December 26, 2015
On the Constellation of Orion
Orion, the constellation that embodies the mythological figure of the same name, was killed and placed among the stars by Artemis as punishment for his boldness in trying, being enamoured of the goddess, to kiss her. He died bitten by a scorpion “hired” by the goddess to that end, a scorpion that was likewise raised among the stars (the constellation of Scorpio), but which, by the wise decision of Zeus, was ordained never to meet him upon the vault of heaven, the two running eternally after one another: when Orion rises upon the horizon, the Scorpion hides below the line of the horizon in the west.
But probably the richest in symbol and meaning is the episode in which the same Orion, blinded as punishment for his boldness in courting for twelve years the beautiful Merope (herself one of the stars of the Pleiades), recovered his sight as the direct effect of his determination to seek the light of the sun, a light towards which he made his way without ceasing, accompanied and guided by Cedalion, one of the assistants of Hephaestus.
Certainly, Orion had no luck in love. Yet his determination to seek the light unceasingly and his courage in embracing to the point of sacrifice his loves for the divine intellections (personified by goddesses) raised him to the empyrean.
The conclusion: though love may kill you, it is love too that raises you among the stars.
Today, happily, Orion is accompanied upon the vault by the quintessence of the eternal feminine, the Moon, which
“pours over all things her voluptuous blaze, She draws from the night of memory a whole eternity Of sorrows, which yet we feel as though in a dream. Moon, thou mistress of the sea, thou glidest on the vault of the world And, giving life to thoughts, thou darkenest our sufferings; A thousand deserts glitter beneath thy virgin light, And how many forests hide in shadow the glinting of springs! Over how many thousand waves thy dominion passes, When thou floatest upon the moving solitude of the seas! How many flowering shores, what palaces and citadels, Traversed by thy enchantment, thou showest to thyself alone!” (Mihai Eminescu, *First Epistle*)
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