Porrima
March 21 – April 4, 2026 180.010° – 192.857° The StarPorrima appears as a single point of light to the naked eye- second brightest star in Virgo, magnitude 2.74, sitting just 38 light years from Earth. But point a telescope at it and the single point resolves into two. Two stars, almost perfectly identical. Both F0V class, both burning at around 7,000 Kelvin, both carrying 1.56 times the Sun’s mass, both shining at roughly 4 times its luminosity. Twin stars, so similar in mass and temperature and brightness that distinguishing them requires precise measurement.
They orbit each other every 169 years in a highly eccentric ellipse, swinging as close as 5 astronomical units at their nearest approach and as far as 81 AU at their widest. Right now they are separating after a close passage. Moving apart from each other in their long slow arc, each tracing the same ellipse the other traces, bound by mutual gravity across the centuries.
The Romans named this star Porrima for one of their twin goddesses of prophecy, Porrima and Antevorta, the sisters who could see what was coming. They named it for twins before anyone knew it was a binary. Before any telescope existed to split the single light into two. Something in the quality of this star’s light told them: this is a doubled thing. This is two.
Two identical stars. Two equal presences. Neither dominant. Neither secondary. The same orbit, the same gravity, the same light. A perfect reciprocity written in physics, held for over a billion years.
March 22. The spring equinox arrived inside this sanctuary, and with it ninety degree heat and seven families on this land.
There was ham and potato salad and deviled eggs and freshly baked bread still warm from the oven with butter that melted into it immediately, cookies and brownies and my own canned baked beans made from scratch with fresh eggs from our chickens. It was abundant and unhurried and intimate in the way that only happens when people are actually present with each other rather than performing presence.
After eating we walked together into the woods, all of us, children and adults and the particular relief of tree shade, despite their being no leaves on the trees yet, after that sudden heat. The still-naked trees opened their canopy just enough. We left our shoes on the creek bank and stepped into the cool spring water, all of us, and the children went immediately to the deepest parts fully dressed, letting the water come up to their chests, their reddened faces cooling in the current. They took their egg gathering baskets into the creek and looked for fish hiding in the roots. They found the logs that led to the pond. At the sandy opening we found frog eggs, thousands of them, looped in tendrils around fallen branches. The next generation of the web of life, right there in our hands.
My daughter and one of the teenagers hid eggs up the hill for the younger children, some just emptied chicken eggs, some wooden, some paper mache, some plastic filled with crystals and small gifts. The children grabbed their baskets and ran. We gathered again under the shade canopy while the kids painted eggs and ate more food and we settled into the deeper conversations that happen when people have shared a meal and a creek and frog eggs together and the afternoon has nowhere it needs to be.
Some families began to leave. Others settled in further. It was a perfect day. These gatherings happen every six weeks, cycling with the seasons, each one building the intimacy and the memory and the trust that real community is made of.
I know, standing in that creek with those families, that the vision I hold is not far off from happening. It is already being gathered. It is already here.
Porrima is a reciprocal system. Two stars of equal mass, equal brightness, equal temperature, pulling on each other across the same ellipse. Neither one the primary in any meaningful physical sense. The designation of A and B is administrative. The reality is two.
The equinox is the same physics at a different scale. Equal day and equal night, the one moment in the year when neither hemisphere tilts toward or away from the Sun, when the light divides itself exactly. Not a stillness. A balance of forces. Two equal things holding each other in tension.
In Celestial Sanctuary 14, just days before a tornado, then fourteen degrees at night, and then we stepped directly into Celestial Sanctuary 15, with ninety degree heat and bare feet in a creek and frog eggs and seven families around a table. Not a gradual transition. A pivot. The equinox as a hinge point, not a resting place.
Porrima’s two stars are currently moving apart from each other in their orbit. The separation is increasing. But the gravity between them has not changed. They are as bound as they have ever been, tracing the same arc they have traced for over a billion years. The distance is not the same thing as the relationship.
The rest of the sanctuary has been a shift into welcome creativity. I have been writing full chapters for the books. I go down each day with the goats, pulling grass for the rabbits. Watching the babies hungrily eat blades of grass as if they are little vacuums when I bring them up. They still fit perfectly in the palm of my hand, and will roll up in a ball.
March 29: We butchered ten male rabbits. We got about 22 pounds of meat that I then canned and put in the freezer. We ate one of the rabbits for two different meals. I made a broccoli rabbit Alfredo, and then enchiladas. Each one was absolutely delicious. My daughter loves the rabbits and will not eat the meat, which I absolutely honor. I make the dinners with some without meat for her. Allowing her own intuition to lead her.
My seed starts have tons of sprouts. Peppers, tomatoes, artichokes, herbs, broccoli, cauliflower, marigolds, and lettuce all growing a little each day. I am excitedly waiting until they get some good roots before they go into the ground.
April 2: We got our water tanks situated so we can catch the coming storm that will be bringing about two inches of rain over the next three days.
Overall, this sanctuary has been very regulating for my nervous system. I wrote the first five chapters for the forthcoming book on seasonal festivals. I am back into the flow of writing, connecting. I can breathe. The trees are getting their leaves, the wild edibles and medicinals are getting bigger, and the rain will make everything even better. Life feels lighter than it has in months, and I am joy-filled that spring is here.
Two stars of equal weight, equal light, tracing the same long ellipse around each other. Named for twin goddesses of prophecy by people who had no way of knowing it was two. Something in the quality of what they saw told them anyway.
This is the sky Earth moves through from late March into early April, the equinox pivot, the equal day and equal night, seven families in a creek with frog eggs in their hands, bread still warm from the oven, children running up a hill with baskets, the nervous system finally regulating after months of resistance and weight and Tarf’s heavy chemistry and the void and the swarm and the tornado and the fourteen degrees at night.
Two equal things. In reciprocal relationship. Holding each other in a billion-year orbit.
That is what spring actually is. Not a softening. A balance struck.