No.557
I'll start with a book I read a couple of years ago while going through an anthropology phase. Roberto Calasso has written several books on Greek mythology now, his most famous being Cadmus and Harmony, but this one stands out as my favourite. It's written a lot more accessibly than his earlier work, and is much more focused, essentialy trying to trace the roots of Greco-Roman mystery religions from earlier hunter-gatherer Shamanic traditions.
>There was a time, even before prehistory, when man was simply a defenseless animal. The gods he worshiped took the form of other beasts or were the patterns of the stars he saw above him each night in the sky, which he transformed into figures and around which he created stories. Soon, however, man learned to imitate the animals that attacked him and he became a hunter. This transformation, Calasso posits, from defenseless victim to hunter was a key moment, the first step on man’s ascendance to power. Suddenly the notion of the hunter became fundamental. It would be developed over thousands of years through the figures that became central to Greek mythology, including the constellations. Among them was Orion, the celestial hunter, and his dog, Sirius.
Central to the book, and the books title, is the curious fact that Greek astrology mostly revolves around fairly minor figures in Greek religion. Calasso's argument is that figures like Orion, Ursa, and even Hercules are remnants of an earlier paleolithic hunting religion. Figures like the Great Bear and the Hunter can also be found in Siberian and Native American traditions, so its possible examine how the same rough outline of religious beliefs are visable (espescially) in the mythology of Greek astronomy.