Through A Glass, Darkly

By Len Wallick

The Sun seems to be taking it all in, crossing the twenty-third degree of Aquarius today (about day 23 of the Sun’s trip through this sign). It is not busy for the moment save for the applying quadruple conjunction new Moon in a few days. Luna crossed its North Node yesterday, rising above the ecliptic in the night. This morning it sextiles Uranus in Pisces and before the day is done it will have climbed into Aquarius, this month’s bed for the reunion of luminary lovers.

By time the Moon has done so, Venus will also have moved onto Pisces. In less than a week just after sunset, we can watch Venus dance with Jupiter. Meanwhile, Mercury beckons the Moon towards their own conjunction this evening after which Luna’s silver sliver will briefly grace the darkest hour, before dawn. Jupiter and Mars, normally so affable, are now distant and estranged, cleaving to their averse elements; alien, strange to each other.

Surveying it all from afar, alone in its vector is Saturn. While the entire solar system seems to be converging upon spring and summer, Saturn alone contemplates its own long winter and remembers when it was young. Chronos, that was the name of youth. Chronos, time itself. Created when the sky came to love the Earth. Set in motion when the sky repelled his children. Veiled in mystery by an unspeakable act towards his progenitor, at the behest of his mother. Father in turn to the future itself. Chronos watches from exile, chained until death, alone with justice. Time itself takes us back to where we left off, when he was the edge of the frozen sky. Even now he can look back over his shoulder where the past will become the future and he will oppose his father again.

There’s this odd thing about people: curiosity. For a while, it’s fun. Exploring and finding new things leads to exciting changes inside of us. Then we start making changes in things outside of us so that we can explore what we could not find before, could not reach before, could not see before. Then what we find changes both the inside and the outside — quickly. We look around us and no place seems familiar. We feel inside and we are not what we used to be. Then it’s not so much fun anymore. It’s life, and from that we rise or fall as is our inclination. It seems we have a talent to rise. The sky, obviously is in the direction of rising.

The word lens apparently comes from the word lentil, from the shape. They have been around a long time, thousands of years. The terms “burning stone” and “reading stone” are indications of the downward inclination for which lenses were used for a long time. For a long time, things progressed slowly. Then, somebody got the idea to polish an emerald into a lens shape so Nero’s aging eyes could watch the gladiators. So we went from looking down to looking out. A thousand years later it was glass in frames (in Holland or Italy). A few hundred years after that somebody put one lens in front of another, first to look out and then, to look up. Then things were not progressing slowly anymore and would never again. Funny how looking up at the sky will do that to you.

Galileo looked up at the night sky with a telescope and saw things nobody else had seen before. These things he did not keep to himself. That got him in trouble. That must have sounded like fun because before you know it, all sorts of people were doing the same thing and other things to get in trouble. Learning how to read, then learning how to read more than one language. Finding better ways to observe, to measure and to express what was observed and measured with words and numbers. Corresponding with and visiting others far away to compare notes and share ideas. Of course, this had been going on in some fashion for a long, long time but there was something about that night when Galileo looked up at the sky that made it all begin to happen really fast.

Too fast for some, who tried to stop it. But there were too many troublemakers and too many places where they were welcome. So the alternative was to make some of them respectable and dependent on a stipend, that would at least be a leash.

Now on payroll the troublemakers who were having fun became the respectable scholars screwing up. Mistakes however, are a kind of gold. Once aware of a mistake the first challenge is not to deny it. Then to own it. Then to learn from it so that one can go on to make even more sophisticated and intelligent mistakes in the future. That’s what a scientist is, right? Those who look up at the sky seem to be really good at it. The very best, most highly paid astronomer in all of England saw Uranus in 1690 and thought it was a star. Others with better telescopes found it on and off over the next ninety years and lost it again.

Finally Sir William Herschel, the guy who gets credit for the discovery tried out a new telescope just before the Vernal equinox in 1781. A telescope big enough to see that it was a disc of light out there and he announced (drum roll here) that it waaas — a comet! Uh no, monsieur, said Charles Messier who knew something about comets. Two months later, Herschel figured the only other thing it could be was a planet, right? But, but, that would meannnn…never mind, things are happening too fast to think of such inconvenient things.

So what we now call Uranus was rather clumsily discovered. In the meantime. Sir Herschel’s salary was being paid by a king. The king’s coffers were being filled, at least in part, by a profitable trade in human beings. Human beings like you and me. Kidnapped from the continent of kings, stacked into ships like cord-wood. Those who survived lived out their time in terror. Forced into labor without pay. Deprived of even the most basic dignity. Beaten into submission. After generation upon generation, however, the idea that this was very, very wrong was not extinguished. So, one inconvenient truth was, in a very real way, made possible by another.

To be continued…