Thursday, December 21, 2017

Happy Winter Solstice!

The winter solstice is what inspired the ancients to create monuments and myths. It was the foundation of the discipline of astronomy that still struggles with an ultimate understanding of gravity which, in simplified form, fully explains it with an equation you can fit on a napkin. Today, the winter solstice is merely a footnote, as we are more enlightened, although perhaps also less full of wonder.

The Old European Culture blog in a recent post, seeks to reconcile astronomy, legend and language. A key link: in Sanskrit, the Orion constellation is called the Deer constellation.

2 comments:

Graham Dungworth said...

Good fortune Andrew whether or not it's Sol Invictus or Merry Christmas or whatever or whenever; it's still a beautiful world for some..
Our scientific background actually always adds to that sense of wonderment and never detracts.

Anonymous said...

Graham! You are here! Please visit my new blog, Arcadian Gravity, and you can hopefully leave comments there.

The Pleides constellation is called Matariki here in NZ, and marks the New Year with the winter solstice. Of course, we just had the summer solstice.