SCORPIO’s GATE TO THE MILKY WAY

… always a monster guarding the treasure

It's New Moon today, May 16 at 16:01 hours, and the dark sky is setting the stage for a new cosmic story to begin.  The winter constellations are drawing away, and summer constellations are on the rise.

By the middle of May in the Northern Hemisphere, we start to get a good view of Scorpius to the south in the early morning before dawn. The constellation never rises very high above the horizon, so you need to watch for it in a clear viewing area. Look for a bright orange star. This is Antares the red supergiant at the heart of Scorpius. Extending upwards to the West is a row of five bluish stars known as the Scorpion’s crown. Looking downwards from Antares towards the horizon then curling Eastward is the Scorpion’s tail. 

The best months to view Scorpius are July and August. It is at its highest point around 21:00 hours in mid-July.

RESPECT FOR THE OLDEST ARACHNID ON EARTH

Scorpius is one of the oldest astronomical pictures in the sky known to us today. The creature that inspired this cosmic image, the scorpion, is just about the oldest land predator living on earth. There are fossils that date 430 million years, long before the dinosaurs, and before the forests grew.

They are small creatures, very quiet with a slow deliberate crawl. They are covered in armor with a poisoned puncturing tail curved over their back like a loaded weapon. They even glow under ultraviolet light. They rely on vibration and touch to know their surroundings. They read the ground. Efficiency, design, timing, and conservation are their powers. They are successful predators because they have patient control over their actions. They strike precisely. They waste nothing. They do not mean to conquer, but to outlast.

For this reason, they became the gatekeepers at the threshold of the cosmic world.

SCORPIUS, GATEKEEPER TO THE MILKY WAY

Centered between the poisoned tip of the curled tail and the body, Scorpius frames the base of the path of the Milky Way in the sky—as its ‘glowing season’ too starts to become visible in the Northern Hemisphere. Scorpius is known as the gatekeeper of the Milky Way’s luminous Galactic Center that follows immediately to the northeast adjacent to the spout of Sagittarius’ teapot (the milk floweth over).

Even though the Milky Way is most prominent in the sky during late summer and early fall running from the southwest to the northeast parts of the sky like a river directly above, the moonless nights right now are a decent time to spot the glowing band before the extended twilight of the summer solstice shortens the viewing window. The higher north you are, the less darkness you will have to see the magic “backbone of the night”. Look for the Milky Way's core between midnight and dawn when it is at its highest in the night sky. You can check this app for precise viewing times: photopills.com

THE MILKY WAY IS A DANGEROUS PLACE

Our home, the Milky Way Galaxy, is a plane that undulates like a stingray turning circles in the water. To look into the Galactic Center is a tremendous feat.

Our solar system is nestled inside an outer arm of this swirling 100-billion-star gyre. We follow the sun as it travels in spiral motion around the center. It takes about 225 million Earth years for the solar system to complete one orbit of the galaxy. (Imagine that the scorpion has endured two full turns around the entire galaxy!)

And because we are on the periphery, we can look towards that bright Galactic Center in the season of the year when the Earth is turned towards it, which in the Northern Hemisphere is our summer. In winter we are turned away which is why we cannot see it.

We can survive this intensely undulating moving explosive gaseous radiation space because our solar system has a protective bubble around it called the heliosphere created by particles and magnetic fields from the Sun. Somehow, we are provided our own realm of life within the greater limit of our dangerous origin. In this contrast lies a great mystery which inspired many of the first astronomers, who were also priests and poets.

SUMERIAN SCORPIO MAN AND WOMAN

What could possibly unify the swirling crashing chaotic galaxy with the more orderly peripheral sunlit world?

For the Sumerians, the Scorpius constellation was a literal astronomical marker. Here lies the intersection where the ecliptic crosses the Milky Way. They called this crossing “the Golden Gate of Heaven” leading through the dark waters to the garden of the Sun, the land of everlasting life.

On either side of the gate lay two monster gatekeepers: a scorpion man and his scorpion wife . They maintain sexual balance so they may open the door for the sun to rise into the heavens each morning and close it after the sun sets into the dark underworld at night. 

Should you wish to reach this paradise, you first have to pass through the Scorpion-human gatekeepers. But it’s nearly impossible to do, for these threshold guardians reflect the primal nature of the traveler with all the anxieties and insecurities that arise when the ego is challenged to leave its familiar world and confront the unknown.

In the epic story of Gilgamesh, the scorpion gate people inform our hero that to attain this land of everlasting life, he has to pass through a tunnel that runs under the mountain. It would take Gilgamesh 12 double hours to journey through the completely dark passage. However, no mortal could survive such darkness, for these are fatal waters, and the monsters are there to protect mortals from trying. 

But Gilgamesh insists and so he enters the darkness when the Sun is at its lowest point, completely hidden beneath the Earth. He cannot see in front or behind and struggles for breath in the suffocating heat. To survive this night sea, he has to ignite his own inner spiritual light and maintain consciousness in the absence of physical light.

BERU: THE TWELVE DOUBLE HOURS OF THE DAY

The journey to the midnight Sun and the 12 double hours it will take to pass through all levels of waters presents us with a unique time-keeping system. The Babylonians divided the 360-degree rotation of the sky into 12 units called beru, each unit lasting 2 hours to stay in sync with the constellations as they turned over the earth during the course of one day. What we have here is a map of the human soul traveling through the 12 signs of the Zodiac or the 12 hours of night representing a complete psychological dismantling before spiritual rebirth into paradise.

Well, Gilgamesh never makes it all the way to that land of immortality, but he returns home fundamentally changed after tasting the wonder and terror of the numinous. And this renewal helps him bring new life to his community.

SPEAK ONCE, SPEAK TWICE

We end this incredible spring month of mysterious May with a second full moon passing through Scorpius right near Antares cresting on the night of May 30th into the wee hours of the 31st at 2:45 eastern time. It’s as if this Blue Moon wants to highlight the call to face the threshold guardians, turn on the inner light, and dive into the center of our beginning.

 

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