On the Fixed Star Ras Alhague

Or, welcome to my pharmakon

Hello friends,

Today, I am releasing an essay on the fixed star Ras Alhague for all subscribers.

While I usually keep these for my paid newsletters, after the lovely response to my Fixed Star Essay Collection, I wanted to give everyone a taste of the sort of content they can find in that book as well as my other pieces on the stars.

Here are some ways to determine if this star is for you:

• do have any placements within 2º of 22º Sagittarius?

• are you interested in healing, medicine and bringing people back to wholeness?

• do you like your pleasures queer and “deviant” according to our puritanical status quo?

• do you receive prophetic wisdom from your dreams?

Then read on. Ras Alhague may be the star for you.

And, as always, if you want to connect with this star yourself, I outline my method for doing so here:

Remember: 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 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 ⭐. My books will open for January at the end of the month! Subscribe to be alerted first.

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Ras Alhague is, first and foremost, a healing star in every sense of the world.Its most common Western association is with Asclepius, divine physician, known for curing all manner of sickness for gods and mortals alike. But, over the course of this essay, we will play with, poke at, and bend the meaning of Healing, taking many detours into the realm of serpents, love lost, struggle and dreams along the way.

To understand this star is to begin to understand how we repair from illness, knowing life will take us in the end but still find our wholeness, if for a moment, and become strong in spite of, because of, what wounds us.

Before there was the doctor tending to our wounds, there was the snake charmer.

Head of the Charmer

The name “Ras Alhague” comes from the Arabic Ras al Hawwa, “the Head of the Serpent-charmer”. Its name refers to the coiled beast wrapped tightly around the man’s arms, as depicted in the constellation, and this sapphire star’s location in his head (Hinckley). Much wisdom and insight into Ras Alhague can be discerned if we simply consider the relationship between man and snake. While our heads hold the ethereal mind, the realm where heaven and earth coalesce, bringing us higher and higher, snakes slither close to the ground, belying their terrestrial, even chthonic, nature.

Prior to meeting the snake, the first humans lived in a state of material bliss and oneness with their divine nature. After eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve became aware of their physicality separate from their holiness (wholeness) and the central duality of the earth— that there are good things and bad things— was revealed. Suddenly aware of and ashamed of their nakedness, the humans ask for clothes, affirming their belief that the world was separate from their bodies and would judge them for their natural existence. The snake, of course, is also born from this sudden duality. Originally a lizard, God punishes the creature for tempting Eve with the forbidden fruit in the first place. From this sudden knowledge, borne of the snake, this division of holy and profane, comes fallible flesh, sin, transgression, as well as the serpent himself.

Saturn and Venus

Rag Alhague lives at the intersection of the ambivalence between divinity and profanity, the wholeness of spirit and the broken, impartial nature of matter. Another way to understand the dynamic central to this star is by examining its planetary pair. Many authors have assigned the fixed stars two planets that describe their nature, but Ptolemy’s list is among the most comprehensive and widely-used today. According to his text, Ras Ahague is of the nature of Venus and Saturn. Venus, on the one hand, is a benefic, a bringer of “good things”. She brings intimacy, pleasure, connection, cleanliness, devotion, and harmony. Saturn, on the other hand, is a malefic, one that brings difficulties. They mete out toil, obstacles, old things, despair, destitution, occult knowledge, and, the final truth, death. When in combination, we must balance what we love with the work needed to maintain it. Our rules and boundaries must be tempered by what is fair and beneficial to everyone. Before the flowers bloom, Venus and Saturn remind us, there is dirt. Lots of it.

One common delineation of Venus and Saturn in combination is difficulty or scandal in relationships. Vivian Robson applies this idea to Ras Alhague as well, claiming that the star “gives misfortune through women, perverted tastes and mental depravity”. To this meaning he adds “a passionate, blindly good-hearted, wasteful and easily seduced nature, unseen dangers, enmity and slander”. Here the Venusian propensity for seduction comes with Saturnine consequences— ridicule, struggle, scandalous or non-normative tastes, even damage from loved ones. There is the potential for a variety of relational struggles and idiosyncrasy though not all of them are painful or without their power.

