September is a period of great transition. The leaves drop from the trees and we drop off the kids at the bus stop. HUT levels spike. Temperatures dip. It is where the Autumnal Equinox takes place. In the cold black void of space, the north pole, boldly and defiantly, starts to shy away from our only source of heat. The Sun is a star at the center of our solar system. It is a glowing force of miraculous proportions, fusing 700,000,000 tons of hydrogen into helium every second. The surface of the sun, the photosphere, is a cool 5505 degrees Celsius. It is a self-contained perpetual nuclear explosion held fast in a near perfect sphere by it’s own massive gravitational pull. You’d think we would look up once in a while in wide wonder. But we are too busy ‘tweeting’ at each like buffoons.
“Stay focused on the Wide Wonder”, I say out loud, as I kick myself….
Twice a year, day and night fall into balance – the Vernal Equinox in spring and the Autumnal Equinox in fall. The word “equinox” comes from Latin aequus, meaning “equal,” and nox, “night”.
It is the summer’s great last heat,
It is the fall’s first chill: They meet.
–Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt
If you drew a straight line through the Earth from the South to North pole and extended it out into space, you have what is known as the North Celestial Pole, or NCP. Yes, there were acronyms before ad tech. Currently, the NCP points directly to Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor… aka. the North Star. Interestingly enough, while Polaris may be our North Star, it will not be for a future herd of hominids to look up at. The NCP is not anchored inside a perfectly spinning cylinder. The Earth is much more like a spinning top that is losing its kinetic energy and wobbling ever so slightly on its axis. This wobble, referred to as ‘procession’, is due to the complex interactions between gravitational forces of heavenly bodies and Earths own geological activity (continents shifting, glaciers forming and ice caps melting). In any event, the NCP rotates about ONE degree every 73 years. The temporal dimensions of a human lifetime and that of the Universe are comically disparate. That is, they are so unlike that there is no basis for comparison. Polaris will remain our North Star for the reminder of our lifetimes and for a few generations after, but then the NCP will make its way over to the next brightest star in the sky, Vega in the constellation Lyra, some 13,000 years from now. Polaris will once again be the North Star for generations 305 x’s removed from the current crop of dingbats infesting and killing the planet, should we make it.
Again I digress! Stay focused on the Wide Wonder….
This seasonal alignment of the sun and the Earths equator marks a celestial event that has had cultural reverberations throughout our short history. The full moon nearest to the Autumnal Equinox is called the Harvest Moon and farmers would harvest their crops by then. Mabon was when livestock would be slaughtered and preserved (salted and smoked) to provide enough food for the winter. Folks in the South Pole will be celebrating the first appearance of the sun in six months. At the North, they will be preparing for six months of darkness. During Medieval times, the Christian Church replaced Pagan solstices and equinox celebrations with Christianized occasions; the Autumnal Equinox celebration was Michaelmas, the feast of the Archangel Michael. Machu Picchu in Peru, a symbol of the Incan Empire that was built around 1450AD was among other things, an ancient astronomical observatory. It’s sacred Intihuatana stone accurately indicates the two equinoxes. Twice a year, the sun sits directly over the stone creating no shadow. No one knows why…Not even Alexa. The Maya, great mathematicians and astronomists, built El Castillo in Yucatan Mexico around 1000 AD. On September 22nd, as on all equinox’s, a light and shadow dance will create the visual effect of a wriggling snake body that connects to the head of the feathered serpent at the pyramids base. 7 triangles of light contrasted with 6 triangles of shadow = 13, a number sacred to the Maya. According to Wikipedia “in Judaism, 13 signifies the age at which a boy matures and becomes a Bar Mitzvah, is the number of principles of Jewish faith and is the number of attributes of God’s Mercy. What’s the significance? I don’t know! But this Equinox would be a good time to have mercy on us all.
Wide Wonder..stay focused.
In the English non-metropolitan county of Wiltshire it was traditional to drink dandelion and burdock cordials at this time as the herbs help to cleanse the blood and are a good tonic for the body after its winter hardships. It is the site of Stonehenge, where an ad-hoc celebration brings together England’s neo-druids, neo-pagans and Wiccan tribes with ordinary families, tourists and travelers to celebrate.. exactly what defies categorization, but has something to do with ancient astronomy and spiritualization. The Shakti Sings Choir is a 100-plus strong national choir that honors the Earth through song and normally performs at the stones. Back in March, a choir member named “Martin of Hampshire”, said: “As society collapses, this feels like a sacred place to be.” It’s bringing us back to the simplicity of the sun and stones. Let’s hope by the summer solstice we’re all in a better place.” What hath Martin of Hampshire have to say now, in September??! Surely he would foreswear hither.
In September the Sun enters the sign of Libra, the scales, reflecting (appropriately) the balanced day and night. Indeed, it was at this time of year when the farmers brought in their harvested goods to be weighed and sold. For those born from September 23rd to September 30th, they are members of the Libra sign and can be identified by their organized and harmony-driven personalities. People born from September 1st to September 22nd are members of the Virgo sign. As one of the zodiac’s most understanding and caring signs, a Virgo can be easily spotted by their innate compassion. Um… hello?! When have we needed organization, harmony and compassion more than right now?
Focus. Wide Wonder. Focus. Wide Wonder…
Where was I? .. oh yes – Balance. On the day of the Fall Equinox, we can balance an egg on its side! Actual, we can do that on any day of the year because the egg making process inside of chickens is not perfect and small calcium deposits form on the outside of the egg acting like miniature kickstands. The urban legend about being able to do it only on the Equinox is hard to trace but most likely has something to do with the metaphorical sense of restoring balance. We are in desperate need of balance these days, as our society has been spun into a violent wobble of its own. But it’s been hard to get at. Jayson Gay Op-ed Columnist for the WSJ summed it up nicely. “These past five months have not been our finest hour. As this pandemic has simmered on, and good faith efforts at mitigation have yielded to fatigue, our impatience has degraded into a blame game in which the usual sides are taken, stats are cherry-picked, and a public-health crisis is turned into a choose-your-own-science segment on cable news. We have politicized masks, schools, bars, beaches, and now college football Saturdays. This is a complicated crisis which involves trade-offs between the health of our communities and economic destruction, and instead, the internet teems with amateur epidemiologists and moral philosophers who claim, with comical certitude, to know the correct path forward”.
This year, the Equinox falls on a Tuesday (Sept, 22nd). The etymology of the word “Tuesday” comes from ‘Tiu’, Anglo-Saxon’s god of war, or Law and Justice in Norse mythology.
September is also the name of that funky groove by Earth, Wind and Fire, who got their name from founding member Maurice White’s astrological sign. White is a Sagittarius, which has the primary elemental quality of Fire, Earth and Air. “Earth, Air & Fire” didn’t sound right, so “Air” became “Wind.” Replaced by modern atomic theory, Earth, Air and Fire were once used as a classifier system for the material world. Classifier systems are currently used in algorithms that drive predictive insights into consumer behavior in order to influence purchased decisions. Did you think I could work in some marketing lingo there?! White was initially bothered by the “ba-dee-ya” lyric.: “I just said, ‘What the f**k does ‘ba-dee-ya’ mean?’. His co-writer said, ‘Who the f**k cares?’. “I learned my greatest lesson ever in songwriting, which was never let the lyric get in the way of the groove.”
With that… Can we not let the lyrics get in the way of the groove? Can we at least sing? Can we look outward, up and beyond? Can we be appreciative and humble? We can learn more about ourselves and each other by focusing on all the Wide Wonder. It’s OK to be smart, Kids. There’s a lot be interested in, even something as mundane as “September”.
But this year – just wake me up when ends…
