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Mythology of the Stargate glyphs

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    #16
    Auriga is usually depicted as a charioteer, holding the reins of a chariot with his right hand and carrying a goat and its two young on his left arm. Even though the image of the charioteer appears in Johann Bode’s Uranographia (1801), none of the stories Auriga is usually associated with have a goat in them.

    In mythology, Auriga is most frequently identified with Erichthonius, king of Athens and son of the fire god Hephaestus.
    Erichthonius was raised by the goddess Athena, who taught him many skills he wouldn’t have ordinarily learned. He was the first man to tame and harness four horses to a chariot, imitating the chariot of the Sun god. Zeus was impressed and later placed Erichthonius among the stars. Erichthonius is usually credited for the invention of the four-horse chariot, the quadriga.
    In another myth, Auriga represents Hephaestus himself, the lame god, who built the chariot so that he could travel anywhere he wanted, whenever he wanted, without difficulty.
    In another popular myth, the charioteer is Myrtilus, son of Hermes, who served King Oenomaus of Pisa. Oenomaus had a beautiful daughter, Hippodamia, and was determined not to give her hand away to any of her suitors. He would challenge each of them to a chariot race. If he caught up with them before they arrived to Corinth, he would kill them.
    With Myrtilus driving the king’s chariot, none of Hippodamia’s suitors survived the race until Pelops, son of Tantalus, came to ask the king for his daughter’s hand. Hippodamia fell in love with Pelops at first sight and asked Myrtilus to let him win. The charioteer, who was himself in love with the king’s daughter, obeyed and tampered with the chariot’s wheels. During the race, the wheels fell off and King Oenomaus was thrown off the chariot and killed. Once Pelops had won the race, he cast his rival Myrtilus into the sea. Betrayed, Myrtilus cursed the house of Pelops before he drowned. It was Myrtilus’ father Hermes who placed his son’s image among the stars.
    The star Capella, Alpha Aurigae, is associated with Amalthea, the goat who was foster-mother to Zeus. The name Capella is Roman and means “she-goat.” The star is located on the Charioteer’s left shoulder.

    https://www.constellation-guide.com/...constellation/

    High in the northern sky stands a forlorn-looking charioteer. With his right hand he grasps the reins of a chariot, while on his left arm he carries a goat and its two kids. Of his chariot itself there is no sign. What’s the story here? Mythology offers several identifications for this prominent constellation, although the presence of the goat is not accounted for by any of them.

    The most popular interpretation is that he is Erichthonius, a legendary king of Athens. Erichthonius was the son of Hephaestus the god of fire, better known by his Roman name of Vulcan. Hephaestus was too busy smithying to be bothered with his son, who was instead raised by the goddess Athene, after whom the city of Athens is named. When he grew up, Erichthonius instituted a festival called the Panathenaea in her honour.

    Athene taught Erichthonius many skills, including how to tame horses. He became the first person to harness four horses to a chariot, in imitation of the four-horse chariot of the Sun (the quadriga), a bold move which earned him the admiration of Zeus and assured him a place among the stars. There, according to this story, Erichthonius is depicted at the reins, perhaps participating in the Panathenaic games in which he frequently drove his chariot to victory.

    Another identification is that Auriga is really Myrtilus, the charioteer of King Oenomaus of Pisa and son of Hermes. The king had a beautiful daughter, Hippodamia, whom he was determined not to let go. He challenged each of her suitors to a death-or-glory chariot race. They were to speed away with Hippodamia on their chariots, but if Oenomaus caught up with them before they reached Corinth he would kill them. Since he had the swiftest chariot in Greece, skilfully driven by Myrtilus, no man had yet survived the test.

    A dozen suitors had been beheaded by the time that Pelops, the handsome son of Tantalus, came to claim Hippodamia’s hand. Hippodamia, falling in love with him on sight, begged Myrtilus to betray the king so that Pelops might win the race. Myrtilus, who was himself secretly in love with Hippodamia, tampered with the pins holding the wheels on Oenomaus’s chariot. During the pursuit of Pelops, the wheels of the king’s chariot fell off and Oenomaus was thrown to his death.

    Hippodamia was now left in the company of both Pelops and Myrtilus. Pelops solved the awkward situation by unceremoniously casting Myrtilus into the sea, from where he cursed the house of Pelops as he drowned. Hermes put the image of his son Myrtilus into the sky as the constellation Auriga. Germanicus Caesar supports this identification because, he says, ‘you will observe that he has no chariot, and, his reins broken, is sorrowful, grieving that Hippodamia has been taken away by the treachery of Pelops’.

    A third identification of Auriga is Hippolytus, son of Theseus, whose stepmother Phaedra fell in love with him. When Hippolytus rejected her, she hanged herself in despair. Theseus banished Hippolytus from Athens. As he drove away his chariot was wrecked, killing him. Asclepius the healer brought the blameless Hippolytus back to life again, a deed for which Zeus struck Asclepius down with a thunderbolt at the demand of Hades, who was annoyed at losing a valuable soul.

    Aratus did not identify the constellation with any character. He simply called it Ἡνίοχος (Heniochos), the charioteer, as did Ptolemy in the Almagest. From this Greek name comes the Latin transliteration Heniochus, used for the constellation by some Roman writers such as Manilius.

    The she-goat and kids
    Auriga contains the sixth-brightest star in the sky, known as Capella, a Roman name meaning ‘she-goat’; the Greeks called it Αἲξ (Aix), meaning the same. It lies 43 light years away. Ptolemy in the Almagest described this star as being on the charioteer’s left shoulder, but all major star atlases, including those of Bayer, Flamsteed, and Bode (above), have shown it in the body of the goat. According to Aratus it represented the goat Amaltheia, who suckled the infant Zeus on the island of Crete and was placed in the sky as a mark of gratitude, along with the two kids she bore at the same time.

