Looking to the Night Sky and Greek Mythology to Understand the Present
Can we make sense of the present by applying the mythological past?
I typically do not look to the stars for guidance, mostly because I am not a sailor but especially because I don’t put much credence into astrology. Nevertheless, I was out walking the other night when I realized, with the assistance of an app, that Jupiter is visible to the naked eye. Uranus is there, too, but you can only see it with special equipment. Jupiter, however, is undeniable, which is why I decided to investigate after wondering which heavenly body I was looking at.
Celestial objects as symbols harken back to antiquity. Tonight, Uranus, the Greek sky god, appears alongside Jupiter, the Roman King of the Gods, with Orion, the hunter, and Cetus, the sea monster, both from Greek mythology, in tow. As one of the most prominent constellations, I’ve known about Orion for decades, but Cetus was new to me. According to Greek mythology, Perseus slayed Cetus, a sea monster, to save Andromeda, the beautiful daughter of Cassiopeia and Cepheus, who decided to sacrifice her to the gods after an oracle made the suggestion.
Imagine sacrificing your beautiful daughter on the recommendation of some crusty old dude who allegedly possesses wisdom. Alas, –
How do these mythical figures from antiquity relate to our current geopolitical moment, i.e. Occupied Palestine and Israel’s slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people? Since I’ll be working with metaphorical analogies here, not to mention deploying some creative hermeneutics, I suggest you take what follows as impressionistic. Nonetheless, I feel that some insights emerge from the following metaphorical pairings.
KEY
Jupiter = rules-based order
Uranus = NATO
Orion = Israel
Cetus = Palestine
Cepheus and Cassiopeia = European colonialism
Andromeda = neocolonialism
Perseus = USA
As per the Geneva Conventions, the Palestinian people have an absolute right to defend themselves against occupation, which Israel has been doing illegally since 1948. Examining this thin segment of the night sky, I got to thinking that Jupiter and Uranus could be stand-ins, first, for the much touted ‘rules-based order’ and, second, as NATO, respectively. Likewise, Orion and Cetus could symbolize Israel and Palestine. This is not to suggest that Palestine is a monster that needs to be slain, but rather that some established partners-in-crime are colluding to destroy an internationally recognized geopolitical entity. Curiously, though perhaps not surprisingly, Cetus is a figure in numerous cultures, albeit appearing under different names and guises.
Israel is a settler-colonial state that has been waging war against its neighbors — Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria — for decades. Thus, casting Israel as Orion, an armed aggressor, seems like a good fit. But Orion is a hunter, you might be thinking. What is Israel hunting? The aim of all colonial projects: land and access to resources. Palestine as Cetus fits because it is Israel’s invented enemy, but also because there are massive gas deposits off the coast of Gaza. Since colonialism as we know it today was born in Europe more than 500 years ago, casting Cepheus and Cassiopeia as European colonial symbols also fits, particularly with Andromeda, their daughter, as a stand-in for neocolonialism. The USA, then, is Perseus, who slayed Cetus (Palestine) to preserve the ‘rules-based system’ (the neocolonial order) we hear so much about in the legacy press.
Although there is no connection between these ancient symbols and their stories today, recasting them as analogies now is one way to keep these stories and symbols alive. After all, that is how culture persists.
But wait! There’s more.
Where is Russia, China, and Iran in this constellation of tense geopolitical interrelations that could bring about the apocalypse? From an American perspective, they are the dangerous ‘outside players’ who would dare stand up to the ‘rules-based order.’ Yet these three ‘rogue’ countries are important because if one takes a long view of the crisis in Occupied Palestine, what we really have on our hands is the West (US/NATO) doing everything in its power to smite Palestinian Arabs, who, lest anyone forget, are a semitic people, too. Accordingly, this Russia-China-Iran alliance is the bulwark against Western imperial aggression against Arabs and Islam, ongoing since the U.S. launched its deadly War of Terror after 9/11. Like the US-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO work together to preserve the inalienable right to colonize and extract resources. In the Middle East, and with Israel as its proxy, the Palestinians are paying with their lives. Thus, the United States, as Perseus, endeavors to destroy Palestine (Cetus) to save neocolonialism (Andromeda).
There is no ‘defense’ of Israel’s destructive offensive actions. As Katie Halper recently pointed out on the Useful Idiots podcast, Israel is the anachronistic projection of European colonialism. It is the antiquated bullhead of European colonial ambitions on Earth today.
Reconfiguring the above analogies, Israel could easily be Cetus, the abominable sea monster that must be slain if we are to have any hope of saving Earth, an incomparable beauty personified by Andromeda that we inherited from Cepheus and Cassiopeia, two imperfect parents who made the rather disgusting decision to sacrifice their daughter on the advice of an oracle. (Does that make Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the oracle? He is if you consider his many years advocating for war in the Middle East.) Jupiter, the so-called rules-based order, and NATO, the fist of the status quo, represent the system we are forced to live under. Given how much outside support Israel receives from non-Jews, Orion is the hunter in us all that resorts to slaughter as a futile means of self-preservation. Though viewed as a savior, neither Perseus nor the United States is a hero to emulate.
If the geopolitical game really is the racist, chauvinistic, power-hungry West versus Arabs, Islam, and the rest, Russia, China, and Iran might be the only chance we have to prevent the West, a leviathan in its own right, from destroying the world.
Let’s hope Perseus fails this time around.
