Introduction

Image: Young Moon and Sister Stars, Pete Lawrence, 4/19/02007
Source: Astronomy Picture of the Day

Introduction

Words From the Typist

This storybook is a collection of astronomical myths from around the world. The goal is to show the importance of the heavens in four different cultures with each story focusing on how a particular grouping or aspect of the stars came into being, demonstrating how our culture shapes our view of the universe. The first story, Orion, comes from the classical mythology of ancient Greece; the second, Bran the Giant, rises from Celtic culture; the third, the Pleiades as told by the Kiowa, a Native American tribe; and the fourth, Rahu, has its roots in Hindu culture. All of these will be told by one narrator, but who is able to tell each of these stories with their original depth and purpose? Only someone who was there when the words were first spoken and has seen them travel around the world, and she will be here long after they fade away and new tales rise to take their place.

Listen: the sun is setting, twilight softens the sky and blurs the boundaries between earth and heaven, and if your eyes are closed and your mind open, you can hear the Moon's voice spreading across the heavens, rich and vibrant. It is night and the edges of reality dissipate in the darkness. It is the time for stories.

The Moon Speaks

I spend my nights telling stories. Your stories, stories from the earth about the sky. Each of you, in different regions, in different homes, from the mountains to the beaches, have your own stories, and I hear them all. The stars you speak of cannot. They recognize your whispers but cannot hear your words.

The stars are far away, but they know the stories exist. Far away without purpose, without time, but full of curiosity and a hunger for something to fill their minds. I am closer than they and watch the parents point at the sky, and I can hear the children’s excited whispers; I can listen to their legends and remember, hearing someone whispering the words while their fingers trace the chipping text and fading pages of books tinted with the same yellow that fills me in autumn. So I keep the tales for the stars, and each night they burn around me, bright and sure, and listen as I tell each of them how they came to be, of how they will fall, of the secrets they are supposed to hold.

There are more stories than I can tell in a month, even without pausing once and taking my voice from the sky for one night, more for each star than I can tell in an evening even when I am at my brightest. Some stories are the same from culture to culture, some are slightly changed, and some are so different from each other that the stars chuckle and change their shapes in the sky so that everyone on earth can be right about them for a time. They pull their fire from me and my stories, and tonight I am fading, swift and sure. Tomorrow I will not be able to manage a breath. And soon the sky will swallow me; I will be blocked from the view of the earth and the heavens. An eclipse, I believe you call it. But that is an earth word.

Yet I must tell the stories or they will fade, purposeless and blank, so tonight I pull my light into me and choose the stories I will share as I come up over the horizon. There will only be time and strength for four tonight, one from the ever present Greeks, one from Celts, one from the native voices that pull their strength from the earth, and the last...I cannot decide on the last. It will come to me from the others, I know, completing my trek and taking the remainder of my strength.

Gather around my friends, my cousins, gather around and hear. Burn brightly, Orion. You will hear first.