    The kids, frequently known by their Latin name of Haedi (Greek: Ἔριφοι, i.e. Eriphoi), are represented by the neighbouring stars Eta and Zeta Aurigae; Ptolemy described them as lying on the charioteer’s left wrist. Hyginus credits the Greek astronomer Cleostratus with having first called these two stars the Kids in the 5th century BC. It is sometimes said that the variable star Epsilon Aurigae to the north of them is a third member of the kids, but this is incorrect – Ptolemy and the mythologists were clear that there were only two kids. According to Ptolemy, Epsilon Aurigae actually marks the charioteer’s left elbow.

    An alternative story is that Amaltheia was not the goat itself but the nymph who owned the goat. Eratosthenes says that the goat was so ugly that it terrified the Titans who ruled the Earth at that time. When Zeus grew up he challenged the Titans for supremacy. Following the advice of an oracle he skinned the goat and made a cloak from its impenetrable hide, the back of which resembled the head of a Gorgon. This horrible-looking goatskin formed the so-called aegis of Zeus (the word aegis actually means ‘goatskin’). The aegis protected Zeus and scared his enemies, a particular advantage in his fight against the Titans. Afterwards Zeus covered the bones of the goat in a normal-looking skin and transformed it into the star Capella.

    Some early writers spoke of the Goat and Kids as a separate constellation, but since the time of Ptolemy they have been awkwardly combined with the Charioteer, the goat resting on the charioteer’s shoulder, with the kids supported on his forearm. There is no legend to explain why the charioteer is so encumbered with livestock.

    Beta Aurigae, incidentally, is popularly known as Menkalinan, a name that comes from the Arabic meaning ‘shoulder of the charioteer’, since it was described by Ptolemy as lying on the charioteer’s right shoulder.

    A ‘shared’ star
    Greek astronomers regarded one star as being shared by Auriga and Taurus. On old star maps this star is shown as representing both the right foot of the charioteer and also the tip of the bull’s left horn. When the German astronomer Johann Bayer came to allocate Greek letters to the stars in the early 17th century he designated this star as both Gamma Aurigae and Beta Tauri. However, since the introduction of precise constellation boundaries in 1930, astronomers have assigned this star exclusively to Taurus as Beta Tauri and there is no longer a Gamma Aurigae. Hence, under the modern scheme, the bull has kept the tip of his horn but the luckless charioteer has lost his right foot.

    Chinese associations
    In the Chinese constellation system, the four main stars of Auriga – Alpha (Capella), Beta, Theta, and Iota Aurigae – plus the present-day Beta Tauri formed Wuche or Wuju, meaning five chariots, one for each of the five celestial emperors. These stars were also said to govern the harvest of the five main types of cereal grown in China at that time. The prominent triangle near Capella formed by the stars Epsilon, Zeta, and Eta Aurigae was one of three such triangles in and around Auriga that the Chinese termed Zhu or Sanzhu, poles for tethering the horses. The second triangle was formed by Tau, Nu, and Upsilon Aurigae, and the third by Chi, 26 Aurigae, and one other star, identity uncertain. Two other groups of stars within Wuche were known as Tianhuang and Xianchi, both representing ponds, although sources differ as to exactly which stars were involved in each group. Xianchi was said to be where the Sun bathed at the end of each day. Tianhuang has also been interpreted as a bridge or pier.

    Nine stars scattered across eastern Auriga, between the Milky Way and the border with Lynx, formed Zuoqi, representing flags marking seats set out for the Emperor and his dignitaries, presumably for official functions. In the far north of Auriga, Delta, and Xi formed part of Bagu, representing eight kinds of crops, most of which was over the border in Camelopardalis.

    http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/auriga.htm
    Resources :
    http://rdanderson.com/stargate/glyphs/glyphs.htm
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(device)
    http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Glyph
    http://www.astronomytrek.com/star-co...-facts-auriga/
    https://astrologyking.com/constellation-auriga/
    http://www.seasky.org/constellations...on-auriga.html
    http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/auriga.htm
    https://www.britannica.com/place/Auriga
    http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/aur-t.html
    http://www.astronomytrek.com/star-co...-facts-auriga/
    http://www.scientificlib.com/en/Astr...tellation.html
    http://www.acmecompany.com/Pages/stock_space.html
    http://tothelandofdreams.blogspot.co...06/auriga.html
    https://www.sciencephotogallery.com/...9-9204797.html
    http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky/
    Special thanks to @Vilnisr.
    "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

    "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

    "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

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      #17
      Glyph 29 – ERIDANUS
      Name and meaning :
      In Greek mythology, the constellation is associated with the story of Phaëton (or Phaëthon), the son of the Sun god Helios and the Oceanid Clymene. Phaëton wanted to drive his father’s chariot across the sky and kept begging for Helios’ permission to do so until the god agreed, advising Phaëton to follow the beaten track where he saw wheel marks.

