Botein
Delta Arietis — the Ram's belly, the strength behind the charge
- Position (J2000)
- 20°51′ Taurus
- Magnitude
- 4.35
- Colour
- Orange
- Spectrum
- K2 III
- Distance
- ~170 light-years
- Nature
- Mars
In the sky
Botein is an orange giant of the fourth magnitude on the Ram's flank, about a hundred and seventy light-years away, a star that has finished burning hydrogen at its heart and swollen to some ten times the Sun's width. It is not a star one notices. It lies well behind Hamal and the horns, low on the hindquarters of the figure, and it is known chiefly as the leading star of the little triangle the Arabs called al-Butain, the little belly, the second mansion of the Moon. In the frame this site uses for the mansions it stands almost exactly on the border between the second and the third, with the Pleiades just beyond.
The star lies very close to the ecliptic, less than two degrees north of it, so that the Moon passes over it often and the planets come to it in their turn.
The myth
The Ram is the beast of the golden fleece, and its belly is the part of it that was never painted: the hidden under-side, where the fleece was thickest and where the animal's strength was stored. The second mansion took its character from it, the mansion of what is kept and slowly made use of, of treasure buried and seed put into the ground. Ptolemy gives the stars of the Ram's hind parts the nature of Mars, and Robson keeps that for Botein.
Mars in the belly is a different thing from Mars in the horn. The horn strikes; the belly drives. This is the strength behind the charge, the store of power that lets the Ram keep going after the first push, and the star speaks of a drive that comes from reserves rather than from impulse. The same Mars, held in the hidden part, can also be the slow heat of a thing kept too long.
What it gives
- Drive from reserve The native's strength comes from what has been stored. They do not flare and fade; they draw on a deep store and keep going after quicker starters have stopped.
- The hidden strength Power that is not displayed. Others underrate this native until the second mile, when the belly's store shows what the horn's show could not.
- Patience in a hot sign The Ram's impulse held in the Ram's body: a native who can wait for the moment with a fire banked rather than spent, and strike when the waiting is done.
- Provision for the charge A gift for preparing, for laying in what the effort will need, so that when the native moves they are provisioned for the whole distance.
What to watch for
- Heat kept too long Mars in the belly can be anger stored. What was not spent at the time gathers in the hidden part and comes out late, with all the reserve behind it.
- Underrated into resentment The strength no one sees can become a grievance about not being seen; the native who stores effort and keeps a ledger of it.
- Reserve that is never spent Provision for a charge that is never made. The store grows and the native waits for a moment that must be chosen, not waited for.
- The slow digestion Experience held in the belly and not yet understood; a native slow to know what they feel, and surprised by it when it finally moves.
How to work with it
The native does well to spend the reserve on purpose, in regular measures: the heat let out in work or motion before it has gathered, the anger spoken while it is still small, the stored strength used on a chosen charge rather than kept against an imagined one.
It helps to show the strength now and then, so that it need not be resented for being unseen. A piece of the hidden work made visible, once a season, is enough.
The belly's patience is a true gift when it has a date: a moment fixed in advance for the charge, after which the Ram moves. Waiting with no end set becomes storing, and storing becomes the slow heat the star warns of.
In brief
Botein is the Ram's belly and an orange star of the fourth magnitude: drive from reserve, hidden strength, patience in a hot sign, provision for the charge. Its difficulties are the stored heart's, anger kept too long, strength resented for being unseen, a reserve never spent, and feeling slow to be known. The placement works best where the reserve is spent in measures and the charge is given a date.