In a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the dying breaths of the star at the heart of the famous Helix Nebula are exposed in wonder and radiance. —Good News Network. Photo: NASA, January 20, 2026
"As above, so below," the famous aphorism by a mythical teacher and a mythical text.
In the Emerald Tablet the ancients already knew about the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm. So, as a star dies and we see its dying breath pushing outward like a cloud of seeds to form new stars when their time has come, so the humble dandelion’s delicate umbrella-equipped seeds go with the wind to settle on another meadow and become new dandelions when their time has come, the spiders die soon after producing their egg sacs, and the spiderlings disperse into the world by ballooning: using the breeze and sometimes atmospheric electric fields to travel far, settling, mating, and laying egg sacs when their time has come.
"As above, so below"—instead of neurons sending electrical signals through axons, stars use magnetic field lines. Trees connect through the complex mycelia network, and we have more than 86 billion neurons in the brain, and a more or less equal number of other cells. Neurons and neurotransmitters are our mycelia.
When my grandfather died, I saw a small silver cloud leaving his open mouth.
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, eight poetry collections and one chapbook, her work has been widely published mostly by US poetry journals. A new full-length poetry collection is forthcoming in 2026.