      Phaëton mounted the chariot and the horses, sensing that the driver was lighter, flew upwards into the sky, leaving the familiar track behind. The inexperienced driver could not control the horses and the reins slipped from his hands. The chariot plunged so close to the Earth that lands caught fire. It is said that this was how Libya became a desert, Ethiopians got dark skin, and the seas dried up. Zeus saw what was going on and had to intervene to prevent further disaster. He struck Phaëton down with a thunderbolt and, when Phaëton’s hair caught on fire, he leapt from the chariot and fell into the Eridanus. His father Helios, stricken with grief, did not drive his chariot for days, leaving the world in darkness.
      The Greek poet Aratus called the constellation Eridanus, while a number of other sources including Ptolemy referred to it as Potamos, which means “the river.” Eratosthenes associated the celestial river with the Nile, the only river that runs from south to north. Hyginus, a Latin author, agreed, pointing out that the bright star Canopus in the constellation Carina was at the end of the river much like the island Canopus lies at the mouth of the great river in Egypt. The actual constellation, however, represents a river that runs from north to south. Later, the river came to be identified as the river Po in Italy by Greek and Latin authors.
      The name Eridanus, according to a theory, comes from the name of a Babylonian constellation known as the Star of Eridu (MUL.NUN.KI). Eridu was a Babylonian city held sacred to the god Enki-Ea. Enki-Ea was the ruler of the cosmic domain of the Abyss, usually imagined as a reservoir of fresh water below the Earth’s surface.
      https://www.constellation-guide.com/...constellation/
      Aratus applied the mythical name Ἠριδανός (Eridanos) to this constellation although many other authorities, including Ptolemy in the Almagest, simply called it Ποταμός (Potamos), meaning river. Eratosthenes had another identification: he said that the constellation represented the Nile, ‘the only river which runs from south to north’. Hyginus agreed, claiming that the star Canopus lay at the end of the celestial river, in the same way that the island Canopus lies at the mouth of the Nile. However, in this he was wrong, for Canopus marks a steering oar of the ship Argo and is not part of the river. Hyginus had evidently misunderstood a comment by Eratosthenes, who had simply said that Canopus lay ‘beneath’ the river, meaning that it was at a more southerly declination.

      Both Eratosthenes and Hyginus overlooked the fact that the celestial river is visualized as flowing from north to south, opposite to the direction of the real Nile. Adding to the confusion, later Greek and Latin writers identified the Eridanus with the river Po which flows from west to east across northern Italy.

      In mythology, the river Eridanus features in the story of Phaethon, son of the Sun-god Helios, who begged to be allowed to drive his father’s chariot across the sky. Reluctantly Helios agreed to the request, but warned Phaethon of the dangers he was facing. ‘Follow the track across the heavens where you will see my wheel marks’, Helios advised.

      As Dawn threw open her doors in the east, Phaethon enthusiastically mounted the Sun-god’s golden chariot studded with glittering jewels, little knowing what he was letting himself in for. The four horses immediately sensed the lightness of the chariot with its different driver and they bolted upwards into the sky, off the beaten track, with the chariot bobbing around like a poorly ballasted ship behind them. Even had Phaethon known where the true path lay, he lacked the skill and the strength to control the reins.

      The team galloped northwards, so that for the first time the stars of the Plough grew hot and Draco, the dragon, which until then had been sluggish with the cold, sweltered in the heat and snarled furiously. Looking down on Earth from the dizzying heights, the panic-stricken Phaethon grew pale and his knees trembled in fear. Finally, he saw the menacing sight of the Scorpion with its huge claws outstretched and its poisonous tail raised to strike. The swooning Phaethon let the reins slip from his grasp and the horses galloped out of control.

      Ovid graphically describes Phaethon’s crazy ride in Book II of his Metamorphoses. The chariot plunged so low that the Earth caught fire. Enveloped in hot smoke, Phaethon was swept along by the horses, not knowing where he was. It was then, the mythologists say, that Libya became a desert, the Ethiopians acquired their dark skins and the seas dried up.

      To bring the catastrophic events to an end, Zeus struck Phaethon down with a thunderbolt. With his hair streaming fire, the youth plunged like a shooting star into the Eridanus. Some time later, when the Argonauts sailed up the river, they found his body still smouldering, sending up clouds of foul-smelling steam in which birds choked and died. Aratus referred to the ‘poor remains’ of Eridanus, implying that much of the river’s flow was evaporated by the heat of Phaethon’s fall.

      Eridanus in the sky
      Eridanus is a long constellation, the sixth-largest in the sky, meandering from the foot of Orion far into the southern hemisphere, ending near Tucana, the toucan. The present-day Eridanus has the greatest north-to-south span of any constellation, nearly 60°. Its brightest star, first-magnitude Alpha Eridani, is called Achernar, from the Arabic akhir al-nahr meaning ‘the river’s end’; at declination –57°.2, it does indeed mark the southern end of Eridanus.

      In Ptolemy’s day, though, the river dried up 17° farther north, at the star to which Johann Bayer assigned the Greek letter Theta (θ). The name Achernar was transferred from this star to its present position when Eridanus was extended south in the late 16th century. Theta Eridani was then renamed Acamar, a name that comes from the same Arabic original as Achernar. The present-day Achernar is the only first-magnitude star not listed in Ptolemy’s Almagest, because it was too far south for him to see.

      Eridanus was first shown flowing southwards to the present-day Alpha Eridani on a globe of 1598 compiled by Petrus Plancius. Plancius got his information on the southern stars from observations made by the navigator Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser during the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies (the ‘Eerste Schipvaart’) in 1595–97. Whether the idea of extending Eridanus was due to Plancius, Keyser, or some earlier navigators who had previously seen this star is not known. Perhaps Plancius was influenced by the English geographer and explorer Robert Hues (1553–1632) who studied the southern sky during a circumnavigation of the globe in 1591–2. In his book of 1594 called Tractatus de globis et eorum usu (Treatise on Globes and Their Use) Hues wrote of seeing three first-magnitude southern stars that are never visible from England, one of them ‘in the end of Eridanus’; this can only have been the present-day Achernar.

