A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter O

Occultation

Astrology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An astronomical event where one celestial body passes in front of and hides another, often symbolizing mystery or revelation in poetic contexts. The deliberate concealment or obscurity of meaning in a poem.

Detailed Definition
In astronomy, an occultation occurs when a closer celestial body, such as the Moon, moves in front of a more distant object like a star or planet, temporarily obscuring it from view. Though not a standard astrological concept per se, poets frequently borrow the term to evoke themes of concealment, fate, or divine intervention. In literary works, occulation symbolizes moments when truth is veiled or revealed, mirroring emotional or spiritual eclipses. Its dramatic visual nature—light swallowed by shadow—resonates with poetic explorations of loss, mystery, or cosmic order, making it a potent metaphor in both classical and modern verse that intertwines celestial phenomena with human experience.
Example
Example in poetry:
In John Keats’s “Endymion,” the Moon’s passage before stars evokes a sense of divine concealment, echoing the poetic use of occultation as a veil between mortal and immortal realms; Sylvia Plath’s “Moonrise” uses lunar occultation imagery to symbolize emotional withdrawal and obscured clarity; In “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot alludes to celestial bodies being “swallowed” by shadow, a metaphorical occultation representing spiritual desolation; Contemporary poet Tracy K. Smith employs occultation in “My God, It’s Full of Stars” to explore how cosmic events mirror personal grief and hidden truths; A poet might write, “Venus vanished behind the Moon’s cold edge—an occultation of love by time,” using the term to dramatize loss; Another poetic use: “As Saturn slipped into the Moon’s embrace, the sky performed its silent occultation—a secret kept from dawn,” illustrating how occultation conveys mystery and cosmic intimacy.
Additional Notes
Astrological term referring to when one celestial body passes in front of another, temporarily obscuring it—most commonly the Moon passing before a star or planet. In astrology, occultations are not part of traditional natal chart interpretation but appear symbolically in poetic and esoteric traditions to represent hidden knowledge, fate’s interventions, or moments when divine will eclipses human sight. Poets often use occultation to evoke themes of mystery, revelation, or cosmic alignment. Related concepts include eclipses (a type of solar/lunar occultation), conjunctions (when planets appear close together), and the “void of course” Moon—another liminal astrological state. For poetry students, understanding the visual and symbolic power of occultation helps decode metaphors of concealment and epiphany; for professors, it offers a bridge between empirical astronomy and mythopoetic cosmology. Note that while modern astrology rarely emphasizes occultations, Renaissance and medieval astro-poetic texts (e.g., by Dante or John Dee) often treated such events as omens, making the term rich for historical-literary analysis.
Also Known As
Hiding Concealment Eclipse Obscuration Shadow Transit
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