Empyreal Environs

Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II
William Shakespeare

It is high time to let the cat out of Schrödinger’s box: I’m beginning to lose faith that I might get a position at NESN. I’ve even resorted trying to divine my future via the extremes of pseudoscience and quackery by consulting horoscopes and other devices of charlatanism. It’s mystifying to me that people think their fates are determined by the observation of astronomical objects all from our relative positions on earth, but I find my self in desperate straits.

I was born on November 23, 1969, so that makes me a Sagittarius. Sagittarians are supposed to be enthusiastic, generous, religious, philosophical, argumentative, blunt, impatient, and pushy. The myth behind the astrological sign of Sagittarius is based on Chiron, a centaur. Centaurs were the only half-man, half-beast creature that was held in any esteem because the ancients respected horses. Chiron was the most honored and was the pupil of Apollo and Diana and thus well-versed in the fields of hunting, medicine, music, and prophecy. In fact, many medical and occult terms still extant have their origins from the name Chiron, a form of the Greek kheir, meaning hand, including chiromancy (palm reading), chiropracty, surgery (originally cirurgerie from Old French), and chiragra (gout of the fingers).

The myth of Chiron tells of him being grievously injured by an arrow shot from the bow of Hercules. The missile had been dipped in the Hydra’s poison that was of such potency that the physician could not heal himself. Here his tale intersects with that of Prometheus, who stole the fire of the gods and granted it to humanity. Prometheus was punished for his misdeed by being chained to a rock in Tartarus while his liver was endlessly eaten and regrown. Hercules requested from Jupiter that Prometheus be freed should someone willing to take the Titan’s place be found. Chiron ceded his immortality to take Prometheus’s place, and the king of gods rewarded him by placing the centaur in the skies as the constellation Sagittarius.

In Chinese astrology, I’m an Earth Rooster. We terrene fowl are much like the bird we are associated with: feisty, resilient, assured, determined, proud, extroverted, and theatrical. This is probably the basis for my telegenic personality. This forecast indicates that the Year of the Rooster bodes well for those of my ilk, so I am trying to remain upbeat. As the old folk say, however, “One day you’re a rooster, the next a feather duster.”

Every Friday, Dave McCarty will join us to discuss a topic of interest to him and probably no one else but the author of this site and other lone linguistics-loving geeks trying to get a word in edgewise.