Abstract
We often hear that we live in a “global community” in which we are linked together across the Earth. The links we usually consider are materialistic – financial transactions, Internet services, trading of goods from distant continents. Yet we are also linked in a more profound way, as citizens of the Earth, surrounded by the planets of the solar system and the dazzling constellations of the night sky (Fig. 1.1). Before international trade and before the Internet, humans looked up at the night sky and traded tales and theories of what it all means. Many of the tales endure in oral tradition, in mythology, and in more subtle forms.
“If you will think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here from somewhere else, you see that we are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the Earth. And this is the voice of the earth.”
Joseph Campbell (Campbell and Moyers 1988)
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Penprase, B.E. (2011). Our Experience of the Sky and Star Knowledge. In: The Power of Stars. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6803-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6803-6_1
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