@amber.of.the.sea
To the ancient peoples of the world the celestial lights were sometimes mysterious strangers who emerged out of the darkness and t
To the ancient peoples of the world the celestial lights were sometimes mysterious strangers who emerged out of the darkness and turned the night into a glittering wonderland. In North America, the Iowas believed the stars to be living creatures, while in the Arctic these living creatures were seen as covered with luminous fur or feathers. According to the DinΓ©, the stars are made of crystals, jewels or pieces of white shell, while to others the stars were lit by the light of the sun, or were themselves tiny apertures in the sky. Some saw the stars and constellations as a web woven by the sky goddess, whereas the Venda, a Southern African Bantu people, pictured βthe stars as hanging from the solid dome of the sky by cords, while other groups believed the stars to be holes in the solid rock dome of the sky.β
Occasionally they were viewed as deities, or the sky itself was regarded as the seat, or the home of the supreme, all-seeing, all-knowing god or sky father. Lao-Tsu wrote of the gods that βsit on their stellar thrones.β Sometimes the god descended to the earth before returning again. An example of this is found among the Ona or Selkβnam people of Patagonia, who tell of how their god Kenos once arrived on the empty earth with three friends. He shaped the land and arranged the ancestors into tribes, and later on he withdrew into the sky, and when the elders tire, some return to the sky to Kenos and become clouds and stars. The Tehuelche of Patagonia, whose supreme celestial creator, βhad always existed his name means βskyβ and the Tehuelche believed he watched over the spirits of the dead, who rose to heaven to become the stars.β To the Polynesians the stars were the many eyes of βAluluei, the god of navigation, whose sparkling brightness guided seafarers on their journeys.β
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From my book The Bronze Serpent
Art: Falling up by Sarah Finnegan @sarahfinnigan.art
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#mythology #bookstagram #mysticism
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2026-03-04 | 6,675 likes | 19 comments
