the theurgist to develop receptivity but what was also important to reach the divine realms was intellectual purification. Here lies perhaps one of the significant differences between magic and theurgy, the fact that theurgy stresses the development of intellectual capacities for the ascent of consciousness to take place. The final goal of the theurgist was anagogeor the raising of the soul to the nousor pure mind, and according to Iamblichus only a theurgist who was also a philosopher could attain this.

The importance of metaphysical and intellectual knowledge was suggested by Iamblichus when he stated, ‘Effective union never takes place without knowledge…but divine union and purification actually go beyond knowledge.’^[38]The emphasis on learning as the means by which the soul can ascend to higher realms distinguishes common forms of magic from theurgy, and also suggests the existence of a class (social) divide between practitioners of both disciplines. Luck observes that Neoplatonist philosophers who were also priests and practiced theurgy were different from ordinary street magicians and diviners, stating that they were ‘more priest like figures than the ordinary magos.’^[39]There seems to have been a clear intellectual, as well class distinction, between those who practiced theurgy and those who practiced magic.

Addey’s second and third distinctions between theurgy and goeteiarelate to the belief in cosmic sympathy and that theurgic abilitiy was given to humanity by the gods. As Iamblichus states ‘The whole of theurgy presents a double aspect. On the one hand, it is performed by men, and as such observes our natural rank in the universe; but on the other, it contains divine symbols, and in virtue of them is raised up to union with the higher power.’^[40]This double aspect is important since it suggests, as Shaw points out, that all theurgical activity was vertical with the aim of lifting human souls up to the gods through using symbols whose identities were horizontal (in nature/material), but imbued with cosmic sympathy or a divine cause.

The importance of the relationship with a divine cause was what potentially also differentiated goeteia from theurgy, and Emma Clarke observes that magic mainly operated within the confines of nature manipulating and exploiting natural forces rather than ‘demonstrating the causative power behind and beyond them.’^[41] In this context, Dodd’s comparison of the sacred rites of theurgy to modern spiritualist phenomena is questionable since there is little evidence to support the view that theurgy attempted to control the gods and fate through ritual practice. This leads to a final question raised by scholars, which is can magic be divided into a higher and lower form? And on this basis, can theurgy be regarded as a higher form of magic?^[42]

Since many of the theurgic rituals involving oracles, prayer, and sacrifice originated from the polytheistic religions of ancient Greece, Egypt, and Babylon, Dodds argues that theurgy can be considered a higher form of magic.^[43]Some of the ritual techniques used by theurgy derived from mystery cults such as that of Pythagoras who employed both symbols and aphorisms in ritual ceremonies.^[44] Furthermore, the manufacture of ‘magical statuettes of gods’ was not a monopoly of the theurgist but was a practice widespread in ancient Egypt. Therefore, if all ritual was magical, then theurgic ritual was as Dodds says, ‘magic applied to a religious purpose,’ rather than vulgar magic which primarily served a profane end. ^[45]Dodds considers that the charging of statues and divinatory practices were magical acts, and it is a compelling argument. Theurgic rituals involved practices that could be considered forms of magic measured against Davis’ inclusive definition of the term, mentioned in the introduction, which stressed the experience, the creative expression, the action, and belief of magic.^[46]However, beyond the actual practices themselves, which raise more questions than answers, the key was the disposition and intent of the practitioner. The motivation of the practitioner was perhaps the only clear and net separation that existed between theurgy and magic.

Conclusion

This paper examined the question of whether theurgy could be considered a form of magic. The difficulty in establishing a connection between the two lies in the elusive nature of the term magic, and also in the fact that theurgy, despite dedicated texts, remains a mysterious subject. As an esoteric discipline that stressed inner spiritual development, theurgy needed to be experienced to be understood. Therefore, it meant different things to initiates of theurgy compared to outside observers. From an outsider’s perspective, some parallels can be drawn between the rituals engaged by both theurgists and magicians.

It is possible to suggest that theurgic rituals using statues, divination, oracles, amulets, words and prayers, and sacrifice were also the tools of magicians practicing both inside and outside the context of a particular religion. What differentiates the two are the inner disposition, the learning and the intent of the theurgist versus the magician. The problem is one of meaning since the term magic remains difficult to define across cultures. Mystery can breed faith, but also doubt and suspicion and in the ancient world the disassociation of magic from religion was perhaps incremental in giving magic a negative reputation.

Theurgy was a lifelong endeavour or as Shaw observes a ‘lifelong labor,’ which consisted of a process of inner development that potentially led to the ascent of consciousness to the divine realm.^[47]It was more than a philosophy since it was experiential and could not be intellectually understood. Ritual served to link the divine and the material through ‘chains’ of cosmic sympathy. Magic, and in particular, goeteiaseparated from religion could be viewed as a vulgar expression of a profane science where the practitioner manipulated forces that were not linked to divine causes. Thus, magic stripped of religious context does not seem comparable to theurgy, although magic practiced in the context of mystery cults or within the confines of religious practice may well correspond to types of theurgic ritual. In the end, the question of whether theurgy was a kind of magic depends on the form of magic under analysis, the context in which it was practiced, and the motivation of the practitioner. Iamblichus stressed this last point beyond all others in differentiating the theurgist from the sorcerer.

Lastly, the double aspect of theurgy combining a vertical and horizontal activity that fed on each other to ascend the soul towards god makes it different from magic or goeteiawhose aim was often to gain practical/material goals. Seen as such, theurgy was an esoteric discipline in which the spiritual predominated. The same cannot be said for goeteiawhose primary concern was the attainment of tangible results.

Bibliography

Addey, Crystal, Divination and Theurgy in Neaplatonism, (London & New York, Routledge, 2014) Kindle Edition.

Addey, Crystal, Oracles, Dreams and Astrology in Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays in Astrology and Divination, ed. by Curry, Patrick and Voss, Angela (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007) Ch.3, pp.35-58.

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Flint, V., Gordon, R., Luck, G. and Ogden, D., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome(London: The Athlone Press, 1999).

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^[1]Addey, Crystal, Oracles, Dreams and Astrology in Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays in Astrology and Divination, ed. by Curry, Patrick, and Voss, Angela (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007) ch.3, p.1.

^[2]Dodds, E.R., Theurgy and its Relationship to Neoplatonism, The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol.37, Parts 1 and 2 (1947) p.55.

^[3]Dodds, Theurgy and its Relationship to Neoplatonism, p.61.

^[4]Shaw, Gregory, Theurgy: Rituals of Unification in the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, Traditio, Vol.41 (1985), p.3.

^[5]Davis, Owen, Magic, A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Kindle Edition, p.1.

^[6]Starck, Rodney, Reconceptualizing Religion, Magic and Science, Review of ReligiousResearch, Vol.43, No.2, (Dec. 2001) p.102.

^[7]Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Smith, N.K., (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007) pp., 42-43.

^[8]Davis, Magic, p. 111.

^[9]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, Trans. Clarke, Emma C., et al. (Atlanta, USA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).

^[10]Addey, Crystal, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, (London & New York, Routledge, 2016) Kindle Edition, p.24.

^[11]Shaw, Gregory, Theurgy of the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1995) p.5; Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, Clarke Introduction p. XXIX.

^[12]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, p.24.

^[13]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 1.2-3.

^[14]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, p.24.

^[15]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 1.11.

^[16]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, IV.10.

^[17]Shaw, Rituals of Unification, p.3.

^[18]Frazier James, The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion, (New York: MacMillan, 1922). pp.65-68; Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, IV.10.

^[19]Shaw, Rituals of Unification, p.1.

^[20]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, Clarke, Emma et al. Introduction, p. xxvii.

^[21]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 1.12, 4.3, 4.9.

^[22]Proclus, On the Sacred Art,http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/redmonds/645w12.html, (accessed 08/07/2017), p.3.

^[23]Proclus, On the Sacred Art, http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/redmonds/645w12.html, (accessed 08/07/2017) pp.3-4.

^[24]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, pp.114-115.

^[25]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, pp. 31-32.

^[26]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 3.13.

^[27]Addey,Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, pp.31-40; Shaw, Rituals of Unification, pp.1-28.

^[28]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, p.32.

^[29]Flint, V., Gordon, R., Luck, G. and Ogden, D., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome(London: The Athlone Press, 1999), p.149.

^[30]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, pp.33-34.

^[31]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, IV 2-3.

^[32]Shaw, Rituals of Unification, p.1.

^[33]Addey,Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, p.34.

^[34]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, p.34; Iamblichus,On the Mysteries, 3.13.

^[35]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, II. 10-11, 11.

^[36]https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/apuleius/, accessed 09/07/2017.

^[37]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, p.26.

^[38]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 2.11.

^[39]Flint, V., Gordon, R., Luck, G. and Ogden, D., Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome(London: The Athlone Press, 1999), p.149.

^[40]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, IV 2-3.

^[41]Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, Clarke, Emma, Introduction, xxvii.

^[42]Shaw, Rituals of Unification, p.61-62 ; Sheppard, Anne, Proclus’ Attitude to Theurgy, The Classical Quarterly, Vol.32, No.1, (1982), pp. 212-224; Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, pp.38-39.

^[43]Dodds, Theurgy and its Relationship to Neoplatonism, p.55.

^[44]Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism, p.32.

^[45]Dodds, Theurgy and its Relationship to Neoplatonism, p.63.

^[46]Davis, Magic, p.111.

^[47]Shaw, Rituals of Unification, p.22.

Sky and Water in Minnesota: A sky journal research report

by Jessica Heim

This paper explores the relationship between the sky and bodies of water in my home state of Minnesota, U.S.A. The aim of this research was to delve into the myriad ways in which the sky is reflected in the water and what it is like to be in this environment. Using a phenomenological approach, I regularly spent time by two bodies of water which I had a particular fondness for, recorded my observations, feelings and insights regularly during a three month summer period, and took many photographs of the water and sky. I then analyzed my findings in the context of literature discussing the value of this method of inquiry, that of immersing oneself in an experience of the sky and the natural world, giving particular attention to the writings of nineteenth century American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. I found that experiencing the reflection of the sky on lakes and rivers, both during the day and at night, and in a variety of weather conditions, may allow one to not only feel a part of the environment in which one is immersed, but also to connect to past times, to those who have come before, and to the larger universe as well.

Introduction

The aim of this research is to explore the relationship between sky and bodies of water in my home state of Minnesota and to consider the reflection of aspects of sky to be found in water. By reflecting the light and colors of the sky, lakes and rivers make the heavens more tangible, pulling them down to earth. This research, approached from a phenomenological perspective, involves reflection upon my own personal responses to experiencing the sky and water in various times of day and night and under differing weather conditions.

Academic Rationale

In Walden, nineteenth century American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau reflects upon the two years (1845-1847) he spent living in a cabin he built outside Concord near Walden Pond.^[1] In this work, Thoreau writes extensively about his observations of nature and includes substantial commentary about his thoughts on Walden Pond and its reflections of its surroundings. Thus, in the tradition of Thoreau, my research aims to delve into the experiences, thoughts and reflections one may experience as a result of extended observation of sky and water.

Methodology

This research will utilize a phenomenological approach, as discussed by Christopher Tilley and Belden Lane.^[2]It will draw upon my experiences with the sky and natural bodies of water in Minnesota, USA. The majority of my observations are of the Mississippi River and the sky as seen from my backyard in central Minnesota, though some are of a small lake by my grandma’s house in northern Minnesota. As part of this research, I have kept a sky journal, in which I have written my thoughts on observations of the sky and water from June through August 2017. In addition, to provide a visual reference to this journal and to more comprehensively capture my experience in the field, I have taken photographs of the sky and water throughout this period. I made prints of my favourite images, placed them in a specially designated photo album, and selected those most relevant to this essay to include here.

Reflexive Considerations

I am a Caucasian woman, and the location which I have spent the most time for this research is an area where I have lived for most of my life (about three decades). Watching the changing reflections of the sky upon the water in various times of day, weather, and seasons is not a new experience for me. For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed watching the play of light upon the water. What is new to me for this research is the more structured aspect it has given this pastime – the heightened focus of regularly writing about my experiences with this environment and of more intense reflection on what these experiences mean to me.

Literature Review

Christopher Tilley has argued that a phenomenological approach is of much value in understanding the world and our relationship to it.^{^[3]} Phenomenology is, as Belden Lane describes, a way of interacting with the world in which one ‘listens to the place itself.’^[4]As Tilley elaborates, with a phenomenological approach, ‘We experience and perceive the world because we live in that world and are intertwined within it. We are part of it, and it is part of us.’^[5] Aspects of the world which are typically seen as inanimate, such as stones, are seen to essentially have a sense of agency, as they influence one’s consciousness. ^[6] Tim Ingold also utilizes a phenomenological perspective to consider the nature of the sky and human perception of it. He observes that without air’s transparent qualities, perception of sky, or anything at all, would be impossible.^[7] He considers the difficulty of defining ‘sky,’ but suggests, ‘the sky is the kingdom of light, sound, and air.’^[8] Thus our perception of sky is influenced by the light we see, the sounds we hear, and the movement of air we feel.

