Fitting Time to the Sky

Fitting Time to the Celestial Objects

The purpose of the Beowulf poem is to teach a new up-to-date calendar, one that the listeners can rely on to give them the best information concerning just when they are in the year. The assumption that this is a calendar is drawn from the fact that the poet names the constellations on the ecliptic, beginning with the spring constellation, called The House of the Sun, and calls attention to each constellation or star as it comes up above the horizon at dawn, from March 22nd to the last of November.

As well as an oral myth, Perseus is a constellation in the northeastern sky. (sky illus.)It rises in the spring, about March 20th, and disappears from the dawn sky in the middle of November. The poet is calling our attention to the sky because he has already in the poem described the new constellation for the spring sky in the morning, Pisces the fishes, which he has renamed Heorot.

The world the poet inhabits is not our world; his is the world before Copernicus. The people of that time believed they lived on a flat world surrounded by a sea. (Heaney 93-94) There is a world of theology and geography in that statement. (Cosmas, I. Celestial Geography.) At the North Pole, Hyperborea, was a mountain that held up the sky, and the constellations that made up the zodiac were at the foot of that mountain by the celestial sea. The mundane sea was connected to the sea that surrounded the constellations at the horizon and some sailors, particularly during night sailing, could sail right into the sky. That is one reason they considered night sailing so dangerous. Odysseus was flung there during a storm raised by Poseidon and had to sail to the celestial south pole to sacrifice to Poseidon before the god would let him return to the mundane world.

According to ancient near-east Astronomy each of the twelve ecliptic constellations, known as astronomical houses, has had or will have its turn as the House of the Sun, the constellation on the eastern horizon at the spring equinox and from which the sun rises. According to Eastern astronomers we have already experienced four ages of man, four constellations having been the House of the Sun: first Gemini in the beginning when men believed they were the closest to the gods, and gods and men alike walked in the heavens and on the earth. (Hamlet's Mill, Santillana and Dechend, 1977; 245.)

In this Golden Age the pathway to heaven, the Milky Way, was exactly horizontal at the spring and fall equinoxes, opening the worlds to gods and men. The second age was Taurus the Bull, then Aries the Ram, The age of Aries came to an end on March 21st, 303 BCE when Pisces was inaugurated by Saturn and Jupiter as the House of the Sun by their presence when the sun first touched the constellation Pisces at dawn on the spring equinox. All of the people needed to know this because the appearance of the current House on the eastern horizon at the spring equinox started their year, March 21st. In 500 CE when the previous constellation, Aries, was on the horizon at dawn it was the next month, April; Taurus signaled May, etc.

The appearance of the proper constellation on the horizon at dawn, no matter what they might have named the constellation, is the only method the people had to tell the month of the year. The people had to know what the constellations looked like and the sequence of the constellations to tell what month they were in, and if they were careful observers of the individual stars in the constellation, exactly when in the month they were. The Beowulf calendar tells them this.

The poet begins at the beginning. He must get rid of the old time system, the Ariean world, because its signal is a month out of date; Aries rises in mid April. To get rid of the old sign in the listeners’ minds the poet must get rid of the old house. Shield Sheafson, the chief of the old house, dies; his house sinks into the waters. (Heaney 2000, l. 26-52) Shield is loaded on a funeral boat --the constellation Aries, decorated with gold -- the stars that made up the constellation, and it is put to sea-- into the celestial waters. The celestial approach clarifies several rather puzzling lines in the poem, “They decked his body no less bountifully/ with offerings than those first ones did/ who cast him away when he was a child / and launched him alone out over the waves.” The poet seems to have used the same image for new time as we do today; the new year, or new age, is imaged as a young child who ages as time passes. “Those who cast him out…" refers to Saturn, who makes time, and Jupiter who marks it off. They are the planets that would have originally designated Aries as the House of the Sun. The water that Shield sailed was the celestial sea. He had been a good chief, kept all the stars in his house. Could stars be lost? Yes, that is precisely what Hrothgar complains of when Grendel attacks.

Because the sun precesses along the ecliptic slowly, taking some twenty five thousand years to make the full circle, each sign gradually falls below the horizon on the spring equinox and sinks into the waters under the earth. In this case the old sign was put on a funeral ship and floated out into the celestial sea.

To be certain that we understand when this event takes place the poet says, “ A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour, / iceclad…” (l 31-32) The time when a vessel might be iceclad is limited to either the fall, when the air is below freezing but the water is still not frozen, or the spring, in March, when the sea has thawed but the winds still blow cold, coating anything along the shore with ice.

The poet affirms that it is indeed spring, the New Year. Which New Year is indicated by the sinking of the old house. Aries loses its designation as the House of the Sun and sinks into the waters on March 21st, 303 BCE. The poet announces the end of the old time sign and begins the new.

Halfdane is the father of the New World. He has four children: Heorogar, Hrothgar, Halga and a daughter. (Heaney 2000, l. 59-62) The poet is naming the corners of the new world, starting in the winter.

Heorogar, the winter corner (in this case Sagittarius), is mentioned as dead, meaning below the horizon. Hrothgar is the spring corner, meaning Hrothgar, Pisces, is on the horizon the first of the year, March. This constellation is the main subject of this poem. The summer corner is “the good Halga,” Gemini. Summer is certainly the good season in the Northland. The fourth corner is the daughter, not named in the first poem, but she is Virgo, the only female figure on the ecliptic and on the eastern horizon at the fall equinox.. These are celestial references because once the celestial location is determined we need to know the structure, and the first structure is the four-corner one. The four children fit exactly the position and gender of the current four seasons. The ancient world did indeed have four corners, but they were in time, not space.

