It may be that the cross-quarter time in a season is the most dynamic, because it has to do with a turn, as though at the midpoint we step away from the past and lean into the as-yet unknown future ~ and what better guide for such a turn than the stars? The compass rose used for navigating was first a rose of winds, and the winds derived their names from the directions that were first and foremost determined by the rising and setting of the stars.

The summer cross-quarter day comes at the end of this week, Friday, August 1st. Traditionally known as Lammas, for ‘loaf mass,’ it is a time for celebrating the first fruits of the harvest. It’s not just a celebration about receiving the fruits, but for making an offering to the nature forces that bring about the miracle of growth and abundance in so selfless a manner.

I love the cross-quarter time, and musing about how I might make my own offering ~ I’m not a farmer, and the modern technologies that crowd into my day bring convenience but also separate me from the drama of the natural environment, both its beauties and its challenges.

And though a recent astronomy magazine post relegated any imagination about our cultural connection with the stars to mere fantasy, and a major newspaper posted a piece about crafting ‘mini-festivals’ deriving from individual interest rather than the seasonal round, still the stars rise and set in their season, bearing stories through the night and into our lives, for sustaining harmony in the environment, rather than discord, like selfless gentle companions that await our noble deeds.

I like to think this is why Shakespeare was so explicit about the date of Juliet’s birth in his great tragedy Romeo and Juliet. He placed her birth at the eve of the summer’s cross-quarter day, July 31st. This is a time when the asterism of the summer triangle crosses the zenith, with the circumpolar stars circling just north. The circumpolar stars never set and include the constellation Cepheus, the king. Ancient mythologies held that the tables of the sun were laid in Ethiopia, and it is here Cepheus ruled, regarded as the ancient father of the science of astronomy.

Now back to Shakespeare. When Romeo first sees Juliet, he uses the stars to express the impression she makes, saying:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear~

Beauty too rich for use, for Earth, too dear.

It is such an image! As though Shakespeare is crafting Juliet right out of the stars of the season, a literal birth from the stars.

And Juliet, in one of her famous monologues, has an equally beautiful way of aligning Romeo to the stars when she says:

Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no heed to the garish sun.

The drama of Romeo and Juliet unfolds in this season specifically, during the weeks and days leading up to the summer cross-quarter, as if to say, beware! If you do not heed the abundance of love and harmony pouring forth from the heaven’s brink, the stars guiding your humanity will cross, and tragedy will befall.

So make an offering. It could be a poem, a loaf of bread, a candle, a prayer, some expression of gratitude to the forces of the natural and cosmic worlds for their ceaseless and selfless communion with this human life.

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