Though Thoreau does not make use of terminology such as ‘phenomenology,’ he clearly values the importance of regularly being out in the world and experiencing it first hand – obtaining knowledge from books alone is not sufficient.^[9] As he observes, ‘What is a course of history or philosophy . . . or the best society . . . compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?’^[10] Thoreau explains why he went to live at Walden Pond. He says, ‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately . . . and not, when I came time to die, discover that I had not lived . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.’^[11] In the course of ‘living deep,’ Thoreau makes extensive observations of the natural world around him and reflects on the significance of what he sees and experiences.

Similarly, astronomy enthusiast Fred Schaaf points out the importance of naked eye observation of the sky. He notes, ‘the best way to learn them [the many features visible in the sky] is though your own personal, intimate discoveries of them. In the most ultimate sense, there is no true replacement for direct observation in astronomy.’^[12] Like Thoreau, Schaaf makes the argument that direct personal experience with the world is essential for better understanding and appreciation of it.

Field Work and Discussion

Undertaking phenomenological research on the combination of water and sky in Minnesota seemed very appropriate. The name, ‘Minnesota’ is derived from the Dakota Mni Sota Makoce, translated as ‘sky-tinted water’ or ‘the land where the waters are so clear they reflect the clouds.’^[13] The state’s nickname is ‘Land of 10,000 Lakes’ (there are actually 11,842) and the state motto is l’etoile du nord (star of the north).^[14] Given the ubiquitous presence of lakes, rivers and streams in the state, experiencing where the water meets the sky seemed like the perfect way to immerse oneself in a Minnesotan experience of sky.

A few points to note – first, I live on the west bank of the north-south flowing Mississippi River. Thus when I face the river, I face east. The same is true for my grandma’s house – the sun and moon appear to rise above the lake. Also, area where I live is near a bend in the river where the river is unusually wide compared to its width just a few miles to the north or south. Due to this, the opposite shore is quite distant, and it consequently, aside from the current, has more of the feel of being on a lake. In addition, I live several miles north of a medium sized city, thus for most of my life, the light pollution affecting the view of the sky at night was restricted to the southern part of the sky. My grandma lives in a very small town much further from larger population centers, hence, at her house, the sky is darker at night and is significantly less affected by light pollution.

Reflection, Light, and Perception

A central theme which repeatedly came up throughout this research was the idea of reflection. The water acts as a mirror which it reflects what is going on above it. As Thoreau muses, ‘Walden is the perfect forest mirror . . . Sky water.’^[15] When the skies are blue, the Mississippi is a rich hue of marine blue (Fig. 4). During stormy weather, the water turns slate grey, even darker than the storm clouds above it (Fig. 5), and it is a wonderful reflector of the light of the rising sun and moon (Fig. 6). One morning, I photographed the rising sun, and the sun’s image reflected in the water was blazingly bright! (Fig. 7) I thought of this experience when I read Thoreau’s comment about watching the sun set above Walden Pond. He notes, ‘you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun.’^[16] Similarly, the purples and pinks visible in the eastern sky at sunset are reflected upon the water (Fig. 8). As Thoreau observes, water is ‘continually receiving new life from above,’ as it reflects the quality and appearance of the air and sky which it lies beneath.^[17]

Figure 1: A sunny day in my backyard on the Mississippi River. 31 May, 2017, 3:31 p.m. . Photo: Jessica Heim.

Figure 2: An approaching storm in my backyard on the Mississippi River. 9 July, 2017, 8:47 p.m. . Photo: Jessica Heim.

Figure 3: The rising moon from my backyard on the Mississippi River. 8 July, 2017, 9:30 p.m. . Photo: Jessica Heim.

Figure 4: Sunrise seen from my backyard on the Mississippi River. 8 June, 2017, 5:52 a.m. . Photo: Jessica Heim.

Figure 5: The colors of sunset: facing east in my backyard on the Mississippi River. 1 August, 2017, 8:50 p.m. . Photo: Jessica Heim.

As beautiful as all these scenes are, the one that I found myself writing about with the most excitement was the sight of the light of the morning sun, once it has gained sufficient elevation, bouncing off the gently flowing water. As I wrote on the morning of 5 June, ‘The light sparkling on the water is so beautiful, so magical… One cannot begin the day in a better way (Figs. 6 & 7).’ Thoreau too, makes note of the play of light upon the water, noting, ‘White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.’^[18] To me, the light of the rising sun or moon makes the river appear as if it is covered in thousands of sparkling diamonds. This is made possible not only by the light of the celestial body, but also by the combination of a light breeze and slight current, which causes the water to move and thus the light to sparkle. Consequently, the air and sky are both acting upon the water which in turn reflects back these stimuli to the observer. Thus is it is not only that the environment and observer can act upon each other, or as Tilley describes, ‘I touch the stone and the stone touches me,’ but also that different parts of the environment interact with one another.

In addition, while I admired the light sparkling, reflecting off the water that morning, I realized that was not all that was sparkling. I ‘noticed how the play of light was appearing not only on the water, but on the leaves of the huge cottonwood tree in our backyard. It looked like there were diamonds in the water as well as the tree.’^[19] This cottonwood tree is a tremendous presence in my backyard and its leaves rustle in the slightest breeze. I reflected further on cottonwood trees, noting, ‘It’s like they are connected to the sky in several ways – their leaves reflect the light of the sun, the wind makes this light move and sparkle (Fig. 8).’^[20]The wind blowing the leaves not only results in a beautiful display of light, but of sound as well. As I described, ‘I’ve always loved the sound of cottonwood leaves rustling in the wind. My dad (who passed away when I was in my early twenties) did too. He often commented on how he loved to hear the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of these trees. So when I hear this sound, fond memories of my dad always come to mind.’^[21] In describing the ideas of musicologist Victor Zuckerkandl, Ingold makes an observation quite pertinent to this scene, ‘in opening our eyes and ears to the sky, vision and hearing effectively become one. And they merge with feeling, too, as we bare ourselves to the wind.’^[22] This perfectly describes my experience observing the sky, river, and environs. As I wrote shortly after a description of the interaction of light and wind upon the water and the cottonwood tree, ‘Though I feel differently depending on the weather and time of day, one thing is consistent, the river makes me feel. I always feel more alive by it.’^[23] Thus in being immersed in ‘the kingdom of light, sound, and air’ – seeing the light upon the water, hearing the leaves in the wind, and feeling the breeze against my skin – in feeling these physically in my body, I feel, too, in the emotional sense of the word.^[24]

Figure 6: Light of the morning sun sparkling on the Mississippi as seen from my backyard. 5 June, 2017, 11:39 a.m. . Photo: Jessica Heim.

Figure 7: Light of the morning sun sparkling on the Mississippi with trees in the foreground, as seen from my backyard. 5 June, 2017, 11:50 a.m. . Photo: Jessica Heim.

Figure 8: The Cottonwood tree in my backyard. 5 June, 2017, 11:40 a.m. . Photo: Jessica Heim.

Time

Another theme which repeatedly surfaced in my reflections on my experience with the water and sky, was that of time and its connection to place. Particularly when observing the sky from my backyard and reflecting upon how I felt about it, I found that many memories of that same place from my childhood came to mind. As Alexandra Harris observes in her book about weather in the lives and works of English writers and artists, ‘Our weather is made up of personal memories and moods: an evening sky is full of other evenings.’^[25] During this research, I frequently recalled time spent on or near the river with my dad (Fig. 9). As I recalled, ‘We would sometimes boat up the river at night, to better enjoy the moonlight on the water (Fig. 10).’^[26] Reflecting on watching the river in the morning, I noted, ‘When I am looking at the morning light dancing as sparkles across the water, I could just as easily be five years old. It feels much the same to be with the sky, trees, and water as it did then.’^[27] Thoreau similarly remarks upon such timelessness of a place, ‘Why, here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago; . . . it is the same liquid joy and happiness.’^[28] As he goes on to describe, ‘I see by its face that it is visited by the same reflection; and I can almost say, Walden, is it you?’^[29] Thus, by being immersed in a landscape which appears relatively constant over the years, one can, in a way, connect back to a past time.

Figure 9: Boating on the Mississippi River with my dad, June 1996.
Photo: Sister Orlean Pereda.

Figure 10: My dad and me boating on the Mississippi River at night. Summer 1996.
Photo: Sister Orlean Pereda.

The idea of connecting to other times via sky observation also came up in another way during this research. When I observed the sky at night from the end of the dock (Fig. 11 – photograph taken during the day, since those I took at night did not turn out well]) at my grandma’s house, the sky was quite dark, many faint stars were easily visible, and the Milky Way stretched as a gigantic arch above me, from Sagittarius on the southern horizon, through Cygnus overhead, to Cassiopeia in the north. As I laid on my back at the end of the long dock, essentially surrounded by the water around and beneath me and by the starry expanse above me, I pondered the idea that, even more than a lake or river, the view of the night sky can be seen as a relatively unchanging place. As I wrote that night, ‘Sky is a primary source, which, when experienced as truly dark, can be experienced very similarly to how ancient people saw it. A way of connecting to the past and transcending time.’^[30] Clive Ruggles, in a discussion about striving to comprehend they way past peoples viewed the world around them and their place in it, notes the value of the sky in this endeavour, as, ‘unlike the rest of their perceived world, the sky is a part that we can visualize directly.’^[31] Thus by immersing oneself into a night-time environment such as this, one can connect more closely with the earth and sky as it was experienced long ago.

Figure 11: My grandma’s dock on the lake. 25 July, 2017, 10:21 a.m. Photo: Jessica Heim.

Darkness

When thinking about all the experiences I had with the sky, river, and lake at night this summer, the importance of darkness came to mind. For darkness at night is essential in order to continue to experience the wonder of the night sky, and in so doing, to feel a sense of connection to both those that have come before us and to the universe itself. As Tyler Nordgren points out, when we lose the night sky, ‘we lose our place in the Universe’ and ‘a direct visible connection to our ancestors . . . In short, we lose a tangible link to ourselves that gives life meaning beyond the here and now.’^[32]In my journal, I reflected upon the loss of the night sky, recalling memories of ‘Sitting on the dock with my dad – looking at the river as it grew dark. . . I remember my dad telling me how when he and my mom had first moved here, the only light visible on the opposite shore of the river was a little green light . . . I would always ask him to point out that light to me. As time went on, more lights appeared, and he was no longer able to make out that light.’^[33] As frustrating as that was, it was relatively minor compared to the recent influx of bright white LEDs which are much more effective at obliterating the view of the stars. Though the daytime view of the sky and the Mississippi remains much the same as in years past, the night-time version has changed substantially, and it is no longer possible to see the stars reflected in the waters below. In not being able to experience a dark, starry sky, I have lost the ability (unless I drive a considerable distance to a remote area) to directly experience the night-time sky in the same way – it’s akin to trying to experience what a forest is like after most of the trees have been cut down, the animals have left, and the understory plants have been trampled. Thoreau wrote in his journal, ‘I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.’^[34] In my own sky journal, I found myself repeatedly expressing my frustration with the rapidly declining accessibility of the night sky and lamenting that if current trends continue, future generations will not ‘know an entire heaven.’ As astro-photographer Dietmar Hager argues, if people cannot see the stars, they will ‘have no relationship with the sky.’^[35] Consequently, something which has been a fundamental part of humans’ experience on earth, their connection to the larger cosmos, will have been lost.

Final Thoughts

Though distinct themes can be found in my sky journal, I found that when immersed in the ‘weather-world,’ as Tilley terms it, all the diverse qualities of the elements around me are intertwined and inseparable.^[36] When I see the light of the sun or moon reflected on the water, I simultaneously feel the touch of the wind and note its effects on all that I see. At the same time, I can hear the water lapping at the shore and the call of a bird soaring overhead. Thus Tilley’s understanding of sky as ‘the kingdom of light, sound, and air,’ perfectly encompasses the entirety of my experiences in this environment.

Conclusion

The aim of this research was to explore the intersection of water and sky using a phenomenological approach. The first theme discussed was how the water’s reflection of the sky changes markedly based on time of day and weather, as well as how light and the movement of air affects not only the appearance of water, but the trees at its bank and an individual immersed in this environment. The idea of place and its relationship to time was also explored. As Tilley observes, memories are an integral part of one’s experience and being in a place routinely can be seen as a series of ‘biographic encounters.’^[37] In addition, I found that viewing a dark, starry sky can serve as a means to connect one to both those who have come before and to the larger cosmos. The continued existence of dark night skies is essential in order to maintain this connection. In conclusion, to understand all facets of the relationship between sky and water, they must be able to be experienced in all conditions – in both stormy weather and fair, in both the brightness of the noontime sun and in night so dark that the stars and the Milky Way can be seen in the sky above and in the waters below.

Bibliography

Explore Minnesota Tourism, Five Ways to Enjoy Minnesota’s 10,000 Lakes,< http://www.exploreminnesota.com/travel-ideas/five-ways-to-enjoy-minnesotas-10000-lakes/> [accessed 13 August 2017].

