For the first term of Virgo
To Venus, 0° Virgo 00’ to 7° Virgo 59’
The Finish Line
With firm intent to live to ripe old age,
Venus works the flesh to keep the mind strong:
"Daily exercise," the cry of the sage,
seems the best way to keep living for long.
The swimmer's graceful' stretch, or runner's gait,
cloth with strong sinew a wrack of old bones,
yet the heart's strong rhythms may swift abate—
bring the tower down to a heap of stones.
Some athletes' lives end with a busted heart,
astonished that their thews could thus betray
the oath made at the fitness-journey's start—
long life comes from living a healthy way!
With last gulps of air and clutching the chest,
the athlete goes into eternal rest.
An athlete in first place breaks the finishing line tape while holding their chest in pain.
As some readers know, my Patreon supporters at the $3 tier and $5 tier are getting all five poems for the Chaldean Terms of the Zodiac as they come out each month this year. The poems were written over the course of the last several years, commemorating the deaths of people I knew, and acknowledging that the Terms (sometimes called the Bounds in astrology) are historically associated with the risks and tribulations and dramatics of death — that is, it’s when our chart encounters changes in the terms that some risks arise and others diminish.
Sooner or later, one of those risks is going to get us.
Each poem consists of a title, a sonnet, and a visual image which may be drawn as a magical picture, or as an image for the purposes of contemplation. I’ll release the he final version of the hymns in some formats next year or the year after. I may choose to include some of the magical purposes to which I’ve put these images and poems in the last half-decade in that.
As part of a way to encourage more people to be supporters of this project, I’ve published the sonnets for the first term of each sign here. You can find the First Term of Aries and the First Term of Taurus here already, along with the first term of Gemini and the first term of Cancer, and the others will come out in the due course of time. If you’d like to support the release of these poems to the public, as a sort of “astrologically based guide to risks of death”, then please support my Patreon at either the $3 or $5 tier.
I’ve checked it and the table says that it belongs to Mercury and the second term of Virgo belongs to Venus from 7° to 14°. How is that?
There’s three different frameworks for the Terms — the Egyptian Terms, the Ptolemaic Terms, and the Chaldean Terms. These are the Chaldean Terms.
I chose to do the Chaldean terms first — and I think I’ll do the Egyptian terms next, but I won’t do the Ptolemaic terms. Two sets of 60 poems will be enough, I think.
Hello Poet!
Why to Venus now?
What’s the reason?
The first Chaldean term of Virgo belongs to Venus — and it runs from 0° Virgo to 7° Virgo 59’.