5. haq’a هقعة • orion’s head in the clouds
“Eine Streitfrage aus dem Talmud • A Talmudic Controversy” by Carl Schleicher, late 1800s, via Wikimedia
or: the Hair Whorl, the White Spot, Orion’s Cowlick
Tropical coordinates: approximately 16º30 Gemini - 29º23 Gemini
Letter: ه hā’
Indicator: Meissa, λ Orionis most specifically, but this station is indicated by the entire constellation of Orion
Plants: Generally white ones, but there’s not much to go on in the literature. Personally, I suspect this station has a special relationship with incense resins as a whole. Al-Buni gives an incense for each station, but for Haq’a gives an especially long list of nidd [1], aloeswood, frankincense, benzoin, mastic. Also consider plants with milky white leaves or flowers as well as glaucous plants which have a whitish coating on their leaves/fruits.
Substances: Anything white is a good place to start. From my own experimentation, possibly milky, adularescent stones such as moonstone and soft, white stones like selenite or alabaster. This station is also associated with anything used for care of the hair, skin and nails (which is a signification you can go wild with).
Animals: Swift and flighty animals like deer and antelope and swooping birds of prey, most especially the falcon. Animals that quest and search and run/fly away from humans when we approach carelessly.
Angel: Iqbāl إقبال
Inloes’ al-Buni gives “hair whorl” as a translation of Haq’a (I interpret this to mean something like a cowlick) while most other European sources (like Volguine or Allen, for example) give something like “white spot.” Whatever it means, it’s a pretty rare word that I haven’t been able to investigate much with my level of Arabic knowledge.
The magic of the 5th station is quite multivalent and, generally speaking, moderate in temperament. This station can be used in magic related to studies and travels (especially the safe return from travels) and petitioning those in a place of authority. It’s not all so highbrow though. Al-Buni says that when the Moon is in this station you should “do good works and not-so-good works.” We can petition the king under Haq’a but we can also poison friendships. This one is an erudite trickster.
In this essay, we will explore the following themes:
The head is a core symbol of the 5th lunar station, whether as a head in the clouds, a head in the books, or the head of a deer fleeing away.
This station is associated with scholarly pursuits, recognition by authority, care for the body (especially hair/skin/nails) and spiritual protection.
What can we see when we plunge our heads into the mist and fog? Haq’a attenuates us to the dream world, imagination and other forms of liminal states.
Haq’a leans slightly beneficent (and slightly masculine) but is essentially neutral. Perhaps we could call “open-mindedness” a characteristic of this station.
There is perhaps an association with agriculture and/or foraging that can be explored with this station.
personal gnosis
Haq’a is a curious station in my experience. It was one of the stations I began working with very early on, in part due to Ryhan Butler and Christopher Warnock’s reports of success using this station for dream magic (which I’m sure you’ve noticed by now is a huge interest of mine). Later, as I deepened my studies of specifically the sidereal lunar stations, I learned that the natal Moon of my longtime partner, Eli, fell in the 5th station, enclosed between both benefics. Of all the stations I have written about so far, I have the most personal and intimate relationship with Haq’a and I’m extremely grateful for everything it has taught me over the years.
This personal background is extremely handy for this writing project because the 5th is one of the stations with the least amount of lore to go on. Its indicator, Meissa, is treated as a D-list star among Orion’s extremely bright stars in the shoulders, feet and belt. I’m excited to invite y’all to read this essay because, unlike 3 Thurayyā or 4 Dabarān, my take on Haq’a is especially a product of personal gnosis. I hope that y’all take this research and expand upon it!
During my 2023 gnosis-gathering project Haq’a didn’t just teach me about its spirit. It actually taught me about the astronomy of the Moon!
As I’ve explained before, my goal with the project was to invoke the angel of each station focusing especially on the station of each full Moon of the year, and the station of the first appearance of the crescent Moon after her conjunction with the Sun (what ancient people and modern Muslims and Jews mean when we say “The New Moon”). The technical terms for these kinds of Moon in Arabic are the Badr • بدر (the 14th day of the lunar month) and the Hilāl • هلال (meaning “crescent”). Calculating the full Moon is as easy as anything, but the emergence of the crescent is a fair bit more wily.
