Orion

“ Upward to the zenith, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon past her quarter, trailing in procession, with the Pleiades following, and the constellation Taurus, and red Aldebaran. Not a cloud in heaven. Orion strode through the southeast, with his glittering belt—and a trifle below hung the sun of the night, Sirius. Every star dilated, more vitreous, nearer than usual. Not as in some clear nights when the larger stars entirely outshine the rest. Every little star or cluster just as distinctly visible, and just as nigh. ”

“ Orion: 'Twill never do To travel all day, and study all night; Will you join in a gallop through mist and dew, In a flight that may vie with the eagle's flight? Hugo: With all my heart. Shall we saddle "Rollo"? Orion: Nay, leave him undisturb'd in his stall; I have steeds he would hardly care to follow. Hugo: Follow, forsooth! he can lead them all. Orion: Touching his merits we will not quarrel; But let me mount you for once; enough Of work may await your favourite sorrel, And the paths we must traverse to-night are rough. ”

“ I hunted through every corner of the garden, through forest, cavern, sky, but never with success. Orion never overtook me! My longing cried every where, but in vain. Oh, Orion, my lost Orion, I have found you now at last!... ”

“ Now the grandest, brightest, and largest of all the constellations is named Orion. It is supposed to represent a giant, with a girdle and a sword, and is rather more like what is fancied than most of the constellations are. You are now going to read the story of Orion, and how he came to be placed among the stars. You may notice, by the way, that the planets, the sun, and the moon are named after gods and goddesses; the fixed stars after mortals who were raised to the skies. ”

“ Slender, youthful, alive with vitality, with sparkling great eyes and smiling lips, she seemed, as she replaced the arrow in her quiver, to breathe forth that very spirit of the forest which had ever drawn Orion into the most intimate depths of nature's wildnesses. ”

“ The great cluster in Hercules has long dazzled the heart with its splendors, but we have learned now that among circular and compact galaxies, a class to which the nebulous stars belong, there are multitudes which infinitely surpass it—nay, that schemes of being rise above it, sun becoming nearer to sun, until their skies must be one blaze of light—a throng of burning activities! But, far aloft stands Orion, the pre-eminent glory and wonder of the starry universe! ”

“ Who with change-hating eyes, fixed on the earth,
Discoursed, and to Orion's anxious looks
Thus made reply. "We have resolved to give
Our utmost aid—or aid that may suffice,—
In furtherance of thy task, which many days
Rightly requires." "Six days," Orion said,
And turned to go; when Harpax interposed:
"Be it then six, but our conditions hear.
Take Merope, thy prize; the rest be ours. ”

“ So Hyrieus, being full of faith, sacrificed his ox, and, at the bidding of Jupiter, buried the skin. And from that skin, and out of the ground, there grew a child, who was named Orion.
Orion grew and grew till he became a giant, of wonderful strength and splendid beauty. He took the most loving care of Hyrieus, and was the best of sons to him. But when the old man died, Orion went out into the world to seek his fortune. And the first service he found was that of Diana, the sister of Apollo, and queen and goddess of the Moon. ”

“ Seiss, Orion stands as a prophetic representation of the great enemy and destroyer, death.
The early inhabitants of Ireland called Orion "the armed King," and the Mayas, the ancient inhabitants of Yucatan, knew the constellation as "a Warrior," a further instance of a similarity in stellar nomenclature among widely separated nations, a similarity that is so marked and so often encountered as to disprove any idea of mere coincidence.
"The rising of Orion is one of the most imposing spectacles that the heavens afford," says Serviss. "No constellation compares with it in brilliance. ”

“ The Pleiades and the twenty millions of suns that form our own galaxy and the Milky Way, with all their varied colours, tints, and hues of white, golden, orange, ruby, red and blue, green and grey, silver, purple and yellow, buff and fawn, emerald and green, lilac and coppery. Thus we see the distant Orion, so far away that swift-footed Light, with its speed of more than eleven million miles per minute, has to travel for more than thirty thousand years before it spans the gulf that intervenes between it and us, and brings to us the news of its existence there. ”

