Adrienne Rich and Alcyone

(dedicated to all my poetic sisters–Judith and Andrea in particular)

As Mercury and Mars moondance backwards (Retrograde) ————–and in the midst of rethinking everything it seems—we are blessed with the sight in the east of Lady of the Stars–VENUS. She shines brightly in the Eastern Sky in the 7 sisters—the Pleiades…Stars in the back of the Bull.

Quoting from Dr.Bernadette Brady on Facebook April 2nd, 2012

The above image is from NASA – A bright Venus entering, or I (Bernadette) would say, radiating, the Pleiades on the 31 March 2012. This is exact tonight – 2 April 2012. Lovely. Its meaning astrologically is an emphasis on the Pleiades which is symbolised by the fixed star Alcyone. All that is mysterious, visionary and mystical, a good night to dream those big dreams!

Bernadette writes (via Starlight program) of Venus and Alcyone:

A Love of theatre or the rituals of religion: the poetic soul

So if your skies are cloudy and you can’t see her or even if you can—I am thinking that this Venusian appearance radiating a particularly powerful constellation and brilliant star (Alcyone) honors and perhaps gives Adrienne Rich a marvelous memorial–for she too, is and will always be a fine woman and a poetic soul.  My guess is Venus is holding a service for her tonight.

We have only to look up and perhaps light a candle or two.

and read her words–read them out loud

Planetarium

BY ADRIENNE RICH

Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750—1848)
astronomer, sister of William; and others.

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
a woman      ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces    of the mind
An eye,
          ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
          from the mad webs of Uranusborg
                                                            encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
             Tycho whispering at last
             ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus
         I am bombarded yet         I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep      so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me       And has
taken      I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images    for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
Source: The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2002)

..a bit more about Venus

From Astro Logos

Venus enters the Pleiades tonight, this is a image from NASA from the 31 March.

If people are interested here is a Visual Astrology Newsletter we wrote in June 2008 about retrograde Venus where she creates a far larger cycle then that of 8 years but rather of 243 years.

Here is the link to the newsletter for those interested in Venus’ path through the sky.  http://www.zyntara.com/VisualAstrologyNewsletters/van_June2008/VAN_June08.htm

a nod of gratitude to all the poets and women and star gazers — you radiate me!  Claudia

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