The constellation Orion has been on my mind for about the last week or so. Yesterday, the constellation representing the 7 Daughters of Asenath was front and center for me, known to us as The Pleiades but among the Elves as Remmirath (the Netted Stars). This is due to the fact that next up in line from the re-exploration of my words from the fall of 2019 is the first mention or allusion to these Daughters.
William Tychonievich even wrote about stars and constellation over on his blog, in response to a question I had for him relating to 'connecting the dots'. He used constellations in discussing that metaphor or phrase, which I thought was timely based on things on my mind. I left a brief message over there to that effect, and mentioned that Orion had been one of these Beings and stories I have been thinking through.
Orion and The Pleiades are connected in modern mythology, of course, just as they are connected in truer stories that have been mostly lost to us I think. Depending on how this goes, I might take a couple posts to talk about my thoughts relative to Remmirath, Orion, and maybe we'll even throw in Orion's dog Sirius, who has come up a few times here and for other folks. We will see how it goes.
I even started writing a draft on Remmirath and the Daughters, but decided that before I do down that path, I wanted to focus on the stars in general and how they fit into Tolkien's mythology, specifically in relation to the Elves. Just really briefly, as I am sure there are whole discourses and academic papers on just this area. I just want to introduce the overall concept.
For those who have read the Lord of the Rings, we get a first sense of how the Elves view and behave regarding the stars and the constellations from Gildor and his fellow High Elves' reaction to various constellations appearing in the sky. Found in the chapter "Three is Company", at this point the Hobbits had encountered Gildor's group in the woods at the edge of the Shire after their narrow escape from being found by one of the Ringwraiths.
After travelling with the Elves for a time to the woods above Woodhall, they stop and the Elves then withdraw into themselves and take no more notice of the Hobbits. Pippin falls asleep. They are not ignoring the Hobbits, however, they are just waiting. For what? The appearance of Menelvagor (Orion) in the sky, apparently:
Away high in the East swung Remmirath, the Netted Stars, and slowly above the mists red Borgil rose, glowing like a jewel of fire. Then by some shift of airs all the mist was drawn away like a veil, and there leaned up, as he climbed over the rim of the world, the Swordsman of the Sky, Menelvagor with his shining belt. The Elves all burst into song. Suddenly under the trees a fire sprang up with a red light.
'Come!' the Elves called to the hobbits. 'Come! Now is the time for speech and merriment!'
Menelvagor, or the Swordsman of the Sky Orion, held a special place for the Elves due to the story he represented. I will save some of my thoughts for that in a later post, but just use the above to illustrate that the stars were important to the Elves. And not just individual stars, but the stars connected or grouped with other stars that made shapes, Beings, and stories. I want to give a very brief background, or at least part of it as I understand things, for why that is.
Awakening under the Stars
The Elves came before Men, in Tolkien's stories. The First, with Men being the Last. They were born before the Sun was the primary source of light for this world, apparently, which I mentioned before in my post on Gim Githil and which is why they reverence the Moon more than the Sun in their stories.
Their 'awakening' happened at Cuivienen, or "The Waters of Awakening". Before this happened, and knowing the time for their arrival was near, the Vala Varda, Queen of Heaven, was said to have performed the greatest of all of the words of the Valar up to that time:
Then Varda went forth from the council, and she looked out from the height of Taniquetil, and beheld the darkness of Middle-earth beneath the innumerable stars, faint and far. Then she began a great labour, greatest of all the works of the Valar since their coming into Arda. She the silver dews of Telperion, and therewith she made new stars and brighter against the coming of the Firstborn; wherefore she whose name out of the deeps of time and labours of Ea was Tintalle, the Kindler, was called after by the Elves Elentari, Queen of the Stars. Carnil and Luinil, Nenar and Lumbar, Alcarinque and Elemmire she wrought in that time, and many other of the ancient stars she gathered together and set as signs in the heavens of Arda: Wilwarin, Telumendil, Soronume, and Anarime; and Menelmacar [the same as Menelvagor] with his shining belt, that forebodes the Last Battle that shall be at the end of days. And high in the north as a challenge to Melkor she set the crown of seven mighty stars to swing, Valacirca, the Sickle of the Valar and sign of doom.
What is important to note here, is that Varda not only created new stars, but she specifically gathered them together (it is said) into shapes that told stories. Not just any stories, though, stories of the future. These were dooms and prophecies as the related to the story of the Elves and of this world.
It is important to remember that this was done for the benefit of the Elves, and that new 'light' here doesn't just mean the physical light of stars that shone down on these first Elves, but actual knowledge. Stories! In the sky, she painted knowledge and stories of the future.
The Elves would have awakened looking up at those stars, and more importantly, at the stories they were meant to tell. Of all Beings, it seems the Elves love stories, and perhaps this is one reason why. They were surrounded by them, in the form of stars and constellations, when they first opened their eyes.
And they understood many of those stories in the beginning, with knowledge likely being lost over time. William in his blog likened the effect of having lost an understanding of the stars to having lost a key. This notion of a keys definitely seems to be an ongoing theme.
Keys are found on maps, and are used as a form of interpretation and understanding. If you have the Key, you can understand the Map. You can 'connect the dots' in the way I think is necessary: not just seeing the stars, not even just seeing the the shapes they form as you join them together, but understanding what those shapes mean in the form of stories. Why are they there and what do they tell us?
In our day, we have completely lost the Key to what our own stars were meant to say, and quite frankly lost the knowledge that they were mean to say anything. We have retained some knowledge of the shapes in which they came (e.g. Orion), but the stories have become lost and utterly corrupted. Varda's work still stands, but our ability to understand her language is gone. The Map remains, but we have no Key.
Just as with the awakening of the Elves at the beginning of this world, it may be that our own awakening will be to see and understand the stars here now at its potential ending. It may be that we first understand them and their stories from our vantage point here on Earth, preceding our future understanding of them in a completely different way as we find ourselves out among them. I don't know, but that is what I imagine.
In the next couple posts, I will try and restore at least some of these lost starry stories as they relate to those Beings and characters I highlighted above. I don't mean that in terms of anything definitive, you should know by now, but just in terms of my own thought processes and guesses. We will start with the Asenath's Daughters and see how it goes from there. I have some ideas on where this ends up based on everything I've thought through so far, but I've been surprised many times in the course of thinking and writing, so I am interested to see how it goes.
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