As stated in my brief (to be added to as time and brain permit) ABOUT section, I’ve been a student of astrology since I was 17 (yee gods that’s 30 years). I’ve always been the odd one out in my family, with deeply spiritual beliefs and ideas about life that have little or nothing to do with my upbringing. It seems they were just somehow ‘in me’.
My brother, who is three years younger than me, is like the polar opposite of me. While I believe everything happens for a reason, that there is no such thing as ‘coincidence’, and that there is some kind of point to life, that in fact this life we currently lead is not the only one we have had, or will have (ie I believe in reincarnation), my brother thinks all of this is bullshit. My brother, who has a PHD in Chemistry and who works as an environmental scientist for probably the biggest company in New Zealand, says “We live, we die, there is no special point to life, once you’re dead, you’re dead, the End.”
My beloved brother (we get on incredibly well and are extremely close) for years has loved taking the mickey out of my belief in astrology. He loved trying to rile me up, attempting to get me to argue with him about it, to defend my beliefs. I never could be bothered and now at least, he doesn’t try anymore.
So, when I was speaking to him on the phone just before and he mentioned to me he had just received a new book he was really looking forward to reading, I naturally asked him ‘what’s the book?’ “The Luminaries” he replied, “by Eleanor Catton”. ‘You mean the one that won the prestigious Man Booker 2013 prize?’ I asked. “Yeah, that’s the one” he says.
And I promptly burst into gales of laughter. “What’s so funny?” he asks. ‘You realize that’s all about astrology don’t you?’
“What! ?” he says.
‘Yeah, that’s the one set on the West Coast of NZ and it’s all about astrology, she’s written her characters with all the basic astrological/or star sign characteristics, or something like that ’ I say.
Silence.
I laugh out loud again. My dear brother says something along the lines of, “Well I’ll still give it a go.”
General chit chat ensues, then he says “Christ I’ve just opened it up and it starts with ‘Mercury in Sagittarius’.
We both roar with laughter. Oh the irony!
The Luminaries……. From Wikipedia:
Each of the twelve men who comprise the council in the first chapter of the book is associated with one of the twelve zodiac signs. The title of a chapter in which one of these men plays a major role is likely to contain that man’s sign.
Another set of characters is associated with heavenly bodies within the solar system.
Justine Jordan, writing for The Guardian, also noted positively that Catton deftly organised her novel:
… according to astrological principles, so that characters are not only associated with signs of the zodiac, or the sun and moon (the “luminaries” of the title), but interact with each other according to the predetermined movement of the heavens, while each of the novel’s 12 parts decreases in length over the course of the book to mimic the moon waning through its lunar cycle.
The Out There Cafe 