Firmament

As I have mentioned before I am writing about parallel mythology from around the world. I have decided to focus on the infatuation that ancient cultures had with the sky and the celestial bodies that orbit our earth. My second book was Mythology: The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth & Storytelling. It is almost 700 pages long, so I didn’t read the whole thing, but I read all the Myths that mentioned the words sky, heaven, moon, sun, astronomy, moon, stars, constellations, thunder, etc. The book obviously has a huge range of mythologies from the traditional greek and egyptian myths to the lesser known Celtic and African myths.

I liked being able to use this encyclopedia of knowledge to find the details I was really looking for, rather than using a book specifically on my subject. I was able to find many parallels by myself just from reading the myths separately. The most striking similarities were the general obsession with the sky and how it was created and myths about the sun and moon.

Many of the myths defined a mother earth and father sky, or similar figures. We see this in Greek mythology with Gaia and Uranus as well as in North American tribal myth where they saw the earth as the Great Mother Spirit’s body and the sky as the Father arching over the Mother. Most of the cultures believed their main gods lived in the sky, and that tall features were holy because they stretched up closer to the gods. Mount Olympus, the “heavenly ladder” ir chinese mythology called the Tree of Jianmu, and the structures built in Egypt, India, Mesoamerica, and many other cultures are all examples of how humans tried to get closer to the gods. Many myths also described how the celestial bodies were created out of parts of the gods. For example, in Norse Mythology, Odin’s flesh became the earth, and in India people believe that Parajapati’s tears created the Earth. In African and Japanese myth, the features of the earth as well as the sun and moon were created out of sickness and the excrements of a dying god.

As for the sun and moon, they were usually linked either as lovers or as siblings. Many of you are probably familiar with the greek myth of the twins of Artemis and Apollo, who drive their chariots across the sky. They were also siblings in Japanese myth, called Amaterasu who was the sun, and Tsukiyomi, the moon. I found it very interesting how in these two myths, the genders of the two bodies were reversed. It shows a difference in culture and how they view the characteristics of ‘male’ and ‘female’. In South American myth, the moon was created to be the consort of the sun. The passage of the sun and moon across the sky was commonly seen as either a race or chase between the two. In other cases, it was a battle between night and day, which was necessary for harmony.

There was less about stars and constellations than I was expecting since the Greeks and romans were some of the only ones who really identified constellations and deliberately tied their myths to them. The majority of the zodiac and other common constellations were created by the greeks who said they were heros that the gods had placed in the stars. However some of those constellations actually have other creatures associated with them. The big dipper was a group of Macaws flying around the earth, and in Chinese myth, the scholar Kui Xing lived within the great bear constellation. The only other common reference to the stars was the significance of the Milky Way. In Japanese mythology, the Milky Way is a river of blood created by the murder of a child of the creator god. In Mesoamerica, the Milky Way was the body of their mother goddess.

I hope to look more into some of the psychology behind why humans worshiped the sky and its vastness. It is such a common trait among humans to turn up their faces in prayer or hope. Humans all over the earth have identified the sky as the home of their gods, and still to this day motion towards the sky when referencing heaven or god. Similarly, people identify hell as being down, under the earth. I want to learn more about this common affinity towards the sky before I write my paper.