The Sun’s Paces: Thirty-Six Hymns for the Decans of the Zodiac by Andrew Watt
From ancient Egypt, through the golden ages of Greece and Rome, to the twilight of the Renaissance, a hidden calendar of thirty-six ten-day periods paced out the Sun’s position against the stars. As the Sun moved through the Zodiac a month at a time, it also traveled more slowly through the Decans. The ancient Egyptians and the Greeks believed that a number of minor deities watched over these ten-day stretches of time; the Abrahamic faiths assigned them angels; in Hindu cosmology, a number of animal-bodied heroes watch over us from these parts of the sky.
In this book, poet Andrew B. Watt presents thirty-six hymns or odes dedicated to the Graeco-Roman figures along the Sun’s path. With startling imagery, he explores ways in which these mythic figures speak to the modern day, and offer both timeless challenges and constantly-renewed opportunities. By following the poetic cycle around the course of the year, readers attune themselves to a range of mythic experiences present in the night sky, and reawaken themselves to both the wonder and the mindset of ancient peoples who saw their own stories present in the stars.
Price INR 85