A THING of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
The poet John Keats wrote these words as the introduction to his poem “Endymion”, about the love of the Moon goddess Diana for the mortal shepherd ~but he could well have been describing the magnificent scene unfolding in the eastern sky at dawn this week.
Venus, Jupiter, and Mars have really been like the scribes of a beautiful morning sky for several weeks now, and now that we have reached midpoint of the season, the Moon is sweeping in to join them. Looking east especially Friday and Saturday, the waning crescent will first move past Jupiter, then Venus and Mars.
As Zeus, Jupiter is the highest god of the Olympians, while Venus is everywhere regarded as goddess of love and beauty. Her main love interest is Mars, but theirs is an illicit love that they would just as soon keep hidden from Venus’ true mate, Vulcan.
Because of this secret between them, ancient astrologers always believed that rather than the love of Venus and Mars being strengthened when they come together ~ as we see them this week ~ they are actually made more vulnerable, and their influence can be weakened.
Still, when the planets move so close to one another, it is an incredible sight, and gives us a sense of worlds beyond or own, and this is also fitting for this season. We have just moved past the cross quarter day, when attention and activity turns away from the harvest activity at the beginning of Fall, toward celebrations and remembrances of loved ones who have died. In this context, we can imagine Venus, Jupiter, and Mars as beautiful guiding lights into the realm beyond our own, and with our closest celestial neighbor, the Moon, joining them on the stage this week, our access to that other world is almost perceptibly eased.