The Glittering Dark
The fixed stars are visceral. They hiss in my ear and lick my wrist and place a charmed necklace around my throat. They haunt me with songs I forgot and I find I suddenly remember the words. They’re the weather outside. They’re a candle going out. They coil around the heads of my friends. They glimmer behind the eyes of my partner. They are the shadow of my childhood imaginary friend. They are the image in my periphery. They teach me about trust, courage, beauty, seduction, and inspiration. They teach me about horror, grief, grit, fury, appetite, and isolation.
The fixed stars are other suns that glitter in the inky sea of the sky. They are the stories we try to tell over and over and over. Every bit of lore you’ve ever loved, any tale that burrowed so deep into your muscles it changed the shape of you, every movie that made you ache, every novel that reminded you of some part of you that you thought was hidden and impossible — they are all up there. We remember our way back to those stars when we listen, read, tell, and watch.
When you meet them, you will feel their strange shine. Maybe you’ll feel eager and greedy. Maybe you’ll feel cautious, like you’re approaching a dragon. The fixed stars are waters that do not quench your thirst. They are waters that once sipped make you feel as though you’ve never actually had such cold, clear water in your life and you now need a bottomless lake of it. I’ve had to learn to sip and not gulp when I can help it. It is so delicious.
I am Mercury’s magpie and nothing is shinier than a fixed star. They are silver trinkets that bewitch the beholder. But I could never say that I collect them. It is truer to say they collect me. They lure me with their beauty, their terror, their stories, and keep me there without any need to lock the door. I'm not going anywhere.
In case this has already sparked your interest, here’s a button so you can come see me for a fixed star reading (it’s called “The Glittering Dark: Your Stellar Companions”). I have spots available now. Or you can just keep reading. That’s also great.
I’ve been slowly working through the list of questions I received after doing an AMA on my Instagram. I've been trying to come up with a good answer to what amounted to a “why do you work with the fixed stars in your astrology practice” question.
I have lots of intellectual answers that come up right away. For one, star observance, storytelling, and worship is very, very old. To say it predates natal astrology as we know it is almost ridiculous. We don't know how far back star-human relationships go but I assume it's as old as possible. Old doesn't mean good or worthwhile automatically but it is meaningful to me to step into impossibly long lineages, to do something my very-far-back ancestors did — even if I can’t quite access the way it was for them, even if that’s not exactly the point.
There's also the celestial spheres argument. In an older cosmology that has influenced Hellenistic astrology and beyond, the fixed stars were considered to be of a higher divinity than the planets. They are further away, closer to the “all,” to “god,” whatever word you use. While the planets are not at all human, they are more-so than the stars themselves — so the thinking goes. At the same time, many cultures hold that we are of the stars (even the most rational materialist scientists agree with this on a chemical level) and it is to the stars that we may return upon our human death. They are the most divine, most otherworldly, most beyond, and yet they are as close as our very skin. Why wouldn't we pay attention to them?
From a practitioner's perspective, the fixed stars also bring in crucial information about a person's life that gets missed otherwise. Sometimes the fixed stars reinforce what is already in the birth chart in truly astounding ways, with rich detail, tying you to fairy tales and imagery so intimate to you you'll be dizzy. But it is also common that the fixed stars contradict the chart, bringing in stories that help explain why a planet is not acting the way we'd expect. Fixed stars change the planets they touch.
These are all fine reasons to know about the fixed stars and to get to know the ones in your own chart. But they aren’t really my reason. My reason is I love them. It’s hard to give reason for love. That’s why this has been a hard question to answer. I’m simply captivated. The stars draw me in and I want them to do so. I love them as an extension of my love for story, for myth. The planets have plenty of myth attached to them but my love is vast and hungry (the fixed star Alphard is in my chart, Mother of the Bottomless Desire-Pit). I want more and the fixed stars are sticky with story, that echo in narratives of all sorts, not only from way-back-when but right now.
The fixed stars are thrilling — the way they articulate the inhuman humanness in us. The part of you that doesn’t quite know how to do human-ing. The part of you that feels like it belongs more to a dream you had than the life you live, and yet you must go on. The part that identifies with the giant wreaking havoc, the unicorn dashing out of sight, the sweet-singing harp that soothes the ears of the underworld, the whale at the bottom of the sea, the fierce bear in the wood, the red fingers of a sister trying to pick the right thorny plants at just the right time of night to save her brothers. Perhaps because the stars are so far away and so other, so literally alien, they are particularly good at describing what is not-quite-human feeling about you.
I love their stunning physical beauty, whether you look up in the evening or look at photos of them and their nebulas taken with special cameras. I love how they also stun me with how literal they can be. How many times I have hedged in a reading, assuming that people with swan stars don’t actually have a literal swan story in their lives but rather it is about what the swan means. It’s nearly always both. People gasp and shake their heads in disbelief in fixed star readings more than any other reading I give. “Oh! That’s why —” insert inexplicable thing about a person’s life that is now given a name, a being, a context. If you like your astrology “loud,” learn about the fixed stars in your chart.
To use my own chart as an example, my Ascendant degree is conjunct the fixed star Asterion which means “starry one” and hi, I’m an astrologer. Since before I can remember, I have been completely transfixed by Ariadne, the mistress of the labyrinth, princess of Crete, goddess of honey and ivy, consort to Dionysus. I truly don't remember how far back this relationship goes. It is as if I always knew her. Dionysus threw her crown into the heavens and we call it the constellation Corona Borealis. When I saw my fixed stars for the first time, I also gasped. Alphecca, the alpha star in Corona Borealis, is connected to my Sun. Moreover, Manilius, writing in the first century, described Corona Borealis like this: “The child of the Crown will cultivate a garden budding with bright flowers and slopes. Grey with olive trees or green with grass. He will plant pale violets, purple hyacinths, lilies, poppies…” If you’ve been here for a while, you know that plants play a huge role in my life and in my work. Moreover, the fixed stars connect to each other, weaving an ever-combining story in your chart. Asterion is also the name of the Minotaur, Ariadne’s half-brother. I could keep going.
If you'd like to learn about the fixed stars in your chart, come see me for a Glittering Dark reading. I have spots available now. I would be honored to be one your guides through the firmament. If you like the way I write about myth and story, you will love this reading.
See you soon,
Maeg