Tell me your legends, and I tell what future awaits you.
We need new legends to live by. And these legends need to inspire not heroism, but cooperation and love. Take for example the legends that surround the constellation of Orion. Since times immemorial humans followed cosmic objects giving them names and weaving legends around them. These legends guided generations to come, and therefore it is no surprise that most legends praising masculinity and heroism have given rise to patriarchal religions, societies and economies.
Constellation of Orion is the brightest and best known constellation in the sky. In the Northern Hemisphere it can be seen in winter. This constellation is best recognized by the three stars in Orion’s belt.
Ancient people from all parts of the world had legends connected to Orion. Babylonians mentioned this constellation in their astronomical tablets as sipa.zi.an.na, “the loyal shepherd of heaven”. This must have inspired Christian stories of shepherdhood.
Even before Babylonians, Orion was part of the Sumerian narrative of Gilgamesh. In these already patriarchal periods the Epic of Gilgamesh depicts Orion-Gilgamesh as the “Light of Heaven” placed against the “Bull of Heaven”. The legend is about how the two male heroes travel to Cedar Forest (which we can guess is in today’s Lebanon — Land of Cedars) to cut the sacred Cedar. The goddess Ishtar gets angry and sends the Bull of Heaven to punish Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and his friend kill the Bull of Heaven, as a result they both are punished, one with death, the other one with eternal searches for immortality and never finding it.
It is not hard to locate the Bull of Heaven in the sky as well, since it is the Taurus constellation situated right next to Orion. And although they are forever facing each other, Orion, that is part of legends from all corners of the world, is in the threatening position to the Bull-Taurus, the creature of Goddess.
So the question is why humanity would have such heroes which are opposed to Goddess, her creatures and life cycle itself (remember the abovementioned hero searching for immortality?).
Today that we have had enough of patriarchy constantly threatening not only women in general, but the life on Earth itself, I think it is the right time to shift our legends or abandon these “heroic” images, create new ones filled with more love, cooperation, harmony, cherishing the life, and live by those legends. But obviously abandoning the old that we are used to, is a painful process. Some nations living to this day have these legends at the very core of their foundation. Take for example Armenians. Unlike Sumerians and Babylonians, Armenians live to this day and for them the legend of Hayk, their forefather and Armenian version of Orion, who killed the Babylonian Bel (bull, baal), is an identity that has been coded on their subconscious level. And patriarchy has been part of that coding too.
Or take the Greeks, whose most famous legends Iliad and the Odyssey are inspired by Gilgamesh too. Interestingly, in Greek mythology, there are two versions of Orion’s death. In the first, while hunting on Crete, Orion boasted that he could kill any animal on Earth. Gaia — mother Earth — took offense and cracked the earth open, from which a scorpion emerged to kill Orion. In the second version, Orion attempted to forcibly break Artemis’ vows of chastity (rape her, put directly). Threatened, Artemis summoned the scorpion that killed Orion. Zeus put Orion in the sky (male solidarity I guess), and yet placed the scorpion there too. And this too is reflected in the sky since whenever the Scorpius constellation rises in summer, Orion sets in the western horizon, “running” from it.
What are possible alternatives in the sky?
Much before the dawn of patriarchy, some 10–15.000 years ago and earlier the life giving forces of Earth were much better recognized and cherished. This was also reflected in abundance of goddess characters in various parts of the world. And of course these perceptions of the world were also reflected in the sky. For example Cygnus, one of the major constellations in the northern hemisphere’s summer sky, best seen from June through November, was pictured as a swan in some cultures, as in Greek, or as vulture, as in Armenian, Egyptian.
Maria Gimbutas talked a lot about water related birds (as the swan) that were especially venerated by ancient people for whom the whole world began from an egg and life — from water.
Vulture in its turn for the ancients, as in pre-Zoroastrian times, was the creature who would take the soul of dead to the Moon-Goddess Mah. Nekhbet or Mut, the archaic vulture mother of Egypt, represented “an ancient matriarchal stratum”. The Egyptian word for mother was the sign of vulture. The necropolis or “city of dead” derives from Nekhen, the sacred city of the ancient Vulture Goddess Nekhbet, who daily devoured the dying sun and gave him rebirth. Greeks named the city after their own childbirth Goddess, Aphrodite Ilithya. To the Romans it was the city of Juno. All, apparently, recognized the vulture as a leading avian symbol of the Mother of death and rebirth.
Interestingly, Armenians have a prehistoric archeological site Carahunge — ancient astronomical observatory according to some scientists and researchers, which was built in the form of vulture-cygnus some 32.000 years ago. Because the position of the stars and the Earth changes throughout millennia, researchers think that some 7800 years ago the stones were adjusted according to the shifted constellation position.
As we see, there were times when the feminine was present in humans’ legends too. What we could do is we could re-learn those legends. And yet we don’t have to necessarily concentrate on feminine or masculine past. Instead we can move on and create new legends which prioritize balance, harmony between humans and nature, men and women, cherish life cycles accepting death and birth as the natural flow of that cycle.
Now that we are at a transformational point, we can indeed create new legends (or call it myth, spiritual path, or else) that will finally put us on a path of harmony. Because anything we have in mind, we have around us. And in the past centuries we have had enough of glorification of masculine heroism, warriors, rapist deities (countless cases by Zeus) and punishing gods. It is high time to let love, respect, care and balance guide us in our legends and lives, so that we are hopeful for the future that comes.
Some sources:
-Sky Safari mobile application
-Barbara G. Walker: The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects (1988)
