Practical Dreaming: On "Parable of the Sower" and the Moon

*Spoiler Alert*: This essay reveals the plot of the first few hundred pages/14 chapters of “Parable of the Sower”.

Octavia is a lunar warrior. In the midst of violence and oppressive structures she asks: Where is the water? What keeps us together? What nourishes us? What does liberation look like in the day-to-day?

Octavia Butler was born when Cancer was touching the horizon, containing both the Sun and Mercury. As both a fan of her work and of the moon, the planet which rules Cancer, I seek to see how a person lives out and demonstrates their chart, even with no prior knowledge of astrology.

Below, in honor of Cancer Season, I examine how Octavia speaks the moon in her most well-known book, The Parable of the Sower. May it be a balm.

Dream Lessons

Octavia begins her first parable with a dream.

We should note this feature, especially because Abu Ma’shar tells us the Moon “signifies the beginning of every work”. Her protagonist, Lauren Olamina (who is also a Cancer), on the eve of her 15th birthday, is visited by visions of learning to fly. She writes in her diary, whose entries comprise the content of the novel, that she has been teaching herself how to fly over multiple dreams and “[she’s] better than she used to be”. When she does lift up, a fire appears, engulfing one of the walls and beginning to reach towards Lauren. As she tries to escape the oncoming flames, she “[fades] into the second part of the dream— the part that’s ordinary and real”. It starts as darkness until stars appear, a sky full of them “casting their cool, pale, glinting light”.

Later, her stepmother tells her that they didn’t used to see stars at night because the lights from the cities drown out their muted glow. While they are speaking they are doing chores, her stepmother passing her brother’s diapers from the clothesline for Lauren to pile with the rest of their garments. Though there are still city lights, Lauren insists, her stepmother tells her of a brighter past, one Lauren never saw. 

“I’d rather have the stars”. Lauren tells her. Her stepmother disagrees, missing the old cities of a lost world.

“But we can afford the stars” she concedes. 

The moon is concerned with this meeting: when fantasy permeates into “the real”: cityscapes, night skies and laundry. Whereas her stepmother misses the “old days” when progress made the stars invisible, Lauren places her desires in the here and now. Even with her dreams of flying, she always comes back to her stars.

Dreams are not impractical, Octavia transmits to us. Dreams are what connect our current life to what is possible.