“ He was in the Den, but the Den was in the universe, and to the scale of the universe he set the little homely, commonplace picture. Life, he realised, is thought and feeling; and just then he thought and felt like a god. He was Orion, and Orion had at last overtaken the Pleiades. The fairest of the cluster lay caught within his giant arms. The Enormous Thing that so long had haunted him with hints of its approach, rose up from his under-self, and possessed him utterly. And, oh, the glory of it, the splendour, the intoxication! ”

“ THE STAR-SPLITTER
“You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion’s having caught me.
Has a man, I should like to ask, no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?” ”

“ When the curtain rose for the third act there was exposed a star-sown sky, in which the galaxy of Orion was shown with distinctness, each star sharply twinkling from the electric power behind- a pretty scene evoking great applause. O'Ryan had never seen this back curtain—they had taken care that he should not—and, standing in the wings awaiting his cue, he was unprepared for the laughter of the audience, first low and uncertain, then growing, then insistent, and now a peal of ungovernable mirth, as one by one they understood the significance of the stars of Orion on the back curtain. ”

“ I watched Orion as a girl
⁠Above another city's lights.
Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
⁠The world's heart breaks beneath its wars,
All things are changed, save in the east
⁠The faithful beauty of the stars. ”

“ The vesture of Orion is the heavens, which are often conceived as a starry mantle,” and seem to be divided among the various constellations. Or we may take the Milky Way as his garment, the “seamless robe,” because it runs continuously across the sky, which is divided at the Twins into two halves by the passage of the sun.
We are now in a position to understand the real meaning of the psalm. The constellation Orion is in astral mythology an astral representative both of the sun and the moon. ”

“ Once you have found Orion you will never again require the help of a star chart to locate him, but it is a good plan to look him up as often as you can, and to draw the imaginary line through his sword and on to the North Star, for should you ever lose your way or want to find the north and the North Star should be hidden by clouds a line through the Sword of Orion when Orion is in the south will direct you as certainly as the needle of a compass. ”

“ Neptune, the burly old god of the sea, had a son named Orion who was almost as fond of the woods as he was of the ocean. From the time when Orion was old enough to catch a sea horse and ride on its back to shore he was gone from his home in the depths of the sea for days at a time. When Neptune blew his conch-shell to call the runaway home, Orion would return regretfully with the tales of the bear he had seen in the forest or the comb of wild honey he had found in an old oak tree. ”

“ On ordinary nights the nebula in Orion is a splendid object, and inspires the observer with amazement; but this is as nothing compared with the grand and magnificent sight which it presents during the very rare moments when our atmosphere is perfectly clear and steady. ”

“ The constellation Orion has been the admiration of all ages, and vies with Ursa Major and the famous Pleiades in historical and mythological interest. It is beyond question the most brilliant of the constellations, containing as it does two stars of the first magnitude, and four of the second. With the exception of the "Dipper," the so-called "Belt of Orion" is probably the best known and most popular of all stellar objects.
The constellation is visible from every part of the globe, and the poets of all nations have sung its praises. Manilius pays the following tribute to the mighty hunter ”

“ The “lion’s hide” which Orion is represented as carrying on his left arm like a shield is shown by a bending row of small stars, beginning with Pi (π) and running upward between Bellatrix and Aldebaran in Taurus. The reader who is not provided with a telescope is advised, at least, to employ an opera-glass in sweeping over the whole space included in Orion. It is a region superb in its beauty and grandeur. Around the Belt, particularly, the sky is filled with sparkling multitudes infinitely varied in size, color, and grouping. ”

“ It is an education in the nebular theory of the universe merely to look at this spot with a good telescope. If we do not gaze at it long and wistfully, and return to it many times with unflagging interest, we may be certain that there is not the making of an astronomer in us."
A fitting conclusion to this sketch of Orion and its stars, is a quotation from Mrs. Martin's Friendly Stars respecting the constellation: "With all its wonders and its beauties it is not strange that Orion should be one of the most familiar and most admired of all the constellations. ”

