Long ago, before the lights of cities dimmed our view of the heavens, anyone who looked up on a clear night could see the Milky Way. The glowing ribbon of light seemed almost close enough to touch. It reminded ancient peoples of common things around them: a river, a road, milk, or strewn wheat. They gave the luminous stream vivid names, such as Celestial River, Star-Filled Basket, and Path to the Place of Abundance. With these names came remarkable stories of how the Milky Way was formed stories ....
Long ago, before the lights of cities dimmed our view of the heavens, anyone who looked up on a clear night could see the Milky Way. The glowing ribbon of light seemed almost close enough to touch. It reminded ancient peoples of common things around them: a river, a road, milk, or strewn wheat. They gave the luminous stream vivid names, such as Celestial River, Star-Filled Basket, and Path to the Place of Abundance. With these names came remarkable stories of how the Milky Way was formed stories ....
The Celestial Scriptures will challenge every spiritual principle that has been imposed upon us through tenets or organized religions. It is not easy to face the fact that religious pronouncements—often contradictory—are primarily distortions regarding some universal truth as seen through myth and superstition. The Celestial Scriptures will challenge the reader to get acquainted with a means of spiritual understanding that is unfamiliar, for it reinstates an extremely ancient device as a teaching tool. The irony is that most people in our technilogical society have at least a passing awareness of this device and associate it with a frivolous pastime. In spite of all humankind's technological advances, we have not learned to override the conditioned religious interpretations that were set down by ancestors who insisted that the Earth was the center of Creation. We have climbed out of such simplemindedness and have raised virtual mountains of technological wonders. But amazingly, from the summits these mountains where we are privileged to peer into the living heart of universal truths, we still bow before mythic explanations and superstitions! It is time to face the fact that deceptions have lurked in the halls of faith for far too long.
In the enchanting world of "Bedtime Stories," imagination knows no bounds and dreams come to life on every page. Journey through a magical realm where children's fantasies flourish, unveiling whimsical adventures and heartwarming tales that capture the essence of bedtime wonder. From brave knights and kind-hearted dragons to spirited princesses and mischievous fairies, these charming stories will transport readers to a land where anything is possible. Delight in the timeless charm of "Bedtime Stories," a collection that will spark the imagination and warm the hearts of both young and old alike.
Comprehensive and cross-referenced, this informative volume is a rich introduction to the world of nature as experienced by ancient peoples around the globe. 51 halftones.
It's not always easy to find the 88 constellations, but this illustrated guidebook will lead you through the stars and make gazing at them a more meaningful experience. Two larger maps portray the entire northern and southern sky, and all the constellations in it. Because the stars put on different seasonal shows, another set charts the changes that take place in the heavens during the year. Still more pictures present a close-up view of every single constellation, filled with detail. (You'll see an image of the real or imaginary creature it's named after, too.) And, there's so much great information accompanying the super visuals: facts on how far away the stars really are, other interstellar phenomena, the history of every constellation and how they got their names, and the best way to do your star searching. A Selection of Children's Book-of-the-Month Club.
The profound influence of ancient cosmologies on our ideas about the human spirit • Shows how ancient myths contain a sophisticated understanding of our relationship to the cosmos, derived from thousands of years of observation of the night sky • Explains how ideas of the mind and spirit are still entwined with these ancient cosmologies despite the disruptive effects of modern astronomy • Reveals how ancient ideas and contemporary cosmology might be combined into a new model for spiritual meaning Thousands of years before the first written records, humans were turning to the night sky as a source of meaning for existence and their place within it. The conclusions drawn from these observations are embodied in stories from across the world known as Creation Myths. Contrary to the popular belief that these myths were meant to explain the origins of the universe, Pete Stewart shows that they were actually designed to create a harmony and order in the lives of humans that reflected, in their society and architecture, the ordered patterns they saw evidenced in the sky. These ancient myths also record, in the story of “the separation of Heaven and Earth,” the discovery of a disastrous discord in this ancient harmony, which the mythmakers overcame by imagining a vastly expanded architecture, one in which the individual soul had a role to play in the evolution of the cosmos. Today science presents a similar challenge to our sense of meaning. Stewart explores how, by reexamining the myths of creation in this light, we can learn how contemporary cosmology might yield a new architecture for the spirit and how the ancient sense of being in the cosmos might be reconstructed for our age.
The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the reader is taken on an ideal ‘world tour’ of many wonderful and enigmatic places in almost every continent, in search of traces of astronomical knowledge and lore of the sky. In the second part, Giulio Magli uses the elements presented in the tour to show that the fundamental idea which led to the construction of the astronomically-related giant monuments was the foundation of power, a foundation which was exploited by ‘replicating’ the sky. A possible interpretive model then emerges that is founded on the relationship the ancients had with “nature”, in the sense of everything that surrounded them, the cosmos. The numerous monumental astronomically aligned structures of the past then become interpretable as acts of will, expressions of power on the part of those who held it; the will to replicate the heavenly plane here on earth and to build sacred landscapes. Finally, having formulated his hypothesis, Professor Magli returns to visit one specific place in detail, searching for proof. This in-depth examination studies the most compelling, the most intensively studied, the most famous and, until recently, the most misunderstood sacred landscape on the planet - Giza, in Egypt. The archaeoastronomical analysis of the orientation of the Giza pyramids leads to the hypothesis that the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren belong to the same construction project.
Every night, a pageant of Greek mythology circles overhead. Perseus flies to the rescue of Andromeda, Orion faces the charge of the snorting Bull, and the ship of the Argonauts sails in search of the Golden Fleece. Constellations are the invention of human imagination, not of nature. They are an expression of the human desire to impress its own order upon the apparent chaos of the night sky. Modern science tells us that these twinkling points of light are glowing balls of gas, but the ancient Greeks, to whom we owe many of our constellations, knew nothing of this. Ian Ridpath, award-winning astronomy writer and popularizer, has been intrigued by the myths of the stars for many years. Star Tales is the first modern guide to combine all the fascinating myths in one book, illustrated with the beautiful and evocative engravings from two of the leading star atlases: Johann Bode’s Uranographia of 1801 and John Flamsteed’s Atlas Coelestis of 1729. This classic book, now in a revised and expanded edition, presents additional information on the constellations with new and enchanting illustrations. For anyone interested in the stars and classical mythology, for anyone who is an armchair astronomer, this is the perfect gift.
