The Winter Maker, the Fool & the Spider

But see, Orion sheds unwholesome dews;
Arise the pines a noxious shade diffuse;
Sharp Boreas blows, and nature feels decay,
Time conquers all, and we must time obey.
Alexander Pope

In my book Orion’s Door, I weave together various strands of esoteric knowledge and symbolism significant to the connection between Orion and Saturn worship. The blog below is a sample of such material taken from the book.

The Ojibwa (Chippewa) Native Americans call the Orion constellation, ‘Kabibona’kan’, which means the ‘Winter Maker’, as its presence in the night sky heralds the coming of winter. Orion is the marker for the coming of the ‘time of death’ in nature and the eventual arrival of the new sun (new year). He is the ‘Year Maker’, and from late summer through to the Beltane (May Day), Orion dominates the sky above the horizon, along with Aldebaran, the Pleiades, Polaris and Ursa Major. Earth’s Pagan festivals marked by the passage of the Sun and the Moon combined, give us the equinoxes and solstices; but the constellations, especially Orion, seem to provide a ‘backdrop’ for some of the most important rituals (festivals) on Earth.

Orion leaves our night skies during the late spring months of May and into June. While out of sight, Orion is said to be in the Underworld. Orion’s passage through autumn into the heart of winter, and the symbols, festivals and other planetary bodies connected to the star man, not least through a collection of archetypes related to Gnostic hermetic mysticism, astrology, and symbols associated with the trickster, or the ‘fool’.

Beckoning Darkness & the Winter Door
Around 160 AD, the alchemists (or theurgist), authors of the Chaldean Oracles, linked Hecate to the Cosmic Soul in Plato’s Timaeus, whose form was also a celestial ‘X’ (there is a whole chapter dedicated to the ‘X’ symbol in Orion’s Door). The point here is that Hecate, as the ‘triple’ goddess, whether we see her as a personification of the moon, or the torch carrier at the gates of Hades, is the goddess of the ‘darkness’. Hesiod, the Greek poet (750 and 650 BC), one of the authors credited with Homer for establishing Greek religious customs, described Hecate as a ‘primal cosmic force, one that can be called upon when worlds cross’. Like the ‘Three Norns’, or the ‘Three Weird’ (Wyrd) Sisters found in Runic magic, all can be ‘drawn down’ at important dates on the pagan wheel at the equinoxes and solstices. Hecate’s wheel symbolism also relates to the ‘core star’, or ‘soul’, said to be at the centre, interacting with what the Gnostics called the ‘fire serpent’ and primordial energy that creates us. What I see with Hecate’s wheel is a ‘celestial compass’, tuned to the stars (especially Orion) and the moon in the darker days of the year.

The winter triangle formed between the stars of Orion (Betelgeuse) and Sirius (Procyon) form another doorway, which is part of two prominent winter asterisms: the ‘Winter Triangle’ and the ‘Winter Hexagon’. The other two stars forming the Winter Triangle, also known as the ‘Great Southern Triangle’, are Sirius and Procyon, which are the brightest stars in the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor, respectively (see figure). The configuration is another version of the tripartite symbols associated with darker days.

Writing in his book, Stellar Magic (2009), Payam Nabarz mentions the moon goddess (Hecate) in myths associated with Sirius and the Winter Triangle:

The star Sirius or the Dog Star is part of the constellation Canis Major (Great Dog), in Greek myths he was seen as Orion’s hunting dog. After the death of Orion, Diana placed Orion’s dog in the sky at his heel to help with the stellar hunt. The star Sirius is part of the winter triangle; the two other points of the triangle are the star Betelgeuse in Orion and the star Procyon in Canis Minor. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, can be located in the night sky by following an imaginary line from the three stars of Orion’s belt to the left and down. The star Sirius is one of the oldest constellations described by man; the Fire Star is one of the stars in the Babylonian A Prayer to Gods of the Night (circa 1700 BC).

Canis Major and Canis Minor are the ‘hunting dogs of Orion’ and with Betelgeuse (the reddish star), they are all symbolic of the royal hunt (see fox hunting) in the UK (especially in autumn and early winter when ‘darker days’ draw to us).