This beautifully written book features star legends from across the globe. Anthony Aveni documents star stories from many different periods and from all seven continents. In light of the rich traditions of astronomy preserved among Indigenous peoples in North America, the star stories from this area will be of greatest interest to readers of this journal. Archaeologists will certainly be intrigued by how these star stories weave together Indigenous cosmologies, and Aveni's book could also find a broad audience in light of the growing interest in “astrotourism” in America's national parks.
Many star stories that Aveni considers in this book share related themes. Some legends encode relationships between star groups to map the heavens. Others seem designed as guides for remembering celestial geography and locating oneself on earth, providing an interface between celestial and terrestrial geography. Many stories emphasize the stars as seasonal markers for events on earth. This pattern is evident in the annual summer solstice ceremony, when the Lakota reenact the myth of the Chief's Hand (Orion). When the chief became selfish and refused to share his harvested crop, he lost his hand, and it went up to the sky. Consequently, this star story also provides guidance on proper human behavior. As Aveni says so aptly at the end of his book, “Every star story is about us” (p. 165; italics in original).
The two opening chapters focus on star groups that seem to be universally important. In “Orion's Many Faces” (Chapter 1), Aveni cites a story from ancient China that tells us that Venus as the Evening Star was paired with the Belt of Orion, whereas the Morning Star was paired with Antares in Scorpius. Many other cultures have tales related to Orion, including ones that have been reconstructed from ancient Mayan texts. The Pleiades star group also gets its own chapter (Chapter 2), and this tight cluster of stars is accorded a special place in seasonal ceremonies worldwide. In the Quechua traditions of highland Peru, these stars are a sign of the new year when they reappear in the east. The Iroquois link their harvest festival to the myth of children who ascended into the sky to become the Pleiades. Among the Navajo, the Pleiades mark the face of Black God, who put crystals in the sky that became the stars.
Chapter 3, which is on the zodiac, features different configurations for tracking the “path” of the sun and planets. Our zodiac, which means “circle of animals” in Greek, was used for predicting the future based on the movement of planets along the ecliptic. This concept is found in ancient China, where the 12-year cycle of Jupiter through the zodiac had special importance. The ancient Chinese also had a zodiac cycle for the moon, as did the ancient Maya. In Aveni's chapter on the Milky Way (Chapter 4), he notes that Greeks saw a path of milk drops, Hindus visualize swimming dolphins, and the Cherokee see a soul's road guarded by two dog stars. The Quechua identify the Milky Way as a celestial river, and in the rainy season, they follow a pilgrimage route aligned with Milky Way. Their concepts are further elaborated in Chapter 5, which focuses on dark cloud constellations in the Milky Way and records star stories from many different cultures that explain the dark areas in the Milky Way.
Chapter 6 features Arctic star stories, where polar constellations play central roles in mythology, and the stories of these peoples often emphasize stars as navigational guides for traveling across a vast landscape. The same could be said of stars used to navigate across waters in the tropics, but in Chapter 7, which focuses on star patterns in the tropics, star stories often involve constellations seen only in the Southern Hemisphere. Chapter 8, “Empire in the Sky,” primarily features Chinese legends and the role of star groups in aligning the architecture and village plans in Indigenous North America. Chapter 9 focuses on star ceilings, known from Egyptian temples and Navajo rock art, and mega-constellations, which chart large areas of the sky, as among the Zuni and groups living in the Arctic and on the Northwest Coast. The final chapter (Chapter 10) treats the gendering of the sky. Aveni makes an important point by noting that star stories often feature males in patriarchal societies, but female roles receive greater emphasis in societies that are less hierarchical.
In this intriguing book, readers will learn a great deal about how people view the heavens in different cultures, and a perfect complement to Star Stories is to be found in Aveni's Creation Stories: Landscapes and the Human Imagination (Yale University Press, 2021).
