Reader's letter and editorial: Venus, lunacy, and harmony of the spheres

Dear Readers, 

My short articles on the affects of the Transit of Venus have brought a flurry of correspondence and comments on Facebook and email. It seems that many people also experienced unusual affects at that time ranging from migraines that lasted several days to general feelings of inner disturbance in some readers. Others report that it coincided with or was followed by self-perceptions of transitional shifts in identity or actual discoveries that have transformed lives.

I recently received a letter from a reader in the United States, which I am reproducing here because it raises the interesting point of belief systems and affect, and how we define our selves in relation to the physical environment, a subject that I will be discussing in further article on this site. In the reader's letter below, J.H. mentions the term 'lunatic' in relation to the idea of being affected by the movements of planetary bodies, and the 'scientific' rational belief held nowadays by those with 'concrete' belief systems that such an idea of influence by the environment is somehow 'lunatic". Whilst I am sure we all are aware that the term 'lunatic' derives from the Latin for 'moon' and the observation of 19th century inhabitants of asylums increased signs of activity and distress at the time of the monthly full moon, what is not so widely known in our western culture, although it more influentially underpins and sustains our entire system of communications, is that the five principles of rhetoric (and consequently our traditions and conventions of composition in writing and music) are based on the intervals of the planetary movements that Pythagoreans termed the Harmony of the Spheres. 

The aim of the ancients was to imitate and thus achieve the harmony of the spheres or planetary bodies, in our own human communications, which is an analogy of writing surely worth aiming for. This also tacitly and subliminally acknowledges the effect and affect, by analogy, of heavenly bodies, the planets, on our perceptions and feelings and ideas that we express in communication in writing and oratory, and ideas from the classical world that survive in reinvented forms of rhetoric and composition in contemporary digital media writing, such as this blog.

Dear Dr Skilbeck, 
I am just now as a 61 year old granny, so relieved, to learn that such an accomplished academic as yourself, felt, as well, that

very personal, yet, inexplicable effect of that particular celestial event.

I would like to add, that .....I am the mother of three grown children, the middle one is a scientist, and professor, studying chytrid  fungus and amphibian

declines at James Madison University in Virginia, the eldest runs a nature center with her husband, and the youngest is involved in a cross country

marathon...Operation Amerithon.  And my husband is a lawyer.  They are all very concrete in their belief systems, and I have a difficult time, hiding

from them, what seems to be somewhat, sometimes, lunatic behavior on my part.

So, I am so relieved to have found your website, as you are clearly, given your credentials, no lunatic.

Would very much look forward to hearing from you, here in Carlisle, PA....

J. H.

Thank you for your letter J.H. I hope that you will be be able to join in further correspondence on this topic in the Daily Fugue.

Best regards,

Ruth Skilbeck