Orion and stars for the season
A different Christmas message to my friends in a world that maybe already has too many difficult stories.
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Friends will remember getting an email from me on or around winter solstice, oftentimes a re-run of a letter ruminating on my favorite Christmas music, Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium.
The world is indeed darker than it was last year at this time, though even then the darkness seemed formidable. Today, even a crèche in Bethlehem has an infant in the rubble of war’s destruction. And so, I reconsidered my greeting for the season when darkest night gradually shifts to brightening, and decided to train my mind’s eye on the starry night. Up from the stable and the feed trough and the warm inn and away from the story that the setting evokes.
Perhaps it is best just to look at stars and feel a presence without talking about it.
'What do you hunt, Orion, This starry night?' 'The Ram, the Bull and the Lion, And the Great Bear,' says Orion, 'With my starry quiver and beautiful belt I am trying to find a good thick pelt To warm my shoulders tonight, To warm my shoulders tonight.' -- Robert Graves, "Star Talk"
Stargazing around my home is almost impossible in summer. A leafy canopy hangs over most of the property, save a couple of holes where visibility is for all practical purposes straight up. As fall comes, the canopy withers and falls and stars gradually present themselves, though branches still obscure some. I was happy to look up to see an old friend one early September morning. Almost straight up, he strode toward the west before being swallowed by astronomical dawn.
He was Orion, and now in December mornings I still can see a single star — Orion’s right hand, clutching his club and sinking in the west. So, he’s become a night owl now, rising not long after dark in the eastern sky to chase the Seven Sisters (the Pleiades). Or maybe he’s hunting the Bull (Taurus), where the Sisters lurk and share some stars with the beast.
Orion’s belt is the give-away. The three stars aligned in an asterism1 have Arabic names: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Because of their brightness and vicinity, many cultures have grouped and named them. In China, they were known as the “Weighing Beam,” which is similar to the modern Arabic name the “Accurate Scale Beam.” They’re also known as the Belt, the Line, and the “Golden Grains.” In India Orion’s belt was known among sailors as tanra tellué, the “sign of three,” and the whole constellation took human form in Nataraja, the “Cosmic Dancer.” The Ojibwa named a larger constellation that includes Orion Kabibona'kan, the “Winter Maker.”
When I was looking at the illustrations of the seventeenth-century Theatrum Cometarum, I couldn’t help but be amazed by their detail. Today’s images of the constellations are stick figures in comparison to those, and the illustrations capture the drama of the stories, too. Orion hunts, his muscles flexing. The Bull is angry. The stars are alive with story and action.
The Greek stories are so old that they couldn’t crystallize into a canonical version in classical mythology, so you have several Orion stories to choose from. Overall, he seems to have been an unruly offspring of Poseidon, a great hunter, a drunken rapist (or at least a boorish admirer), and a loud mouth. My favorite story — and I’m stickin’ with it — is that Orion threatened to kill every animal on earth, which so enraged Gaia that she threw a scorpion and Orion into the heavens — Scorpio to kill the offending and overzealous hunter. (Scorpio and Orion, by the way, never appear in the heavens together.) Another story says that Orion pursues Taurus, the Bull, which of course he does.
But in cold clear mornings or evenings of winter, Orion is a friend, an abiding presence despite his tempestuous history. I think back and I can’t remember a clear winter night without Orion. His was the first star shape to form in my childish mind and the first explanation of the stars in story.
Stars reassure sailors, because when the sea forms a liquid landscape, the wheeling stars above are the only reliable firmament. Night lights would portend earth-changing events, too, when they unexpectedly appeared. The comet pointed to cataclysm or monumental transformation;2 star-like supernovae, too, flashing and fading, as they do, sometimes remained visible even in daylight.
Stars figure into the Christmas season, of course. The Stella Magorum guided three wise men to Bethlehem, and Christmas trees around the world still show off stars at their peaks, perhaps as a remembrance.
NASA astronomers managed to find a whole Christmas tree in the heavens this year and published a green composite image from infrared and optical sources, star atop and strung with stars twinkling from astronomical “lensing.”
My glance upward to catch a glimpse of Orion has a history connected with my brethren around the world, all of whom have woven stories or looked upward to find their ways. It’s happened for millenia, this looking to the lights of night for guidance or companionship or remembrance.
In other years, I might want to recount Christmas stories and weave them into lived life, but this year it seems that witnessing stars on cold mornings and at night is enough. It’s enough to know that stars abide. They’ve spun around long before my speck of a life arrived to see them, and they’ll continue long after I’ve returned to dust.
As 2023 winds down, and Christmas and the darkest night pass, I feel I cannot tell another story.
For now, Calvin and Hobbes sum it up: “If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently,” Calvin said as he looked into the night sky.
“How so?” asked Hobbes.
“Well, when you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.”3
So, to my friends and readers I wish a restful and meaningful Christmas. Take a walk outside under the stars.
Just to see them and be thankful.
Got a comment?
Tags: Orion, stargazing, Christmas, comet, constellation, stars, astronomy, galaxy
Links, cited and not, some just interesting
Betelgeuse is part of the constellation Orion. Bartels, Meghan. “Betelgeuse Will Briefly Disappear in Once-in-a-Lifetime Coincidence.” Scientific American, December 11, 2023. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/betelgeuse-will-briefly-disappear-in-once-in-a-lifetime-coincidence/.
“ ‘Two years ago, Webb launched flawlessly on Christmas morning,’ Dr. [Danny] Milisavljevic said. ‘At the time I thought it was the best Christmas gift ever.’ But the telescope, he added, ‘is the gift that keeps giving.’ ” Miller, Katrina. “It’s Christmastime in the Cosmos.” The New York Times, December 19, 2023, sec. Science. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/science/christmas-stars-galaxies-webb-nasa.html.
Good article on the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster. Mohon, Lee. “Sprightly Stars Illuminate ‘Christmas Tree Cluster’ - NASA,” December 19, 2023. https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/telescopes-illuminate-christmas-tree-cluster/.
Yes, the Robert Graves of I, Claudius. Graves, Robert. “Star Talk.” Public Domain Poetry. Accessed December 13, 2023. https://public-domain-poetry.com/robert-von-ranke-graves/star-talk-38260.
Watterson, Bill. “Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for June 30, 1992.” GoComics, June 30, 1992. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/06/30.
Ha! Another word that I hadn’t run into until now. An asterism is “a pattern of stars that is not one of the traditionally established, named constellations, such as the Big Dipper or the Summer Triangle. Asterisms are often named and may be composed of stars that are members of one or more constellations” (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, fifth edition).
Lubieniecki, Stanisław. Historia Cometarum, A Diluvio usque ad præsentem annum vulgaris... (Amsterdam: Pro Francisco Cupero, Bibliopolâ, prope Portium Harlemensem, 1666) includes a plate facing page 48 that shows the “Star of the Magi” as well as disasters associated with comets and other astronomical rarities.
But it’s worth noting that Hobbes deflatingly replied, “We spent our day looking under rocks in the creek.” To which Calvin said, “I mean other people.” Watterson, Bill. “Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for June 30, 1992.” GoComics, June 30, 1992. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/06/30. Looking under rocks in a creek sounds pretty good, actually.
Thanks, Mark 🥰
It really puts it into perspective (Calvin and Hobbes were sage philosophers). We spent some time last week during the Geminids, huddled on a country roadside to catch the streaks in the sky. Frozen but always and absolutely worth it. 💫