Abstract
Look up in any modern city and you may only see a few or a dozen stars. Travel to the country, and the sky is filled with stars, of a wide variety of colors and brightness, arrayed across the sky with a mysterious splendor as it has for thousands of years. Our reaction to this sky is primal and universal. The night sky can bring us strong feelings – “A feeling of falling from a great height” as Carl Sagan describes, or perhaps the reaction of Emily Dickson in which she describes how she knows poetry – “I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off.”
Many generations have ordered the realm of the night sky with symbols, names, and lessons that mirror the values and experience of our earthly world below. In this chapter we will explore some of the ways in which cultures from around the world have given order and meaning to the formless feelings invoked by the night sky.
“The arch of sky and mightiness of storms
Have moved the spirit within me,
Till I am carried away
Trembling with joy.”
Uvavnuk, Inuit shaman woman (Lionberger 2007
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Penprase, B.E. (2011). A World of Constellations in the Night Sky. In: The Power of Stars. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6803-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6803-6_2
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