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Phaethon by Gustave Moreau (1878)
Apparently the idea of Comet ISON has captured a lot of people's imagination, as it's all over the news, and now people want to watch a live feed on November 28th (Thanksgiving Day in the United States) to see if NASA (or anyone else in the space biz) can tell if ISON has indeed survived its brush with the Sun...
It's all a bit of outer space drama, absolutely. And fascinating to watch. An object out there which is billions of years old is about to have what may be its ultimate fateful encounter with a star. And we humans pretty much get to watch.
That's dramatic.
The whole thing is dramatic - and thus it represents (to us) something which is 'dramatic' or which has some evocative or (for you perhaps) emotional meaning. Or maybe it just promotes some feeling response. Good or bad, whether your instinct is to sit and listen or run away or ignore some learned habit to second-guess yourself, Comet ISON is about all that which has just in this past little while (generally speaking) shown up in your world. Arriving unexpectedly and totally capable of rattling the windows, chains or foundations of anyone's world (whether it does is about your individual chart) ISON represents some idea, some knowing, some totally unexpected and probably unheralded perspective which has come to be - by whatever measures - injected into our lives.
Will ISON 'impact' the Sun? And to the extent that it does, does that limit the effect of whatever ISON's appearing out of the vastness of the unknown has manifested as in each of our lives?
Over the past few days the solar wind gave ISON a buffeting. But the comet got past. Unlike Encke - which got its tail 'cut off' by a like encounter with a solar CME back in 2007.
Whatever was 'out there' in our lives is still out there. For a day or two it seemed to waver...but it's still on course.
Evidently life wants us to continue feeling this issue in some ever-increasing sort of 'obvious to us' (if nobody else) sort of way.
Scientists are saying that ISON is an object about the size of a shopping center made of rock and ice. That's nothing the Sun couldn't simply absorb in a moment... which by implication says that whatever it is which is so 'foreign' to us, we could absorb it. Yet instead we're treating as some 'strange thing' which has shown up in our world. It's of our solar system - our life environment. And yet for some reason, we've never seen it. It's never registered in our (solar) consciousness - at least not to the degree that we've noticed it.
Until now, that is.
From the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's home page for November 27, SOHO images
of comets Encke and ISON heading towards Earth.
To see this film clip in full, link to JPL: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/
And now...?
Proving that our universe (even our solar system) is nothing if not entirely capable of surprising us with what we don't know (which maybe is a hint for people to stop acting like such know-it-all's?), today NASA released a new piece of information on asteroid Phaethon.
In short, Phaethon is not "merely" an asteroid. It's a comet without a tail.
If you link to NASA's typically friendly 'chat' on this subject, what you'll learn - among other things - is that Phaethon is the source of the Geminids, one of Earth's yearly meteor showers...the next one up on the calendar, as life would have it. The Geminids begin on December 7th and run through the 17th with a peak hourly rate (of falling meteors) on December 13/14.
And just to make this interesting, the 17th is the date that Uranus goes direct AND of December's Full Moon.
Think what happens in your 'now' could affect your 'then'? Quite possibly so. If so, the 'active' process which will get you to that place...which you may well be thinking about now...would begin on December 3rd.
Why?
Because December 3rd is the date of December's NEW Moon - that which starts in motion whatever it is which either culminates, is discarded, adapted or integrated into a new phase at the FULL Moon.
With me?
So now we're thinking. We're realizing. We're contemplating. (And if you're American, you're probably also getting ready for that annual pumpkink-cranberry-turkey fest thing.)
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A time-lapse photograph of the Geminid meteor shower over
Brasstown, Bald Mountain (Georgia) by NASA
The really quirky thing here is the Phaethon part...which is really what got me into writing this post. This Phaethon news isn't really "new news" - the European Space Agency issued the press release on Phaethon's rock-comet-hood back in September.
But that NASA would bring this up as part of its tightly-packed set of releases regarding all things ISON with the understanding that in our temporal life we are about to go from ISON to the New Moon to the Geminid meteor shower and on into Uranus' station/direct at the Full Moon - all of which then culminates in the Capricorn Solstice at the moment of Venus' turn to retrograde?
There is a whole world of business and economics out there which could probably profit (literally) from taking note of what lies ahead. The New Moon will be in Sagittarius, so we're trying to move ahead. Some will be in that trying to leave something else behind, but no matter - we're trying to move ahead and get on with life and living.
And as we do, all those little 'dapples' of light, those 'sparks' of streaming insight streak across our mindful sky.
Thus we will arrive at change - a shift which leads either to disappointment and retreat or a consolidating of those dearly held values and assets which we as individuals... we as humans... hold dear.
But first, we have to confront the fact that life is not black and white. Into all that ISON's appearing has manifested as, into all that Encke's reaching its perihelion has caused us to realize about who we are, who others may or may not be and the difference between daily matters and relationships, feelings and efforts which last a lifetime....
...into all that has come knowing Phaethon is not simply an asteroid, and it's not what we know as a comet.
It's something else. It's something new. We need to rethink or retool.
An asteroid 'as' comet would be something we wrestle with until it 'brings us' understanding. On the other hand, a comet 'as' an intermittent life challenge simply tells us we are never done learning - and for some of us, yes - that is news!
Beyond that is the realizing that we are being 'notified' of 'new things under the Sun' and how we don't know everything which exists or how everything comes to exist. Or to be what it is.
And that fits too. How so? Well, as an astrological symbol, Phaethon is hasty. Its myth is all about a very bull-headed teen demi-god of the 'don't tell me I can't do that' sort.
(Okay, so that's every teenager on the planet, granted. And most teens think they can go around acting like demi-gods, yes. But you get my point.)
And now that the 'asteroid' we have known as Phaethon is not what we thought it was, what created that haste? Where did it really come from?
Also interesting: the mythic Phaethon came to his (teen, demi-god) end because he thought (prematurely, hasty boy that he was) that he was capable of controlling the chariot of the Sun.
In other words, life. (Or our mentality - the Sun also rules consciousness.)
So while we're watching Comet ISON dive in towards the Sun we also are being told that what has driven our haste...or our conviction...it isn't what we thought it was?
What does that say about us?
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