Hrothgar, the new spring, begins the construction of the new House of the Sun, Heorot. This is the same type of house that Jesus speaks of in the Bible, John 14-2. “In my Father’s house are many mansions…” Only an astronomical house would have room for many mansions.

“Orders for works to adorn that wallstead / were sent to many peoples.” (Heaney 2000, l. 75-76) The poet calls attention to the fact that people worldwide acknowledge the new hall and contribute their legends, the astronomical constellations, to decorate the hall, the area inside the ecliptic.

The author does not want us to mistake the house for any mundane house; he describes Heorot as “the greatest house in the world.” (l. 145-46) Heorot, Pisces, is a great constellation on the ecliptic, spanning some thirty six + degrees. Heorot “stands on the horizon, on its high ground.” (l. 285) It was “radiant with gold.” (l.308) He tells us, “its light shone over many lands.” (l. 311) It was “the best of houses”(l. 933), “the bright hall.” (l. 1639) These statements are not poetic hyperbole; they are an accurate description of Heirot, the new House of the Sun. The poet looks at the eastern sky at dawn and describes exactly what he sees. The gold decorations so often mentioned are the bright stars glistening in the constellation. The house stands on the horizon because that is where the House of the Sun stands at dawn on the spring equinox, and by its presence states the time. “The hall towered, gold shingled and gabled.” (l. 1799-1800). (The Sky, show March 20th, CE 599)

In the Mediterranean world Pisces was seen as two fishes connected by a ribbon. (Allen 1963, 336-344) For the northern world the poet changes the figure to a set of stag antlers. The ribbon connecting the fishes becomes the beams of the antlers, and the fishes are seen as the palmate terminals, the cups of each antler, a structure peculiar to the European fallow deer. Each star in the constellation becomes the point of a tine, and the knot in the middle of the ribbon is the stag’s skull. (Need a depiction here) This change maintains the form of the constellation but gives it an image more familiar to the people in the northern audience. They would have thought a deer skull and antlers more regal than a couple of fish connected by a ribbon. The Antlered Hall is the area within the ecliptic and the door is the constellation Heorot.

Why did the poet change the sign of the House of the Sun from a pair of fish to a set of deer antlers? Allow me a bit of the colloquial; it is a man thing. In the foothills of the Appalachians where I live most men, and a few women, go deer hunting every season. The aim is to kill the biggest, the most heavily antlered deer they can find. The trophy, the antlers of the deer, are nailed over the front door or, if the wife will allow, hung in the front room of the house. Sometimes hung over the door of the garage also. The antlered bucks they kill are the oldest in the herds, neck swelled with rutting blood, meat full of testosterone. Though they eat the meat, the purpose of the hunt is the trophy.

I have traveled a bit in eastern Canada and the northeastern US where the main occupation is fishing, but I have never seen a cod head nailed over a front door. But I have seen moose antlers, deer antlers, so displayed. On the Northwestern coast of the US and in Alaska they fish for salmon and trout, but again no fish heads displayed over the door. Some do display fish preserved by taxidermists, but with none of the masculine pride of a great set of antlers. On Television I watch men who spend thousand of dollars and weeks of their time with hired guides, horse and camping equipment, far up in the Rockies hunting a great set of Mountain Sheep or Mountain Goat racks. They do bring back the meat, but the cost of that meat is over a hundred dollars a pound; the pride is in the trophy, the heavily antlered or horned head of the master of the herd.

Our poet takes the image of an astronomical house and makes it into a real house of the gods, inhabited by real celestial people. We have to know what kind of people they are, so the antlers over the door. The owner of this house is a good provider, but he is also a great, virile man. Hrothgar has all of the symbols of a great man: the long house, the antlers, that signal to Beowulf that Hrothgar is a great man.

With his description he also identifies the house with Asgard, the home of the gods. “He… filled the broad lap of the world with branches and leaves.” (Heaney 2000 l.94-97) The poet is referring to Yggdrasil, the world tree, whose roots are in Nefthelm, the trunk in Mitgard where it forms the pole of the world, and whose branches are in Asgard. (Grant) He places a hart in its branches, the second of the four Asgard harts. Around the ecliptic at Sagittarius, where the Milky Way crosses the ecliptic, is Mimir’s well, the source of counsel, and where Heimdal keeps his horn, the new moon. (Grant 2002 , 13) This must be Asgard. The old setting would have been familiar to the people and would have contributed to their understanding of the locale of the story.

The constellation Heorot extends for a bit outside the ecliptic; this is the only part of the house that Grendel can attack says the poet; the rest is protected by God, as are all things within the ecliptic. (Heaney 2000, l. 168-169) This constellation rises in the spring, March 20th, and goes down below the horizon at dawn in late August, around the 30th. Its position on the horizon at dawn is a good indicator of the time of the year for the spring month.

To travel to this place one must travel at night. The Beowulf poet carefully makes the distinction between day travel and night travel. To get to Heorot Beowulf travels a day and a night. To get back to Geatland he travels a few hours in the daylight. To get to Heorot Beowulf has a boat that “flew like a bird” (Heaney 2000, l. 218), that “sails the swan’s road.” (l. 200) The swan road and the whale road are not metaphors for the same sea. The poet is better than that; he knows a whale is limited to the waters; a swan can swim or it can fly. Astronomically the swan road is the Milky Way; the constellation Cygnus, the swan, is in the middle of the Milky Way. (Allen 1963, 192). Thus to sail the swan’s road is to sail the Milky Way. (Sky illus. Cygnus)

The boat moves south at night to a place of “sunlit cliffs, sheer crags/ and looming headlands.” (Heaney 2000, l. 222-223) That does not describe the country of Denmark, but it does describe the southern mountain, the mythic mountain under the pole tree where the gods live.