Cassiopeia/Llys Don

My wife bought me a telescope for Christmas. Mounds of snow in the yard have kept me from using it, but I have been preparing for its debut by learning some constellations. Up until recently, I could identify Orion and the Big Dipper (not even a whole constellation but a mere "asterid"), and that was it. Now I can identify several circumpolar constellations and some individual stars by name, and I have only begun to learn.

If you follow the pointers in the Big Dipper to Polaris and keep going, you may see what looks like a celestial "M" or "W" about as far from Polaris as the Dipper on the opposite side. This is Cassiopeia, boastful mother of Andromeda whose comeuppance was wrought by Perseus, sitting in her chair. Some see it as a queen on her throne. Some say it is Mary Magdalene or some other uppity woman of legend. It sits right smack dab in the Milky Way, and I have become obsessed with it. I suppose it is it's recent salience to me that inspires me to look for it every night and meditate on it.

The Norse may have seen it as the deer who pick at the shoots of the World Tree. I like this image. The constellation, seen from our porch at about 9 pm, lies right over the meadow where the deer feed behind our house. The meadow is surrounded by woods just as Cassiopeia is surrounded by the Milky Way, trunk of the World Tree. The pesky eternal squirrel runs up and down the trunk sowing discord between the Serpent at the root and the Eagle in the canopy, just like the pesky squirrels in our woods (except we don't have a serpent or an eagle, and frogs and turkeys will have to do).

To the Celts, the constellation is Llys Don, the house of the earth goddess Don, consort of Belenor, mother of the Gods. The Milky Way in which it lies is the fortress of her son Gwydion. Belenor is sometimes Christianized into St George, for whom I am named.

If I had a coat of arms, I think it would have to feature Cassiopeia.