Dreamt I was dealing with the dream version of “everyday bullshit” when I looked up into the rotated night sky. The compass points no longer had any meaning, and the only way to tell which way I was headed was to compare my heading with constellations.
As I was trying to do just that, the sky rotated once more and I felt an unvoice tell me to look to my right. The constellation Scorpius hung unusually low. I knew it was also rotated relative to my vantage point, but I could not tell how at the time. (I did understand how once I woke up.)
The constellation was very bright, and I saw it as the ancients did, which made me very happy. Three stars in the bend of its tail were connected by a vividly red line, with the middle star becoming unusually large and bright by the attention.
The unvoice prepared to speak in my ear.
The alarm went off.
I have homework.
During lunch, I was driving back to work when I looked up just in time to see a low cloud formation against a clear blue sky. It looked like a large scorpion, complete with body scales and proper claws, oriented to face “up” like I saw in my dream, but with one exception.
The cloud scorpion’s tail ended without a bend and stinger.
Curiouser and curiouser.
And now, the plot twist. In the dream the sky had rotated so that the southerly constellation was now northerly, with Antares taking the place where Polaris would usually sit. So from my point of view, the “tail” of the “scorpion” was now grazing the northern horizon.
The cloud formation was oriented properly south for the constellation, as if the clouds were showing where the stars are “supposed” to sit at night.
After looking up the constellation, and comparing what I saw in the dream with what actually is in the sky, I’m convinced that the highlighted star is Theta Scorpii. The common name for that star is “Sargas”, but I can’t find any thing more about it than the name is of Sumerian origin.
Maybe it is something, maybe it isn’t. But it makes a nice tale for the day.