In ancient times (a lot before telescope and other technical achievements) people were observing the sky at night and were slowly realizing the complexity and regularity of its motion. Out of countless stars only some were changing their position. They called them „wandering stars“–planets. They were the best reflection of inconstant existence of the humankind on the Earth and the inevitable change. With two „lights“- the Sun and the Moon – there were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Everything else were „fixed stars“.
After the last phase of Saturn sphere (as they imagined) there was the immense vastness of stability. The world that wasn’t changing so obviously as the positions of 7 „wanderers“. And only Gods could resist the test of time and remain untouched.
There are many theories on the origin of myths. From distorted presentation of real events in the past where participants had status of gods up to allegorical presentations of natural phenomena, personification of natural forces – fire, water… or compensation for forgotten motives of some rituals. Maybe some of those theories are correct, maybe the mind imprisoned in rationalism and metrology was finding satisfying explanations in those statements, however it’s not possible to escape the truth that when we look up to the stars, we’re looking at the past. The past that is so far that we can’t even perceive that time. The light that travels for a million of years to us brings not only photons, but symbolism that we cannot reject without trying to understand it.
They say when the man lives long enough he starts to truly perceive how things and events repeat in circles. In a slightly different version, but with the same topic. The mere examples of fashion, art, war motives…confirm this statement. On the other hand, there’s generally accepted attitude (which we don’t even question) that the evolution of the humankind is going in upward direction. The amount of information that we possess completely dominates insights of the ancient man and especially of some thinker from the Bronze or the Stone Age. Thinker? We tend to prejudice how that thinking was insignificant, incapable of realizing the existence within the wider context. Unlike today when we have all answers categorized on Wikipedia. The rest is solved by beam-scales, microscopes and mobile phones.
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Our civilization, created on ruins of the Roman Empire, was developing technology – especially in wars, sport games and the art motivated by the inner pain. We needed at least 2000 years to come to this level. Civilization before us also lasted for centuries, some of them for more than millennium. It is expected that some other knowledge and insights were also brought to high level.
Among that knowledge, if not one of the greatest, is the mythology. The capability to transmit the complexity of human existence, interpersonal relationships, the creation of the world and natural phenomena through stories that we still remember today.
Myths were created by agglomeration of stars in the sky into certain groups or vice versa? It’s hard to respond, but for astrologers the most important constellations are those along the ecliptic where passes the imagined path of stars wanderers – planets. Throughout time 12 constellations (of the same name, but not the same as 12 signs) were formed and the Sun “traversing” them was releasing a special form of divine fixed energy in which the man could find his stability, his star in the sky.
Still Plato was saying that souls are born in Milky Way and this appropriate name talks in symbolic language about the connection of human soul with spaces outside solar system. The sun and planets around it form the individual, but only through stars of Milky Way we become a part of something bigger. Only some of those stars are visible by bare eye, those that stand fixed and tell us stories about Gods. With the help of technological discoveries we notice that the sky at night is not so “empty”, it’s filled with numerous stars, that were souls or that will become souls. Similarly to humanity. Only small number of souls on the Earth are alive, the rest are emerging or they fulfilled their path and now they’re one of the “invisible” stars in Milky Way. There’s no ending behind this point, there is Primary Originator – God, the one who gives impulse to the motion of the whole universe, beyond individual galaxy, and is still present within everybody.
If this still sounds too abstract, we should admire the strength of imagination of those ancient people who (seemingly isolated from each other) were thinking out stories on Andromeda, Golden Fleece, Osiris and Isis, goddess Ishtar, gods Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, Svarog, Perun, feathered snake Quetzalcoatla, Noah’s Ark and the tower of Babel due to which we don’t understand each other well.
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