Look to the stars…

Look up at the night’s sky: above us is a jet-black canvas pricked with white dots, and a carnival of animals, mythical creatures, gods and goddesses in its shining constellations. In Stories in the Stars, Susanna Hislop – writer and stargazer – and Hannah Waldron – international artist – leap between centuries, cultures and traditions to present a whole universe of stories in all their blazing glory.

Here’s three constellations from the book, all visible in a clear winter night sky in the UK.

Orion
Ori/Orionis, The Hunter

Rank in size: 26
Asterisms: The Belt, The Butterfly, The Heavenly G, The Rake, The Sword, The Three Kings, Venus’ Mirror, The Winter Octagon, The Winter Oval, The Winter Triangle

The days draw in, the pumpkins and the fireworks come out, and the giant hunter
Orion appears in the sky, his dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor snapping at his heels.
Or at least, he’s supposed to. Perhaps as a child I was too busy sparkling my name in the
air to notice the glittering of the great hero’s belt. Why, as the Victorian writer Thomas
Carlyle asked, ‘did not somebody teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the
starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don’t half know to this day?’

In days of old, mothers sang lullabies to their children to pass on their knowledge of the
stars. I wish that as I’d lain in my sticker-clad bunk bed, one of my many babysitters had
told me about the stellar nursery hidden just south of this huntsman’s belt: the Orion
nebula in which not just stars, but whole solar systems are formed. Or about Shen, the
warrior who – in a rare conjunction with Western astronomy – the Chinese also see in these
stars, as part of a celestial hunting tableau. Why, when I wrote a whole project on Inuits, did
I not learn that they too saw hunters chasing through the night? Why did my New Zealand
au pair not tell me about the Canoe of Tamarereti, the mythical ancestor of the Maori people?
Or my Norwegian nanny not thrill me with tales of Thor breaking off Aurvandil’s frozen toe,
and casting it up into the heavens?

When someone plonked me down in front of Tim Burton’s 1988 film, I had no idea that
the devious hero of this spooky comedy owed his name to the unpredictable variable
supergiant, Betelgeuse. Nor that this star marking the hunter’s right shoulder, although
designated as Orion’s α star, is in fact only its second most brilliant. The constellation’s
lucida is actually Rigel, from the Arabic rijl meaning ‘foot’; but this ‘bright star in the left
foot’ as Ptolemy called it, is labelled β Orionis. Nor was my imagination sparked by the fact
that a female warrior – the supergiant Bellatrix, sometimes known as the Amazon star –
sits on Orion’s left shoulder.

Only in adulthood have I learnt that this star-spangled hunter is the anthropological
descendant of the great Sumerian hero Uru An-na (meaning ‘light of heaven’) who
fought the Bull of Heaven and whom we call Gilgamesh; and that this is why Orion is still
pictured brandishing his club and lion pelt against the charging Taurus. And learnt to see
in this image the undeniable hints of another ancient hero, Hercules. And that there are
so many stories to explain the presence of this glorious giant, the most recognisable of
all constellations, that I would need several childhoods to listen to them all in awe.

Lepus
Lep/Leporis, The Hare

Rank in size: 51
Asterisms: None

Crouching in fear beneath the feet of the great hunter Orion, and hiding from his dogs – Canis Major and Canis Minor – as they try to sniff out its scent, is Lepus. This timid
hare plays a bit-part in the dramatic hunting scene of an action film that is projected onto
the night sky of the northern hemisphere every winter. Largely forgotten by the other
characters, and in the corner of the shot, the hare – about to be killed by Orion – is
spared in the nick of time as Taurus the bull comes charging at the huntsman with its
terrifying horns. Orion is not so lucky: as the stars of Scorpius rise in the east, the deadly
scorpion rises up from a crack in the ground to deliver a fatal bite to the huntsman’s
foot, and the stars of Orion set, defeated, in the west. Asclepius, the great healer, then
bounds into shot, and uses all the medical cunning taught to him by the wise Chiron
(Centaurus) to revive him.As he slowly brings the huntsman back from the dead,
Scorpius is once again crushed back down into the earth, and Orion rises again in the
east. It makes sense that when this celestial hunting film was first watched in 4000 bc, it
would have been screened in the autumn – in hunting season – whereas the Earth’s celestial precession over the years means that now it is projected most vividly in winter. The hare, as mentioned, only had a minor part, but he was so well reviewed that he is remembered in the sky just as well as the lead actors. A nineteenth-century ornithologist even bumped up his role: adding a layer of psychological complexity, D’Arcy Thompson created a new Hitchcockian spin to the drama. According to him, the hare is pathologically afraid of ravens, and so as Corvus the crow rises, poor Lepus scampers away in panic, burrowing deep into his dark warren beneath the sky.

Chinese astronomy also sees an annual hunt in this part of the sky, although one with some slightly less delicate imagery. In that ancient tradition, the stars Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta Leporis form Ce – a toilet – while Mu and Epsilon Leporis create a privacy screen for hunters wanting to use this celestial WC. There is even a star assigned to depict their faeces, dropping south from Ce, which lies in the constellation Western stargazers call Columba.

Taurus
Tau/Tauri, The Bull

Rank in size: 17
Asterisms: The Heavenly G, The Hyades, The Pleiades, The V, The Winter Octagon, The Winter Oval

Two bovine tales of lust ignite the bright-starred horns of Taurus. Both – you will
not by now be surprised to hear – involve the libidinous Zeus.

The first is of Io: yet another of the god’s flings flung aside to a life of suffering and
misery. The story starts much as they all do: once upon a time there was a beautiful girl and
Zeus fell in love with her and (to use the euphemism the ancients seem fond of ) ravished the
innocent virgin. When the god’s wife Hera challenged her adulterous husband, he lied to her
face: ‘I did not so much as touch the girl,’ he said brazenly, though not quite able to look at
her straight. Hoping to protect young Io, who still softened his capricious heart, Zeus turned
her into a cow; but Hera claimed the heifer as hers, and sent the hundred-eyed guardsman
Argus to spy on her. Not one to be trumped in marital guile, Zeus sent Hermes to steal her
back. Charming Argus asleep with the soft sounds of a flute, Hermes cut off his head and freed
poor lowing Io. In revenge, Hera send a gadfly to chase, bite, buzz and plague Io wherever
she went; while Argus’ hundreds of eyes she placed for ever in a peacock’s feathers.

The second is the rape of Europa: a bovine tale in reverse – for when Zeus was not turning
his paramours into heifers, he was disguising himself as a bull. Europa was another young and
lovely thing, the daughter of King Agenor of Phoenicia. Zeus looked down on this princess
lasciviously – or perhaps in this case, his heart was tender and true – as she played on the
beach with her friends, her delicate ankles frolicking in the surf. Employing the wiles of
his trickster son Hermes once again, Zeus devised a cunning plan. King Agenor had a herd
of fine cattle, and getting Hermes to drive them from their mountain pastures to the
seashore, Zeus took his place amongst the line of cows plodding their way down the hillside.
Europa turned from the waves to see a beautiful white bull staring up at her, batting thick
lashes across its big brown eyes. She stroked its back, and let it lick her palm, and put flowers
in its horns. Then climbing up onto its back, she let it carry her down to the shore. But
when it reached the water it didn’t stop, and soon it was swimming with her out to sea.
Europa’s friends stood in horror as the bull diminished towards the horizon, carrying
the princess to Crete and leaving a trail of flowers on the waves.

Taken from Stories in the Stars by Susanna Hislop, illustrated by Hannah Waldron

You can Click & Collect Stories in the Stars from your local Waterstones bookshop, buy it online at Waterstones.com or download it in ePub format