Constellating 1: Spica
Spica (2025, tempera and gold leaf on linen) © Stefanie Wenner
Against the grain with Spica
Spica is not one, Spica is two Stars. Spica is the name of the grain in the hand of the maiden, in the constellation of Virgo, the virgin. This is our image of her today: She floats above us, lying between Leo and Libra on the flat disc of the Zodiac. Which is that part of the sky, the planets move through, the part of our sky that the sun honors with her path of light, the path of the sky, we privilege above all other parts of the sky. These constellations of the zodiac are what most of Western Astrology talks about: these constellations and the planets. I want to talk today about and with Spica, their teachings, and their mission in the narratives of the skies of the world.
The Quechua People for example, did not see the constellation of Virgo. Where we located her above us, they saw a deer. The main star of their constellation is located at the mouth of the animal. While the images are very different, the message remains related. The star talks about nurture.
In astronomy, Spica is a binary star system and one of the 20 brightest stars in our night sky. Spica is a system of two suns rotating around each other every four Earth days. They appear to be a blueish color because of the great heat, they emmit. The bigger star can become a Supernova, being 7 times the radius and 10 times the mass, and 20 times the luminosity of our sun. It is so big that it takes up 30% of the space between itself and the smaller companion sun.
Traditional Western astrological significations of Spica include an abundant gift of knowledge, which was, in earlier times, connected to the understanding of cultivation. Spica is a binary star, also in this sense. They bring the gift of abundance, of knowledge, and a skillful way of caring to make the most of something. For people, it might grant access to important, but also dangerous insights, like agriculture itself.
Spica, as the wheat in the hand of the maiden, has a lot to tell us about the grain, which was not cultivated by humans but rather the other way around. Crop culture required more people to work in the fields to tend to the plants than was needed before. While hunting and gathering kept people on the move, the cultivation of the grain created the need to stay, the need to work harder, to grow more grain. This was not at all considered to be a good thing by the humans of the time. People were fighting against the grain, holding up against civilisation. They cultivated being on the move; they did not want to become citizens. Spica talks about this. They talk as the two-faced star of the wisdom of the moon, the wisdom of life, nurtured and grown in bodies we now refer to as female. Easy does it.
Against the grain, they are reminding us of the different life forms contemplated by the vestal virgins, who by no means did not have sex. They just did not get married. Spica is the binary Star representing the grain in one hand of Virgo the Virgin, the unmarried, the free woman, a warrior against patriarchy, if you will. They are the embodiment of an old goddess figure, double-faced like Venus or the Moon, a trickster like Mercury, much older than the ideas of agriculture, fertility, and harvest. They are a portal beyond the scope of exploitation of life in the name of an unsustainable harvest, of extractivism, which is another name for a cultural death drive that is leading a war against all living bodies of the planet.
Claviceps Purpurae is a fungus growing on wheat with the twofold potential it shares with many drugs, between enlightenment and poison. It might have or might not have been part of the drink that was offered in Eleusis, at the Mysteries, the rites for Demetra and Kore. It certainly is part of the legend of the grain, its heroic story being told by humans.
The maiden holding the grain reminds us of that pharmacon, that poison, that cure - always a question of the dose -, of the drug that I am thinking of. Which are carbohydrates in the case of the grain, and which is a dreamspace in the case of the fungus growing on it. Claviceps Purpurae, the mushroom growing against the grain of the monoculture of the grain, dangerously nurturing a different kind of dream.
Magical practices connected different bodies of the earth at all times. Tending to a place might include leaving it be. Spica know of this magic of timing and spacing. They remember nurturing beyond cultivation and hoarding, honoring wheat as a partner of humans, not as a mass product.
Spica’s suns rotate; they keep connected. Ergotism was a threat to health inflicted by Claviceps Purpurae, becoming stronger just as the wheat itself through monoculture. The poison still included the cure.
Stargazing is time-traveling. The light we see where we locate Spica traveled 250 years to get here. People all over the world have also at that time and much earlier, been looking up and wondering. They have been star-struck by what is given to see, trying to make sense of it, constellating the stars, and storytelling. Stars locate us within a bigger picture, connecting not only humans, but more than human bodies, co-creating the world we live in. Anybody can begin a new thread, tell a different story, cut the wood against the grain, or comb the web inside out. This is the Portal of Spica, inviting to constellate the Stars beyond extractivism and patriarchy. An invitation to invent new stories. Let us begin here.
Thank you, Renée Sills and the whole cohort @embodiedastrology of the practitioners program, where I was privileged enough to share an amazing journey becoming an astrologer over the last 16 months.
Thank you, Luz Peuskovich and The League of the Stars for introducing me to the magic of fixed Stars.
Thank you, Lila Lakehal, for co-parenting a future project with Spica and initiating a sparkling conversation about and with her.