The crescent emerges when the Moon emerges from combustion and can be spotted with the naked eye for the first time, which varies from place to place. This means that the Moon can emerge within a 2 day window at various places on the planet. In Islamic calendrics, this is a major concern because the emergence of the crescent marks the first day of the month. This has become an extremely advanced area of study in Islamic thought and all of us selenophiles (Muslim, Jewish or otherwise) could stand to learn from Islamic scholars’ treatment of the Moon [2]
The point of this digression is to introduce the story that Haq’a taught me not to trust mathematical calculations too much and to rely on observation of the Moon as much as possible. According to my calculations, prepared months in advance, the crescent Moon of May 2023 would emerge in May 21st in station 6 Han’a. Despite my careful calculations, there I was on May 20th, sitting at a long wooden table with some of my closest friends beside an enormous east-facing window shortly after sunset when we observed the tiniest, thinnest crescent Moon emerge from behind a cloud! I had my back to the window when a friend shouted “look, it’s the Moon!” I nearly broke my neck whipping it around.
I was dumbfounded.
I was so confident in my astrologer mathematics that I wasn’t even looking outside at sunset. It was an incredibly humbling experience.
Haq’a taught me that the crescent can emerge anywhere between 12º and 18º of separation with the Sun depending on several factors. Let’s put down our little computers and go stand outside under the sky and use our embodied senses to observe reality. Haq’a indicates the unique intersection of scholarly pursuits and embodiment.
This experience is part of what led me to my project to invoke the first 5 stations in a row in November 2023. I started with the first 2 stations, centered my devotions on the full Moon in 3 Thurayyā, then ended with 4 Dabarān and our erudite Haq’a.
As with the 4th night, I unexpectedly found myself with a partner at the time of the Moon’s rise, this time with Eli, a child of the 5th station. On the last night of this sequence of invocations, I bathed my phylactery in incense smoke and performed the Invocation to the Moon a fifth time with Eli by my side.
a man strolls through his crops, neatly plowed in rows in the field. he surveys the growth, counts the fruits, makes plans for the harvest, all the while calculating calculating calculating…
“i am the counter and the planner,
the one who determines the next move on the path.
my head is swimming in the heavens
and my feet are firmly rooted in the earth.
i know the way through the passage of time
and i know the hidden things in the clouds.”
Eli was also given a vision, theirs of a busy city in the rain with the streets completely flooded. Despite the fact that the streets had become canals, the people of the city kept walking along, running their errands, and didn’t seem to be bothered by it.
As I said before, this was far from my first time in the presence of Iqbāl. I think it was interesting that, when I was still working with the stations using their tropical coordinates, I found myself extremely drawn to this for dream revelation and felt an instant personal connection with it. As time went on, I learned that it was heavily present in the nativity of one of the greatest loves of my life and, of course, a dream revelation was the thing that sent me down the life-changing path of the sidereal stations.
This wasn’t even my first time invoking Iqbāl with Eli. Previous to my 2023 project, we had prayed for the angel of their natal station on several of their lunar returns in previous years. I often find my experience with Iqbāl mediated by my relationships with others, whether the romantic relationship with Eli or my friend sighting the crescent for me over my shoulder. I think this speaks to Haq’a’s vibe—as someone without much of a natal connection to this station, I often find myself attempting to grasp its nature through the mist. Perhaps also there is the fact that the descendant of my nativity falls in this station.
Iqbāl has a very mild presence. Al-Buni calls him moderately warm which encapsulates my experience with him very well. After Eli and I drew this celestial being into our bedroom together, we literally curled up in bed and slept the most peaceful sleep. His energy is comfortable, like a warm bath. I do perceive him to have a somewhat masculine energy, but it’s a much more gentle masculinity, scholarly rather than warlike. While the angels of other stations (such as 18 Qalb or 20 Na’a’im) feel wild and feral, we consistently find Iqbāl to be humane in the traditional sense of the word. He is an angel, to be sure, but of the range of angels I’ve experienced, he seems to understand and relate to our essential human-ness more than others.
The song that came forth for me the day of this gnosis-gathering session is called “Reasonable Man” by Tiny Ruins. The album this song came from, Brightly Painted One, came out shortly before I met Eli and was a constant soundtrack to the first year or two of our relationship. I hadn’t listened to this song in years but it randomly came up on Spotify shuffle when I was running errands with Eli the morning before our invocation of Haq’a. I found it such an evocative representation of Iqbāl.
I went in search of a reasonable man.
