star bear mysteries

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Mangi, the bear and chief ancestor spirit, is found in the stars of Arcturus and Bootes, and comes out to pursue them. Mangi’s tracks appear as the Milky Way.

An Iroquois legend says that several hunters were determined to hunt a special Big Bear no matter where it went. Three giant stone monsters chased the hunters and killed all but three. These three hunters were lifted by invisible hands into the sky where they, along with the bear, were transformed into stars. The three ‘tail’ stars are the hunters, the rest of the constellation is the Big Bear.

Donald A. Mackenzie, in The Migration of Symbols, and Their Relation to Beliefs and Customs, argues that the pagan ceremonies of circular, ecstatic dances were ‘originally…performed by magic-workers to simulate the Great Bear Constellation’.

Throughout Europe and Asia, the constellation Ursa Major was long held to be a bear. Contact between all of these peoples, for thousands of years, can explain the common perception. The first ‘Star Bear’ mystery is: Why a bear? No bear, for ten thousand years, had a long tail.

Adding to the ‘Star Bear’ mystery is the fact that in India, the seven-star constellation is also called the ‘Seven Bears’. Yet in the Indus Valley, bears are very rare, so why ‘bears’?

It has been suggested that the solution may be found in the ancient Sanskrit language. It seems that the word for ‘star’, riksha, means both ‘bright’ and ‘bear’. The seven ‘bright ones’ could therefore be interpreted as the seven ‘bears’. The trouble is that though this is possible, the primary meaning of riksha is not ‘bright’, it is ‘bear’.

Thus, the primary meaning of the ‘Seven Riksha’ is not the ‘Seven Stars’, it is the ‘Seven Bears’. In other words, the designation of the constellation as that of the ‘Seven Bears’ takes priority over the constellation as that of the ‘Seven Stars’.

THE ‘STAR BEAR’ MYSTERIES

One of the best known constellations in the northern hemisphere is the Big Dipper, also known as Ursa Major or the Great Bear. The legends attached to the Big Dipper are many, here are but a few...

Unknown to most people is the fact that the Tower of Babel in the Bible was called the ‘Temple of the Seven Lights’, a reference most likely to the seven stars of Ursa Major. The Tower feared by God was thus the Temple of the Bear.

The ancient Greeks had a legend that said the great god Zeus transformed Artemis, then known as Kallisto, into the Great She-Bear stars, Ursa Major.

The ancient Siberians say that in the sky each night, Kheglen (Ursa Major) and her child (Ursa Minor) circle around the north star.

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