Today’s newsletter is a deep dive on the fixed star Thuban, found in the tail of the Draco constellation. You don’t need to have much technical knowledge of astrology to appreciate the stars. We have been writing stories and praying to them since we have been looking up. This essay is meant to help readers connect more deeply to these divine messengers and better understand ourselves. If you want to know if Thuban touches your chart, see if you have any planets or significant placements within 2º of 7º Virgo. Even if not, you have so much to learn from this powerful star.
If you are still mystified by the fixed stars and how they fit into your chart, I have multiple class on the stars!
One gives a basic overview of what stars are, both astronomically and astrologically, traditional opinions on the stars, plus how to fit them into your astrology practice. I also have classes on the daimonic helical rising and setting stars as well as one on stellar gnosis, or connecting with the stars directly.
Learn more and purchase the class here.
If you want to learn more about how the stars touch and guide your beautiful life, and what your soul is asking of you, book a fixed star reading with me ⭐. You have to feel the magic of the stars yourself to believe it. P.S. everyone who purchases my intro course gets 20% off their next fixed star reading ;)
Despite its massive size and sublime power, the dragon is nothing if not elusive. Though ever-present in the human psyche, they are mythical creatures, never appearing outside of stories and epics or CGI-ed into movies. The often possess the ability to breathe fire and can fly soaring heights despite their overwhelming size. In The Book of Symbols, the authors make a connection between dragons and alchemy, as well as to the unconscious, another massive yet hidden part of our lived experience. In our unconscious we find our repressions, hidden desires, self-destructive impulses, as well as our connection to the collective, the divine, our spirit. There is a dark depth to the image of the dragon, “the self-fertilizing and self-devouring serpent,” containing both the seeds of destruction and the potential for transcendent regeneration.1
But we have also heard stories of the dragon sitting atop a mountain of gold, buried deep in the earth as if they were an extension of the hard earth, hoarding the value and preventing its movement, sinking deeper and deeper into matter in the process.
All of these themes coalesce in the constellation Draco and its alpha star Thuban. Though it has alternatively been a snake, including the serpent in the Garden of Eden, even the Babylonians worshipped this constellation as Bel the Great Dragon. Thuban is a pale yellow star in the tail of this massive constellation that used to encompass both Ursa Major and Minor, the latter of which acted as the dragon’s wings.2 The nature of the dragon can also be understood in its basic depiction— as a snake with wings. As discussed in my Alphard essay, snake’s proximity to the earth connects them to the base, the chthonic, as well as the power and transformation contained within an alignment with the earth. Wings show the ability to float beyond the baser concerns and touch real, divine Truth— both are inherent in the dragon archetype.
The Eternal Pivot
With vast convolutions Draco holds
The ecliptic axis in his scaly folds.
O’er half the skies his neck enormous rears,
And with immense meanders parts the Bears.
— Erasmus Darwin’s Economy of Vegetation
This all-encompassing, heavenly and earthly, nature of the Draco is heightened by the constellation’s exalted position thousand of years ago. 4,000 years ago, Draco was the pole star, or the north star that corresponds with with the axis around which the world turns. They call Thuban Yu Choo in China, meaning the right-hand pivot.3 In Akkad, it was known as as Tir-An-na, the Life of Heaven or Dayan Same, the Judge of Heaven, each signifying its central position to not just turn the heavens and earth but accurately judge those who move with it.
Despite it precessional shift away from the poles over the last few thousand years, it is still apparently a very important star for navigation and nautical commerce directing, representing the dragon’s coils’ snaking around the earth, exerting “subtle influence in all worldly affairs”.4 Thuban native would do well to not neglect the mundane. and earthly: this is a portal to something deeper. One unique feature of pole stars is that they never rise and set. Being so close to the unmoving center of the world, it never dips below the horizon, making it an “eternal” star, always touching the realms of the immortals in heavens and never being changeable or dying like a phasal star. We see it every night, regardless of the shifting seasons and stellar positions.
Stars like Thuban can be seen like gates of heaven, aligning with what is eternal as well as with what is earthly, at the mercy of cycles of growth and decay. Bernadette Brady saw its former pole position as indicating its guarding of “the greatest treasure of all, the pivot-point of the world”.5 Thusly, it did not let anyone access this immortal afterlife: Thuban was also syncretized with “the Crocodile of the Egyptians,"' who devoured“ any dead beings whose hearts were too heavy for the scale of judgment, thus stopping them from immortal life at the Pole”.6 In its capacity as judge, this constellation must determine who is worthy of its riches. Thus, being aligned with the base and sacred alike gives Thuban a unique ability to sink into matter and judge it accordingly.
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