Hager, Dietmar, ‘Ethical Implications of Astrophotography and Stargazing,’ in The Imagined Sky: Cultural Perspectives,ed. by Darrelyn Gunzburg, pp. 305-318 (Bristol, Connecticut: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2016).

Harris, Alexandra, Weatherland: Writers & Artists Under English Skies (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015).

Heim, Jessica, Sky Journal, June – August 2017.

Ingold, Tim, ‘Earth Sky, Wind, and Weather,’ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13(2007), 19-38.

Ingold, Tim, ‘Reach for the Stars! Light, Vision, and the Atmosphere,’ in The Imagined Sky: Cultural Perspectives,ed. by Darrelyn Gunzburg, pp. 215-233 (Bristol, Connecticut: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2016).

Lane, Belden C., Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality, Expanded edn (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

Nordgren, Tyler, Stars Above, Earth Below: A Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks(Chichester, UK: Praxis, 2010).

Ruggles, Clive, Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmology and Myth, (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2005).

Schaaf, Fred, The Starry Room: Naked Eye Astronomy in the Intimate Universe (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1988).

State of Minnesota, State Motto,< https://mn.gov/portal/about-minnesota/state-symbols/flag.jsp> [accessed 13 August 2017].

Thoreau, Henry David, Journal, in The Journal: 1837-1861 by Henry David Thoreau, ed. by Damion Searls, Preface by John R. Stilgoe (New York: New York Review of Books, 2009).

Thoreau, Henry David, Walden,in Walden and Civil Disobedience, Introduction and Notes by Andrew S. Trees, (New York: Barnes & Noble: 2012), pp. 1- 258.

Tilley, Christopher, A Phenomenology of Landscape(Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994).

Tilley, Christopher, The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology(Oxford: Berg, 2004).

Upham, Warren, Minnesota Place Names: a Geographical Encyclopedia,3rd edn (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001).

Westerman , Gwen and Bruce White, Mni Sota Makoce: the Land of the Dakota (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012).

^[1]Henry David Thoreau, Walden,in Walden and Civil Disobedience, Introduction and Notes by Andrew S. Trees (New York: Barnes & Noble: 2012), pp. 1- 258.

^[2]Christopher Tilley , The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology(Oxford: Berg, 2004); Belden C. Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality, Expanded edition (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 26.

^[3]Tilley, The Materiality of Stone, p.31.

^[4]Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred, p. 44.

^[5]Tilley, The Materiality of Stone, p. 2.

^[6]Tilley, The Materiality of Stone, p. 16.

^[7]Tim Ingold, ‘Reach for the Stars! Light, Vision, and the Atmosphere,’ in The Imagined Sky: Cultural Perspectives, ed. by Darrelyn Gunzburg (Bristol, Connecticut: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2016), p. 225.

^[8]Ingold, ‘Reach for the Stars!’ p. 231.

^[9] Thoreau, Walden, p. 86.

^[10]Thoreau, Walden, p. 86.

^[11]Thoreau, Walden, p. 20.

^[12]Fred Schaaf, The Starry Room: Naked Eye Astronomy in the Intimate Universe (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1988), p. 2.

^[13]Warren Upham, Minnesota Place Names: a Geographical Encyclopedia,3rd edn (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), p. 4; Gwen Westerman and Bruce White, Mni Sota Makoce: the Land of the Dakota (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012), p. 13.

^[14]Explore Minnesota Tourism, Five Ways to Enjoy Minnesota’s 10,000 Lakes,<http://www.exploreminnesota.com/travel-ideas/five-ways-to-enjoy-minnesotas-10000-lakes/> [accessed 13 August 2017]; State of Minnesota, State Motto,< https://mn.gov/portal/about-minnesota/state-symbols/flag.jsp> [accessed 13 August 2017].

^[15]Thoreau, Walden, p. 147.

^[16]Thoreau, Walden, p. 145.

^[17]Thoreau, Walden, p. 147.

^[18]Thoreau, Walden, p.155.

^[19]Jessica Heim, Sky Journal, June – August 2017, 5 June journal entry.

^[20]Heim, Sky Journal, 10 June journal entry.

^[21]Heim, Sky Journal, 5 June journal entry.

^[22]Ingold, ‘Reach for the Stars!’ p. 231.

^[23]Heim, Sky Journal, 5 June journal entry.

^[24]Ingold, ‘Reach for the Stars!’ p. 231.

^[25]Alexandra Harris, Weatherland: Writers & Artists Under English Skies (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015), p. 13.

^[26]Heim, Sky Journal, 15July journal entry.

^[27]Heim, Sky Journal,5 June journal entry.

^[28]Thoreau, Walden, p. 150.

^[29]Thoreau, Walden, p. 150.

^[30]Heim, Sky Journal,24 July journal entry.

^[31]Clive Ruggles, Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmology and Myth, (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc, 2005), p. xi.

^[32]Tyler Nordgren, Stars Above, Earth Below: A Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks(Chichester, UK: Praxis Publishing, 2010), p. 428.

^[33]Heim, Sky Journal,15 July journal entry.

^[34]Henry David Thoreau, The Journal: 1837-1861 by Henry David Thoreau, ed. by Damion Searls, Preface by John R. Stilgoe (New York: New York Review of Books, 2009), entry from March 23, 1856, p. 373.

^[35]Dietmar Hager, ‘Ethical Implications of Astrophotography and Stargazing,’ in The Imagined Sky: Cultural Perspectives,ed. by Darrelyn Gunzburg, pp. 305-318 (Bristol, Connecticut: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2016), p. 307.

^[36] Tim Ingold, ‘Earth Sky, Wind, and Weather,’ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13(2007), 19-38.

^[37] Christopher Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape(Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994), p. 27.

How important occult texts treat the Moon: a review

by Selina White

By comparing and contrasting three astrological primary sources, namely Plutarch’s Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon (De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet), Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, and Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy (‘De occulta philosophia libri III), this paper explores the treatment of the Moon by the authors of these primary sources. Some common themes that emerge in this exploration of the treatment of the Moon in these three primary sources are the scientific and alternative investigation of the Moon, the role of the Moon in the myths of ancient and modern cultures, and the mysterious, dark, or negative aspect and influence of the Moon. The result is that the authors of all three primary sources treat the Moon as an object of importance worthy of exploration.

Introduction

This essay will compare and contrast the treatment of the Moon in three primary sources and through the lens of three core themes, namely; 1.) Science and the Laws of Nature; 2.) Myth and the Moon; and, 3.) The Dark Side of the Moon. The first primary source is Concerning the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon (De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet). It was writtenby Plutarch (Plutarchus) (ca. 45–120 CE) who was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia in central Greece and became a scholar of Platonic philosophy at Athens. It was written in ca. 100 CEand appears in Plutarch’s larger treatise entitled Moraliawhich contains a collection of essays and speeches on various subject matters which influenced later European Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophy. It was originally written in Greek and then Latin and translated into English by Harold Cherniss and W. C. Helmbold and published by Loeb Classical Library as Moralia Vol. XII in 1957. This is the edition I will be referring to for the purposes of this essay.^[1]

The second primary source is The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy. It was written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Helena Petrovna von Hahn) (1831-1891 CE) who was born in the then Russian Empire (now Ukraine) and who became a well-known 19^th– 20^thcentury occultist, medium, author and founder of the esoteric organisation, the Theosophical Society, in 1875. It was written in English in 1888 and was originally composed of two volumes; the first volume entitled Cosmogenesis, the second volume entitled Anthropogenesis. It is an example of ‘revealed’ literature which contained a synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophical and spiritual thought and resulted in reviving interest in esoteric and occult study in modern times. The edition that I will be using for this essay is the Theosophical University Press Online Edition which contains both volumes.^[2]

The third and final primary source is Three Books of Occult Philosophy(‘De occulta philosophia libri III). It is a composite collection of three books written by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535 CE) between 1509-1510. Book I is entitled Natural Magic, Book II Celestial Magicand Book III Ceremonial Magic. Agrippa was a Renaissance scholar influenced by Hermetic and Neoplatonic philosophy and his Three Books of Occult Philosophybecame an invaluable source of Western ritual and astrological magic. All three volumes were printed together for the first time in Cologne in 1533. They were originally written in Latin and were translated into English by one J.F. and were published by Gregory Moule in London in 1651.The translation that I am using for the purposes of this essay is that of Joseph H. Patterson made in 2000 from the transcription of the Moule version, and which is available as a digital edition.^[3]It is to be noted that a Book IV entitled ‘Of Magical Ceremonies’ was later discovered and attributed to Agrippa, although its provenance remains spurious. I have therefore confined my analysis to the original three books for the purpose of this essay.

Science and the Laws of Nature

A common theme appearing in these three primary texts is the authors’ treatment of the Moon from a scientific standpoint as a natural phenomenon requiring investigation. Plutarch’s De faciebegins by stating that standard scientific theories and scholarship do not answer or explain what the figure visible on the face on the Moon is and so ‘when the ordinary and reputable and customary accounts are not persuasive, it is necessary to try those that are more out of the way […]’^[4]. Therefore, the Moon in this regard is viewed by Plutarch as a kind of scientific anomaly that requires alternative investigation. Various alternative theories for the existence of the apparent face on the Moon are then discussed in the text, including ideas of optical effects, geometry, mirrored reflections, and layers of shadow, air, fire, water creating shapes.^{^[5]}However, a more concrete understanding of the Moon is given later on in the text when scientific details are discussed regarding the motion of the Earth ‘revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time […] rotating about its own axis’ and the fact that ‘the earth is a great deal large than the moon’, as well as in-depth reference to transits and lunar and solar eclipses and how they occur.^[6]This shows, according to scholars such as Karamanolis,that, in De facie, ‘Plutarch shows quite some interest in the explanation of natural phenomena […]’^[7].

Agrippa similarly emphasises an exploration of nature and the natural world in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, to the extent of dedicating the whole of Book I of this treatise to natural magic, which according to Yates, ‘teaches how to arrange substances in accordance with the occult sympathies between them, so as to effect operations in natural magic.’^[8]Agrippa acknowledges the influence of the Moon on Earth as well as there being a line of communication between the two based on their close connection in space.^[9] The Moon also features in Agrippa’s discussion of the number seven where he outlines the natural process of the changing phases of the moon based upon four sets of seven days.^[10]This is as scientific or technical as Agrippa gets in his treatment of the Moon. For the most part of the remaining coverage of the Moon by him, he refers to it in the context of natural laws, sympathies and correspondences, which is very much illustrative of the Hermetic and Neoplatonic influences present in his work through his referencing of numerous Hermetic and Neoplatonic scholars throughout the text. Yates puts it very aptly in stating that Agrippa’s aim is to provide ‘the technical procedures for acquiring the more powerful and “wonder-working” philosophy, […] a philosophy ostensibly Neoplatonic but including a magical Hermetic-Cabalist core.’^[11]In this regard, he establishes “enmities” and “friendships” between the Moon and each of the other plants^[12]which can be employed in magic and astrology, as well as listing a number of creatures and features of the natural world, such as plants, trees, stones, animals, and indeed certain humans, which are lunar in nature.^[13]Despite the strong use of symbolic connections and natural laws as opposed to hard science, Agrippa incorporates an intellectual and scholarly methodology in his treatment of the Moon and other planets, leading Yates to describe Three Books of Occult Philosophyas ‘a matter-of-fact text-book’.^[14]

Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrinealso approaches the Moon from an alternative scientific standpoint, similar to Plutarch’s “alternative theories” approach inDe facie. Blavatsky considers that the Moon is the Earth’s satellite only in its function of physically revolving around the Earth. However, ‘in every other respect it is the Earth which is the satellite of the Moon […]. Startling as the statement may seem it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease which coincide with the lunar phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in the phenomena of human gestation and conception.’ She also states that ‘[…] so far as Science knows, the Earth’s action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to circle in her orbit.’^[15]It appears therefore that Blavatsky considers herself to have debunked the standard scientific view of the relationship between the Moon and Earth and instead treats the Moon as being the dominant player in the relationship between it and the Earth, the Moon being a kind of magnetic force that exerts a constant influence on the Earth, akin to a mother exerting authority over its child. However, William Quan Judge, a contemporary theosophist of Blavatsky, seems to take a more positive attitude towards the role of science and its exploration and understanding of the Moon, where he says that ‘[m]odern and ancient science alike unite in watching the night’s great light as she performs her journey round us.’^[16]On balance, all three texts do acknowledge the scientific nature of investigation required of the Moon, however, for the most part, it appears that the authors’ believe that scientific laws do not fully explain the true nature of the Moon.

Myth and the Moon

Another shared feature of each of the three primary texts is their treatment of the Moon’s role in the context of myth. In Plutarch’s De facie, the role of myth is central to the title and overall theme of the text, namely an explanation for the apparent visibility of a man-like figure in the moon. This myth of “a man in the moon” has saturated the imagination of many cultures since time immemorial. According to Brunner, ‘[…] there is not one moon but many, each particular to a different culture.’^[17]Each culture therefore interprets what the moon is to them and it follows that ‘[o]nly a small step [is] required for stories to evolve from these images.’^[18]The interconnection between the Moon and the development of myth is even evident in the name for the study of the moon, “selenology”, which comes from the name the Greek goddess of the Moon, Selene, a prominent figure in Greek mythology.^[19]

The influence of myth is evident in De faciein the discussion on humanity’s fear that the Moon is unsupported in the sky and is liable to fall, whereas the Earth is supported by ‘Atlas, [who] stands, staying on his back the prop of earth […]’ or alternatively that the Earth is supported by ‘steel-shod pillars’^[20]. However, probably the greatest influence of myth in De faciein the context of the Moon is in what Karamanolis calls ‘the eschatological myths […] [which] integrate cosmological, psychological, and ethical considerations’, particularly ‘the role of the moon in the world and its role in the life of souls […].^[21]Plutarch describes the Moon’s mythical role as being a storehouse and conveyer of souls from one world to the next.’^[22]Hamilton also alludes to the express references to myth in Plutarch’s text which relate to the nature of the soul and argues that such references are influenced by the story of Atlantis in Plato’s Timeus.^[23]

Agrippa describes a number of images of the Moon which can be created for particular magical petitions.^[24]These images make use of mythological symbolism taken from ancient cultures, such as dragon and serpent symbolism. A specific image of the head and tail of the Dragon of the Moon is illustrated where Agrippa states that the Egyptians and Phoenicans ‘do extol this creature [the image of a serpent] above all others, and say it is a divine creature and hath a divine nature […].’^[25]He also presents the Moon’s mythological association with the sacred feminine by outlining that the Moon is associated with numerous mythological goddesses.^[26]

Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrineis also a strong advocate for the power of myth over science in the context of the Moon. She states that ‘[f]rom the archaic aeons and the later times of the witches of Thessaly, down to some of the present tantrikas of Bengal, her [the Moon’s] nature and properties were known to every Occultist, but have remained a closed book for physicists.’^[27]She appears to be implying here that science has not been able to break through the threshold of mythical knowledge that exists in relation to the Moon. She also espouses the power of religion in culture over that of science where she says ‘[t]he importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient religion […] and have been remarked by many observers of psychical and physical phenomena.’^[28]It may be argued here that she considers the Moon as having more of a connection to occultists and those studying myth and occult science than to exoteric scientists, and that the former category are more able to penetrate the myths and mysteries of the Moon to attain a true understanding of it. Overall, all three texts provide a strong and positive approach towards the Moon’s role in myth.

The Dark Side of the Moon

Finally, all three texts directly express the theme of the Moon being of a mysterious, even insidious nature. In common with his earlier inference of the Moon being a kind of scientific mutation requiring alternative investigation, Plutarch’s De faciegoes on to negatively describe the Moon as: ‘[…] misshapen, ugly, and a disgrace to the noble title, if it is true that of all the host in heaven she alone goes about in need of alien light […]’.^[29]He also states that ‘[t]he sun imparts to the moon her brilliance [and the Moon] often has concealed and obliterated him [the Sun]’.^[30]These references appear to imply that the Moon is kind of parasite attaching itself to the Sun, constantly feeding off the Sun’s light in order to emit light itself.

Agrippa takes on a more positive handling of the Moon than Plutarch by constantly conveying the importance of the Moon in magical workings^[31]and disseminating copious amounts of information and lunar correspondences for such magical working, such as figures of divine letters or characters of the Moon^[32], the Moon’s positive influence over divination and dreams^[33], the seal, table, divine names, intelligences and spirits of the Moon^[34], names of ancient cult centres associated with Moon deity worship^[35], and the angel of the Moon and angels of the twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon^[36]. Agrippa lays emphasis on the importance of the Moon and urges the reader to acknowledge and respect the Moon in its role as conveyor of magical power: ‘[…] for thou shalt do nothing without the assistance of the Moon […] thou shalt take the Moon [and its patterns, aspects and conjunctions] for that I conceive must in no wise be omitted.’^[37]According to Yates, ‘Agrippa’s occult philosophy is intended to be a very white magic.’^[38]However, despite the corresponding lunar connections, he does acknowledge that the Moon’s influence is changeable like a fitful mistress: ‘the Moon changeth her nature according to the variety of the Signe which it is found in’.^[39]He also describes that ‘[…] the Moon by vertue of the Sun is the mistress of generation, increase, or decrease’^[40], which is a subtle allusion to the symbiotic relationship between these two luminaries which Plutarch regards as parasitic. There is also a reference to the more negative ‘[…] Lunatick passions which proceed from the combustion of the Moon.’^[41]

Comparable to Plutarch’s consideration of the parasitic nature of the Moon towards the Sun, Blavatsky envisions a similar understanding of the Moon with regard to its relationship with and influence on the Earth. In The Secret Doctrine, the Moon is treated as a dead planet having an unhealthy influence over our living planet Earth and this is extremely evident in Blavatsky’s use of potent language in this regard: ‘The Moon is now the cold residual quantity, the shadow dragged after the new body […] doomed for long ages to be ever pursuing the Earth, to be attracted by and to attract her progeny. Constantly vampirised by her child, she revenges herself on it by soaking it through and through with the nefarious, invisible, and poisoned influence which emanates from the occult side of her nature. For she is a dead, yet a living body. The particles of her decaying corpse are full of active and destructive life, although the body which they had formed is soulless and lifeless. […].’^[42]Blavatsky gives concrete albeit grim examples of this influence in the physical world in the fact that grass growth thrives on the graves of the dead and that ‘the moon is the friend of the sorcerers and the foe of the unwary’^[43]. C.W. Leadbeater, a contemporary theosophist of Blavatsky, equally approaches the Moon in an abysmal manner, stating that ‘it is a “dead end,” a place where only refuse gathers, and it is a kind of a dust-heap or waste-paper-basket to the system – a kind of astral cesspool into which are thrown decaying fragments of various sorts, such as the lost personality which has torn itself away from the ego […].’^[44]Overall, Plutarch’s parasitic view of the Moon and Blavatsky’s treatment of the Moon as an insidious, blood-sucking being conjures up a far from alluring, admirable and magical image of the Moon that we see in Agrippa’sThree Books of Occult Philosophy.

Conclusion

Taking everything into consideration, it is evident that all three texts regard the Moon as an object of significance. Concerning science and natural laws, all three texts acknowledge the role of science in investigating the Moon. However, for the most part, all three authors convey the need for any investigation of the Moon to go beyond ordinary scientific methodologies, advocating for the Moon to be explored magically through natural laws and occult studies. Regarding the role of myth, all three texts positively convey the role of the Moon in the myths of different cultures, both ancient and modern. Finally, all three texts acknowledge to varying degrees the Moon’s negative side and influence, Agrippa at the lesser end of that scale in flagging only the Moon’s changeable, “lunatic” nature but Plutarch and Blavatsky at the upper end of that scale imparting the parasitic, vampiric and insidious nature of the Moon.

Bibliography:

Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. by Joseph H. Patterson, 2000: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa1.htm

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 2014): http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd-hp.htm

Brunner, Bernd, Moon: A Brief History, (Yale: Yale University Press, 2010).

Hamilton, W., ‘The Myth in Plutarch’s De Facie (940F-945D)’, The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Jan.,1934), pp. 24-30.

Judge, William Quan, ‘Moon’s Mystery and Fate’, William Q. Judge Theosophical Articles, Vol. I: http://www.blavatsky.net/index.php/moon-s-mystery-and-fateaccessed on 8th June, 2017.

Karamanolis, George, “Plutarch”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/plutarch/

accessed on June 10^th2017.

Leadbeater, Charles Webster, The Inner Life Vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Press, 1942).

Plutarch, MoraliaVol. XII, trans. by Harold Cherniss and W. C. Helmbold (Harvard University: Loeb Classical Library, 1957).

Yates, Frances, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age(Oxford and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2010).

^[1]Plutarch, MoraliaVol. XII, trans. by Harold Cherniss and W. C. Helmbold (Harvard University: Loeb Classical Library, 1957).

^[2]Helena Petrovna, Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine,the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 2014): http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd-hp.htm, accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[3]Heinrich Cornelius, Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. by Joseph H. Patterson, 2000: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa1.htm accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[4]Plutarch,Moralia, Line 920C, p. 35.

^[5]Plutarch,Moralia, Line 920C – 923, pp. 35-55.

^[6]Plutarch,Moralia, Line 923 p.55-59.

^[7]George, Karamanolis, “Plutarch”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/plutarch/accessed on 10^thJune 2017.

^[8]Frances,Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age(Oxford and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2010),p. 53.

^[9]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (viii) How the Elements are in the Heavens, in Stars, in Divels [devils], in Angels, and lastly in God himself’, Book I Natural Magic, Three Books of Occult Philosophy:http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa1.htm#chap8 accessed 5^thJune 2017.

^[10]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (x) Of the Number Seaven’, and the Scale thereof, Book II Celestial Magic,Three Books of Occult Philosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa2.htm#chap10 accessed 5^thJune 2017.

^[11]Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, p. 55.

^[12]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xvii) How by enmity and friendship the vertues of things are to be tryed, and found out’,

Book I Natural Magic, Three Books of Occult Philosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa1.htm#chap17accessed 5^thJune 2017.

^[13]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xxiv) What things are Lunary, or under the power of the Moon’, Book I Natural Magic, Three Books of Occult Philosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp1b.htm#chap24accessed 5^thJune 2017.

^[14]Yates,The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age,p.55.

^[15]Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 180.

^[16]William Quan Judge, ‘Moon’s Mystery and Fate’, William Q. Judge Theosophical Articles, Vol. I: http://www.blavatsky.net/index.php/moon-s-mystery-and-fate accessed on 8^thJune, 2017.

^[17]Bernd, Brunner, Moon: A Brief History, (Yale: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 25.

^[18]Brunner, Moon: A Brief History, p. 27.

^[19]Brunner, Moon: A Brief History, p. 32.

^[20]Plutarch, Moralia, Line 923C p. 59.

^[21]George, Karamanolis, “Plutarch”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/plutarch/

accessed on 10^thJune 2017.

^[22]Plutarch, Moralia, Line 943 p. 207-209.

^[23]W., Hamilton, ‘The Myth in Plutarch’s De Facie (940F-945D)’, The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Jan.,1934), pp. 24-30.

^[24]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xliv) Of the Images of the Moon’, Book II Celestial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2c.htm#chap44accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[25]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xlv) Of the Images of the head and tayle of the Dragon of the Moon’, Book IICelestial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy:http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2c.htm#chap45accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[26]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (lix) Of the seven governors of the world, the Planets, and of their various names serving to Magicall speeches’, Book IICelestial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy:http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2d.htm#chap59accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[27]Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, p. 156.

^[28]Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 180.

^[29]Plutarch, Moralia, Line 929, p.99-101.

^[30]Plutarch, Moralia, Line 929, p.99-101.

^[31]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xxx) When Planets are of most powerful influence’, Book IICelestial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy:http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2c.htm#chap30accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[32]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xxxiii) Of the Seals, and Characters of Naturall things’, Book INatural Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy:http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp1b.htm#chap33accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[33]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (lix) Of Divination by Dreams’, Book INatural Magic,Three Books of OccultPhilosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp1c.htm#chap59accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[34]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xxii) Of the tables of the Planets, their vertues, forms, and what Divine names, Intelligencies, and Spirits are set over them’, Book IICelestial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy:http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2b.htm#chap22 accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[35]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xiv) Of the Gods of the gentiles, and souls of the Celestiall bodies, and what places were consecrated in times past, and to what Deities’, Book III Ceremonial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa3.htm#chap14accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[36]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xxiv) Of the names of Spirits, and their various imposition; and of the Spirits that are set over the Stars, Signs, Corners of the Heaven, and the Elements’, Book IIICeremonial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp3b.htm#chap24accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[37]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xxix) Of the Observation of Celestials, necessary in every Magical Work’, Book IICelestial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2c.htm#chap29accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[38]Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, p. 55.

^[39]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xvii) How by enmity and friendship the vertues of things are to be tryed, and found out’,

Book I Natural Magic, Three Books of Occult Philosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa1.htm#chap17accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[40]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xxxii) Of the Sun, and Moon, and their Magicall considerations’, Book IICelestial Magic,Three Books of OccultPhilosophy: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2c.htm#chap32accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[41]Agrippa, ‘Chapter (xli) Of the Images of the Sun’, Book IICelestial Magic, Three Books of OccultPhilosophy:http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2c.htm#chap41accessed on 5^thJune 2017.

^[42]Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine,Volume I, p. 156.

^[43]Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, p. 156.

^[44]Charles Webster Leadbeater, The Inner Life Vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Press, 1942), p. 184.