Anonymous 379’s description of Saturn-Venus echoes Robson in part when predicting “people who are subject and slave to passions, do obscene and indecent things or speak effeminately” for those touched by such stars. The obscene and indecent things speak to the so-called “deviant” nature of the pleasures of this combination, but remember that what is “deviant” is often just counter to what is considered “normal” by conventional society. Is being a slave to passions inappropriate when you meet new love, you whole body a live wire in their wake? Or when a loved one is hurt and you have to call out sick to work to care for them? I always encourage people to contemplate the complex manifestations of Venus and Saturn in combination and it’s no different with this star. The reference to speaking effeminately in Anonymous 379’s treat a veiled reference to homosexuality, supports this more expansive side of deviancy. In a world ruled by homophobia and transphobia, simply loving whom you choose (as much as it’s a choice) love can become a scandal.

If touched by this star, you may need to find your pleasure, both sexually and beyond, in “perverse” or non-normative settings, or look beyond the scripts you’ve been fed about love and romance. But, there is more to this combination than who and how we love. Anonymous 379 adds that stars of this nature also “make the natives prosperous, they make them have many possessions and really well-known,” demonstrating a certain elevation found with Ras Alhague and other Venus-Saturn stars that combines the popularity of the Lesser Benefic with the material security of the Greater Malefic.

Anonymous 379 also marks a distinct character to Venus-Saturn star natives: “these stars make the natives people who love the virtue and who criticise the pleasures of love using stern and severe words”. In other words, those marked by this star have a strong, at times rigid, code of conduct, particularly around relationships, and are likely to point out when when something, especially in the realm of love, does not meet their criteria. From there another Venus-Saturn trait emerges: high standards, both internally and externally. Anonymous proves that such strident expectations can also lead one down a particularly divine path:

as the years go by and they get older they take part in some priestly offices and services; people who are esteemed for some kind of religious practice or owing to their self-control and composure, people who refuse to eat some aliments and who are expert in occult books; the natives also become fond of sciences of the sky, their eyes are rather grey (23) and sparkling and they are good-looking

After the experience of age (a vintage Saturn trait), these natives cultivate the discipline and knowledge to become students of the spirit, able to renounce material things for hidden wisdom. This connection to the heavens even makes its way into their appearance, their eyes twinkling as if full of stars on a cloudy night.

Kissing the Snake

Manilius gives us one way as to how such composure and regulation is achieved. Those touched by this constellation, he writes, “will receive snakes into the folds of their flowing robes, and will exchange kisses with these poisonous monsters and suffer no harm." Again with this star we see the amorous intimacy of Venus bringing one close to a potentially harmful Saturnine figure yet still leaving one unharmed by its venom. Could it be the love and tenderness the man brings to the creature that saves him? Could the intimacy he gives to something so potentially harmful render it harmless?

As Manilius goes on, it’s clear, however, that this kindness paid the serpent is not a one-and-done deal but a continual process. He envisions this constellation as a man wrestling with the snake that curls around his arms. The “[o]ne called Ophiuchus holds apart the serpent” that coils around his body, he writes, “so he may untie its knots and back that winds in loops”. As the man unloosens the animal from his limbs, “the serpent looks back and returns,” twisting around the man once again. “The struggle will last for ever,” Manilius claims, “since they wage it on level terms with equal powers”. Though there are moments of relief, maybe even a temporary victory over the serpent, they are followed by moments of struggle and constriction as the beast winds its way back again. Could this dynamic also serves as a metaphor for maintaining this mortal coil? Might this be a way to understand the process of healing, the sacred purview of the star, which, at its root means wholeness?

Ras Alhague demonstrates that to be alive, to have a body, is to be in continuous process. It teaches us that to live on earth as flesh and blood is to be a creature that is continually out of whack who is also a part of everything, never not separate from the divine mystery. That, no matter how healthy we are, no matter how much healing we do, life is a chronic condition. That the only guarantees in life are sickness, old age, and death. But Asclepius, ever-optimist, ever turning, doesn’t stop there. It is exactly in this tension of opposites between pain and healing, wholeness and separation, that this star comes alive.

Asclepius the Healer

We can contemplate this interdependence of wound and cure in the myth of Asclepius, born of the Sun God Apollo and princess Coronis. While pregnant with the god’s child, the mortal woman falls in love with another man Ischys, with whom she has an affair. A white crow sent to watch her relays her transgression to a heart-broken Apollo, who orders the death of his beloved and turns the crow black out of spite. Though he reneges on his murderous position, Coronis is already dead on the funeral pyre, though the baby from her womb is able to be saved. In exchange for this painful sundering, Apollo gives his son the gift of healing, a common Solar attribute. He further sharpens his education with the centaur Chiron, also known as the wounded healer thanks to a hip injury that never stops bleeding. In this myth, we see the duality of this star on full display. Asclepius, on whom the Ophiucus constellation is based, is born not just of a mortal and a god, but a dead mortal from whose demise the divine physician himself is born. A white crow, due to witnessing the misfortunes of the world, is turned black, marked by merely relaying the transgression to a wrathful god. And, despite the broken origins of Asclepius, this demi-god is given the ability to repair what has been broken, while also studying under a teacher of medicine who never heals. We can’t get healing without death or wholeness without pain in this myth. They are ever-bound.

