Beowulf and the Sky

If an archaeologist finds an old statue, it might be dirty and grown over with mold. Perhaps the statue has a broken part. The old statue may become something for study and rethinking over the years. Beowulf appears to have bardic elements in it that were preserved by an oral tradition. It may have originated in or was influenced by some bardic culture but seems to have switched or migrated away from it.

Very long ago, 6,000 years ago, I believe a good bard knew how to navigate with his or her understanding of the sky. During the bard’s youth, they likely learned the zodiacal and decanate constellations by finding them at the same time each morning or evening. I think they had to study a different decanate constellation for each 10 day week. Later as an adult in a different land, they would observe the same constellation at the same time and note the difference in the constellation’s location. They could then derive the angular distance between the different land and home.

Beowulf is a much more recent story, thought to be composed between 600 AD and 1100 AD. People were writing at the time. Beowulf also does not have the abundance of reference to the sky as found in the older stories. However, in terms of Campbell's monomyth, it follows the thresholds and boundaries well and there are quite a few constellations that do fit the story. That is why it needs study and rethinking. Beowulf is a mystery. Let me present some of the mystery.

Let us first look at the name “Beowulf.” It could mean "Bear-Wolf," the story from the Bear constellation around to the Wolf constellation.
 

Below is how Beowulf fits into Campbell’s monomyth and Bardic Astronomy boundaries and thresholds.

Now for the story:

Trouble with a monster in Denmark (Hrothgar's Kingdom) reaches king Hygelac in the land of the Geats. Hygelac's warrior, Beowulf, heads in a ship for Denmark having chosen 14 other warriors to travel with him.

The path is Hydra and the ship is Argos. Hydra is the third decanate of Leo and Argos is the first decanate of Cancer.
 

Argos

(The number 14 is a cosmological reference, there are seven steps of coming into existence and seven steps going out of existence. Seven steps down Jacob's Ladder and seven steps back up Jacob's Ladder. Cosmological stories usually go half way through the 14 steps, they end at Pisces/Aquarius. This is where the Beowulf story ultimately ends.)

Beowulf meets Hrothgar and identifies himself a hero and as the son of Ecgtheow, a man that Hrothgar once helped. The Geats join the Danes for a feast. One of the Danes, Unferth, confronts Beowulf about his performance in an old swimming contest.

(The Danes standing around Beowulf testing him is probably the constellation Cancer (The Crab) which is three stars around a central nebula.)

Cancer

Beowulf said he won the contest but also had to fight off sea monsters while he was swimming.

(This is a reference to a sequence of constellations. First, Orion (The Hunter) which looks like a person--Beowulf--diving into the water. The near-by constellation Eridanus (the River) would be Beowulf's path in the swimming contest and Cetus (the Sea Monster) one of the conquered sea monsters).

Queen Wealhtheow enters the feast with a mead cup, offering it to Hrothgar, the Danes and then to Beowulf.

Crater

(To expand the system of 12 zodiacal constellations and 36 decanates, bards developed "expansion techniques" of re-using sections of the sky. There is often a signal that we can recognize that tells us a part of the sky is being re-used. The mead cup is Crater (The Cup). This was already passed but we can use it again by just rewinding to that section of the sky. The next zodiacal constellation after Crater is Cancer.)

The party winds down and Beowulf and his men will sleep in the hall and wait for the monster Grindl. In those days a warrior would often sleep with his pages or men around him so that they were the "trip" system. If Grindl shows up later, one of his men could inform Beowulf if needed.

Cancer (Beowulf with his men around him.)

Grindl comes rips the hall's door off (possibly Gemini) and eats one of Beowulf's men and kills another. Beowulf battles the creature and rips its arm off.

(In another story Dionyus was probably born from Zeus's thigh in this area. This thigh was probably Ursa Major or Ursa Minor. In this story, I believe one of these bear constellations is Grindl's severed arm.).

Ursa Minor

Grindl leaves a bloody trail and retreats to the marshes. A minstrel comes singing tales of Sigemund and Beowulf. (The minstrel in his song can follow the thresholds and constellations too--this can be another expansion technique. The Sigemund story follows the Orion, Eridanus, Cetus sequence. Gunther and his sister in that story are are Cepheus and Cassiopae.)

The Geats and the Danes celebrate. That night, Grindl's mother comes for vengeance. She kills a number of Geats and Danes. Beowulf and Hrothgar slept away from the hall. They are summoned and follow the blood stained path of Grindl's mother to a lake. We re-use the Milky Way, Orion, Eridanus, Cetus sequence. This time, Beowulf will put on his armor and dive into the lake after Grindl's mother.

(The lake is the Milky Way and is a boundary or threshold from Campbell's monomyth structure. Beowulf diving into the water is the constellation Orion. If you go out and get a good look at Orion it looks like Beowulf splashing into the lake or perhaps Osiris's coffin splashing into the Nile.

The ancients knew the Milky Way went all the way around the sky so they sometimes used its circle as a lake of fire or burning water--like the circle of fire around Brunhilde. Canis Major is often a dependable friend or female like Penelope or Brunhilde and is probably Wealhtheow in this story. In the Lord of the Rings it was likely Frodo’s good friend Sam. Tolkien was instrumental in popularizing the Beowulf story. Tolkien was also studying these symbols. I quote the Beowulf story in a few paragraphs and you will see it refer to Beowulf as a “Lord of the Ring.”)

Unferth offers Beowulf his sword, named Hrunting. Beowulf swims down and is attacked by Grindl's mother.