Stonehenge

by Mike Parker Pearson

Reviewed by Pam Armstrong

The crucial thing to know about Mike Parker Pearson’s book ‘Stonehenge’ is that it not only discusses the famous megalithic stone circle; it also explores the history of two other circles close by, Woodhenge and Bluestonehenge, as well as exploring the lives of the people who built all three. Professor Parker Pearson’s overview of the monument that we think of as Stonehenge is really about the most recent archaeology carried out on the entire hillside leading down from Stonehenge itself, to the newly discovered Neolithic settlement of Durrington Walls close to the River Avon. As Parker Pearson tells it the extensive excavations across this entire hill and riverside reveal new information about the way people lived and buried their dead in what was essentially Europe’s largest community 4500 years ago.

The Stonehenge World Heritage Site including Durrington Walls, Bluestonehenge and Woodhenge.

Once the settlement by the river was discovered it became clear that the two sites, Stonehenge and Durrington Walls were not separate as everyone had thought, but were in fact two halves of the same complex. In other words, to understand Stonehenge, one has to decode Durrington. And that is precisely what Parker Pearson’s book does. His easy to read and well illustrated text details the archaeological excavations which became known as the Riverside Project. This project ran for seven years from 2003 and counted as one of the world’s largest of its time. In all, forty five excavations occurred across the 26.6 square kilometres that we loosely designate ‘Stonehenge.’

As Parker Pearson himself points out Stonehenge was not one monument, built at one moment in history, but many monuments built over many centuries. His book covers this evolutionary process, and then broadens in scope to look at the wider social patterns of the time. It explores long-distance mobility and trade, architectural developments and funerary customs all of which provide an essential key to understanding the Neolithic peoples who inhabited this landscape then.

Parker Pearson is bold in his claims that the discoveries of the Riverside Project must now re-shape our view of this unique World Heritage site. He claims for instance that the design of megalithic Stonehenge was not influenced by distant cultures but followed architectural fashions of the time, reflecting local vernacular. In terms of Stonehenge’s social function, the discovery of animal bones and lipids within pots at Durrington Walls point he says to midwinter and summertime gatherings. This reinforces the view that the circle’s solsticial and lunar alignments were not part of an abstracted calendar, but marked key moments of annual gathering and celebration. Perhaps most importantly the Riverside Project has reassessed radio carbon dating old and new and so is in a position to argue for a revised chronology of Stonehenge’s building phases. Thus Parker Pearson’s ‘Stonehenge’ anchors this spectacular monument in time and place in a new way and for this alone the book is a most useful reference point for those interested in the continuing debate about Neolithic Europe. Highly recommended.

Saturn as a Malefic Planet: A Research Note

Stavroula Konstantopoulou

This research note compares and contrasts the treatment of Saturn as a malefic planet according to three original source documents. The first source is the second-century Tetrabiblos or Quadripartitum,the four-book treatise on astrology composed by Claudius Ptolemy and originally written in Greek (ca. 100-178 CE).^[1]Though the Tetrabiblosis now known as a systematic treatise on astrology, Ptolemy actually uses the word ‘astronomy’: the two words then had no separate meaning.^[2]The second source, De vita libri tres (Three Books on Life) by the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), was first published in Latin in 1489 and discusses a variety of topics relating to on medical, psychological, astrological and magical issues.^[3]Ficino also offered his readers advice on how to be a man of letters (as he was) and still maintain good health.^[4]The third source is Saturn. A New Look at an Old Devil, a seminal work in modern psychological astrology by Liz Greene, published in 1976.^[5]Greene examined the traditionally so-called ‘malefic’ influence of the planet Saturn through signs, houses, aspects and synastry from a psychological point of view. Greene’s analysis dismissed Saturn’s traditional description as malefic and, relying on a psychological perspective, she re-defined the planet’s role as a tool for self-realisation and self-actualisation. This research note will analyse these sources from the viewpoints of Saturn’s influence as a malefic or transformational planet, and from the different cosmological contexts that shaped understanding of Saturnian qualities.

One of the most fundamental distinctions in Western astrology, which originated in Mesopotamia, holds that there are two categories of planets — ‘good’ and ‘bad’ classified in the sources as ‘benefic’ and ‘malefic’, that is, causing good and evil fortune respectively.^[6]Western astrology’s view — both traditional and modern — of Saturn is an amalgam of a variety of characteristics. Inherited from the earlier Mesopotamian tradition. what prevails is Saturn’s association symbolically with restriction, harshness and discipline.^[7]The Tetrabiblospresented some of the earliest negative perceptions of the planet’s astrological characteristics. Ptolemy called Saturn malefic, deadly and the bringer of evil: ‘if it happen’, he wrote, ‘that Saturn be in fixed signs, and in quartile or opposition to the Sun, and contrary in condition, he will produce death by suffocation, occasioned either by multitudes of people, or by hanging or strangulation… if in Virgo or Pisces, or watery signs, and configurated with the Moon, he will operate death by means of water, by drowning and suffocation’.^[8]

Conversely, Ficino’s De Vitapromoted a more positive and constructive attitude towards Saturn’s influence: ‘if some were to accuse Saturn and Mars of being harmful by nature, I would not believe it … When the power of Saturn is cautiously taken, it is useful …’^[9]Ficino seemed to have great respect for Saturn, which may be related to its prominent place in his own personal horoscope.^[10]In a letter addressed to his friend Giovanni Cavalcanti, he commented that ‘Saturn seems to have impressed the seal of melancholy on me at the beginning’.^[11]His understanding of Saturn sought to counter the planet’s constrictive connotations — the ‘tyranny of Saturn’ as he called it — by encouraging the reader to create harmony and balance in all spheres of life.^[12]Similarly, Greene acknowledging that the majority of astrological textbooks about Saturn coincided ‘with hindrances and the frustration of the even flow of material and emotional comfort in life,’ was oriented towards a more psychological reading of the planet; in her words ‘it is the inner meaning which here concerns us’.^[13]For example, in discussing the placement of Saturn in the sign of Leo, Greene suggested that the planet’s challenges had to be recognised and seriously accepted in order for the individual to increase their self-awareness: ‘Saturn is awkward in the Sun’s sign, and the challenge offered to the person with this placement is a difficult one for he needs to find his inner centre and identify with that rather than the trappings with which he usually surrounds himself’.^[14]

Taking into account their diverse cultural backgrounds, while all three source documents connected Saturn to adverse connotations, they varied in their assessments of the planet’s impact and experience, a variation which may be related to their broader cosmological context. Within the Tetrabiblosone may see Aristotle’s pivotal impact on Ptolemy’s cosmology, in which the mechanism behind astrology was conceptualised as working through some naturalistic rationale, and the celestial influence from the stars and planets was removed from all divine and mythological causes. As Ptolemy wrote: ‘We apprehend the aspects of the movements of sun, moon, and stars in relation to each other and to the earth, as they occur from time to time; the second is that in which by means of the natural character of these aspects themselves we investigate the changes which they bring about in that which they surround’.^[15]Following the Aristotelean line of thought to set up the framework for the astrological mechanics, Ptolemy argued that the principles of physics and geometry defined the favourable and unfavourable nature of planets. Thus according to the planets’ natural qualities and their angular relationships towards the ecliptic, Ptolemy claimed that ‘Saturn’s quality was chiefly to cool and, moderately, to dry, probably because he is furthest removed both from the Sun’s heat and the moist exhalations about the earth’.^[16]One may observe that the format of Greene’s Saturnfollowed the Ptolemaic tradition in a sense of an astrological textbook of delineations, presenting Saturn’s placement in the signs and houses and in aspect to other planets. However, as Robert Hand noted in his introduction to the 2011 edition of the book, this conventional way of organising the material moved passed the traditional forms of astrology that held there were ‘good’ and ‘bad’ planets, and maintained that ‘the level of consciousness with which one approaches one’s own life is not fixed or determined by whatever the birth chart signifies’.^[17]

Similarly, but contrary to the Ptolemaic tradition that upheld a natural process of causation, Ficino objected to the mechanistic rationale in Aristotelean causality and embraced, as he exclaimed, ‘Plato’s style [which] is more like that of a divine oracle than any human eloquence’.^[18]At the beginning of Book I, Ficino stated that ‘Hippocrates promises health of body, Socrates, of soul,’ meaning that his exposition of causality did not exclude the spiritual presence in the natural world.^[19]Ficino understood and perceived astrology’s purpose not in the sphere of prognostication but as a means to harmonise one’s physical and spiritual living with the heavenly order. His aetiological treatment on the influence of the stars was based on the idea of correspondences (sympatheia), which, as Suzanne Bobzien wrote, held that ‘in some sense everything in the universe emits some physical influence on everything else,’ where every single thing in the cosmos was linked into a set of intricate horizontal and vertical correspondences.^[20]The reader of De vita was then encouraged ‘to investigate which star promised what good to the individual at his nativity’ and then to participate actively in the relationship between the natural and the divine worlds ‘by an application of our spirit to the spirit of the cosmos’ in order to achieve balance.^[21]

was then encouraged ‘to investigate which star promised what good to the individual at his nativity’ and then to participate actively in the relationship between the natural and the divine worlds ‘by an application of our spirit to the spirit of the cosmos’ in order to achieve balance.^[21]

Ficino’s concern about the influence of the body on the soul was epitomised in his treatment of the astrological significance of the melancholic humour, particularly in its relation to the planet Saturn.^[22]Profoundly influenced by the fact that Saturn had a prominent place in his birth chart, Ficino offered a series of remedies to counterbalance the malefic effects of the planet upon one’s horoscope, such as wearing specific garments and amulets, listening and playing to music, using appropriate herbs and scents and altering behavioural habits.^[23]Unlike Ptolemy, Ficino perceived that the experience of astrological Saturn was not confined in the workings of a deterministic universe but on the corresponding level of the individual’s ability to minimise in theirs mind, body and soul the effects of what was thought to be a challenging astrological placement. It was from this notion that Ficino re-visioned the role of planets as they all had gifts to offer, including the so-called malefics for which he cautioned his readers to ‘be sure then that you do not neglect the power of Saturn’.^[24]

Nicholas Campion raised an important distinction in that Aristotelean naturalism provided the cosmological framework for Ptolemy’s astrological rationale, but at the same time appealed to Plato’s worldview of manipulating the natural world by harmonising with celestial influences.^[25]According to Campion, Ptolemy indeed brought into his work Saturn’s traits from the Babylonian astrological tradition, ‘but gave them a naturalistic justification which meant he hoped that it was difficult to challenge them’.^[26]

As a final note, Saturn’s astrological malefic manifestations found in the Ptolemaic tradition are part of astrology’s history and can offer a constructive insight into rationalisations in modern Western astrology. All three source documents exhibited that the perception of Saturn remained in its core intact, for in the course of the historical scholarship of astrology the planet seemed to call for the same attention and effort from the individual to constructively maximise its astrological influence. For instance, with regard to Saturn’s early interpretations Erin Sullivan took a contemporary psychological point of view and suggested that ‘they were valid perceptions of Saturn at that time, and to a certain degree remain entirely functional at a symbolic level’.^[27]From this viewpoint when Saturn in the fixed signs Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) makes hard aspects (such as square and opposition) to the Sun, physical suffocation is better understood as ‘suffocation of one’s will, vitality and essential Self, originating in feelings of inadequacy or oppression’.^[28]At one level, by exploring the different Saturnian dimensions of experience, Ptolemy, Ficino and Greene all revealed the developments in the technicalities of practicing astrology through the centuries; yet at another level these passages can contribute to a profound understanding for the historical scholarship in astrology.

Introducing the 2011 edition of Liz Greene’s Saturn, Robert Hand presented a short history of the ideological framework of the notion of benefic and malefic planets that dominated the astrological literature until the twentieth century, and he explored how other ancient and contemporary authors before Greene had voiced similar objections about the deterministic views on astrology and the planets’ classifications as auspicious or not.^[29]Out of this range of meanings and functions ascribed to Saturn one can observe that modern Western astrology survives through a continuity rather than diversification in its technical language, and this continuity is based primarily on the shared philosophical, cultural and cosmological patterns of belief that shaped the astrological milieu. It is within this framework that one can understand why for Ptolemy, Ficino and Greene astrology, in Campion’s words, ‘remained managerial and participatory … but the locus of participation had changed’ for each.^[30]In the Ptolemaic tradition the focus was the natural universe, in Ficino’s world the struggle between the body and the soul, and for Greene psychological factors.

To conclude, having considered the treatment of the planet Saturn in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, Marcilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres and Liz Greene’s Saturn,a key conclusion is that, aside from methodological and ideological points of convergence and divergence, the notion that it can provide an insightful framework for appreciation and understanding of humanity’s relationship and discourse with the sky links to classical, Renaissance and modern texts with remarkable continuity.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. by Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts Clark (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies and the Renaissance Society of America, 1989).

Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos(trans. F.E Robbins; Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1940).

Secondary Sources

Bobzien Susanne, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy(Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1998] 2005).

Brennan Chris, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune(Amor Fati Publications , 2017).

Burton Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. by John B. Bamborough et al., 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989–2000).

Campion Nicholas, A History of Astrology. Volume I: The Ancient and Classical Worlds (London: Continuum Books, 2008).

