Curiosities of the Sky

From a historical and picturesque point of view, one of the most striking results of the motions of the stars described in the last chapter is their effect upon the forms of the constellations, which have been watched and admired by mankind from a period so early that the date of their invention is now unknown. The constellations are formed by chance combinations of conspicuous stars, like figures in a kaleidoscope, and if our lives were commensurate with the eons of cosmic existence we should perceive that the kaleidoscope of the heavens was ceaselessly turning and throwing the stars into new symmetries. Even if the stars stood fast, the motion of the solar system would gradually alter the configurations, as the elements of a landscape dissolve and recombine in fresh groupings with the traveler's progress amid them. But with the stars themselves all in motion at various speeds and in many directions, the changes occur more rapidly. Of course, "rapid" is here understood in a relative sense; the wheel of human history to an eye accustomed to the majestic progression of the universe would appear to revolve with the velocity of a whirling dynamo. Only the deliberation of geological movements can be contrasted with the evolution and devolution of the constellations.

And yet this secular fluctuation of the constellation figures is not without keen interest for the meditative observer. It is another reminder of the swift mutability of terrestrial affairs. To the passing glance, which is all that we can bestow upon these figures, they appear so immutable that they have been called into service to form the most lasting records of ancient thought and imagination that we possess. In the forms of the constellations, the most beautiful, and, in imaginative quality, the finest, mythology that the world has ever known has been perpetuated. Yet, in a broad sense, this scroll of human thought imprinted on the heavens is as evanescent as the summer clouds. Although more enduring than parchment, tombs, pyramids, and temples, it is as far as they from truly eternizing the memory of what man has fancied and done.

Before studying the effects that the motions of the stars have had and will have upon the constellations, it is worth while to consider a little further the importance of the stellar pictures as archives of history. To emphasize the importance of these effects it is only necessary to recall that the constellations register the oldest traditions of our race. In the history of primeval religions they are the most valuable of documents. Leaving out of account for the moment the more familiar mythology of the Greeks, based on something older yet, we may refer for illustration to that of the mysterious Maya race of America. At Izamal, in Yucatan, says Mr. Stansbury Hagar, is a group of ruins perched, after the Mexican and Central-American plan, on the summits of pyramidal mounds which mark the site of an ancient theogonic center of the Mayas. Here the temples all evidently refer to a cult based upon the constellations as symbols. The figures and the