The Box of Stars [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Star-gazing is one of the oldest human occupations. To locate the ancient constellations, many of them forty or fifty centuries old, is to see the world through the eyes of our earliest known ancestors, to re-enter the Bronze Age 'DreamTime', when the myths, the mysterious, primordial images in man's psyche, were first placed in the skies. The stars themselves, of course, have been there from time immemorial, but of the eighty-eight official man-made constellations, which were finalised worldwide in 1930, forty-eight were listed by Ptolemy in the second century AD. The skies are alive with symbols and, from Orion, the Hunter, the handsomest man in the world who went blind but regained his sight by looking at the sunrise, to Serpentarius, the Healer, holding the serpent of medicine and rebirth, and Bootes, the Herdsman, who pursues the Bears around the pole, they all teU their own story of a timeless world. Modern science also teUs us that the glittering firmament which surrounds us is timeless in another way as well. Until the sixteenth century men believed that the stars which they grouped into constellations were near to us and to each other, but we now know that centuries often lie between the moments at which the individual stars give out their light, and that the universe is boundless, and populated with black holes and spinning galaxies. In this booklet, which is not intended to be a scientific guide, I have tried to bring together these two completely different ways of looking at the skies. Under the heading of each card, I have first given the myths and legends associated with each constellation, and then, in 'The Stars', not only the stories and beliefs connected with the individual stars, but any scientific information which seems to add to the sense of awe and wonder with which we view the universe we live in. Lastly, comes a ifi i;, . : / ¦' ¦