Campion Nicholas, A History of Astrology. Volume II. The Medieval and Modern Worlds(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2009).

Clydesdale Ruth, ‘‘Jupiter tames Saturn’: Astrology in Ficino’s Epistolae’’ in Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his Influence, ed. by Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw and Valery Rees (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 198. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 117-132.

Greene Liz, Saturn. A New Look at an Old Devil(York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1976).

Klibansky Raymond, Panofsky Erwin and Saxl Fritz, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (London: Nelson, 1964).

Rochberg-Halton Francesca, ‘Benefic and Malefic Planets in Babylonian Astrology,’ in A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs, ed. by Erle Leichty, Pamela Gerardi, Abraham Sachs and Maria de J. Ellis (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), pp. 319-324.nRadden Jennifer (ed.), The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva(Oxford University Press, 2000).

Riley Mark, ‘Science and Tradition in the Tetrabiblos,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society132.1 (1988), pp. 67-84.

Erin Sullivan, Saturn in transit: boundaries of mind, body, and soul(York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 2000).

Voss Angela, ‘The Astrology of Marsilio Ficino: Divination or Science?’, Culture and Cosmos4.2 (2000), pp. 29-46.

^[1]Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, trans. F.E Robbins (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1940), pp. x-xi

^[2]Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, pp. x-xi.

^[3]Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. by Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies and the Renaissance Society of America, 1989), p. 4 ff. De Vitaconsists of three books: Book I entitled De litteratorum veletudine curanda(On Caring for the Health of Learned People), Book II entitled De vita longa(On Long Life) and Book III De vita tum valida tum longa coelitus comparanda(On Obtaining a Life both Healthy and Long from the Heavens).

^[4]Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life.

^[5]Liz Greene, Saturn. A New Look at an Old Devil(York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1976).

^[6]Rochberg-Halton, Francesca, ‘Benefics and Malefics in Babylonian Astrology’, in E. Leichty et al., eds., A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs(Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 9, Philadelphia, Pa, 1988):pp. 323-328.

^[7]Francesca Rochberg-Halton, ‘Benefic and Malefic Planets in Babylonian Astrology,’ in A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs, ed. by Erle Leichty, Pamela Gerardi, Abraham Sachs and Maria de J. Ellis (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988): pp. 319-324. See also Robert Hand, ‘Introduction’ in Greene, Saturn, pp. 3-8;

^[8]Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Book IV.9.

^[9]Ficino, De Vita, Book III.2.60ff

^[10]Ruth Clydesdale, ‘‘Jupiter tames Saturn’: Astrology in Ficino’s Epistolae’’ in Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his Influence, ed. by Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw and Valery Rees (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 198. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 123-126.

^[11]Cited in Ficino,De Vita, p.20.

^[12]Nicholas Campion, A History of Western Astrology, . Volume II.The (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2009), pp. 91-92.

^[13]Greene, Saturn, p. 15.

^[14]Greene, Saturn, p. 83 and Hand, ‘Introduction’, pp. 3-8.

^[15]Ptolemy Tetrabiblos, Book I.1.1; For Aristotle and Ptolemy see Nicholas Campion, A History of Astrology, Volume I(London: Continuum Books, 2008), pp. 209-211 and Mark Riley, ‘Science and Tradition in the Tetrabiblos,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society132.1 (1988), pp. 67-84.

^[16]Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, I.4.

^[17]Greene, Saturn, p. 8.

^[18]Angela Voss, ‘The Astrology of Marsilio Ficino: Divination or Science?’, Culture and Cosmos4.2 (2000), pp 29-45 (p. 33), citing Marsilio Ficino, Opera omnia (Basle, 1576), p. 1129; Campion, History II, pp. 89-90.

^[19]Marsilio Ficino, De Vita, Book I.1.19-20.

^[20]Kaske, CaroleC. and Clark, John R., ‘Introduction’, in Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. Kaske, CaroleC. and Clark, John R. (1989), Ficino, Three Books on Life, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Binghamton: State University of New York at Binghamton, pp. 3-90,

Susanne Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy(Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1998] 2005), p. 169. (quote); Campion,History II, p. 91.

^[21]Ficino, De Vita, Book III.2.82-92.

^[22]Jennifer Radden (ed.), The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva(Oxford University Press, 2000): pp. 87-88. On the notion of melancholy, see Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. by John B. Bamborough et al., 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989–2000) and its relation to Saturn, see Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (London: Nelson, 1964).

^[23]Ficino, De Vita, Book III.2.63-66.

^[24]Ficino, De Vita, Book III.12.59-60.

^[25]Campion , History I, pp. 210-211

^[26]Campion, History I, p. 211.

^[27]Erin Sullivan, Saturn in transit: boundaries of mind, body, and soul(York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 2000), p. 17.

^[28]Sullivan, Saturn in transit, pp. 17-18.

^[29]In Greene, Saturn, Hand, ‘Introduction’, pp. 3-6.

^[30]Campion, History I, pp. 211-213.

The Turtle, The Peccary, and the Two-Headed Serpent: Comparison of Maya Zodiac Constellations in the Paris Codex and the Murals of Bonampak

Chris Layser

This paper presents a brief comparative analysis of two important depictions of the sky from the corpus of Maya art and iconography: the so-called ‘Maya Zodiac’ found within the pages of the Paris Codex and the painted murals of Room 2 at Bonampak in Chiapas, Mexico. This comparison will focus on three iconographical elements relating to the Maya sky: the skyband, the turtle, and the peccary — the latter of which is now effaced in the Paris Codex — in order to establish whether they represent three important sky markers relating to the Maya creation myth.

Although the exact age and provenience of the Paris Codex, a Maya screen-fold hieroglyphic manuscript, is unknown, Bruce Love suggests ‘the best working hypothesis’ is that it was produced in the Post-Classic Yucatec polity Mayapan, ‘near the end of that city’s existence as a power centre, around A.D. 1450’.^[1]Gregory Severin presents it as an astronomical ephemeris, demonstrating that pages 23-24 represent a thirteen-constellation zodiac which the Maya used in order ‘to calculate the sidereal year’.^[2]These pages are frequently referred to as the ‘Maya Zodiac’, although Love suggests a ‘dominant constellation’ model may be more accurate, arguing that though ‘stars and groupings of stars were extremely potent forces, and yearly movements of the constellations held great meaning… these stars did not have to lie within the [18˚ wide] zodiacal band..^[3]This analysis will refer to the constellations as zodiacal and will compare two of them to animal figures within cartouches painted onto the corbelled ceiling of Bonampak Room 2.

The murals were painted in the three rooms of Structure 1 and ‘work as a unit formally and iconographically’ to tell a story set near the end of the Classic period.^[4]The Room 2 mural depicts a battle on one wall and a victory celebration on the other — set beneath what appears to be a starry sky. Harvey and Victoria Bricker describe this ‘one small portion of the murals’ as ‘relevant to any investigation of a pre-Columbian Maya zodiac’.^[5]Unfortunately, as Michael Coe explains, Maya scholarship is now ‘dependent upon copyists for the analysis of the Bonampak murals’, for though the paintings were ‘relatively intact upon their discovery in 1946, [they] are now only shadows of their former selves.’^[6]

Figure 1: The Maya Zodiac from pages 23-24 of the Paris Codex with skyband, turtle and possible peccary constellations. Identification notes added by author.

The Skybands

An important and ever-present aspect of Maya celestial iconography is the skyband, identified in Figure 1. Animal images hang from the dominant skyband of the Maya Zodiac, which bisects the two pages, while a less ornate skyband crosses the bottom of the pages. Beth Collea’s early 1980s study sets the following three criteria for their identification: at least one of a set of specific glyphs is represented, the glyphs are shown ‘fused together rather than in separate cartouches’, and no affixes appear within the glyphs in the band.^[7]The skyband glyphs on the upper-register of the Maya Zodiac reads from right to left and contains a variety of glyphs pertaining to the sky, heavenly bodies, or signs of the night.^[8]The band on the lower register has no diagnostics, only a zig-zag dotted line, which may represent a serpent’s pattern and out of context would likely not pass Collea’s identification criteria as a skyband at all.

Herbert Spinden first pointed out that though the skyband ‘turned downward at the left’ and ‘cut off short at the right end’ it must represent ‘the elongated body of a Two-headed Dragon.’^[9]John Carlson and Linda Landisbelieve the skyband ‘in all its functional representations is the body of the bicephalic dragon’ which becomes the ‘cosmic border framing the Maya world’.^[10]Linda Schele realized the ‘Double-Headed Serpent’ which was draped around and through the branches of the ‘World Tree’ of the Milky Way in so much Maya iconography specifically represented the ecliptic- the ‘line of constellations in which the sun rises and sets throughout the year’.^[11]It is now well understood that skybands point to celestial activity, and these bands bear import roles in the astronomical interpretation of both the Paris Zodiac and the murals of Bonampak.

Figure 2: Lower portion is the reproduction of the entire Bonampak Room 2 by Antonio Teudaf, 1948, from Martha Ilia Nájera Coronado (1991). The upper portion is the enlarged section of the top of the north wall (right).

Subtle and subdued in comparison to the upper skyband in the Paris Codex zodiac pages, the blue-green skyband of Room 2 at Bonampak separates the ‘battle scene’ of the south-west wall and the ‘victory scene’ of the north-east wall from the celestial happeningson the corbelled ceilings above (Figure 2). Mary Ellen Miller thought that the front head of this bicephalic monster was identifiable atop the east wall of Room 1.^[12]Although the crossbands glyph – which Schele suggests represents the intersection of the ecliptic and the Milky Way — can be determined, no other glyphs are discernible.^[13]Bricker and Bricker suggest that:

The painting was never completed… the sky band in its present form appears to have ten rectangular fields or segments. Both the leftmost and the rightmost two segments contain cross-bands signs similar to those [at] Las Monjas at Chichén Itzá… [while] the central six segments… are empty.’^[14]

Taking account of the attention to detail in the rest of the mural, Bricker and Brickers’ opinion seems unlikely, and the lack of detail may be a stylistic choice of the artist. The real purpose of the skyband, Miller contends, is ‘dividing human space and heavenly space’.^[15]Here the cartouches set atop of the skyband — as opposed to the Paris Codex where figures hang below. This identifies them as heavenly images, and informs, as do all representations of the two-headed serpent, of observation along the ecliptic.

The Turtle

Of the recognisable figures hanging from the skybands of the Paris Zodiac, only the turtle is found on the Bonampak murals; and from the frequency of the turtle’s depiction throughout Maya art, its importance becomes apparent (Figure 3). Severin notes the sixteenth-century Spanish/Maya dictionary Calepino de Mortul‘lists but two Maya constellations with their known counterparts in the Greco-Babylonian zodiac: tzab, the ‘tail of the rattlesnake’ known to us as the Pleiades…and ac ek, the “turtle stars”’, which corresponded in part to the stars in the constellation Gemini or Orion.^[16]The Maya creation story as recorded on stele from Quiriguá explains how three ‘hearthstones’ were placed in the sky at the beginning of the current age.^[17]Dennis Tedlock found ‘the stars Alnitak, Saiph, and Rigel in Orion… are said by the Quichés to be the three hearthstones of the typical Maya kitchen fireplace arranged to form a triangle’ and that these stars ‘enclose the Orion Nebula … said to be a smoky fire’.^[18]The turtle which sits upon the skyband at Bonampak has three star symbols upon its back, and the preponderance of evidence suggests this represents the Belt of Orion.

The Peccary

A second cartouche on the Bonampak ceiling contains copulating peccaries, yet the peccary is not found in the Paris Zodiac. Floyd Lounsbury compared these pages to ‘a band of astral or zodiacal signs inscribed on the Casa de las Monjas at Chichen Itza’ which ‘gives evidence for a “peccary” … with both the turtle and the peccary depicted over “star” signs within their respective cartouches’.^[19]The question could be asked whether these various sources contain the same collection of celestial images. Bernadette Brady has demonstrated that in the Western tradition the ‘images that humanity has placed in the sky’ display a ‘persistence through time’ changing little over the span of millennia.^[20]It is reasonable, therefore, to suggest that the Maya constellations had remained static over the course of mere centuries, and that the peccary constellation would have its place within the Paris Codex zodiac pages. Bricker and Bricker pointed to the empty space at the bottom-left corner of page 24 and ‘suggested that the peccary… might fit into the sequence at this position… However, this suggestion was based solely on [their] interpretation of murals on the north wall of Room 2 at the Classic site of Bonampak.’^[21]Analysis of the embedded arithmetic by Richard Johnson and Michel Quenon suggests this spot would be home to the stars that comprised the constellation of Gemini.^[22]

Figure 3: (left) The sky turtle and the three hearthstones of creation hang from the skyband in the Madrid Codex M.71a; (left centre) the Maize God reborn at the moment of creation from a crack in a the turtle’s back, photo by Justin Kerr, K1892; (right centre)the Maize God re-born at the moment of creation from a crack in the peccary’s back from Michael Coe (1973) page 159 and (right) the peccary constellation within the skyband at Casa de las Monjas at Chichen Itza, drawing by Herbert Spinden, 1916.

