Gemini and 2 planets illuminate evening skies in May
As darkness arrives these May evenings, the western side of the sky sparkles with dozens of stars and two planets.
The planets are Saturn, shining bright yellow high up, and Mars, glowing dimmer orange lower down. They shine in the foreground of one of the most famous constellations: Gemini, the Twins.
Like many constellations, Gemini looks like what it's supposed to represent, if you connect the dots right. Its two brightest stars are Pollux and Castor on top, traditionally marking the twins' heads. The stick figures here were drawn more than a half-century ago by H. A. Rey, the Curious George author and illustrator, in his enchanting constellation guide, ''The Stars: A New Way to See Them" (still in print). However, the figures surely are much older than that. Ancient descriptions of Gemini from Greek and Roman times make it clear that skywatchers connected the dots pretty much the same way more than two millennia ago.
Once you know the pattern, the Gemini figures stand in the night like a pair of enormous cartoon characters looming over the world. To see them well, you'll need a darker sky than you'll find near Boston. Beyond Route 128, you should be able to make them out, if you've got sharp vision and keep away from bright lights. From a shaded spot beyond Interstate 495, they practically jump out at you.
In Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux were twin sons of the god Zeus. A Roman story makes them out to be mortals whom Zeus lofted into the heavens in recognition of their brotherly love. Egyptians considered them the god figures Horus the Elder and Horus the Younger.
Tales from ancient India and from medieval Venice make them a boy and a girl, and that's how they've always looked to me -- the female Pollux figure, with her wide hips, holds hands with and gazes at male Castor, who leans toward her with his other arm flung wide. A pair of lovers, if ever there were. This week, Mars shines right between them.
Back when people had no idea what planets were (other than moving points of light), they assumed that the planets were magical entities watching over them, dispensing all sorts of influences and correspondences that acted on daily life. Mars was colored fiery orange-red, not because of iron compounds in its soil (no one even knew it had soil), but because it was the god of war, and war involves blood and fire.
Similarly, the 12 constellations through which the planets pass (there are 13, but 12 was considered a nicer number) each had their own characteristics, based on their connect-the-dots patterns. The hand-holding twins, for instance, stood for duality. So when Mars was in Gemini, as we see it these evenings, diviners could spin out interpretations of war and duality combined. Thus astrology was born. The basics of Western astrology were fully roughed out by several centuries BC.
We know now that Mars is an inanimate rock that cares no more about, nor has any more influence over, whether we should go to war with Iran, for instance, than does a rock lying in your backyard.
But a lot of people still don't get it and take such obsolete pagan notions literally.
Interestingly, some people who do get it are among those who call themselves pagans today: self-declared witches, partakers in magic ceremonies, and nature worshippers. I have some of these folks as friends.
Modern neopaganism (if that's not a contradiction in terms) is about mythical correspondences and influences that reasonable people should have outgrown long ago.
But, apparently, as with the Bible, one can take these things literally or metaphorically, ''the way," a friend explained to me, ''people find truth in a novel even when they know it's fiction."
By comparison, astrology columns, such as the one this newspaper prints every day, are the coarsest sort of literal pagan fundamentalism, whether their readers know it or not.
Maybe it's too much to expect that humanity will outgrow its earliest naive beliefs. But perhaps the beliefs, once examined, may evolve from literalism to a level of refinement at which they at least do no harm.
MacRobert is a senior editor of Sky & Telescope and Night Sky magazines in Cambridge (SkyandTelescope.com, NightSkyMag.com). His Star Watch column appears the first Saturday of every month. 