“ When strong Orion chases to the deep
The Virgin stars."
There is a suggestion of intense irony in this position of Orion amongst the other constellations. He is trampling on the Hare—most timid of creatures; he is climbing up into the zodiac to chase the little company of the Pleiades—be they seven doves or seven maidens—and he is thwarted even in this unheroic attempt by the determined attitude of the guardian Bull. ”

“ ORION (the Glorious One) This picture is to show that the coming one is no mere animal, but a man: a mighty, triumphant, glorious prince.
[pg 125] He is so pictured in the ancient Denderah Zodiac, where we see a man coming forth pointing to the three bright stars (Rigel, Bellatrix, and Betelguez) as his. His name is given as Ha-ga-t, which means this is he who triumphs. The hieroglyphic characters below read Oar. Orion was anciently spelt Oarion, from the Hebrew root, which means light. So that Orion means coming forth as light. The ancient Akkadian was Ur-ana, the light of heaven. ”

“ Our eyes will answer the question for us. However we may direct them, they instinctively return to the south, and are lifted to behold Orion in his glory, now near the meridian and midway to the zenith, with Taurus shaking the glittering Pleiades before him, and Canis Major with the flaming Dog Star following at his heels. ”

“ Around their listless bodies thoughtfully.
"Three giants slain outright by Phoibos' beams,—
Now hath a dead sleep fallen on my friends.
'T was wise in Akinetos not to move."
An earthquake would not wake them. Artemis
Rejoices, and the hopes of Merope,
To whom the news a breathless shepherd bore,
Throbbed fearfully suspended o'er the brink
Of this event. Not long Orion paused:
"Though all may fail, the utmost shall be tried:
Secure is he who on himself relies." ”

“ Sometime later these same Pleiades became seven bright stars, and were set as a constellation in the sky, where they have remained ever since.
Orion continued to hunt from early dawn until nightfall without any misfortune overtaking him on account of his impetuous love-making. On the contrary his ardor evidently found favor with the goddess Diana, for one day, when he unexpectedly met her alone in the forest, she smiled graciously upon him and offered to share the day's sport with him. Perhaps it was the beauty of the young hunter as well as his boldness that charmed the goddess ”

“ Hog-faced and hog-backed with his daily toil,
Mudded and root-stained by the steaming ooze,
As he himself were some unnatural growth;
Who yet, at times, whistled through broken fangs—
"Happier than I, this hind," Orion thought.
⁠Once tow'rds the city outskirts strayed his steps,
With a half purpose some relief to seek
Midst haunts of men, and on the way he met
A mastic-sifter with his fresh-oiled face.
"O friend!" Orion said, "why dost thou walk
With shining cheek so sadly in the sun?"
Sighing, the melancholy man replied:—
"The lentisk-trees have ceased to shed their gums ”

“ At this a sudden fervent longing for Orion came over her. She made a great effort to shake it off; still, she felt that in writing to him it was impossible that she should find the right words, and as she replaced the papyrus in the chest and looked at the seal a strange thing happened to her; for the device on her father’s well-known ring: a star above two crossed swords—perchance the star of Orion—caught her eye, with the motto in Greek: “The immortal gods have set sweat before virtue,” meaning that the man who aims at being virtuous must grudge neither sweat nor toil. ”

“ Beneath the three bright stars which form the belt of Orion are several small stars, ranged, when Orion is in the south, in a vertical direction. These form the sword of the giant. On a clear night it is easy to see that the middle star of the sword presents a peculiarity of appearance: it shines as through a diffused haze. In an opera-glass this phenomenon is yet more easily recognizable. A very small telescope exhibits the cause of the peculiarity, for it is at once seen that what seemed a star is, in reality, a mass of small stars intermixed with a diffused nebulosity. ”