Lounsbury interpreted date of the battle depicted on the mural from the heavily effaced glyphs to be 13 Chichan 13 Yax (9.18.1.15.5).^[23]Linda Schele later used this date, correlating to 6 August 792 CE, to show that ‘in the hours before dawn the constellations of Gemini and Orion had hovered above the eastern horizon’ and made the connection that ‘Gemini had to be the copulating peccaries’.^[24]She noted this date was only four days before the creation date of 13 August and suggested these two constellations at the intersection of the ‘World Tree’ and the ‘Double-Headed Dragon’ marked the location in the sky where the act of creation took place (Figure 4). Further evidence in support of this conclusion is presented in Figure 3 which includes images of the Maize God reborn at the moment of creation, emerging from a crack in the back of both a turtle and a peccary.

In conclusion, this paper presented a comparative analysis of pages 23-24 of the Paris Codex- which demonstrates the Maya recognised thirteen constellations along or near the ecliptic, and murals painted upon the walls of Room 2, Structure 1 at Bonampak. Both display a skyband representing the ‘Two-headed Dragon’ of the ecliptic, though the skyband of the Paris Codex offers complex glyphic diagnostics whereas the skyband of the murals is in its most simplistic form. Two constellations were considered: the turtle and peccary. The turtle is present in both the codex and the murals and has been identified as the stars of Orion by ethno-astronomical investigations. It has been argued that the peccary, which is present on the mural, once existed on the codex as well and represents the stars comprising the constellation Gemini. Furthermore, it has been suggested that these two constellations were important sky markers pertaining to the Maya story of creation. When the ancient Maya looked to the pre-dawn summer sky, the turtle and the peccary were important figures perceived at this intersection of the ecliptic and Milky way.

Bibliography

Bernadette Brady, ‘Images in the Heavens: A Cultural Landscape’, in The Imagined Sky, ed. by Darrelyn Gunzburg, (Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox Publishing, 2016).

Harvey M. Bricker and Victoria R. Bricker, ‘Zodiacal References in the Maya Codices’, in The Sky in Mayan Literature, ed. by Anthony Aveni, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Harvey M. Bricker and Victoria R. Bricker, Astronomy in the Maya Codices, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2011).

John B Carlson and Linda C. Landis, ‘Bands, Bicephalic Dragons, and Other Beasts: The Skyband in Maya Art and Iconography’ in Fourth Palenque Round Table, 1980, ed. by Merle Greene Robertson and Elizabeth P. Benson, (San Francisco: The Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, 1985).

Michael D. Coe, ‘Art and Illusion among the Classic Maya’, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, Vol. 64 (2005).

Michael D. Coe, The Maya Scribe and His World, (New York: The Grolier Club, 1973).

Beth A. Collea, ‘The Celestial Bands in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing’, in Archaeoastronomy in the Americas, ed. Ray A. Williamson, (Los Altos and College Park: Ballena Press and The Center for Archaeoastronomy, 1981).

Martha Ilia Nájera Coronado, Bonampak, (Nápoles, Mexico: Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas, 1991).

David Freidel, Linda Schele and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path, (New York, London, Toronto and Sydney: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1993).

Floyd G. Lounsbury, ‘Astronomical Knowledge and its Use at Bonampak, Mexico’ in Foundations of New World Cultural Astronomy, ed. Anthony Aveni (Boulder: University of Colorado, 2008). Originally published in Archaeoastronomy in the New World, ed. Anthony Aveni, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

Bruce Love, The Paris Codex: Handbook for a Maya Priest, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994).

Mary Ellen Miller, The Murals of Bonampak, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

Mary Ellen Miller and Claudia Brittenham, The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013).

Gregory M Severin, ‘The Paris Codex: Decoding an Astronomical Ephemeris’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 71, No. 5 (1981).

Herbert J. Spinden, ‘The Question of the Zodiac in America’, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1916).

Dennis Tedlock,Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of The Mayan Book of The Dawn of Life and The Glories of Gods and Kings, (New York: Touchstone, 1996).

Dennis Tedlock, 2000 Years of Mayan Literature, (Berkley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2010).Khistaan D. Villela and Linda Schele, ‘Astronomy and the Iconography of Creation Among the Classic and Colonial Period Maya’ In Eighth Palenque Round Table, 1993, eds. Merle Greene Robertson, Martha J. Macri and Jan McHargue, (Aust

^[1]Bruce Love, The Paris Codex: Handbook for a Maya Priest, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), p.13.

^[2]Gregory M. Severin, ‘The Paris Codex: Decoding an Astronomical Ephemeris’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 71, No. 5 (1981), p. 37.

^[3]Love, The Paris Codex, p. 89.

^[4]Mary Ellen Miller, The Murals of Bonampak, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p.23

^[5]Harvey M. Bricker and Victoria R. Bricker, ‘Zodiacal References in the Maya Codices’, in The Sky in Mayan Literature, ed. by Anthony Aveni, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 176.

^[6]Michael Coe, ‘Art and Illusion among the Classic Maya’, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, Vol. 64 (2005), p. 55.

^[7]Beth A. Collea, ‘The Celestial Bands in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing’, in Archaeoastronomy in the Americas, ed. Ray A. Williamson, (Los Altos and College Park: Ballena Press and The Center for Archaeoastronomy, 1981), p. 215.

^[8]Carlson and Landis, ‘The Skyband in Maya Art’, pp. 135-138.

^[9]Herbert J. Spinden, ‘The Question of the Zodiac in America’, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1916), pp. 74-75.

^[10]John B. Carlson and Linda C. Landis, ‘Bands, Bicephalic Dragons, and Other Beasts: The Skyband in Maya Art and Iconography’, in Fourth Palenque Round Table, 1980, ed. by Merle Greene Robertson and Elizabeth P. Benson, (San Francisco: The Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, 1985), p.115

^[11]David Freidel, Linda Schele and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path, (New York, London, Toronto and Sydney: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1993), pp. 78-79.

^[12]Miller, The Murals of Bonampak,p. 93.

^[13]Freidel, Schele and Parker, Maya Cosmos,pp. 75-87.

^[14]Bricker and Bricker, ‘Zodiacal References in the Maya Codices’, p. 177.

^[15]Mary Ellen Miller and Claudia Brittenham, The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), p. 105.

^[16]Severin, ‘The Paris Codex: Decoding an Astronomical Ephemeris’, p. 8.

^[17]Dennis Tedlock, 2000 Years of Mayan Literature, (Berkley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2010), pp. 43-58.

^[18]Dennis Tedlock, Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of The Mayan Book of The Dawn of Life and The Glories of Gods and Kings, (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 236.

^[19]Floyd G. Lounsbury, ‘Astronomical Knowledge and its Use at Bonampak, Mexico’, in Foundations of New World Cultural Astronomy, ed. by Anthony Aveni (Boulder: University of Colorado, 2008), p.570

^[20]Bernadette Brady, ‘Images in the Heavens: A Cultural Landscape’, inThe Imagined Sky, ed. Darrelyn Gunzburg, (Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox Publishing, 2016), p. 235.

^[21]Harvey M. Bricker and Victoria R. Bricker, Astronomy in the Maya Codices, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2011), p. 706.

^[22]Khistaan D. Villela and Linda Schele, ‘Astronomy and the Iconography of Creation Among the Classic and Colonial Period Maya’ In Eighth Palenque Round Table, 1993, ed. by Merle Greene Robertson, Martha J. Macri and Jan McHargue. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), p. 4.

^[23]Lounsbury, ‘Astronomical Knowledge and its Use at Bonampak’, pp. 582-583.

^[24]Freidel, Schele and Parker, Maya Cosmos, p. 80.

Experiencing the Goan Skies

Nomita Khatri

This paper explores the relationship between the sky and land in my home state of Goa, India at the onset of the Indian monsoon. Using a phenomenological and reflexive approach I regularly spent time observing the sky at different points as I went about my day, journaling my experience and photographing it over a period of two months. I then analysed the themes that emerged in the context of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) notion of “dwelling,”; Alexandra Harri’s comment on Gilbert White’s idea of being attentive to the weather through the senses and it’s ability to have “agency” on us as described by Christopher Tilley and Bruno Latour. I found that my experience “under-sky” urged me to find expansiveness both outside and within. By encountering the sky as it was I gave myself permission to be present to whoIwas being in the moment too.

Introduction

This paper is a report on the sky journal I kept in June and July 2018 in Goa, observing the wind, clouds, sun and the mildness – or not – of the weather as the Indian monsoon was beginning and ripening to its fullest: this was the hinge as the seasons change. As part of my investigation I explore Martin Heidegger’s concept of ‘dwelling’, outlined in his 1971 essay ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, applying it to life under the monsoon sky of Goa, in the semi-urban neighbourhood where I live. I also looked at Bruno Latour and Christopher Tilley’s notion of ‘agency’, together with and Alexandra Harris’s observation of Gilbert White’s phenomenological response to the weather.

My Method: Phenomenology and Reflexivity

I relied on two methodologies: phenomenology and reflexivity. In the reflexive method narratives through stories are understood in the context of lived experiences and the meanings they create. I am an Indian woman who has just observed my thirty-seventh monsoon from the western coastal state of Goa, India, where I now live. I grew up predominantly in large metropolises around India in a middle class dual-religion (Catholic/Hindu) family. My interest in bio-dynamic farming took me to live, learn and work in semi-rural and rural places, while my professional work as a graphic designer incorporated more of the themes of connecting with the earth, water and sky. Through these experiences, I deepened my understanding of the web of connection in which we live, reflecting both the urban and rural perspectives I have developed.

As Kim Etherington comments, ‘as human beings we learn a great deal from re-telling stories, creating new meanings and deepening existing ones’ while being mindful of ‘our own ideology, culture and politics and that of our participants and audience’.^[1]I have looked at ‘stories’ told during the monsoon period in the form of festivals and rituals, including my experience as a researcher as I considered the sky allowing it to reveal new subjective meanings and a sense of self and identity, negotiated as the stories unfolded. My own experience then becomes part of the narrative. Also, in effect, I was interviewing the sky, engaging with it as fully as I could, as a multi-sensory component. This was the phenomenological part of my research, engaging directly with the phenomena around me. Maurice Merleau-Ponty sees phenomenology as the essential contact point between consciousness and environment.^[2]He talks about phenomenology as a ‘philosophy for which the world is always ‘already there’ before reflection begins… and all its efforts are concentrated upon re-achieving a direct and primitive contact with the world… that does not expect to arrive at an understanding of man and the world from any starting point other than that of their facticity.^[3]Laura Sewall adds to this idea when she says, ‘focused attention produces a richness of colour, a depth of sensory experience and often means the difference between seeing and not seeing’.^[4]For me, inhabiting the sky relied on the use of all my senses, including sound and smell as well as sight. I paid particular attention to the sensual cues presented in my observations, and spent time observing the sky to see what Sewall’s ‘focused attention’ brought to my consciousness.

When there was pause in the rain, which there was most days in the two month period, I walked outside and took photographs on my phone, recorded my sensory observations in a journal. I paid attention to what each of my presented to me, along with anything else which particularly drew my attention.

Literature Review: Being and Dwelling

In his essay ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ Martin Heidegger traces the root of the English word ‘building’ to the Old English word bauen, meaning to dwell. ‘Dwelling’, in turn, comes from the Gothic wunianand is itself related to the German bauen, which is ‘to dwell’ Bauenalso signifies to ‘stay in place’ or ‘remain’ whereas, wunian specifies how this is to be experienced, ‘to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the vine’.^[5]Therefore bauen means ‘to stay in one place’, while ‘being at peace’ to be ‘safe guarded from danger.’Heidegger belived that, ‘the fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving’(emphasis in the original).^[6]This kind of attention or ‘dwelling’ allows entities to become or be themselves without having to be more than they already are.

To extend the concept of ‘preserving, for me, to ‘preserve’ the earth means to be under the sky, which also means ‘remaining before the divinities’ and includes a belonging of mortal to mortal. Thus, by a ‘primal oneness,’ earth, sky, divinities and mortals belong to together. In Heidegger’s opinion, ‘when we say sky, we are already thinking of the other three [Earth, Divinities, and Mortals] along with it, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four’, which he calls the ‘fourfold’ .^[7]To understand how to ‘dwell’ in this peaceful way, by Heidegger’s definition, is to understand a human being’s place within the fourfold. It is through this lens and the study of the sky that I unpack Heidegger’s concept of the ‘fourfold’.

The phenomenology of weather was experienced by ‘dwelling’ in it through my senses – sight, hearing, smell and feeling. Alexandra Harris, commenting on Gilbert White’s attentiveness to the weather, wrote, ‘White could never be content with statistics alone. He also had to look and touch and smell the air to understand how this familiar environment was altered’.^[8]To follow White and Harris, if I were to experience the fundamental character of ‘dwelling’, I had to rely on focused sensual experience in order to expand my awareness. Also, to inhabit the sky, is to be impacted by it. Agency, as described by the French social-theorist Bruno Latour and the British archaeologist Christopher Tilley, is the equal ability for things and people to have an impact on each other propelling them into action. As Tilley wrote, objects ‘create people as much as people make them’.^[9]In my research Tilley’s objects were in the sky, and the ones in my sky were the wind-borne monsoon clouds and the sun, all of whom exhibited ‘agency’, impacting on me, the earth and the cultural rhythms that define this time of the year.