      The southern extension of the river to Achernar consisted of five stars in all, and is clearly seen on the chart of Eridanus in Bayer’s Uranometria of 1603. Bayer included these five new stars in the catalogue that accompanied the chart, labelling them in order of increasing southerly declination with the Greek letters Iota (ι), Kappa (κ), Phi (φ), Chi (χ), and Alpha (α), which they still bear today. These same five stars can also be seen in the lower left of Bayer’s chart of the twelve new southern constellations invented by the Dutch navigators.

      According to the Arab star name expert Paul Kunitzsch, Bedouin Arabs visualized present-day Achernar and Fomalhaut (in Piscis Austrinus) as a pair of ostriches.
      "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

      "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

      "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

      Comment


        #18
        Chinese associations
        In the Chinese sky, much of modern Eridanus was taken up by two constellations whose names both transliterate as Tianyuan. The more northerly of the two consisted of a large arc of 16 stars from Gamma Eridani via Delta and Eta to Tau-9, the same as the large meander in northern Eridanus that we visualize today; in China, this group was the celestial fields where animals were sacrificed to the gods, or alternatively where animals were reared for hunting. The second Tianyuan consisted of a chain of 13 stars starting at Upsilon-1 Eridani and heading south via Theta towards Kappa and possibly beyond, much as southern Eridanus is visualized today; this stretch represented the celestial orchard full of fruit trees, possibly the orchard of Xi Wang Mu, the Chinese goddess of immortality (although the Dunhuang manuscript described it as Tianpu, a vegetable garden).

        Running from north to south along the present-day borders with Orion and Lepus was a chain of nine stars called Jiuliu or Jiuyou, nine flags or banners of the Emperor that formed part of the hunting scene visualized in this area (for more, see under Orion). Next to Jiuliu in northern Eridanus was a loop of nine stars forming Jiuzhou shukou, representing interpreters for visitors to the hunt from far-off regions.

        Beta, Psi, and Lambda Eridani were joined with Tau Orionis to make a square next to Rigel called Yujing, the jade well for exclusive use by the nobility; the well for ordinary soldiers, Junjing, was to the south in Lepus.

        http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/eridanus.htm


        Resources :
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridanus_(constellation)
        https://www.theoi.com/Potamos/PotamosEridanos.html
        http://www.comfychair.org/~cmbell/myth/eridanus.html
        https://heavens-above.com/myth.aspx?...cul=en&con=Eri
        http://www.constellationsofwords.com.../Eridanus.html
        http://www.seasky.org/constellations...-eridanus.html
        http://calendargirl3.tripod.com/stargazing/id2.html
        https://www.britannica.com/place/Eridanus
        https://in-the-sky.org/data/constellation.php?id=37
        http://thestarsandplanets.com/ecosmos/page.php?id=57
        http://rdanderson.com/stargate/glyphs/glyphs.htm
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(device)
        http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Glyph
        Special thanks to @Vilnisr.

        Glyph 30 – ORION
        Name and meaning :
        In Greek mythology, the hunter Orion was the most handsome of men. He was the son of the sea god Poseidon and Euryale, the daughter of King Minos of Crete. In Homer’s Odyssey, Orion is described as exceptionally tall and armed with an unbreakable bronze club.
        In one myth, Orion fell in love with the Pleiades, the seven sisters, daughters of Atlas and Pleione. He started pursuing them and Zeus scooped them up and placed them in the sky. The Pleiades are represented by the famous star cluster of the same name, located in the constellation Taurus. Orion can still be seen chasing the sisters across the sky at night.
        In another story, Orion fell in love with Merope, the beautiful daughter of King Oenopion, who didn’t return his affections.
        One night, he had too much to drink and tried to force himself on her. The king, enraged, put out Orion’s eyes and banished him from his land, the island of Chios. Hephaestus felt sorry for the blind, wandering Orion and offered one of his assistants to guide the hunter and act as his eyes. Orion eventually encountered an oracle that told him if he went east toward the sunrise, his sight would be restored. Orion did so and his eyes were miraculously healed.
        The constellation Orion has its origins in Sumerian mythology, specifically in the myth of Gilgamesh. Sumerians associated it with the story of their hero fighting the bull of heaven, represented by Taurus. They called Orion URU AN-NA, which means “the light of heaven.” Their name for the constellation Taurus was GUD AN-NA, or “the bull of heaven.”
        Orion is often shown as facing the attack of a bull, yet there are no myths in Greek mythology telling any such tale. When describing the constellation, the Greek astronomer Ptolemy describes the hero with a club and lion’s pelt, both of which are usually associated with Heracles, but there is no evidence in mythology books of a direct relation between the constellation and Heracles. However, since Heracles, the most famous of Greek heroes, is represented by the much less conspicuous constellation Hercules, and since one of his tasks was to catch the Cretan bull, there are at least hints of a possible connection between the two.
        Most myths about Orion’s death involve a scorpion, but the stories differ from one mythographer to another. In one tale, Orion boasted to the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto that he could kill any beast on earth. The Earth Goddess heard him and sent a scorpion, which stung the giant to death. In another story, he tried to force himself on Artemis and she was the one who sent the scorpion. In yet another account of his death, Orion was stung while trying to save Leto from the scorpion. All myths of Orion’s death share the same outcome: Orion and the scorpion were placed on opposite sides of the sky, so that when the constellation Scorpius rises in the sky, Orion sets below the horizon in the west, fleeing from the scorpion.
        However, there is also a myth that does not involve a scorpion: Artemis, the goddess of hunting, fell in love with the hunter and, to stop her from giving up her vows of chastity, her brother Apollo dared her to hit a small target in the distance with her bow and arrow. Not knowing that the target was Orion, who was enjoying a swim, she hit it in a single shot, killing her would-be lover. Devastated by his death, she placed Orion among the stars.
        Orion is a well-known constellation in many cultures. In Australia, the stars forming Orion’s Belt and sword are sometimes called the Pot or the Saucepan. In South Africa, the three stars of Orion’s Belt are known as Drie Konings (the three kings) or Drie Susters (the three sisters). In Spain and Latin America, the stars are called Las Tres Marías, or The Three Marys.
        Babylonians knew Orion as MUL.SIPA.ZI.AN.NA or The Heavenly Shepherd (The True Shepherd of Anu) in the Late Bronze Age and associated the constellation with Anu, the god of the heavenly realms. Egyptians associated it with Osiris, the god of death, afterlife and rebirth. Orion was also identified with Unas, the last Pharaoh of the Fifth Dynasty, who was said to have eaten the flesh of his enemies and devoured the gods themselves to become great and bring inheritance of his power. According to myth, Unas travels through the sky to become the star Sabu, or Orion.
        Because pharaohs were believed to be transformed into Osiris after death, some of the greatest pyramids – the ones at Giza – were built to mirror the pattern of the stars in the constellation. To make the transformation easier, the air shaft in the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid was aligned with the star Alnitak, Zeta Orionis, the easternmost star in Orion’s Belt.
        The Aztecs called the stars of Orion’s Belt and sword the Fire Drill; their rising in the sky signalled the beginning of the New Fire ceremony, a ritual Aztecs performed to postpone the end of the world.
        In Hungarian mythology, Orion is identified with Nimrod, a famous hunter and father of Hunor and Magor, the two twins also known as Hun ad Hungarian. In Scandinavian tradition, the constellation is associated with the goddess Freya and called Frigg’s Distaff (Friggerock), after the tool she used for spinning. The Chinese knew the constellation as Shen, a great hunter or warrior.
        Another ancient legend dates back to the second millennium BC. The Hittites (a Bronze Age people of Anatolia, the region comprising most of present-day Turkey) associated the constellation with Aqhat, a famous mythical hunter. The war goddess Anat fell in love with him, but after he refused to lend her his bow, she tried to steal it. However, the man she sent to get the bow messed up the assignment pretty badly, killing Aqhat and dropping the bow into the sea. This is why, according to the myth, the constellation drops below the horizon for two months in the spring.
        https://www.constellation-guide.com/...constellation/

