Lift your eyes and you will see the stars
Australian Proverb
Our
oldest ancestors
lived in true harmony with nature. They recognised that the rhythms of the days
and those of the years were largely influenced and defined by the movement of
the sun and the stars:
During the night the stars would move from East to West, day by day they would
rise and fall in different places, and over time some important groups of stars
would vanish whereas other well known ones slowly appeared to take their place.
The starry sky was also
used to tell the time during the night, as well as being used by those who
worked on the land as a calendar and of course as a guide to navigation when at
sea.
To take a little bit of the
threatening aspect away from the dark of the nights, early cultures would group
the stars together into pictures or constellations, giving them forms from
their own cultures and religions. It was thus that the night's sky filled
itself with domestic and wild animals as well as heroes and gods from the
valued stories that had been handed down from generation to generation.
Some of the myths and
proverbs that were included in the constellations have been lost over time,
whereas others continued to be handed down through subsequent writers of the
ancient world. It is for this reason that there are very different accounts of
the constellations from each cultural/historical era, many cultures
interpreting the constellations in very different ways.
Looking into the heavens today is no longer something that comes naturally to us:
On the one hand, darkness
doesn't tend to pose a threat any more and we now have our own calendars and
clocks. And of course on the other hand, modern civilisation has reduced the
visibility of the stars by cramming buildings close together and through air
pollution and light pollution.
Most of mankind has removed
itself from the stars, as well as the pictures made from their seemingly random
placement. Apart from the signs of the Zodiac most people would only be able to
recognise the Plough and the North Star. Fewer still would be able to recognise
the constellation of Cassiopeia. Those who stop to consider where the wide
range of names for the constellations came from more often than not receive no
answer.
Dr F.
Kahn expressed
this in 1914 when he said that…
"Our ancestors were as much at home with the stars as we
are with our maps and calendars with all their numbers and columns. The man of
the past was as much a friend of the stars as we fail to be today".
Nevertheless it is really
worth looking up to the sky on a clear night!
You don't need any special
equipment. Neither a telescope nor a pair of binoculars can help you come close
to the powerful overall impression the naked eye can offer you on a clear and
starry night.
The fact that a lot of
constellations bear little resemblance to the forms they are meant to represent
shouldn't discourage you. Our oldest known ancestors didn't find any portraits
in the heavens, yet tried to fill them with well-known figures from their own
lives and from the stories that had been handed down from generation to
generation.
Our project contribution
will try, with some carefully chosen examples, to awaken your interest in the
constellations and pass on some background information to some of the most
prominent ones.
On the following pages you
will find out….
And also
the advantages in having long hair if you are a woman.
We want you, as
people with a very scientific and global perspective on life, to begin to
appreciate the images that were important to early cultures and to make the
constellations come to life before your very eyes.
We only have to look back
to our strong personal reactions to the total eclipse of the sun on the 11th of
August in 1999 (that is of course if you were able to see it at all!), to begin
to understand the fear of darkness experienced by early mankind.
In the following
chapters we will tell the tales behind the constellations and introduce you to
the various cultural interpretations.
Then you too can look into
the heavens on a starry night with a fresh pair of eyes and recognise the
relationships between the constellations and get to know your way around the
heavens a little better:
"Learning is all about calling up the information that
has resided in man's soul for generations" (Socrates)
Let us just consider the literal meaning of the Greek word for
"man": "ántrőpos" meaning "he who looks up to the skies".
And to Ovid
who wrote in his "Metamorphoses":
"And while the other beings were looking down at the
earth under their feet, he gave Man a highly held head and told him to look to
the heavens and to raise his face proudly to the stars".
Consulted literature: