Ruby Todd, author of Bright Objects, pens a piece for us about the power of the stars.
Years ago, during a difficult passage in my life, I returned to a practice I’d abandoned as a teenager: reading my stars. Learning about the ingress of Uranus—the planet of shock and revolution—into the earth sign of Taurus, or the passage of beneficent Jupiter through Sagittarius, or the implications of the current Venus transit for my sixth house of health, became a balm, as well as a new cosmic way of keeping time.
Like many, I’d initially turned my gaze to astrology as an exhausted response to my own existential bewilderment, anxiety about personal and collective events on Earth, and longing to explore a view of the universe that reaches back into antiquity. Through this lens, our cosmos is possessed of an innate, multidimensional creative intelligence, equally alive in the design of the smallest leaf and in the patterns underlying vast galaxies beyond our own. This view of cosmic interconnectedness was a lived reality for the ancient Romans, whose emperors considered planetary transits matters of state, and whose gods gave the planets of our galaxy more than just their names.
In astrology, the cyclical movements of celestial bodies through the constellations are seen to correspond with certain conditions and potential events on Earth, from a civilisational level to the level of an individual life. This perspective is underpinned by an intricate framework of symbolic archetypal meaning, in which the various astrological transits are understood through the archetypes and mythological counterparts associated with the relevant planet and constellation.
For instance, cultural historian and astrology researcher, Richard Tarnas, has surveyed key transits involving Uranus (associated with sudden change and disruption) in connection with Neptune (associated with the unconscious, dreams, and mysticism) from the time of Socrates to our own twenty-first century, finding at each point shifts in culture and spirituality that reflect these archetypes—from the development of Platonism in the pre-Christian era to Einstein’s disruption of the cosmological worldview in the early twentieth century.
Whether or not one believes in astrology, as an ancient symbolic paradigm and language which continues to evolve through interpretation and experimentation, it offers much to ponder—particularly in the way that it invites reflection on our place in the wider cosmos, in connection to ancestors who lived through the same planetary cycles, centuries or millennia before us. It’s this unique lens of viewing human history—and perhaps also our own longings, fears and frailties—through the movements of celestial bodies whose journeys through time and space so dwarf our own—that led me to comets, and helped to inspire my novel, Bright Objects. From the comet that presented after Caesar’s death to the numerous visits of Halley’s Comet and the long sojourn of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, perhaps no celestial phenomenon in history has been more regularly and evocatively recorded than these eternal wanderers. Roman coins, medieval chronicles, and even the archived transcripts of early internet chatrooms preserve the ever-shifting story of our responses to bright comets in our skies—revealing, in the process, how we view ourselves and our place in the universe.
Bright Objects tells the story of Sylvia, a young widow in grief, desperate to avenge her husband's death, whose life in a small New South Wales town in 1997 is upended by a bright comet not seen since the time of the pharaohs. Despite all that has changed on Earth since its last visit, everyone in town has an opinion on the comet, whether scientific or mystical—while projecting onto it their various hopes and fears. Caught between the competing worldviews of an astronomer and a meditation teacher, Sylvia begins to question the line between reality and illusion, while beginning to experience her own life through the lens of the comet’s progress through the sky.
Regardless of their perspective on the comet, what everyone in the story shares is the same instinct that has brought people together around the world this year to view the total solar eclipse and the ‘Devil Comet’, just as happened at the apparition of Caesar’s Comet in 44 BC. It’s the instinct, amid the strangeness and uncertainty of life on Earth, to look to the skies in shared wonder, and to be reminded of the vast universe of which we are a part.
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About Ruby Todd
Ruby Todd is a Melbourne-based writer with a PhD in writing and literature. She is the recipient of the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest award for Fiction and the inaugural 2020 Furphy Literary Award, among others. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, Overland and elsewhere. Shortlisted for the 2023 Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award, Bright Objects is her debut novel. She writes Book of Hours on Substack. Website: ruby-todd.com
Bright Objects
by Ruby Todd
A young woman grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy and romance.
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