        Orion was a powerful figure - strong, handsome and possessing great prowess as a hunter. Whilst visiting the isle of Chios, he fell in love with Merope, a granddaughter of the god Dionysis. Her father, Oenopion, agreed to their marriage on condition that Orion first rid the island of all dangerous beasts. This he did, but Oenopion made further excuses as to why the marriage should not take place. An exasperated Orion drank a great deal of potent wine and, under its influence, forced himself on Merope. Oenopion was furious at this attack on his daughter and, whilst Orion was still drunk and helpless, blinded him. Orion sought the assistance of an oracle and was told that he had to travel to the East to seek the Sun's morning rays in order to recover his sight. After many adventures, including a meeting with Vulcan, blacksmith to the gods, on the island of Lemnos, he finally met the Sun god Helios and was given back his sight.
        Now all his thoughts were of revenge, but on his way to seek out Oenopion, he landed in Crete, where he met the beautiful Artemis, his feminine counterpart where hunting was concerned. Here the story varies considerably. One version goes that, noting how frequently the pair hunted together, and fearing that Artemis may become yet another conquest of Orion, her brother Apollo challenged her to hit a speck in the sea, a speck which in reality was Orion swimming. He was killed with a single arrow shot from her bow. Another variant of the story has Orion boasting of his ability to kill all animals, no matter how dangerous they were. The gods, rightly fearing for the world's ecology should he decide to put his boast to the test, produced a gigantic scorpion, whose body was so heavily encased that Orion was unable to pierce through the armour, and was himself stung to death. In both cases, so the story goes, Artemis was greatly saddened and arranged for Orion to be immortalised among the stars.
        The Scorpion responsible for Orion's death is also immortalised in the Heavens, but is placed in the opposite quadrant to that of Orion.
        https://www.heavens-above.com/myth.a...&tz=UCT&cul=en
        "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

