Vertcliff Publishing · the fixed stars

Aculeus

Messier 6, an open cluster in Scorpius — the butterfly beyond the Scorpion's sting

The constellation Scorpius drawn in gold foil, with the star Aculeus marked at the butterfly beyond the Scorpion's sting.
Scorpius — Aculeus marked, the butterfly beyond the Scorpion's sting
Position (J2000)
25°48′ Sagittarius
Magnitude
4.20 (combined)
Type
Open cluster, ~120 stars
Colour
Blue-white, with one orange giant
Distance
~1,590 light-years
Nature
Mars · Moon

In the sky

Aculeus is a small open cluster about fifteen hundred and ninety light-years away, lying just above and beyond the tip of the Scorpion's tail. Most of its members are hot blue-white stars, and its brightest, BM Scorpii, is an orange giant that glows among them like an ember among sparks.

Its outline in a small telescope suggests a butterfly with open wings, and it is known as the Butterfly Cluster. To the naked eye it is a faint patch near the sting. Hodierna recorded it before 1654 and Messier catalogued it in 1764.

The myth

The Scorpion was sent against Orion when the hunter boasted that he would kill every beast on earth; in some tellings Gaia sent it, in others Artemis or Leto. Zeus set both in the sky on opposite sides, so that they never meet. Aculeus is Latin for the sting or prickle; the Arab astronomers called it and its neighbour that which follows the sting.

Ptolemy's cloud-like cluster at the sting is the neighbour, Acumen, to which he gave the nature of Mars and the Moon. Robson gives Mars and the Moon to both clusters, and warns that they damage the eyesight. This book reads such a warning as the finest of gifts: the eye that is dimmed toward ordinary things sees further into what lies beneath them. The Moon's feeling and the heat of Mars, joined in a small cloud beyond the sting, describe perception sharpened by what it has suffered.

What it gives

  • Sight beneath the surface The native perceives what lies under a situation, the hurt behind a hard manner or the fear beneath an argument.
  • Feeling with courage Mars with the Moon makes the emotions quick and warm, and gives the native the nerve to act on what they feel, to defend the vulnerable and to answer an injury done to another.
  • A life of true changes The cluster's butterfly shape suits a life of distinct stages. The native passes through real transformations, each shedding the last.
  • Wisdom from wounds The native turns what has hurt them into understanding. They know pain from the inside, and can speak to others in pain with real authority.

What to watch for

  • Seeing only the dark The same sight can fix on what is hidden and troubling until the ordinary goodness of things is lost from view, and this is the gloom the old readings warn of. It is brought back by looking, just as deliberately, for what is well.
  • The sting returned Quick feeling joined to the heat of Mars can answer every prick with a sting, so that the native's replies outrun their judgement. The remedy is a pause between the feeling and the answer, long enough for the Moon to be heard before Mars.
  • Change forced The butterfly cannot be hurried from its chrysalis, and forcing change, or abandoning each stage before its work is done, weakens the wings. It is eased by letting each season of life complete itself before the next begins.
  • The wound kept open What hurt can become a place to live, the injury tended so long that it never heals. It is restored by closing each hurt deliberately once its lesson has been taken, and by ordinary care of the physical eyes.

How to work with it

Give the inner sight honest work. Counsel, healing, the arts and any calling that needs someone to see what has not been said will use this faculty well; kept idle, it turns inward and begins to find darkness everywhere.

Let the Moon speak before Mars. The native's feelings are true guides, and their force is best spent after a short interval, so that the answer to an injury is chosen rather than struck.

Honour the stages of change, and tend each wound until it closes. The eyes, which the tradition names, deserve ordinary practical care, and the inward eye is kept clear in a similar way, by rest and by beauty.

In brief

Aculeus is the small butterfly beyond the Scorpion's sting: sight beneath the surface, feeling with the courage to act, a life of true changes, and wisdom gathered from wounds. Its risks are the sting's — sight fixed on darkness, injury answered with injury, change forced before its season, and hurt kept open. The placement functions best where the inner eye has honest work and each wound is allowed to heal, and worst where the sharpness it gives is turned back upon its owner.

The shared observatory

For thousands of years astrology was built one way: someone watched the sky, watched a life, and wrote down what seemed to answer what. Everything in the tradition — every verdict the old texts hand down about Aculeus — began as one person's observation, kept, compared, and corrected across generations. This page continues that work. If Aculeus stands close upon a planet in your chart, add your observation to the record: what it has given, and what it has asked of you.

Which planet does Aculeus stand upon in your chart, and how close is the orb? How do you experience the conjunction — where does it show in your life, and what has it taught you? The calculator will find your conjunctions if you have not looked yet.

No account needed — a nickname and your words. Observations are reviewed before they appear, which usually takes a day or two.

Read Aculeus beside its hundred and twenty-two companions in A Book of Fixed Stars, or raise your own chart to see which stars stood close at your birth.

These stars walk the world in the novel. Our Sidereal World: Selena and Lilith — Anastasia Vertcliff's mythopoetic, philosophical fantasy of souls and free will, where the fixed stars come down wearing faces, eager to help, and not to be trusted.

Meet them in the novel →