And I thought, “oh, it must be lonely
to be the only voice of reason”
a collection of starlore
Haq’a’s primary indicator is typically listed as Meissa (λ Orionis), however it is most specifically the three stars of Meissa, φ1 Orionis and φ2 Orionis which mark the head of Orion. I chose the image at the top of this essay to represent Haq’a because it looks remarkably like the trio of stars in Orion’s head (as you can see below). Many authorities (starting with Ptolemy, I believe) have said that Meissa is shrouded by a nebula, which is part of how we get our cloud imagery associated with this station. Astronomers have identified the cloudiness of Orion’s head as a ring of nebulosity that is most likely the remains of an ancient supernova that have become ionized by Meissa’s heat. A nebula is like a womb from which baby stars are born but Meissa’s shroud is that of a deceased star.
Detail of Schleicher’s painting above
The three stars that indicate Haq’a
Meissa is a multiple star system, predominantly composed of a type O blue giant and a B-class main sequence star. They’re so close together that all but the most sensitive tools depict them as one shining luminosity. The blue giant component burns extremely hot and bright, so much so that the majority of its light is in the ultraviolet spectrum (hence the ionized ring of nebulosity). This makes Meissa appear dim to observers on earth who cant see ultraviolet light. Type O stars burn with a very cold bluish white light and the largest of them are blue giants, like the largest and most visible star of the Meissa system. Type O stars are quite rare in our universe; they burn so hot that they tend to have very short lives (on the cosmic timescale).
Taking all of these considerations in hand is helpful when considering the small amounts of lore handed down to us about this star. Manillius says that Orion’s head is “embedded in high heaven with his countenance remote.” Allen records what many people probably think: that it’s quite strange that the peoples whose lore gave us the manāzil in their current form chose Meissa to indicate the 5th station rather than any of the other bright stars near the ecliptic. We can speculate about their motivations all day but perhaps this is one of the mysteries of this pattern of 28. Personally I think it has to do with the prominence of Orion and the fact that, dim as it may be, Meissa is the the star in Orion that points the whole constellation toward the ecliptic.
In the Indic nakshatras and the Arab manāzil, only this station is associated with Orion. The Chinese xiù contain two stations associated with Orion, with the trio of Haq’a stars we’ve discussed marking 觜 Zī and Orion’s belt marking 参 Shēn. [3] Zī is typically translated as “the beak of a turtle” which seems a perfect fit for the triangular shape.
The 5th nakshatra, मृगशीर्ष Mṛgashīrṣa, means “deer-head” and the deer as a symbol is the root of its interpretation in Indic astrology. I’ll leave the discussion of its interpretation to people who are more educated on that topic, but the deer symbol is quite salient in my interpretation of this station. Al-Buni records the rhyming (in Arabic) saying, “when Haq’a rises, people scout for food” which calls to mind the image of deer foraging the countryside, for me.
By the Diné people, Orion was called Átsé Ets’ózí “the First Slender One” who was depicted as a young man in the prime of youth. Diné astronomer Dr. Nancy D. Maryboy teaches us that Átsé Ets’ózí is associated with planting (like Dilyéhé, the Pleiades), which is another interesting echo of the agrarian energy with Orion. [4]
Beyond this, I have not been able to find a ton about Meissa or the stars Orion’s head specifically. Luckily Orion itself is a hugely influential constellation in world cultures and I think we could get a lot from studying the extensive myths associated with the constellation as a whole which I wont devote more time to (but invite you to research further yourselves!)
on al-haq’a • الهقعة
As I’ve hinted at above, the most salient symbol of the Hair Whorl is the symbol of the head. The head obviously houses the brain which is the center of our reasoning and so you can see how they got to Haq’a as a station of education. Some of the most salient lore regarding Meissa, the head of Orion that indicates this station, has to do with the nebulosity surrounding the head. In the Neoplatonic worldview that undergirds much of the kind of astrology we do, the universe is organized in a series of esoteric spheres rising up from the earth. The fixed stars are the final sphere, which means that other other side of them is the realm of divinity itself.
“Sen • Dream” by Jacek Yerka, 2004, via Wikiart
When we say that Orion’s head is in the clouds, this is what we mean. Orion is an enormous cosmic giant, so tall that his head is halfway into heaven. It may look misty from here but Meissa has a unique ability to peer between the material world and the world of the gods themselves. This is what lends Haq’a its association with dream magic. A fortunate alignment in Haq’a brings auspiciousness to all the liminal places in which we can interface more directly with God, the ancestors and other spirits. Volguine associates Haq’a with poets and poetry and perhaps this is one way we get there. Another way may be in the physical nature of Meissa’s secret light—though it is an extremely bright star, it appears dim to us on earth because its light is mostly emitted in a range that we cannot see with our eyes.
