Australia aboriginal star story reported in ABC News in Science 21 April 2014. Duane Hamacher of University of New South Wales, Australia and his colleague Trevor Leaman have examined records left by Daisy Bates (1859-1951), an anthropologist who lived at Ooldea, South Australia, between 1919 and 1935, where she recorded the traditional stories of the Aboriginal people of the Great Victoria Desert. Amongst her records is the story of Nyeeruna the hunter, represented by a star constellation known to western stargazers as Orion.
According to the aboriginal story Nyeeruna pursues a group of young sisters called Yugarilya, represented by the star cluster know in western astronomy as Pleiades, which also means seven sisters or young women in other cultures. Of particular interest is the story about the star Betelgeuse, the distinctive red star in Orion, known in the Aboriginal story as the club of Nyeeruna, which is filled with ‘fire magic’. In the Aboriginal story the young sisters are protected by Kambugudha, represented by the Hyades star cluster. As the club in Nyeeruna’s right hand, i.e. star Betelgeuse, fills with fire magic ready to throw at Kambugudha, Kambugudha lifts her foot, represented by the star Aldebaran, against him. This star is also full of fire magic and humiliates Nyeeruna by putting out his fire. According to Hamacher, “This is very interesting because this ancient story accurately describes the variability of Betelgeuse, which brightens and fades over a period of about 400 days”.
Hamacher also explained, “Other parts of the story talk about sparks issuing from Nyeeruna’s body, perhaps when he’s filled with lust for the seven sisters. The sparks coming from Nyeeruna, match the radiant of the annual Orionids meteor shower produced by Earth’s passage through the debris trail of the comet Halley, which typically peaks over the last two weeks of October”.
Similar stories about these constellations and stars are found all over the world and in different cultures, including Greek mythology, parts of Asia, South America and Africa. Hamacher commented: “There’s always a debate about why these stories are so similar from different places around the world. It could be contamination from one culture to another, but I think it’s simply that as humans we perceive natural phenomena in certain similar ways and those similarities tell us about our psychology.”
Editorial Comment: Tells us about human Psychology does it? But a modern child would repeat his elders’ story of big bang evolution, and the star patterns not actually being together in space, and having no meaning at all – so let’s get a better fit to the evidence. The fact needing to be explained is that stars and constellations have names with the similar meanings and associated stories across many differing cultures speaking many varied languages.
Let’s start by looking at some of the things the Creator God has revealed about stars from Genesis to Revelation: God created stars for signs and times and seasons (Gen 1:14-19) and God named the stars (Isaiah 40:26, Psalm 147:4).
Man’s first task in the Garden was a naming one (Genesis 2) and we still delight in naming things, stars included. It reflects the fact we are made in God’s image and He names things. Any knowledge revealed by God about the stars to Adam and Eve would have been passed on to their descendants. After the Flood Noah’s three sons and their families passed a common star knowledge and names down to their children, yet their offspring increasingly rebelled against the God of Creation. The stars and constellations were originally made by God to indicate “signs, times and seasons” for the service of mankind (i.e. they do have meaning and purpose), and it should not surprise us, that as post flood but pre-Babel man increasingly turned from worshipping the Creator to worshipping the creation. Noah’s descendants increasingly perverted the meaning of the stars and developed many myths and legends ascribing power to the stars and constellations, instead of to the Creator. All of which brought God’s anger and judgment, at the Tower of Babel, (Genesis 11) where mankind was split into new God given language groups.
The newly formed post Babel separate language groups would have different ‘words’ for the names of the stars and constellations, yet the basic meaning would have remained the same. Hence no matter where on earth they migrated to, the North American Indian, the Australian Aboriginals and the ancient Greeks (and many others) all had the same sister story about the same seven stars.
Today we should recognize the stars are still part of God’s provision for us, and not the result of any naturalistic evolving big bang which has at its centre worship of the sun. We must make sure to worship the One who made the stars, and not the stars themselves, and we should continue to make use of the stars and constellation for signs and times and seasons. (Ref. astronomy, astrology, zodiac)
Evidence News vol.14, No. 7
7 May 2014
Creation Research Australia