Tag: Milky Way
The mystery of the Incas: the "dark constellations" and the celestial "floods"
This article is based on the summary of William Sullivan's book "The Mystery of the Incas" edited by Piervittorio Formichetti and expanded by Marco Maculotti.
waka, totem animals, constellations
The ancient Andean peoples called huaca (o waka) "the presence of the sacred and the magical-telluric in each of its multiple forms or manifestations (stones, mountains, rivers, stars, celestial and terrestrial phenomena, crossroads, funeral cults, etc.)"That they encountered everywhere in a sacred world / mental space [GonzΓ‘lez,Β The pre-Columbian symbols, p. 75]. In other words, they revered the innumerable states of a Universal Being manifesting through the environment as a hierophany. The Italian anthropologist Mario Polia writes [The blood of the condor, p. 86], reporting an indigenous tradition of the Samanga valley: "Le huacas, be they rocks, stones or mountains, they are hungry and if men do not nourish them, they devour their soul, their "shadow", sucking life from their bodies. If they are satisfied, however, they protect the fields, ward off evils and call the rainsΒ».
The symbolism of the Spiral: the Milky Way, the shell, the "rebirth"
di Marco Maculotti
Having analyzed in recent months [cf. Cosmic-agrarian cults of ancient Eurasia] a series of rites, myths and deities connected to the theme of cosmic rebirth, we want in this appointment and in the next ones to focus our attention on some symbols, which we have already mentioned, which archaic man recognized as images capable of eschatologically raising him towards the understanding of this mystery.
The "Heavenly Fire": Kronos, Phaeton, Prometheus
di Andrew Casella
cover: Jean Delville, Prometheus, 1907)
[Continued fromΒ The astronomical significance of the Golden Age: Astrea and the "fall" of Phaeton]
In a Mongolian wedding prayer it is stated that: "Fire was born when Heaven and Earth separated": Therefore, before the celestial equator (Father Heaven) and the ecliptic (mother Earth) moved away (ie the inclination angle of about 23 Β° of the ecliptic with respect to the equator was recorded), the" Fire " did not exist. At the beginning, the Milky Way united heaven, earth and the world of the dead: the southern part of the Galaxy, in correspondence with Scorpio and Sagittarius, is, for many traditions, the place dedicated to the collection of souls waiting to reincarnate.
The astronomical significance of the Golden Age: Astrea and the "fall" of Phaeton
di Andrew Casella
cover: Sidney Hall, representation of the Virgo constellation, taken from "Urania's Mirror", 1825)
(follows fromΒ Stellar symbolism and solar symbolism)
All the peoples of the world sang of a mythical "first time" of abundance, in which the gods walked the earth and all things were in harmony. The myth of the Golden Age fascinated poets from remote antiquity to the times of the Renaissance. Basically, it was believed to be a time of material wonders, in which the bodily well-being of men was guaranteed by the natural and infinite flow of milk and honey. But are things really as the poets sang? What was the Golden Age really? The poets themselves, on the other hand, have preserved (consciously or not) some revelatory clues to the mystery, which refer, once again, to the celestial vault.