Higher Power

But, in the realm of Ras Alhague, sickness or pain is more than just an ending. Through this myth and this star, we gain the ability to sublimate our hurts and brokenness into something wise and spiritual. In Fixed Stars and Their Interpretation, Elsbeth Ebertin gestures to “supposedly higher influences attributed to this star,” but adds that “only very few people are able to attune themselves to these influences”. There are a multitude of ways I’ve seen this star manifest, all of them vital. In researching those who have this star conjoined their ascendant, I found Anjelica Houston, actress best known for roles like Morticia Addams in The Addams Family movies, a vampy, gothic matriarch who cuts the flowers from the stems before putting them in bouquets and enjoying the pain of childbirth. In real life, she was married to Jackson Nicholson for almost two decades before he fathered a child out of wedlock— a Venus-Saturn star indeed. But, she is also an avid gardener, and prefers to stay home and tend to her massive, well-kept plot. Though not a healer, Huston’s life demonstrates the dark glamour as well as the sundering that leads to greater growth present in this star.

Then we have someone like Herman Hesse, popular German writer born in 1867 who was known for his transcendant novels and tumultuous personal life. He was sent to a clinic for “nervous diseases” at 16 and suffered from mental breakdowns throughout his life as well as alcoholism, depression and hypochondria. Hesse was also deeply influenced by the Indian mysticism he witnessed when he visited the country as well as his study of Jungian psychoanalysis. Most of his books have a spiritual component, such as Siddhartha and The Glass Bead Game, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work is still taught in classrooms and read widely today, particularly useful for those who wish to find a beacon along their spiritual path.

All manifestations of this serpentine, Venus-Saturn star are holy and profane. Or, put another way, the “supposedly higher influences” of this star are inextricable from its “lower” ones. There’s insight to be found this low to the ground, calling to mind Jesus’s exhortations to his disciples that they be “wise as snakes”. Though leading to their expulsion from Eden, what would humanity be without Adam and Eve’s exile? What is the point of faith and hope if they haven’t been tested by the suffering and vagaries of life? This star tells us that we are not meant to fight against our dual, part divine, part fallen, nature, but use the powers of our mind to find a wise way through these forking paths, finding dirt in heaven and healing in a snake.

Welcome to my Pharmakon

Another common Ras Alhague meaning is possession of the ability to heal snake bites. In addition to kissing snakes, Manilius adds that this constellation “renders the forms of snakes innocuous to those born under him”. Firmicus writes that “those who are born with this star rising will be snake charmers who soothe poisonous snakes” but also cautions that those born with Ras Alhague setting or near malefic may die by poisonous snake bite. A talismanic texts further supports this meaning, telling us the constellation “drives away poisons and cure venomous bites” of all kinds. This ability calls to mind Venus and Saturn in a different manner; while Venus, ruler of venereal diseases, affects through intimacy, Saturn rules borders and blockages. This star can help prevent subtler forms of harm, like those found in microscopic germs, toxins, or the host of ailments caused by autoimmune disorders. Here we see the extremely Asclepian concept of pharmakon come to life. Referring to a drug of any sort, both poisonous and healing, a pharmakon can be helpful and harmful depending on dosage and context. Much of our body and medicine works in this way: While having no immune system will wreck your health, so will having an overpowering one that attacks one’s own body. Many drugs that would be poison to a healthy person are used to treat cancers, which are themselves harmful because they bring too much life, a growth made monstrous. Those touched by or working with this star must understand the subtle nonduality present within concepts of health and healing.

Even Asclepius himself understands the fraught relationship between life and death. After Perseus slayed the gorgon Medusa, Athena gave the physician two vials of the woman’s blood, one from each of her sides. While blood from Medusa’s left side helped restore an ill person to health, blood from the right side was lethal. Those touched by these stars similarly experiences both the pleasure and pain of existing and, what’s more, are meant to follow that for their purpose. This is not to say those touched by this star are flippant with life and death, but understand their necessary relationship, how one flows into the other, especially if we get out of the way sometimes. Ras Alhague speaks to a wisdom that is divinely given, a sort of skillful means that helps us understand when something is vital and when something is harmful.

