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Dark Sky Park: Fomalhaut

Ancient Temple of Demeter

http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/2013-08-30%20Fomalhaut%20-%20Web.mp3

IPR: We're almost at the end of the month and the end of the current lunar cycle which means there should be several evenings of great night sky viewing this week. What should we be looking for in the sky and in the stories that accompany what we're seeing?

MARY: If you're a morning person, you can catch the waning crescent Moon as it sweeps past Jupiter, Pollux and then Mars, August 31st, September 1st and September 2nd respectively. This will be a beautiful apparition in the East just before sunrise but the story that most intrigues me in this season has to do with the rising of the star Fomalhaut, which translated means "the Fish's Mouth." This star marks the mouth of the fish, Pisces Austrinus which is the "Southern Fish" not to be confused with the zodiacal constellation Pisces.

Pisces Austrinus lies immediately south of Capricorn and Aquarius and with its open mouth marked by the star Fomalhaut this southern fish is drinking the entire outflow from the Urn of Aquarius, the Waterman.

IPR: So what story belongs to this star and where can we see it?

MARY: Fomalhaut is rising up low in the southeast just as Antares, at the heart of the Scorpion, is setting in the southwest. These two stars, Fomalhaut and Antares, together with the stars Aldebaran in Taurus and Regulus in Leo, were known several thousand years ago as the Royal Stars of Persia and they were regarded as the Guardians of Heaven. They stand opposite each other in the sky and they are not above the horizon at the same time, though one of them is always visible.

So we have these four guardians: Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut. Aldebaran is the Bull's Eye, Regulus is the heart of the Lion, Antares is the heart of the Scorpion, and Fomalhaut is the mouth of the Southern Fish. So here we have these four sacred stars forming a cross, as it were, across the sky and at their rising and setting, certain ceremonies were to be observed.

IPR: What is the ceremony associated with Fomalhaut now that it's rising?

MARY: Records show that as late as 500 B.C. this star marked the time for sunrise worship of the Goddess Demeter at her Temple in Eleusis. Demeter was an Olympian, wife and sister of Zeus, and the mother of Proserpina, or Persephone. She forsook Olympus when her daughter was abducted by the God of the Underworld and she cloaked herself in disguise as a mortal woman. In this manner she was taken into service as a nursemaid by an honorable family. But each night, rather than suckling the baby in her care, she would place him as a firebrand in the fire, by which means she sought to groom him for immortality. 

One night, the boy's mother spied on Demeter and when she saw her son being placed in the fire she screamed out which caused Demeter to remove her cloak and reveal herself in all her divine and powerful glory. The mother's mistrust of the Goddess so incensed Demeter that she required it of the village that they build her a Temple and it is here, presumably, that the Lesser Mysteries of the Spring, and then the Greater Mysteries of the Fall, would be celebrated. And the times for these celebrations and ceremonies was indicated by the rising and setting of the Guardians of Heaven, these four Royal Stars of Persia. 

In the Spring mysteries there would be a ceremony of re-enacting the abduction of Persephone by Zeus' brother, god of the Underworld but, here in the Fall, the Greater Mysteries were celebrated as the union of Demeter and Zeus; the mighty union of Heaven and Earth. 

Tucked into this story is the revelation that the gods could no longer grant immortality to human beings - that the time for this type of relationship between the earthly world of man and the heavenly world of the gods was changing. This change, though unsettling, was regarded through the Mysteries as a necessary step in humanity's quest toward self knowledge.