astrology – Feminism and Religion

Star Beings? by Sara Wright

The well-known writer LESLIE MARMON SILKO has a very interesting idea – that star beings come to earth crossing over occasionally when the membranes of parallel worlds are more permeable than usual. She painted some star beings and they spoke to her without words…. Some were not friendly; most of hers lacked compassion and didn’t care much for human beings.

This made me think about astrology, a very popular cultural belief system that has ancient origins involving divination and was once correlated with the stars in our galaxy and the patterns they created (the stories they might have been telling and others we told about them), but has since split away into a very fixed system that make little sense to me. However, since the 60’s popular astrology has become a kind of religion for some. Perhaps astrology is taking the place of religions of various kinds that are in a state of collapse?

Sedna in Spring by Anna Marie Laforest

With the Sun in Aries and then Taurus from late March through mid-May, representing Spring and the renewal of all things creative, it is a good time to think about the evolution of the goddess Sedna who created the walruses, seals, and new kinds of fish to feed her Inuit tribe which until then had to make do with bearberries, seaweed, and arctic moss. Sedna’s name means “provider of food,” but of course her creations came at a very dear price.

Her father, in a moment of patriarchal panic, cut off her fingers to separate her from their lifeboat kayak during a storm in which he could only think to save himself, as he was the chief of the tribe. As Sedna fell deeper and deeper into the sea, she was surprised that, instead of feeling frightened, she felt more like her real self than ever before. She saw her father (who had lied about killing her first love) and the “bad crow” husband he had selected for her instead, for who they were, and she saw her fingers, as they tumbled down with her, turn into wondrous, powerful animals.

When she got to the bottom of the sea, her bones had been purified by her blood and the salt water of her tears, and her skeleton was radiant. She quickly put on body weight, of a sea kind, and with the help of her sea-children she made herself ruler of the under-water world. Continue reading “Sedna in Spring by Anna Marie Laforest”

Astrology and Its Relevance to the Jewish (and Christian) Belief of Poppaea by Stuart Dean

Poppaea Sabina as portrayed on a Roman coin minted 62-65 CE.

As a follow up to my last post on Poppaea Sabina, I want to focus on Poppaea’s interest in astrology, one of the few facts about her that can be confirmed independently of the hostile (and hence questionable) depiction of her by the Roman historian Tacitus, who, apart from Josephus, is the primary source of information about her. Indeed, she may have practiced astrology, for as Empress she was given a celestial sphere on her birthday by the poet Leonidas, who said it was a gift “worthy . . . of her learning.” Another possible indication of Poppaea’s special interest in astrology is the fact that a large banquet hall in the Roman imperial mansion built during Nero’s reign (recently discovered), probably conceived of and designed before Poppaea’s death (perhaps with her input), had some rotational feature, effectively making it a planetarium.

Though Tacitus thus would appear to be accurate on Poppaea’s interest in astrology, there is good reason to be wary of sharing his negative opinion about it. He never expressly explains himself on the issue, but it is not hard to spot what bothered Tacitus about astrology and hence Poppaea. Famous for his appreciation of freedom of speech, Tacitus wistfully looked back on a time when that was a freedom enjoyed only by men. By contrast, ancient astrology was but one part of a comprehensive philosophy of nature that viewed the entire cosmos as governed equally by male–and female–powers. Continue reading “Astrology and Its Relevance to the Jewish (and Christian) Belief of Poppaea by Stuart Dean”