Dreaming the Cure

No more does this subtle, divine wisdom come together than in the realm of dreams.

In Ancient Rome, one would visit an Asclepion, or a temple for Asclepius, to ask for the god’s help with any ailment with which you suffered. After making their offerings, the sick would sleep in the temple, wherein, during the night, they would dream their cure. Though we we may thoughts or interpretations of what we see during the night, it is clear that the dreaming itself is the actual medicine. As depth psychologist James Hillman puts it, “[t]he healing cults of Asclepius depended upon dreaming, but not upon dream interpretation”. To allow a dream to remain a dream means not settling on one meaning but instead letting it retain a multivalent set of significations that may or may not contradict themselves. Simply open yourself up to the wholeness presented in that one image or scene. What does your therapist have to say about it? Your best friend? Your lover? How it is read literally and what do the various elements mean when reduced to their symbols? All of these potentials help you understand the wholeness and power of just one dream. I have seen many Ras Alhague natives with prophetic dream potential, so consider paying attention to the messages in your slumber if you are touched by this oneiric star.

Calling upon the embodied wisdom represented by the snake, Hillman tells us that “[I]t is better to keep the dream's black dog before your inner sense all day than to "know" its meaning (sexual impulses, mother complex, devilish aggression, guardian, or what have you)”. Just as a curing dose for one can kill another, we would do well to avoid generalizations or abstractions when trying to heal our particular body and mind, just as we should resist reducing our singular dreams to the few lines found in a dream book. There’s a versatility to Asclepius natives and practitioners who understand the light of the mind and its wisdom as well as the deep, bodily knowing that can only come from hidden, mysterious sources.

I am reminded of a phrase used a lot at the Buddhist monastery where I lived for two years: psychic surgery. This word was given to describe a peculiar phenomenon I sometimes experienced that felt akin to divine grace. I would be struggling immensely with some big, seemingly insurmountable problem or inner blockage for weeks, months only to have it suddenly shift. After trying to throw all of my thoughts and conscious practices at it I would go to sleep and, as if overnight, the burden was suddenly lifted in the morning. As if while I slept, unseen hands stitched my frayed synapses or hurts feelings back together, a healing of which I was not the architect. I believe that engaging with this star can provide you with this very type of spooky healing at a distance, so to speak, the allowance of change beyond what our human capacity alone could achieve or even imagine.

Because, really, this star does not want you to choose between the head and the snake. While sometimes, healing is done by experts with a strong knowledge and understanding of disease and treatment, other times, it’s as if the god themselves have rearranged fate. This duality is needed even more so when understanding that healing is not a static state but a process of continual engagement and shifts. One may be strong today, but what of tomorrow? We may have exercised or fed ourselves or slept enough for now but that does not guarantee we will do so the next time, or that we even need the same nourishment and rest as we did the last time.

There’s a commitment to sensitivity, to being a loving steward of a fragile body, that comes with working with this star. As artist, writer, astrologer and disability advocate Johanna Hedva puts it, “in order to encounter healing, there first must be damage that necessitates it”. Just as our dreams of the future must also reckon with past hurt, “I can think of no greater intent to do care together than a willingness to do pain together, to invite our monstrosities, our leaking guts, our violences to find ways to live under the same roof” (Hedva). Perhaps, at last, we reach the final meaning of Asclepius’s Venus-Saturn nature. Rather than only connecting through our blessings and charms, this star dares one to find connection while feeling broken, monstrous, wounded, the opposite of whole. What does it mean to meet ourselves exactly where we are, especially with the idea that only through that dirty portal can we reach higher planes? How can we meet each other in the muck, outside of Eden, with our wounds bringing us closer together, closer to care, closer to life and death all at once?

Sources:

• Star Names, Richard Hinckley Allen, 1889, p. 300

• Vivian Robson, The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology p.193.

• Anonymous 379, Bright, passionate, harmful and helpful stars

• Manilius, Astronomica, 1st century AD,  book 1, p. 333, 31

• Firmicus, Mathesis, VIII.XV.I

• James Hillman, “Dream and the Underworld”

• Johanna Hedva, “How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability and Doom”