Fieldwork and Discussion

Once I had written my Sky Journal, I was able to analyse it into three themes, each exploring an aspect of ‘dwelling’which emerged over the course of the observational period. Each section includes some of my observations, as well as the myths, and other academic insights that wove their way into my experience during this time.

Theme 1: Myth and Ritual in ‘Dwelling’
On 17 June, 2018 I wrote:

I am enjoying the fresh smell of damp earth, after months of heat, dust and dry weather. The sky in the west looks an ominous purple-grey and I hear distant thunder. I watched mesmerised by the contrast in colour between sky and land (see Figure 1). The wind blew in rain-heavy clouds, sweeping them over where I stood, still watching, mesmerised. I finally seek shelter as it begins to pour. While I stand under a sliver of tin roof, slowly getting soaked, I think of the monsoon myth.

Situating this experience and observation in the context of the mythology of the sky, the Vedas, which are a collection of hymns and other ancient religious texts written in India between 1500 BCE and 1000 BCE, speak of the arrival of the monsoon as a war between Indra, God of rain, warrior of the peopleand Vitra the demon.^[10]Having taken all the waters of the earth, Vitra has placed them in a mountain and stood guarding it, causing drought and famine. Indra decides to fight Vitrato free the waters with his weapons – the thunderbolt and lightening. The battle concludes withIndrafatally wounding the demon Vitra, freeing the waters that bring back life. Since then, the sound of a gathering storm indicates the presence of Indra. Examining this myth in the context of my phenomenological experience affirms Heidegger’s understanding of the verb ‘to dwell’, that is, to live, by ‘preserving’ and ‘sparing’ in the ‘simple oneness of the ‘primal oneness,’ earth, sky, divinities and mortals.^[11]It was as if the ancient myth came alive in my experience.

Figure 1. *Indra’s*Battle in the Sky. Wednesday 6 June, 6:43PM. *Photo*: Nomita Khatri

The expression of experiencing the ‘essence’ of the arrival of the monsoon, is turned into a local ritual of celebration and thanksgiving on 24 June, which is also the feast of Saint John the Baptist. The festival of São João is celebrated traditionally when young men go from house to house seeking a dip in the family well to be given gifts of the earth, the local seasonal fruit and a sip of the local alcoholic cashew drink, fenias an expression of thanksgiving.^[12]The day is also marked by making tiara’s called koppels made out of the season’s flowers and leaves. By dwelling on the weather-myth in my first drenching of the season, I felt appreciative of the nuanced connections to the ‘fourfold’ in the form of the São João ritual. As an annual reminder, it illustrates Heidegger’s idea of dwelling by embodying it into lived experience. Sky, earth, mortals and divinities are intrinsically linked by the coming of rain, in a natural phenomenon that is experienced year after year allowing the sky to belong to what Tim Ingold called ‘the world that people inhabit’ just as the earth we tread on.^[13]

Theme 2: Dwelling Within and Without

For the majority of this research project I remained, to use a Tennysonian invention, ‘under-sky’ that is, under cloud-cover.^[14]My internal response to the churning of the monsoon sky was split. The gardener in me cheered at the dripping skies, which signified a time of ripeness, fertility and plenty. The urban woman in me at first exulted in it, ‘learning to feel the level of damp or dryness in the air, as a gauge of whether or not to run errands on a scooter.’ As the monsoon progressed I dwelled with feelings of ‘claustrophobia’, a ‘sense of confinement’ and ‘gloom.’ In a journal entry from 20 July I observed, ‘riding a scooter means to be open to the elements and hence needing to live by its rhythm. The downside is that it restricts my freedom of movement in the way having the car-on-loan simply does not.’

When I did step outside, I noticed myself seeking a sense of space by riding towards open expanses or quite old neighbourhoods with their still-dense tree cover to walk in, steering clear of the urban sprawl. Phrases from my journal illustrate this until now, unconscious choice, ‘the fields in front of me feel soothing to the spirit this evening’, ‘the forest to my right makes a dark green wall that reaches up to the sky’, which is when it struck me — the experience of expansiveness that Shelley had found in the sky I had unconsciously been seeking ‘under-sky’, only to understand that it was available in wide expanses and the subtly different, shades of green (see Figure 2).^[15]That coupled with the almost constant battering rain slowed the pace of life to a crawl, allowing long stretches of solitary time in which to contemplate how I ‘dwell’ with myself.

Figure 2. Purple-Grey Nimbostratus. Sunday 17 June, 6:43PM. *Photo*: Nomita Khatri

In a journal entry dated 30July 2018, when I chose to walk a part of the neighbourhood I was unfamiliar with I observed:

An old laterite (stone) house with its tiled roof completely caved in — a house that is reclaiming the sky! All manner of greenery, with impetus from the heavy rains, no doubt, are simultaneously reclaiming the stone. Two seats, part of what would have been a roofed in verandah, still sit conversationally facing each other.

Figure 3. Reclaiming the Sky. Monday 25 July, 6:02PM. *Photo*: Nomita Khatri.

Roszak, Gomes and Kanner, commenting on Laura Sewall’s approach to phenomenology, state, ‘Perceptual psychologist Laura Sewall points out that our sensory capacities — taste, smell, sight, hearing and touch are the fundamental avenues between self and world’.^[16]This former building (see Figure 3) in its crumbling form exhibits ‘dwelling’ in that it is becoming itself by ‘reclaiming sky’ and being reclaimed by the earth. In being itself in the moment I encountered it, it seemed to give me permission to be who Iwas in that moment too — presence begetting presence.

Theme 3: Dwelling ‘Under-Sky’

A small percentage of the local population leapt into action, in a time-honoured tradition of tilling the land, emphasising French social theorist Bruno Latour’s concept when he says that an object has agency when it, ‘has the ability to move us to take action’.^[17]An excerpt I wrote on 12 July 2018 exhibits this agency with the onset of the monsoon:

Plastic-encased human figures stoop in ankle deep water on communidade(the Portuguese word for community) land, transplanting paddy… I see another semi-transparent wall of rain in streaks of grey obscuring the bucolic planting scene (see Figures 4, 5 and 6). The figures continue to dig, sow and transplant as the rain batters down.

Figures 4|5|6. Patch-by-Patch. Tuesday 12 June, 5:36PM | 5:47 PM | 5:48PM.
*Photos:* Nomita Khatri

The earliest record of the sky as agent appears as early as 700 BCE when the Greek poet Hesiod urges his brother Perses in the poem Works and Days toplough the field ‘when the Pleiades and Hyades and strong Orion begin to set’.^[18]Turning again to Heidegger, as we receive the churning sky in ever-changing shades of grey, the earth below changes visibly in response to mortals ‘tilling the soil’ or ‘sparing’ it, nurturing it into a vibrant patchwork of psychedelic greens that exhibit the ‘fourfold’ and our place as mortals within it.^[19]Rain is a key ingredient of the making of humanity, in the classical tradition too, as is evident in the sensuous description of the birth of rain in this passage from Virgil’s Georgics, cited in Harris’ ‘almighty father, Air, marries the Earth and penetrates her with prolific showers, and, their bodies joined as one, unbridles life’s potential’.^[20]

Harris describes the concept of being ‘weathered’.^[21]We can be ‘weathered’ by life in the fourfold, which gives us much to contemplate if we stay present to the outcomes of experiencing it in its windy and fierce glory, even when it comes into destructive contact with human development. For example, an almost routine component of my research has been the experience of power outages and resulting regular disruption. Trees have fallen on electricity lines and been brutally felled, canals have flooded and poorly built bridges collapsed. By bringing ‘focused attention’ to the sky I was able to see the ways in which we choose to control the earth, to ‘build’ in the most restrictive sense of the word and hence to spoil rather than ‘preserve.’ Just like White and Heidegger, paying conscious sensuous attention to the weather meant an insightful connection to it, in both its beautiful and destructive aspects.

Final Thoughts

At the time of completing the writing of this essay at the end of August 2018, torrential monsoon rains continue to lash the coastline from where I sit. Paying focused attention to the objects in the sky had become a sort of ritual for the duration of the research. To ‘dwell’ in the sky meant to ‘dwell’ on myself with a deepened ability to see the connections within the ‘fourfold.’ By extension, the weather-myths and rituals we’ve created serve as a ritual reminder of the interconnectedness within which we live — a connection that is alive in the agrarian community I witnessed during my research.

Urban life, on the other hand, as noticed from witnessing a part of myself, is increasingly removed from this interconnection. As I observed, simply not having a car meant I had to learn to pay attention to the wind-speed, shade and tone of the clouds on the horizon in order to gauge how long I had between squalls. Paying conscious sensuous attention to the weather meant a connection to it, which expanded my awareness of its impact. This repeated awareness of my place with respect to the sky was dulled, when I had brief access to a closed vehicle. The larger these leaps away from experiencing the forces of nature, the deeper our sense of loss and a lack of awareness of the web of interconnectedness within which we live and always have. Ritual in this context becomes a meaningless sequence of repetitive acts devoid of meaning. The delusion that we have control over the physical environment that we find ourselves in perpetuates, even as we increasingly make choices that reflect our increasing disassociation with it and hence ourselves.

Conclusion

The aim of this research project was to examine the sky by recording observations made through the senses: sight, touch, sound and smell, compiled in the months of June and July 2018 in a semi-urban neighbourhood in Goa. I took a reflexive approach, reflecting my own position, and a phenomenological one, attempting to engage as directly with the phenomena around me as I could. By choosing this approach to study the sky, the door was opened for me to observe and record at multiple sensuous levels and I explored my findings in relation to Martin Heidegger’s notion of ‘dwelling’ within the ‘fourfold’. Chris Tilley, Tim Ingold and Alexandra Harris also helped me focus on being in place and time. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideas formed the connection between the theoretical framework and my experience with the sky and my consciousness. I was truly ‘weathered’. To conclude, I will return to my experience of watching the purple-grey clouds stacked atop one another at the beginning of the monsoon. As I watched the clouds glide over me, caught up in the sheer beauty of it, I forgot to seek shelter, getting drenched in the bargain. An insightful learning that I unpacked in the following weeks emerged — the knowing that for better or for worse we are bound to and are intrinsically connected to the cycles of this planet; a simultaneously frightening and liberating thought. It was frightening to notice the increasing disconnection between the Earth, the ball of matter we inhabit, and the sentience on which we are so completely dependent upon in order to thrive. It was liberating because, in the experience of staying present to the sky with attention, I was able to see the huge impact that we too have as agents within the ‘fourfold’, to remedy this disconnection and all the possibilities that entails.

^[1]Kim Etherington, Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Ourselves in Research(London: Jessica Kingsley, 2004): pp. 7 and 36.

^[2]Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Routledge and Kegan Paul (London: Routledge, 2005 [1945]), p. 73.

^[3]Merleau-Ponti, Phenomenology of Perception,p. vii.

^[4]Laura Sewall, ‘The Skill of Ecological Perception’ in T. Roszak, M. E. Gomes and A. D. Kanner (eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995):pp.201-215.

^[5]Martin Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ in Poetry, Language, Thought(1971) at http://ssbothwell.com/documents/ebooksclub.org__Poetry__Language__Thought__Perennial_Classics_.pdf [accessed 3 July 2018]. pp.145 -147.

^[6]Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, p.147.

^[7]Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, p.147.

^[8]Alexandra Harris, Weatherland: Writers and Artists Under English Skies(London:Thames and Hudson, 2016): p.210.

^[9]Christopher Tilley, Metaphor and Material Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999): p.76.

^[10]British Museum, Indra and the Monsoons (2002) at www.ancientindia.co.uk [accessed 10 August 2018].

^[11]Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, pp.145–147.

^[12]H. Vadlamani, 2016. ‘Across Goa, youth are jumping into wells today to celebrate the Sao Joao monsoon festival’ (2016) at https://scroll.in/article/810545/across-goa-youth-are-jumping-into-wells-today-to-celebrate-the-sao-joao-monsoon-festival [accessed 10 August 2018].

^[13]Tim Ingold, ‘Earth, Sky, Wind and Weather’ in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol.13 (2007): p.S25.

^[14]Harris, Weatherland, p. 288.

^[15]Harris, Weatherland,p. 288.

^[16]Sewall, ‘Skill of Ecological Perception’, pp. 201-215.

^[17]Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005): pp. 63-86.

^[18]Hesiod, ‘Works and Days, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, including ‘Works and Days’ and ‘Theogonis’,trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1917), lines 609-617.

^[19]Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’,pp.145 -147.

^[20]Virgil, Georgics, 2:325-27 cited in Harris, Weatherland, p.94.

^[21]Harris, Weatherland,p.114.