        "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

        "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

        Comment


          #19
          The earliest story concerning Orion was recorded by the Sumerians who ruled the southernmost region of Mesopotamia, or the land lying between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. To this urban civilization, the constellation represented their hero Gilgamesh, whose exploits were immortalised in the first surviving piece of heroic literature called the Epic of Gilgamesh. While records point to Gilgamesh being a historical king who ruled over the Sumerian city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia sometime between 2700 and 2500 BC, the mythology describes Gilgamesh as a demigod possessing superhuman strength whose great accomplishments assured his divine status amongst his subjects.
          Amongst Gilgamesh’s many great deeds was ordering the city walls of Uruk to be built, and wrestling with the wild man, Enkidu, representing the natural world, who was sent by the gods to humble him. Following a fierce battle, they became great friends, and enjoyed many adventures together, including killing Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven, who had been unleashed by the supreme god Anu to kill Gilgamesh after an appeal by his daughter the goddess Inanna (Akkadian: Ishtar) whose affections Gilgamesh had spurned. The Sumerians subsequently honored the struggle by depicting Gilgamesh in the celestial heavens as the constellation of URU AN-NA (“the light of heaven”) fighting a bull, identified as the modern nearby constellation of Taurus. Amongst the attributes ascribed to the constellation of URU AN-NA was a bow in Gilgamesh’s left hand, an axe in his right, and a sword hanging from his belt.
          In 2334 BC, the Sumerian city-states of Mesopotamia were conquered by the Akkadian ruler Sargon, with the new empire they created eventually passing into the hands of the Babylonians after being conquered by Hammurabi in 1787 BC. Around 1000 BC, Babylonian astronomers then compiled the MUL.APIM, a comprehensive star and constellation catalogue in which the constellation of Orion was called MULSIPA.ZI.AN.NA, meaning the “True Shepherd of Anu”, referring to the Sumerian attendant deity Ninshubur, who served as a messenger to Anu, the god of the sky, and supreme ruler of heaven. Ninshubur was also a personal attendant to the goddess Ishtar (Sumerian: Inanna), the Queen of Heaven, who had earlier been rejected by Gilgamesh, but later Mesopotamian traditions would subsequently assimilate Ninshubur with the Akkadian messenger god Papshukal to become a herald to the general pantheon of gods.
          In the Babylonian star map, the constellation depicted Ninshubu/Papshukal as a shepherd with his left foot forward, and a staff in his extended left hand. Traditionally, the deity was symbolized as the figure of a walking bird, and behind and below the messenger god was imagined a Rooster, with both separate constellations representing Papshukal in his bird and human forms.
          The ancient Egyptians believed that the gods descended from the three stars of Orion’s Belt, and the bright star Sirius in Canis Major. Orion was originally regarded as the god Sah (Sahu), the “father of the gods”, with Orion’s Belt imagined as a crown upon his head, while the star Sirius was his wife Sopdet (Sothis), a fertility goddess whose earliest depictions were either as a reclining cow with a flower between its horns, or as a woman wearing a tall crown adorned with a five-pointed star.
          Sah and Sopdet were later syncretized with the deities Osiris and Isis, and while the appearance of Sirius (Isis) rising with the Sun (heliacal rising) around the time of the summer solstice following a 70 day absence heralded the flooding of the Nile and thus the start of the agricultural year, the appearance of the three “king-stars” of Osiris (Orion) at night after a similarly absent period, before pointing to Isis, signified the flooding’s end around the time of the winter solstice.
          The constellations associated with Osiris and Isis showed the deities standing on their separate celestial boats, both with human appearances, but with Osiris having green skin and a false plaited beard. Osiris was the deity in charge of death, the afterlife, and reincarnation, and the Kings Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza, completed around 2560 BC, was built with its southern air shaft pointing towards Orion’s Belt as a celestial marker for the pharaoh who would unite with Osiris in the afterlife and inherit eternal life. Incidentally, its northern shaft aligns with the circumpolar stars, where his soul would ascend to the celestial realm of the indestructible, undying stars that never set, a perfect destination for a king’s soul.
          http://www.astronomytrek.com/orion-c...lon-and-egypt/

          Resources :
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)
          https://www.constellation-guide.com/...constellation/
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(mythology)
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)
          http://www.comfychair.org/~cmbell/myth/orion.html
          http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/orion.htm
          https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths...ion/orion.html
          https://www.britannica.com/topic/Orion-Greek-mythology
          https://www.ancient.eu/Orion/
          http://www.seasky.org/constellations...ion-orion.html
          https://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/orion.html
          http://rdanderson.com/stargate/glyphs/glyphs.htm
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(device)
          http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Glyph
          Special thanks to @Vilnisr.

          Glyph 31 – CANIS MINOR
          Name and meaning :
          Though strongly associated with the Classical Greek uranographic tradition, Canis Minor originates from ancient Mesopotamia. Procyon and Gomeisa were called MASH.TAB.BA or "twins" in the Three Stars Each tablets, dating to around 1100 BC. In the later MUL.APIN, this name was also applied to the pairs of Pi3 and Pi4 Orionis and Zeta and Xi Orionis. The meaning of MASH.TAB.BA evolved as well, becoming the twin deities Lulal and Latarak, who are on the opposite side of the sky from Papsukal, the True Shepherd of Heaven in Babylonian mythology. Canis Minor was also given the name DAR.LUGAL, its position defined as "the star which stands behind it [Orion]", in the MUL.APIN; the constellation represents a rooster. This name may have also referred to the constellation Lepus.[2] DAR.LUGAL was also denoted DAR.MUÅ EN and DAR.LUGAL.MUÅ EN in Babylonia. Canis Minor was then called tarlugallu in Akkadian astronomy.[3]
          Canis Minor was one of the original 48 constellations formulated by Ptolemy in his second-century Almagest, in which it was defined as a specific pattern (asterism) of stars; Ptolemy identified only two stars and hence no depiction was possible.[4] The Ancient Greeks called the constellation προκυων/Procyon, "coming before the dog", transliterated into Latin as Antecanis, Praecanis, or variations thereof, by Cicero and others. Roman writers also appended the descriptors parvus, minor or minusculus ("small" or "lesser", for its faintness), septentrionalis ("northerly", for its position in relation to Canis Major), primus (rising "first") or sinister (rising to the "left") to its name Canis.[4] In Greek mythology, Canis Minor was sometimes connected with the Teumessian Fox, a beast turned into stone with its hunter, Laelaps, by Zeus, who placed them in heaven as Canis Major (Laelaps) and Canis Minor (Teumessian Fox).[5][6] Eratosthenes accompanied the Little Dog with Orion, while Hyginus linked the constellation with Maera, a dog owned by Icarius of Athens.[7][8] On discovering the latter's death, the dog and Icarius' daughter Erigone took their lives and all three were placed in the sky—Erigone as Virgo and Icarius as Boötes.[8] As a reward for his faithfulness, the dog was placed along the "banks" of the Milky Way, which the ancients believed to be a heavenly river, where he would never suffer from thirst.[9]
          The medieval Arabic astronomers maintained the depiction of Canis Minor (al-Kalb al-Asghar in Arabic) as a dog; in his Book of the Fixed Stars, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi included a diagram of the constellation with a canine figure superimposed.[10][11] There was one slight difference between the Ptolemaic vision of Canis Minor and the Arabic; al-Sufi claims Mirzam, now assigned to Orion, as part of both Canis Minor—the collar of the dog—and its modern home. The Arabic names for both Procyon and Gomeisa alluded to their proximity and resemblance to Sirius, though they were not direct translations of the Greek; Procyon was called ash-Shi'ra ash-Shamiya, the "Syrian Sirius" and Gomeisa was called ash-Shira al-Ghamisa, the Sirius with bleary eyes.[10] Among the Merazig of Tunisia, shepherds note six constellations that mark the passage of the dry, hot season. One of them, called Merzem, includes the stars of Canis Minor and Canis Major and is the herald of two weeks of hot weather.[12]
          The ancient Egyptians thought of this constellation as Anubis, the jackal god.[13]
          Alternative names have been proposed: Johann Bayer in the early 17th century termed the constellation Fovea "The Pit", and Morus "Sycamine Tree". Seventeenth-century German poet and author Philippus Caesius linked it to the dog of Tobias from the Apocrypha.[4] Richard A. Proctor gave the constellation the name Felis "the Cat" in 1870 (contrasting with Canis Major, which he had abbreviated to Canis "the Dog"),[4] explaining that he sought to shorten the constellation names to make them more manageable on celestial charts.[14] Occasionally, Canis Minor is confused with Canis Major and given the name Canis Orionis ("Orion's Dog").[15]
          "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

