The Planets

The Sun is the centre and the source, the visible god of the sphere you live in.

The Moon is the light that has no light of her own, the mirror that gives the Sun back softened and changed.

Mars is the red wanderer, the planet of edge and impact, the force that cuts and forges.

Mercury is the quick one, never far from the Sun, the planet of the crossing-point and the messenger between worlds.

Jupiter is the great benefic, the largest of the wandering lights and the most open-handed.

Venus is the bright star of morning and evening, the lesser benefic, the planet of love and beauty and the pull of one thing toward another.

Saturn is the farthest of the seven wandering lights, the slow one, the old one, the lord of the edge of the known world.

Uranus is the first planet nobody inherited.

Neptune is the planet that was found by arithmetic.

Pluto is the smallest and furthest thing this Oracle still calls a planet.

The North Node is not a body.

The South Node is the other crossing — where the Moon's path cuts back down through the Sun's, exactly opposite the North Node and never anywhere…