Wild Signs and Star Paths: Key #10, The Sky Map

[kylec]

This series is an exploration of the works of Tristan Gooley. I’ll document my efforts to learn to read nature’s signs. If you enjoy reading, I encourage you to support the author by purchasing a copy of Wild Sings and Star Paths (UK) or The Nature Instinct (US). I’m in no way affiliated with the author, nor do I profit from sales of the book.

Last Week’s Work

To observe the pink compass. The rising and setting sun casts a pink glow onto nearby clouds and treetops, even after it’s below the horizon.

New World

I corrected an error in the last essay in this series, where I stated that the pink compass is found opposite the sun. Not true. The brightest spots will be those closest to the sun. This one was easy to spot, and often dramatic. At a certain angle at sunrise, the black sky turns dark blue, which lightens and bleeds across the horizon until it passes to yellows and oranges and pinks on clouds near the sun, and finally a uniform pale blue with brightly lit clouds. In the evening, we see the blue turns to bands of pink and orange, narrow, converge on a single point, and disappear. It’s as if the sun were an extravagant king whose entourage arrives long before he does and takes some time to trail off in his passing.



We’ve already seen a number of ways to determine direction, and this is yet another. There are plenty of signs for plenty of other things, but direction is a powerful key. It gives us a sense of where we are and where we might go. To someone whose life is intimately connected to natural cycles and finding things like water and game, to get lost is to risk death. Even if you don’t know exactly where you are, but you’ve maintained a sense of direction from your starting point, you can always find your way home. So being lost doesn’t mean to always have familiarity in your position and confidence in what lies ahead. It only means that you still enjoy a thread that you can trace home from the labyrinth.

Gooley reinforces that direction is not the name of a cardinal vector. The sun doesn’t exactly rise in the east and set in the west. It shifts north or south of the equator depending on the time of year. We might think of the sun as depending on the month. For example, it’s December, so the sun will rise and set pretty far south of an east-west line and daylight will be short. Most older cultures thought of it the other way: the sun not only reveals space, but time as well.

It’s easy to tell direction when the sun is out. In the sun anvil clue, we let its rays beat down on us an keep an eye on shadows as they shift through the day. But we can’t always see the sun when we want to know where we stand. The pink compass expands our ways of honing in on that crucial reference point beyond the hours when the sun is above the horizon. Sure, it’s a narrow window. I was shocked to watch how quickly clouds turned from brilliant pink to duller purples to stone gray. And it doesn’t work as well when the entire sky is blanketed. But these signs work in relation to one another. No one key is constant or foolproof. We take them in constellations.

In the metaphors of our daily lives, I would define the equivalent of the pink compass as any radian power that brightens that which surrounds it—like the king and his retainers. It’s the noise and the bustle of the crowd before the parade arrives, or the warm glowing mood in the room in the minutes after a funny, gregarious person has left. We can use the effect to find interesting areas in strange cities, or freeway onramps. We can even trace a ripple of excitement in our social circle to the good news at its source.

Key #10: The Sky Map

The land and sea beneath the clouds affects their formation, shape, behavior, and color. We can use this map to tell what land features lie around us long before they arrive in sight. Clouds often form over warm spots or obstructions. I’ll especially observe any clouds that persist over one spot or stand out from their neighbors, and see if I can notice a relationship to what’s underneath them. I’ll also note the hues on the bottoms of the clouds and what they reveal about the ground below.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

An extravagant king, indeed! A most glorious one.

On an esoteric level, the sun's relation to the various milestones of the year and seasons (solstices, equinoxes, etc.) make for extremely interesting viewing. At the risk of transgressing one of the fundamental tenets of the occult, I think it's safe to suggest that, depending on one's path, certain operations are accomplished by the particular angle of light, making timing of this sort even more important.

Axé,
Fra' Lupo

[kylec]

I'd guess in the days before wall calendars, relating the sun to some object in the environment was exactly how they would determine it was time for the solstice, for example. I'm interested in gaining such a reference for my area. For example, while observing one of these pink compasses, my wife noted sunsets here are prettier in winter. I think it's due to the sun setting most over the water, where it can find coastal clouds without obstruction, compared to land settings in summer. Maybe i'll head to the beach on the 21st and nail it to a spot!