          "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

          "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

          Comment


            #20
            In non-Western astronomy
            In Chinese astronomy, the stars corresponding to Canis Minor lie in the Vermilion Bird of the South (南方朱雀, Nán Fāng Zhū Què). Procyon, Gomeisa and Eta Canis Minoris form an asterism known as Nánhé, the Southern River.[8][16] With its counterpart, the Northern River Beihe (Castor and Pollux), Nánhé was also associated with a gate or sentry. Along with Zeta and 8 Cancri, 6 Canis Minoris and 11 Canis Minoris formed the asterism Shuiwei, which literally means "water level". Combined with additional stars in Gemini, Shuiwei represented an official who managed floodwaters or a marker of the water level.[8] Neighboring Korea recognized four stars in Canis Minor as part of a different constellation, "the position of the water". This constellation was located in the Red Bird, the southern portion of the sky.[17]
            Polynesian peoples often did not recognize Canis Minor as a constellation, but they saw Procyon as significant and often named it; in the Tuamotu Archipelago it was known as Hiro, meaning "twist as a thread of coconut fiber", and Kopu-nui-o-Hiro ("great paunch of Hiro"), which was either a name for the modern figure of Canis Minor or an alternative name for Procyon. Other names included Vena (after a goddess), on Mangaia and Puanga-hori (false Puanga, the name for Rigel), in New Zealand. In the Society Islands, Procyon was called Ana-tahua-vahine-o-toa-te-manava, literally "Aster the priestess of brave heart", figuratively the "pillar for elocution".[18][19] The Wardaman people of the Northern Territory in Australia gave Procyon and Gomeisa the names Magum and Gurumana, describing them as humans who were transformed into gum trees in the dreamtime. Although their skin had turned to bark, they were able to speak with a human voice by rustling their leaves.[20]
            The Aztec calendar was related to their cosmology. The stars of Canis Minor were incorporated along with some stars of Orion and Gemini into an asterism associated with the day called "Water".[21]
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canis_Minor
            Canis Minor is most commonly identified as one of the dogs following Orion, the hunter in Greek myth. In another legend, the constellation is said to represent Maera, dog of the unlucky wine-maker Icarius, who was killed by his friends after they had mistaken drunkenness for a murder attempt, thinking Icarius had tried to poison them. (They had never tasted wine before.)
            Maera, Icarius’ dog, found his body and ran to his daughter Erigone. Both the daughter and the dog were overwhelmed with grief and took their own lives. Erigone hanged herself and the dog jumped off a cliff. Zeus later placed their images in the sky. In this version of the constellation myth, Icarius is associated with Boötes, the Herdsman, Erigone with the constellation Virgo, and Maera with Canis Minor.
            Hyginus (Latin author who lived at the turn of the millennium) confused the myth somewhat in his writings. He wrote that Icarius’ murderers escaped to the island of Ceos and, as punishment for their misdeed, the island was stricken with sickness and famine, which were attributed to the searing Dog Star, Sirius. (Procyon is mistaken for Sirius here, the other “dog star,” located in Canis Major.)
            When Aristaeus, King of Ceos asked the god Apollo, who was also his father, for advice on saving his people from starving to death, he was told to pray to Zeus. Aristaeus did so and Zeus sent Etesian winds to the island. Every year, the myth goes, Etesian winds blow for 40 days and cool Greece and its islands during the Dog Days of summer. After Zeus had sent relief to Ceos, the priests instituted the custom of making ritual sacrifices to the gods every year before the rising of Sirius.
            In yet another myth, Canis Minor is identified as the Teumessian fox, the animal that could not be outrun, and was eventually turned into stone by Zeus, who also turned its hunter, Laelaps, to stone. (Laelaps was an extremely fast dog, destined to always catch its prey. In the myth, the dog is represented by the constellation Canis Major.) To commemorate the event, Zeus placed both animals in the sky.
            https://www.constellation-guide.com/...constellation/



            Resources :
            http://rdanderson.com/stargate/glyphs/glyphs.htm
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(device)
            https://in-the-sky.org/data/constellation.php?id=16
            http://www.seasky.org/constellations...nis-minor.html
            http://www.astronomytrek.com/star-co...e-smaller-dog/
            http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/canisminor.htm
            https://www.universeguide.com/constellation/canisminor
            https://astrologyking.com/constellation-canis-minor/
            https://www.stellar-journeys.org/mon...canisminor.htm
            http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Glyph
            Special thanks to @Vilnisr.

