To maintain perspective, everyday I expose myself to the latest images and insights into the cosmos from JPL, NASA, ESA, and soon the CNSA. The solar system is very active! Our understanding and sensory capability is expanding everyday. Understanding the cosmos is more critical to understanding the moments of human activities than most are comfortable considering. Somehow all that water and electromagnetic activity in the human body is supposed to be isolated from gravitational lensing and the broad spectrum of radiation passing through the atmosphere all the time. Have you ever seen a cosmic ray detector? It’s a giant vessel of water lined with sensors that have to be analyzed by very intelligent machines.
There’s so much confusion about the minds of our ancestors. The academics in their infinite arrogance miseducated people into believing that the ancients believed their myths to be factually true. That was probably the case of uneducated people, who were probably just so busy trying to survive that they didn’t really care.
However to those who belonged to the mystery schools, there were always hidden meanings to the myths and plays. For instance, Oedipus Rex is about the horrors of reincarnation, it is NOT literally about an individual man who forgets who he is, kills his father. and marries his mother. Some of the stories actually encoded scientific wisdom that was designed to be orally transmissible. Newton stole too much credit. Myths were used to pass down useful understandings of the pharmacological traits of plants, fertility cycles, and philosophies uncorrupted by language. They were intended to help you see patterns that are self evident to anyone with awareness.
The assumption that cosmic maps portrayed all the stars revolving around planet Earth, occurred in large part because of the confusion of the characters of Gaia and Earth. It would be more precise to say that Gaia is the material body of our local solar system. If the ancient Greeks had access to the telemetry of Voyager, I believe they would identify Gaia with all matter within the heliopause. If you can make that leap, you might see the dynamics of our system with more interest. Cosmic origin stories can convey far richer meaning.
Most creation myths in particular are actually stories about how the forces of the cosmos interact to produce novelty and innovation. The mingling of siblings and parents and children did not read as incest to the ancient mind, but as an understanding of how forces and ideas originate and the recombine with their successors. Origin myths are about the dynamics of creativity, and if you remember it is always quite messy.
Across all the continents every origin tale conveys a mythic history of a cosmos that shifts generationally. The titans are replaced by the gods who are replaced by humans. Each revolt against the order of the previous paradigm creates a new alignment of beings committed to the new paradigm versus the established ruling order.
When Heracles and his friends initiated the Age of Man, they did so with allies among the titans and the gods. When this age comes to an end, will you side with transformation or resist the fate of the titans and gods that came before?
Artwork by Vladimir Kush