Thread by @urspiritauntie

1/🧵Ok it's only 10:30 in the morning and 🤯🤯🤯
Do you astro folx (who were raised in one of the Western monotheistic traditions) remember Ba'al from your Sunday/Hebrew/Qur'an school stories?
The "bad" god in the story of prophet Elijah?>>>

2/🧵Guess who Ba'al was to the Phoenicians?
✨The constellation Orion. ✨
Yup.
And they observed Ba'al/Orion's movements in giant reflecting pools that were oriented to the directions of the equinox and solstices.
These pools are found in Phoenician temple complexes>

3/🧵all over the ancient Mediterranean, as the Phoenicians were skilled sea-farers/traders.

I had known that the Phoenicians were amazing navigatiors (they got at least as far as the West coast of Africa and the British isles).
And I knew they worshipped Astarte/Venus>>>

4/🧵 But I never knew that their star-veneration included Ba'al, who I only knew from the Biblical shade-throwing.
Who knew that behind those stories lay such beautiful archaeological finds--quiet moon and starlit pools for the observation of the heavens?>>>

5/🧵 And these temple precincts are found in EXACTLY the region (Sicily) that gave rise to the Orphic tradition, which went on to form the cosmological basis of Hellenistic astrology,
& Pythagoreanism, which is the basis of almost all subsequent Western philosophy>>>

6/6 (including Islamicate philosophy).
I wound up sobbing into my coffee this morning at the beauty of it all.
Moonlit star observation pools? Gettouttaheah!
This Brooklyn babe is reduced to puddles.
🥹🥹🥹
Source: cambridge.org/core/journals/…

#baal #orion #stars #astrology #venus #phoenicians #elijah #sicily #pythagoras #pythagoreans #orphic #orphism #orpheus #ancientsicily #carthage #punic #starworship #ancientastrology #ancientastronomy #archaeoastronomy #archaeology #mindblown #fixedstars #astarte