            Glyph 32 – MONOCEROS
            Name and meaning :
            In Western astronomy, Monoceros is a relatively modern constellation, not one of Ptolemy's 48 in the Almagest.[7] Its first certain appearance was on a globe created by the Dutch cartographer Petrus Plancius in 1612 or 1613[8] and it was later charted by German astronomer Jakob Bartsch as Unicornu on his star chart of 1624.[9]
            German astronomers Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers and Ludwig Ideler[10] indicate (according to Richard Hinkley Allen's allegations) that the constellation may be older, quoting an astrological work[11] from 1564 that mentioned "the second horse between the Twins and the Crab has many stars, but not very bright"; these references may ultimately be due to the 13th century Scotsman Michael Scot, but refer to a horse and not a unicorn, and its position does not quite match. Joseph Scaliger is reported[12] to have found Monoceros on an ancient Persian sphere. French astronomer Camille Flammarion believed that a former constellation, Neper (the "Auger"), occupied the area of the sky now home to Monoceros and Microscopium, but this is disputed.[13]
            Chinese asterisms Sze FÅ«h, the Four Great Canals; Kwan Kew; and Wae Choo, the Outer Kitchen, all lay within the boundaries of Monoceros.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoceros

            Resources :
            https://www.universetoday.com/21990/monoceros/
            http://www.seasky.org/constellations...monoceros.html
            http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/monoceros.html
            https://www.constellation-guide.com/...constellation/
            http://rdanderson.com/stargate/glyphs/glyphs.htm
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(device)
            http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Glyph
            Special thanks to @Vilnisr.
            Last edited by Platschu; 11 November 2020, 08:34 AM.
            "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

            "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

            "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

            Comment


              #21
              Glyph 33 – GEMINI
              Name and meaning :
              In Babylonian astronomy, the stars Castor and Pollux were known as the Great Twins. The Twins were regarded as minor gods and were called Meshlamtaea and Lugalirra, meaning respectively 'The One who has arisen from the Underworld' and the 'Mighty King'. Both names can be understood as titles of Nergal, the major Babylonian god of plague and pestilence, who was king of the Underworld.[10]
              In Greek mythology, Gemini was associated with the myth of Castor and Pollux, the children of Leda and Argonauts both. Pollux was the son of Zeus, who seduced Leda, while Castor was the son of Tyndareus, king of Sparta and Leda's husband. Castor and Pollux were also mythologically associated with St. Elmo's fire in their role as the protectors of sailors.[11] When Castor died, because he was mortal, Pollux begged his father Zeus to give Castor immortality, and he did, by uniting them together in the heavens.
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(constellation)

              Resources :
              https://www.heavens-above.com/myth.a...cul=en&con=Gem
              http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/gemini.html
              https://greekerthanthegreeks.com/202...of-gemini.html
              https://nineplanets.org/gemini-constellation/
              http://www.astronomytrek.com/gemini-the-twins/
              https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths...ni/gemini.html
              https://littleastronomy.com/gemini-c...tion-for-kids/
              https://in-the-sky.org/data/constellation.php?id=39
              "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

              "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

              "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

              Comment


                #22
                Thank You so very much for posting this! I have been researching/studying the meanings behind all of the ancient egyptian & sacred geometry decor/art symbols in the Stargate franchise, like the decor of the gate, the costumes, the ships inside & out, etc, and it is amazing! A lot of thought and effort was put into it. And this info from you ties right into it. I am currently designing several fiber art Stargate projects, and I have hundreds of ideas for smaller projects that I plan to create and make patterns for so that others can make their own. Thanks Again!

                Comment


                  #23
                  Yay. I am happy if it was useful in anything. These constellation infos and myths were collected from different websites then I have made little, very-very simple picture montagues for the SG:C app. Later they have deleted those onesso I have never bothered to complete it until glyph 39. I believe it is worth of reading these stories as it gives an extra cultural knowledgs even if they are not directly episode related informations.

                  https://stargate-sgc.fandom.com/wiki/Glyph
                  https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Glyph
                  "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

                  "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

                  "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Originally posted by Platschu View Post
                    Yay. I am happy if it was useful in anything. These constellation infos and myths were collected from different websites then I have made little, very-very simple picture montagues for the SG:C app. Later they have deleted those onesso I have never bothered to complete it until glyph 39. I believe it is worth of reading these stories as it gives an extra cultural knowledgs even if they are not directly episode related informations.

                    https://stargate-sgc.fandom.com/wiki/Glyph
                    https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Glyph
                    Your info is more useful than you know, in many areas, as it leads people to learn thing like math and sacred geometry, fractal enlightenment, interdependent universe, etc. For me, personally, from studying the sacred geometry & ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs alone eventually led me to learning some very important things about life that our culture was lost somehow along the way, since ancient times. Things that would benefit every human being individually and our world as a whole, that we are not taught as children or adults, that is responsible for every single problem we have in the world today. It has to do with people not realizing that we live in an interdependent universe and behaving accordingly - I've come across several people who are currently working very hard to help bring this knowledge back to us, to benefit the world - people like Richard Grannon, Lisa A. Romano, and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev who is trying to help the world rediscover this basic knowledge we have lost.

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