Orion

Beowulf with sword Hrunting and Armor

Beowulf’s Path Down to Grindl’s Mother

Grindl’s Mother Waiting Below Surface

(We have re-used the Milky Way, Orion, Eridanus, Cetus sequence as in the earlier swimming contest, but now Beowulf is after Grindl’s mother and will pursue her further to the end of Eridanus below the world tree and below Pisces/Aquarius. The bards sometimes moved around the sky with a sort of “3 steps forward and 2 steps back” method. In the web site and blog I try to avoid this as much as possible because of the complexity.)

Beowulf's path swimming and grappling down to the “grotto” is the Eridanus (river) constellation. The attack of the mother starts at Cetus, about halfway between the Milky Way threshold and the grotto at the bottom of the monomyth diagram at Pisces/Aquarius. The river constellation path takes them all the way down to the circle of constellations that never rise--to the underwater grotto of Grindl and his mother.)

On the way down, people in Hrothgar’s court are waiting for Beowulf to return to the surface. Hrothgar and Wealhthow are probably Cepheus and Cassiopeia. This is why old stories began to be called a monomyth, because versions of the same constellations show up in different stories. For example in the Siegfried story, after Siegfried kills the dragon he goes to Gunther and Gunther’s sister’s court. The Siegfried story is an isomorph of the Beowulf story and Gunther and his sister are probably the result of a different bard using the same Cepheus and Cassiopeia constellations. Of course, the names Cepheus and Cassiopeia come to us from a third (Persian) story of Perseus and Andromeda where another monster, named Cetus gets killed.

 

Hrothgar and Wealhthow

Gunther and Kriemhilde

Cepheus and Cassiopeia

From the Gummere translation about the battle:

Then bore this brine-wolf, when bottom she touched,
the lord of rings to the lair she haunted
whiles vainly he strove, though his valor held,
weapon to wield against wondrous monsters
that sore beset him; sea-beasts many
tried with fierce tusks to tear his mail,
and swarmed on the stranger. But soon he marked
he was now in some hall, he knew not which,
where water never could work him harm,
nor through the roof could reach him ever
fangs of the flood.

Beowulf’s battle with Grindl’s mother takes him into her underwater grotto and his sword is useless against her. A magic sword appears and he uses it to behead her.

'MID the battle-gear saw he a blade triumphant,
old-sword of Eotens, with edge of proof,
warriors' heirloom, weapon unmatched,
-- save only 'twas more than other men
to bandy-of-battle could bear at all --
as the giants had wrought it, ready and keen.

(The grotto is the circle of constellations that never rise. It is the monomyth boundary area of death and resurrection at the bottom of the world tree. At this place, monsters die and then Beowulf returns the hero. The beheading is the constellation Aquarius--normally bent over holding a jug but now bent over severing the monster's head.

Beowulf with a Monster’s Head

To those skeptical about Aquarius being a beheader of monsters, in the sky chart above notice by the jug a part of the horse constellation Pegasus. The horse Pegasus came into existence from blood dropped when Perseus beheaded the Medusa.

Beowulf beheads both the mother monster and her dead son Grindl. The magic sword dissolves leaving only the hilt. Beowulf then swims back up to the surface past the fish constellations, the Southern Fish, the Dolphin and Capricorn.

The Hercules constellation is Beowulf emerging from the lake, possibly holding the head of Grindl and the hilt of the magic sword.

Beowulf brings Hrothgar the head of Grindl and the hilt of the magic sword.

Beowulf then returns Unferth’s sword, named Hrunting. I believe the “Snake Handler” constellation Ophiucus was thought to be a person holding something across the front their body, like a man holding a snake or perhaps presenting a sword.

Ophiucus

Hrothgar is pleased with Beowulf. He divides up treasure for him using the scales of Libra.

Hrothgar then studies the engraving on the magic sword’s hilt. The remaining part of the sword looks like the cross constellation Crux.

Hrothgar advises Beowulf on how to be a good king. The northern crown constellation, Corona Borealis reminds us of this part of the story. Beowulf then returns to the land of the Geats.

The Crown

Libra has three decanates, the remaining one is Lupus, The Wolf, which completes my mapping of the story of Beo-wulf, the story from the Bear to the Wolf.

The wolf constellation is on the edge of my Burrit sky chart so I’ll switch to Hevelius. I've included the Centaur here below the wolf constellation. Also, Hevelius made his chart like it was on the surface of a globe, with the perspective from outside of the sphere looking in. I’ll reverse Burrit’s image and the reader can then see the Wolf as it may appear in the sky.

When I started this post on Beowulf, I stated:

“If an archaeologist finds an old statue, it might be dirty and grown over with mold. Perhaps the statue has a broken part. “

Beowulf has a part that does not fit into the pattern of more ancient stories--I have described two types of bardic stories in the simulations and on the blog. The first is cosmological which moves only halfway around the zodiacal circle and the second is a complete life which moves all the way around the zodiacal circle.

Beowulf fits all the monomyth boundaries and thresholds until 50 years after Beowulf returns home and becomes king. Then there is a second ending--he decides to fight a dragon. The creator of Beowulf seems to have put both kinds of endings on the story, a complete life ending and then a cosmological type ending where Beowulf dies at Pisces/Aquarius.

This violates the phase knowledge of the ancient world. We need to remember that Beowulf is a more recent work. To the ancients, the Pisces/Aquarius boundary was the half-way point in life. The Gemini/Taurus boundary was the boundary between early childhood and adolescence.

By looking at the stories this way, the Isis, Osiris and Set story is not only cosmology but also child psychology. It is also ancient history. One can go back three zodiacal ages in the civilization and get the story of what happened.

Looking at the cycle knowledge in this way WAS the ancient culture thousands of years before Beowulf.

Here, I mapped the Beowulf story until he safely returned home. I’ll leave the reader to map the last part as a cosmological story from Virgo/Leo through Gemini/Taurus to Pisces/Aquarius. It maps like the swimming contest in the beginning. Cetus is the dragon and Eridanus is the path of Beowulf etc..)