Appendix D: Looking Skyward - Notes on Celestial Myth

Depending on whether one reads the ballad as set for the 1999-2000 millennial turnover of popular understanding or, the 2000-2001 transit of official understanding, the sky will be a little different. The moon will be a little more, or less, horned by New Year's Eve. December 25th will have a waning gibbous moon for 1999 and a new moon for 2000, and so forth.

The irony, of course, is that the matter is all very arbitrary anyway. Scholars still hunt for the birth of Christ somewhere between 8 B.C. and the first or second century A.D. As for December 25th for a birthday party, well, even Christians wouldn't swallow the notion of his birthday coinciding with a pagan ritual. Still, cycles do figure in human history and millennial milestones have a decidedly seductive quality about them. Three-thousand and nine-thousand year cycles also figure importantly in marking significant changes in the histories of civilizations, the later perhaps indicative of some overall birth-to-death cycle in a lifespan of a major civilization - Egyptian, Minoan, Mayan/Incan and so forth.

As to where the marker for the coming millennium really ought to be placed, It hardly matters. The span is sufficiently large that the briefest division which would be appropriate to mark its passage would reasonably be in years rather than seconds, …1999…tick…2000…tock…2001…, a more realistic approach to time and large-scale change. One, I think, that is in keeping with how one might personally approach the transit in an honoring way - to regard this passage and its implications throughout the year and to give it the long moment of respect which a thousand years of human ups and downs might well deserve.

In the context of the poem, any attempt to accurately fix the moment with a corresponding local celestial ambiance (a full moon here or there) was difficult. There was a little room for dramatic fiddling. The horned moon does approximately reverse itself over a year's time before it flees over the western ridge (at 21% and 31%) on New Years at the longitude and latitude of the valley. Mars will be rising at the approximate time of one celebration and setting at the next. But most attempts at arranging dramatic or symbolic significance were abandoned early in the drafting. I think it best to leave that all to the astrologer's mumbo-jumbo. There will undoubtedly be no end to them popping up and making their dire or providential assessments and predictions before this year is up. Of that you can be sure.

The one sub-theme that is consistent is that perhaps it is time we grew up and stopped painting the heavens with ancient mythological constructions so washed in stories of blood, rape, incest, power and in-house abuse. What is it we are trying to explain? The origin of humankind's inevitable fall from grace? It is not simply foolish to hang such shameful hats on the rack of heaven, but it is psychologically unhealthy to do so. What is it we teach when our very skies mirror human failure to future generations of children who may very well venture there? Perhaps it is time we took down those old, tired props and let the wondrous shores speak forthemselves.

Still, sky myths do abound (every culture has them) and are ideal for dramatic metaphor. Orion, the hunter, is forbidden his wife Eos, the dawn, facing her from the distant west as she rises in the East during the bitter seasons, until he once again rises with her in the spring. It is punishment from Gaia and a deterrent for having savaged the earth (the Island of Delos). She calls on Scorpion to put an end to his insatiable appetite and sting him to death. When it is done, the two of them are cast in opposite parts of the sky. In one story he rapes Chios' daughter, in another it is the handmaiden of Artemis (there are dozens of versions). No matter. His appearance in the sky of the ballad derives from a persistent character of violence, gratuitous appetite and the overarching theme of death and regeneration. Were he roaming on earth today there is no doubt he'd be a candidate for the three-strikes laws.

Demeter, of course, archetypally evokes this theme of tension between the cycles of death and rebirth and seasonal replacement. It is Demeter's seven cold oxen that Dante refers to who are pulling the 'crib of Iacchos', the chariot or dipper, through the sky while the golden goddess of grain, herself, looks on in long black robes that she has worn since the rape of her daughter Persophene. Persephone will carry the full burden of the cycle of life and death in her periodic journey to the underworld. In the ballad, it was not only appropriate to wither the grain in the hand of Demeter, as is usual in symbolic recognition of her grief, but to atrophy her hand as a well. If for no other reason, than to recognize the humiliation that she should have had to accept the tainted 'compromise' forced upon her by Zeus -- A half-year's earthly life for her daughter, and a half-year in the underworld to appease the lust of Hades. Forever after, the earth would suffer this humiliation during its seasons of want when the black-robed Erynis, the raging form of Demeter, would take her revenge.

Most disturbing of all is the fact that such stories (particularly that of Demeter) mark the concession by humankind transferring the power of nature to the power of deity. Nothing more validated the path of conquest of the natural order than to give it into the hands of God. Once safely delivered, the way was wide open for commercial development.

Demeter's 'chariot' reminds us of yet another tale of rape and woe - in its role as Ursa Major, The Big Dipper. Zeus, again on the lookout for fresh meat, corners Callisto in a dark glen. Whether one holds, by some versions, it was seduction or, by other versions rape, it is clear that Zeus' attentions were unwanted. Callisto flees to the gardens of Artemis to escape this stalking suitor, but he corners her anyway. The curious thing is that she fares no better after the deed in the hands of her 'sisters' than she did with her unbidden lover. The discovery that she is pregnant from the liason leaves her abandoned by both Artemis and her handmaidens. Depending on which story one uses, she is punished either by Hera or by Artemis. In any case, her feet turn hairy and by the time she gives birth she has changed into a bear. Ultimately she is banished to the polar sky where she will forever circle (and protect) her child, Ursa Minor, The Little Dipper/bear. It is from this sky that Jenny Dawn disengages when she 'steps down' and joins the men at the campfire. Callisto remains in the arctic sky, high enough so that the dipper is inverted and her 'tears' spill over the polar cradle of her child, as they must do each night in perpetuity.

These, then, are the postcards from the skies which our ancestors have left for us. We might say 'Western' ancestors, since these are largely Greek myths, but other cultures have also managed some brutal celestial stories. It seems a good dumping ground for things we would prefer to project 'out there'. It is for the storytellers of future human conduct to decide what of this blood-soaked myth, if any, may be safely relegated to an ancestry whose atavistic practices and projections have long since been abandoned; that is, if such a day should ever arrive.

Appendix A - 'The Second Coming'	Appendix B - Chronology
Appendix C - Celestial Data	Appendix D - Celestial Myths
Appendix E/F - 'Proceedings' & Institute Calendar	The screenplay for 'Emma Good' is not being presented at this time.
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The Ballad of Emma Good	©1999 Red Slider, all rights reserved.