Phosphorescent Sea: Imprinted on William Steig

(In the Better Late Than Never category, here is an article I wrote three months ago that was published in the NCGR-NYC's spring 2021 "Astrology and Literature" issue of The Ingress. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!)

When I dove head- and heart-first into the sea of astrology many moons ago, I was a college student majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. I had very little in the way of elegant defense when individuals who had previously respected my intelligence called it into question upon learning that I was a budding astrologer. Sometimes I proselytized, attempting to explain the tenet “as above, so below”; other times I asked to interpret their charts to demonstrate that astrology was far more than a vague Sun-sign horoscope (no takers there); and if I was in a foul mood, I reminded them of their own non-scholarly pursuits.

In a forum like The Ingress, of course, I need no such defense, yet the Astrology and Literature theme of this issue made me realize that I had fallen in love with the former in much the same way as I had with the latter—that there was indeed a common thread. Both astrology and literature deal in timeless symbols; in archetypes; in universal truths and a finite number of themes that find new, highly personalized life and meaning with each interpretation or narrative. Although astrology has a scientific, mathematical component (as the planets in our solar system exist and form various geometric angles to one another), it is not strictly quantitative—just as literature can be analyzed in many ways or experienced on a sheerly intuitive, visceral level. Both astrology and literature are kin to mythmaking, a collective need to find meaning and order in seemingly random chaos. Both explore various facets that illuminate what it means to be human; what it means to be alive.

Of all the planets, the Sun, ruler of the “superstar” sign Leo, has the most to do with conscious “I am”-ness and with the urge to shine and to create. The Sun longs for immortality, which manifests most obviously and literally by creating children (traditionally associated with the 5th House, which is ruled by the Sun) but also in masterpieces, for those who choose to define themselves as artists of some sort. Thus, while it is important to consider the placement and aspects of an author’s Mercury (communication), the Moon (emotion), Neptune (imagination), and the ruler of the Ascendant (if exact birth time is known), the situation of an author’s Sun sign must come first and foremost.

From early childhood up to the present day I have been a devoted re-reader, thanks to a heavily aspected natal Sun-Mars-Mercury stellium in Cancer (the “comfort food” sign that, like its opposite sign, Capricorn, is linked to the past). I cannot say if this deep-rooted desire to go back time after time to books and stories that spoke strongly to me is why I started writing and dreaming of becoming a published author and artist as a six-year-old, but learning entire passages of favorite books by heart certainly showed me how it was done, even if I could not articulate the mechanics until I landed in undergraduate creative writing seminars. The first literary god of my personal pantheon was William Steig, best known as a prolific cartoonist for The New Yorker and author of Shrek (which led to several movies only loosely based on the book, as well as a Broadway musical). To me, he was the creator of several books for children that, despite having won prestigious awards back in the 1970s, probably would not be published today due to their combination of unflinching intensity and sophisticated language. To me, they are typewritten treasures that both shaped and validated my worldview.

William Steig was a Scorpio with a Sun-Mercury conjunction trine his Moon-Saturn conjunction in Pisces (pulling in my own Cancer Sun and Scorpio Moon). Because Steig’s time of birth is unknown and I wished to rectify his natal chart for this article, I researched his personal life and studied some photographs of him (one of which revealed to my immense pleasure that he was a fellow left-hander). Throughout his life, Steig retained a full head of thick hair and customarily posed for photos with his arms crossed over his chest in a manner more self-protective than swaggering. His Polish Jewish immigrant parents encouraged him and his brothers to become artists instead of laborers (who would be exploited by businessmen) or businessmen (who would exploit laborers). In high school he was an All-American water-polo athlete, graduated early, then dropped out of three colleges. Although he wanted to run off to sea to become a beachcomber, the Great Depression intervened: he instead became the family breadwinner when his father, a housepainter, could not find work. As an artist, he achieved early and sustained financial and critical success. He had three children from four marriages and was obsessed with the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich’s controversial orgone box (immortalized in the film Sleeper as the Orgasmatron). At age 95, he died of natural causes shortly after publishing his last picture book, When Everyone Wore a Hat, based on his childhood. With all of this information, this is what I came up with: November 14, 1907, 7:42pm EST, Brooklyn NY.

William Steig once said, as would befit someone with a prominent 5th House, “I think I feel a little differently than other people do. For some reason I’ve never felt grown up.”(1) Yet it was not until Steig entered his sixties that he began writing and illustrating children’s books. His watercolor-and-ink illustrations recall two other Scorpio artists: the bluntness of Picasso and the delicacy of Monet (who happens to share a birthday with Steig). Amos & Boris, the first of Steig’s books that I can recall, was read to me both in nursery school and at home. On its surface, this tale of a seafaring mouse named Amos and a whale named Boris is a recasting of The Lion and the Mouse; I dove beneath the Scorpionic waves and reveled in gorgeous, sophisticated prose that unflinchingly confronts life’s primal joys and fears. Amos, who lives on a beach, has built a boat and set sail:

One night, in a phosphorescent sea, he marveled at the sight of some whales spouting luminous water; and later, lying on the deck of his boat gazing at the immense, starry sky, the tiny mouse Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt thoroughly akin to it all. Overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of everything, he rolled over and over and right off the deck of his boat and into the sea.(2)

Before he is rescued by Boris, Amos, whose boat has sailed on without him, treads water for several hours in this life-or-death predicament, wondering “what it would be like to drown. Would it take very long? Would it feel just awful? Would his soul go to heaven? Would there be other mice there?”(3)

Other Steig tales also feature protagonists of various species who face the probability of untimely death: Pearl, the young pig in The Amazing Bone, is kidnapped by a fox who intends to eat her for dinner. “I’m only just beginning to live,” Pearl confides to the magic bone she found shortly before her abduction. “I don’t want it to end.”(4) The bone urges her to be brave:

She was dragged into the kitchen, where she could see flames in the open stove. “I regret having to do this to you,” sighed the fox. “It’s nothing personal.”(5)

In Brave Irene, which was published when I was about a decade past the intended demographic, a young girl who is determined to deliver a gown sewn by her ill mother to the duchess in time for the ball is caught in a blizzard and pushed by the wind into a snowbank: “Even if she could call for help, no one would hear her. Her body shook. Her teeth chattered. Why not freeze to death, she thought, and let all these troubles end. Why not? She was already buried.”(6)

Although Scorpio as a sign is clearly linked to death—Pluto’s domain is the underworld—it is also associated with bravery (notably, its coruler is Mars) and the desire to intimately, compassionately connect with another soul. The deep friendships formed in Steig’s books—between Amos and Boris; between Pearl and the bone who saves her by suddenly remembering how to put a spell on the fox; and, in Steig’s wonderful chapter book Dominic (the first novel I read to myself repeatedly after having it read aloud to me as a five-year-old), between Dominic the wandering Good Samaritan dog and Bartholomew the centenarian pig—are the rewards for facing life and death with a brave heart and questing spirit.

Interestingly, in Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, a young donkey, Sylvester, has no company after he finds a magic pebble and panics when he runs into a lion. Instead of wishing himself back home safe with his parents, he foolishly wishes to be turned into a rock. Before his inevitable rescue, Sylvester lies in a field for a whole year as the seasons literally pass over his rock form. Sylvester’s consciousness is still intact but beginning to fade due to much depression-induced sleep. While his parents mourn his disappearance, the local cops (portrayed as pigs, which later got the book banned!) cannot solve the perplexing case.(7) Quite an apropos expression of a Moon-Saturn conjunction in Pisces.

Scorpio’s brand of duality finds transcendence by going down into the depths. When that paradox occurs, rebirth follows—as when leaves and seeds go underground, and certain species hibernate in caves in mid-autumn (the Scorpio season in the Northern Hemisphere) so that they can be regenerated or refreshed in the spring. In Dominic, after his friend Bartholomew dies, Dominic slumbers “under the vast dome of quivering stars, and just as he was falling asleep, passing over into the phase of dreams, he felt he understood the secret of life. But in the light of morning, when he woke up, his understanding of the secret had disappeared with the stars. The mystery was still there, inspiring his wonder.”(8) In the morning, Dominic buries Bartholomew in the pig’s front yard: “He had to cry. Life was suddenly too sad. And yet it was beautiful. The beauty was dimmed when the sadness welled up. And the beauty would be there again when the sadness went. So the beauty and the sadness belonged together somehow, though they were not the same at all.”(9)

The above passages encapsulate the emotions of the water element so enchantingly, I keep returning to my tattered copy of Dominic. I do not even want to label Steig’s profoundly Scorpionic tales children’s literature. Like other books that can be experienced in myriad ways by readers (or listeners) of all ages and circumstances, they simply are literature.

End Notes

1. Literature for Kids: Author Study, https://karissaspitler.weebly.com

2. Steig, William. Amos & Boris. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.

3. Ibid.

4. Steig, William. The Amazing Bone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976.

5. Ibid.

6. Steig, William. Brave Irene. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986.

7. Steig, William. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.

8. Steig, William. Dominic. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972.

9. Iid.