When we look up the sky we enter worlds within worlds, initiated into the vast realms of infinite stars. Each star has her own story, her own unique landscape, her own history, language, nature, nutritive cycle, temperature, seasons. Each one has her own richness and magical power, her own art of love and celestial wisdom.
Fixed stars in astrology have long been used, and still are today, and while there are many of them, the ones we usually pay attention to are the Behenian Stars.
The Behenian Stars are a special selection of fifteen fixed stars that were considered really important for medieval astrology in both Europe and the Arab world, and were long used in magical practices also. Their name derives from the Arabic bahman, meaning “root,” as each star was considered a source of astrological power for one or more planets. Each of the Behenian stars is also connected to specific gems and plants or flowers, and people would make talismans to protect them and bless them.
In astrology today we still use them, and especially when they are conjunct or in the orbit of an inner planet in a natal chart, they hold a lot of significance in the native’s life such as insights on their life’s journey, and potential special gifts and talents.
The Behenian Stars, with their corresponding Tropical sign degrees, are:
– Algol, Eye of Medusa, 26º Taurus
– The Pleiades, the 7 Sisters, 0º Gemini
– Aldebaran, Eye of the Bull, 10º Gemini
– Capella, The Charioteer, 22º Gemini
– Sirius, The Shining One or the Major Dog Star, 14º Cancer
– Procyon, Lesser Dog Star, 26º Cancer
– Regulus, Heart of the Lion, 0º Virgo
– Alkaid, Tail of the Bear, 27º Virgo
– Algorab, The Crow, 13º Libra
– Spica, The Maiden’s Sheaf of Wheat, 24º Libra
– Arcturus, The Hunter-Farmer, 24º Libra
– Alphecca, The Flower Crown, 12º Scorpio
– Antares, The Heart of the Scorpio, 10º Sagittarius
– Vega, Orpheus’s Lyre, 15º Capricorn
– Deneb Algedi, Tail of the Sea-Goat, 23º Aquarius
The tradition was to use the Behenians for talismanic prescriptions with recipes for ensouling the virtues of a star into a stone talisman. They were also used for healing and medicine, as the herbs associated with the stars would be used for medicines depending on the time of year and the native’s unique natal chart.
Each star has her own nature and planetary influence and energy, and some of the fixed stars are of Venus nature, as observed and written by famous Roman astronomer Ptolemy. Those of the Venusian nature I call stars of love, and they often reveal deeper insights on someone’s relationships in this life. Historically, people would also use them to create their talismans to invite love, peace, romance and harmony in their lives and homes.
Behenian fixed stars Sirius and Alphecca are two of the stars of love, and their beautiful bright Venusian natures often gifts the natives with many love and creative gifts. If rising, they are said to bring fortune, good marriage, happiness, gifts, love, romance and abundance. Since they are of Venusian nature, natives with these stars prominent in their chart are said to be quite magnetic and benefit when working with other women or helping other women, and excel in anything Venusian related such as the arts, counselling and creativity.
It is only then that we may fall into an intimacy – an intimacy with another person, an intimacy with ourselves, an intimacy with the world.
Love has its own flow, and a wind comes and takes us, and it may not be in the direction we thought but we must follow it; it may not have come from the direction we’ve been staring at, but we must give ourselves to it now.
To walk the path of love is to allow to be taken to somewhere you may have never been before, a wild unknown land, somewhere wholly new, where not much will be in your control. But it’s something that will transform you, grow you, expand you. Love is where there is no time. Time is only something that exists because of resistance. So in love, there is no time. This is why it feels timeless, like time stops, when you are fully present in a moment with a loved one, with your family, with something you love doing.
This takes courage – to let go of time and resistance. To enter the kingdom of love is only for those truly brave. Because it will ask you on the very portals of the gates to take it all off and surrender yourself. To let go of the judgments, falseness, masks, fears, limitations, armours. And to say yes. To say yes to love, yes to yourself.
This is what the stars of love are truly about.
It isn’t about divination or predictions, it isn’t about “talismans” to pull your destined beloved into your arms. It isn’t about making something happen or knowing what will happen. It’s about a certain kind of deepening; an insight or inspiration, or a looking up and deep within, that may then help open you, so that more love enters you through self knowledge. Celestial awareness, just like connection to nature, are essentially an opportunity for a deepening – for you to connect to yourself more deeply, know yourself a little more, and release your true fragrance.
Astrology is a spiritual practice, a guide to help you on your dharmic path of soul growth and evolution. It isn’t about predictions; it is about gnosis, inner wisdom, expansion of your intuition and awakening your inner mystic and wisdom. It is about knowledge; so that the more you know yourself, the more you enter yourself, the more love enters you also. It’s an alchemy. And it isn’t always pleasurable, but know thyself is the beginning and the key always.
What I love about fixed stars is that they are like love letters – desires, dreams, hopes, emotions sealed in time. These stars seem like they are fixed in the sky, seen the same from wherever you are, and they can guide you through any night. They would help sailors at sea find their way back home and to help them navigate through any water. They were the same stars people looked at from thousands of thousands years ago – dreamers, poets, mystics, astronomers, philosophers, children with wonder in their eyes.
They hold the dreams of humanity, stories within stories, stories that made us and we made through them. They hold the gazes of people and their prayers, the dreams of those looking up at them, dreaming of their beloved, or speaking of a wish.
And the stars too were held by us, by humanity; held within talismans like a necklace we’d wear on our chest, heart close. The stars witness us, as us them; they witness people in their quiet vulnerabilities at night, when no one else is perhaps watching them except maybe a night lantern.
Witnessing. Holding dreams. Looking at us as us at them. Reminding us of the smallness yet vastness of it all, so that we can keep grounded and clear, knowing the right proportion of things and of ourselves.
All of the Behenians essentially invite us to build strength in our spiritual core, deepen in self knowledge and align to higher values and virtue, so that we may be vessels for the divine and inspired creativity to flow through us. They seek to help us navigate the twists and turns along our paths and shine our path forward through their celestial wisdom and insight.
Sailors would navigate the big waves and dark nights looking towards the stars, lovers would carry the jewelled talismans near their hearts, and all of us have looked at the beautiful stars above without even knowing their names or stories they held of humanity; and yet even without this knowing of who they were, they still looked at us and shined like candles. Lights looking at us even when we weren’t looking at them.
Stars aren’t strangers to darkness. They know very well what emptiness may feel like, what aloneness may feel like, and that all may end even the brightest burning ones. But they stay loyal and faithful to the light for as long as the wax allows them their existence. And they hold it all – all nuances, all shades, all hardships and all joys – into one body. One star, one body, one light – within her existing the nuances of the human experience.
And shine bright, like Sirius, the brightest fixed star in our sky. They shine to remind us that life is meaningful; that our everyday actions are sacred; that light will burn out as life will end as wax feeds on its flame but being alive matters and each moment matters. Existence matters, our life matters and there is another kind of light, soul like, not just seen with human eyes, that will shine eternally thereafter and light the paths of all other wanderers.
In the coming weeks I look forward to sharing with you my spiritual astrology insights on some of the fixed stars, starting with Sirius and Alphecca!
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