April is National Poetry Month in the US, a wonderful time to celebrate the passion and delight of poets and poetry throughout history. Poetry evokes our deepest heartfelt feelings, through its “rhythmical creation of beauty in words” (Edgar Allen Poe). As Samuel Becket once said, “Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.” Poetry leads us to appreciate the world around us through an honest but more subtle and nuanced point of view than what we often find in prose.
An Astrologer’s Song was written by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the British Nobel-prize winning journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. The poem I am sharing here was published in Rewards and Fairies (1910) with “A Doctor of Medicine,” and reflects the beliefs of the seventeenth-century physician Nicholas Culpeper.
Kipling also gave a lecture in November 1928 to the Royal Society of Medicine on “Healing by the Stars,” in which he spent much of his speech talking about Culpeper. His argument was that Culpeper, “as an astrologer, believed in the unity of the universe. Kipling declared that Culpeper would find much to confirm his belief in modern science and medicine. Kipling feared that recent scientific discoveries had made medicine more limited in approach.”
Oh wow. I only knew of Rudyard Kipling from Jungle Book and Just So Stories. I had no idea he studied Culpeper, though I shouldn't be surprised given the rampant occultism of turn of the century intellectuals. Thanks for sharing!
Oh wow. I only knew of Rudyard Kipling from Jungle Book and Just So Stories. I had no idea he studied Culpeper, though I shouldn't be surprised given the rampant occultism of turn of the century intellectuals. Thanks for sharing!
And being from the mystical land of Mother India probably influenced his more “alternative”/esoteric interests too! Thank you! 💕🙏