The loud music was keeping us awake. Finally, around 2 a.m., we decided to go out and search for the culprit. That’s why we were out on the streets with a flashlight. But there was no need as the moon was extraordinarily bright. It was also a bit lopsided. As an experienced moon gazer, I could detect a slice of peach colored light coming from behind one side of the moon. It was Saturn. The two celestial bodies, sharing the same longitude in the sky, were in conjunction. The moon, although in front of Saturn, is smaller and unable to completely hide Saturn’s presence. And that’s what created the distortion.

The moon’s gravitational force is modified by Saturn’s presence. And, as Hurricane Idalia is on its way, there’s the fear that this conjunction can dramatically rise the tides.

This past week I have been feeling a bit strange and waking up earlier than usual without understanding why. But seeing how Saturn was cheating the moon out of its perfect roundness, I began remembering what’s said about Saturn and its modifying capacities.

In astrology, Saturn has a reputation of being a bit domineering. In space it helps steer dangerous asteroids from Earth. But for those of us still on the ground, Saturn can cause much turbulence. In medical astronomy, Saturn rules the bones so that explains why my knees have been hurting all week especially considering that, as a Capricorn, I am governed by Saturn.

Since Saturn makes you weird, it is the planet most associated with creative people. So much so that art historians, Margot and Rudolf Wittkower, wanted to see if it were true. In Born Under Saturn, they explored the idea that artistic inspiration is a form of madness directly expressed in the artists’ unhappy and eccentric lives. The couple concluded that if an artist was wacko, it wasn’t Saturn’s fault.

Many of the stereotypes related to artists and creativity were instigated by men. Plato differentiated between clinical insanity and creative insanity. Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino believed that the artist, thanks to his senses, was enraptured by divine frenzy. Whereas Proust believed that everything great in the world came from neurotics.

Lunar markings on prehistoric bone fragments indicate that women were tracking their menstrual cycles in correlation with the phases of the moon (both moon and menstrual cycles are c. 29.5 days.). The most famous such calendar is the Ishango Bone. The etchings on the bone indicate a knowledge of simple mathematics leading Claudia Zaslavsky, mathematician and civil rights activist, to believe that women were the first mathematicians.

The Moon and the Earth exert a gravitational pull one on the other. This pull affects ocean tides so when the moon is full, the tides are higher. Just as the moon affects ocean tides, it also affects the tide of our menstrual cycle. Maybe that’s why, once upon a time, women better understood that there exists a relationship between ourselves and the universe. It was this symbiosis with mother nature that elevated women to the role of goddesses. Unfortunately, that changed with patriarchal dominance.

Considering the negative effect this patriarchal dominance has had on nature, Ladies, don’t you think it’s time we go back to being goddesses once again?

Bibliography:

Wittkower, Margot and Wittkower, Rudolf. Born Under Saturn. Random House. New York. 1963. (You can find it on archive.org HERE)

Related: See Saturn snuggle up to the Super Blue Moon in the night sky tonight + Michelangelo’s uncelebrated birthday and uncertain death + Leonardo and Michelangelo: the astrological significance  +  Metaformic Theory + Ishango bone + Claudia Zaslavsky + Were Women The First Mathematicians In Ancient Africa? Video + Lebombo bone, calendar stick with 29 notches +

Supermoon could team up with Hurricane Idalia to raise tides higher just as the storm makes landfall + How the Lunar Cycle Affects Women +