Constellating 2: Astrology
Tokyo Luck 2025 Foto: Stefanie Wenner
you want it darker, we kill the flame
… sings Leonard Cohen on his last album, released two months before his death in the same year as David Bowie finished his time on earth with the Album Blackstar. We kill the flame. We might be the humans destroying the flame of spiritual life, of the magical entanglement of humans with all other bodies of the world, with needless engagement embodying an unprecedented death drive, a collective nightmare of the present moment.
And then again, there is light. There are the stars, there is movement that was not made by humans, but is merely there. Astrology is a semiotics of the earth and the universe. It is a portal to be revisited in times of a climate crisis. The language of planets and stars is a form of communication that requires translation.
Or, does it? We feel it. We live with it, we act upon it, even without translation.
Signs might be hidden, like the wishes written on folded papers at temples in Japan. Still, the hidden wish is hoped to become fulfilled. Even a buried wishlist, hidden in the dark womb of earth, would carry the agency of potential fulfillment. It is the desire that counts, wherever it is lingering with its flame.
Maybe we do need it darker. Maybe we need the flame to be killed—this destructive flame of capitalism, of neglect of the power of darkness. Maybe we need the flame of brightness to be killed, that the light of oil sheds, being burnt day by day into the atmosphere.
We long for the darkness, the hidden place, the compost. We long for the fire to settle down. We long to bury the coal in the earth. A message for the new day, a new light, a new way of dealing with fire. Bury the fire at night, dig out the glimmering splinter the next morning, and from then on, keep the fire low, keep the flame contained and alive.
Read those signs, feel the language of the earth and the stars and planets connecting to your body. It is not complicated; it is just the magic of life. In darkness. In light. In you.