Orion constellation: Encyclopedia II - Orion constellation - Mythology

Orion constellation - Mythology

Main article: Orion (mythology)

It is not very surprising to see such a prominent constellation to have more than one version of a story surrounding it in Greek mythology.

In another version, Artemis, the goddess of hunt and the moon fell in love with him and stopped doing her job of illuminating the sky at night. Her twin brother Apollo, seeing Orion swimming on the sea, dared his sister to strike what it just appeared to be a spot on the waves. Not knowing it was Orion, Artemis shot an arrow and killed him. Later when she found out what she did, she placed his body on the stars. The grief she felt explains why the moon looks so sad at night.

It may be that the naming of the constellation precedes the mythology in this case. It has been suggested that Orion is named from the Akkadian Uru-anna, the light of heaven, the name then passing into Greek mythology. As such, the myth surrounding Orion may derive simply from the relative positions of the constellations around it in the sky.

In some depictions, Orion appears to be composed of three bodies, having three arms [1], two divergent legs, and a small central one, as well as the three bodies being bound at the waist. As such, together with other features of the area in the Zodiac sign of Gemini (i.e. the Milky Way, the deserted area now considered as the constellations Camelopardalis and Lynx, and the constellations Gemini, Auriga, and Canis Major), this may be the origin of the myth of the cattle of Geryon, which forms one of The Twelve Labours of Herakles.

In Finnish mythology the constellation of Orion is called the scythe of Väinämöinen. The term most likely comes from the fact it can be seen in the sky in early autumn, the time of haymaking.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Mythology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki