[Aztlan] astronomical thinking

[martha noyes]

I’m very glad we’re talking about these things.  And I’d like to reply a little to the wonderful posts from Harold and Lloyd.

 

To interpret a celestial myth does indeed require knowledge of the culture the myth comes from.  To recognize a myth as likely to be celestial very often does not.

 

Tropical cultures in general do use horizon circle and zenith/nadir points, but many also use the celestial poles-equator-ecliptic as well.

 

Yes, the perception of asterisms varied among the cultures, but certain asterisms were almost universally observed, albeit often with different outer boundary stars.  The Pleiades were recognized nearly everywhere.  Orion, too, was recognized, although in different configurations than the west sees Orion.  In Hawaii, for example, the stars of Orion are part of a larger constellation that is a bird snare.  The Big Dipper and the Little Dipper were recognized in most regions from which they could be seen, and that includes the tropics.  The same is true for Crux.  Scorpius likewise was observed, although it wasn’t necessarily a scorpion and wasn’t necessarily limited to or inclusive of all the stars of the western Scorpius.

 

Similarly, most of the major bright stars were observed wherever they could be seen.  

 

Although the equinoxes do not fall precisely between the solstices, they serve in many cultures to “quarter” the year, to function as midway marks between solstices.  

 

Likewise, many cultures viewed four pillars, posts, corners, walls, what have you, to determine, denote, hold up the walls or roof of the sky.

 

When I said there are keys to celestial myth I didn’t mean that every culture has the same keys, but, rather, that if one knows enough of the keys in general it is more than a fair presumption that a myth which contains a number of them is a celestial myth.

 

Even south of the equator north is usually up and south usually down.  One religion of the Pacific region which follows this sees north and south as a continuum, like a kind of celestial tunnel, such that death may go to either end and life may return from either end, and north is black and it is also white in that same culture.  

 

Some cultures have multiple asterisms and multiple symbols for a single celestial phenomenon.  Orion, for instance, in Hawaii can be a bird snare, the place where Maui keeps his adzes, or any one of several other objects/places, just as the hook of Scorpius is Maui’s hook and it’s one end of a celestial canoe.  Crux is a bat, a bird perch, a cross, and a war club.

 

It is possible to know that in some cultures the celestial knowledge contained in myths was definitely reserved/sacred knowledge.  Enough living descendants exist to let us be sure of that, and often enough knowledge of the culture itself exists to let us know that.  It was sacred and restricted knowledge in the ancient Middle East, in many, even most, native cultures of North America (ex. Hopi, Chumash, Navajo), and certainly of Oceanic cultures.