In the tradition of the Arab manāzil, the 5th station represents the entire vast constellation of Orion, and so the 5th station represents the place where Orion’s head is closest to the ecliptic. It’s a space where all those bright and active stars can most easily make a connection with the earthly realm. In fact, when projecting the stars of Orion onto the ecliptic, basically all of them fall into the degrees assigned to Haq’a (perhaps Betelgeuse is more like in the 1st degree of station 6 Han’a). Volguine observes that the 5th station seems to be “more propitious for private life than social activity” which might be supported by this—in the pattern of 28 stations, we connect to Orion not through his flaming shoulder but through his foggy head.
Coming back to the symbol of the Hair Whorl, I came across the concept of the Hairy Ball Theorem in topology (an extremely abstract branch of mathematics concerned with categorizing geometric objects based on their properties when distorted in various ways). The basic idea is that if you have a perfect sphere covered in hair, it is impossible to comb it all so that it lays flat without creating a cowlick. This symbol seems ripe for the esoteric contemplation of Haq’a!
I have mentioned the correspondence between Haq’a and deer already, but I’ve personally found some interesting synchronicities myself. Where I live there is an abundance of American pronghorn, which are often called antelope (though I guess they aren’t technically). Seeing them come out during twilight hours is like watching the arrival of a troupe of fairies and they’re far more skittish than deer.
The association of swooping birds of prey with Haq’a comes out of the Invocation of the Moon, which names the Falcon as the 5th lunar symbol and I think they’re an interesting example of the way we might expand some of the stations symbolism. Haq’a speaks to the flighty and liminal nature shared by falcons and deer, however while deer and antelope shyly forage the land, falcons capture their prey with exacting swiftness. We don’t get many falcons where I live but I can report that I have sighted a Cooper’s Hawk in conjunction with Haq’a veneration!
The plant associations with Haq’a are especially mysterious to me. It seems natural to use the Moon in Haq’a to produce skincare and haircare products and so that could be an angle of exploration. The major observation I’d like to share is that there seems to be a resonance between the 5th station and plants with glaucous leaves. The whitish waxy covering seems like a perfect analogue to the cloudiness we see around Meissa. If I could be so bold, maybe a kind of type genus for the Haq’a plant could be agave / magüey (I picked a species to link whose glaucousity was especially sumptuous).
I have used Haq’a in many kinds of magic to further my journey with research and academia and highly recommend it for that. Something I hope to experiment with a bit in the future is working specfically with Mercury in the 5th station, which seems quite potent considering that Haq’a resides towards the end of Gemini these days. I see some interesting opportunities to experiment with coming up soon!
The number 5 is very symbolically potent in many Semitic cultures. Station number 5 is associated with the Arabic letter ه hā’ which, due to its essential Fiveness, strongly conjures the symbol of the five-fingered human hand. The Arabic word for the number 5 is hamsa • خمسة the famous sign of protection. The Fiveness of Haq’a is a powerful thread to explore for protection and leads me to consider the hamsa to be a symbol of this station.
Finally, I would like us to inspect the name of the angel who presides over this station: Iqbāl • إقبال. Their name is actually a conventional Arabic word that comes from the root {Q B L} with a range of meanings having to do with concepts relating to “the front” and “acceptance.” Iqbāl comes from the verb ‘aqbala • أقبل which means “to approach” or “to be abundant” and other similar things. As a verbal noun Iqbāl can mean “approach” or “arrival” but it also especially means “prosperity.” In fact, the word has been loaned into many languages including Turkish, Uyghur and Uzbek to mean “good fortune” or “prosperity.” Some of the stations have extremely esoteric names which we can only guess at the meaning of but Haq’a’s is a common lexical item. For that reason, in our work with Iqbāl, perhaps we would be equally correct to call him Prosperity.
Al-Buni teaches us that Iqbāl helps with beneficent things but also more ambiguously ethical circumstances. Prosperity is a tricky thing.
Notes
[1] Nidd is a blend of incense which contains aloeswood, ambergris, musk and frankincense. Varisco 2017 explains that this word is often mistranslated as just aloeswood but typically refers to this specific blend, something just to be aware of.
[2] A classic essay to introduce this topic is called Caesarian Moon Births by Hamza Yusuf, and there’s a lot that can be learned from digging through this repository of Islamic Moon sighting info.
[3] This works because the 28 Xiù are of unequal lengths. With equal-sized stations (as are ubiquitous in the Arab and Indic traditions), the stars of the Belt fall within the confines of the 5th station.
[4] Maryboy, Nancy D., David Begay. 2010. Sharing the Skies: Navajo Astronomy. Rio Nuevo Publishers.