For thousands of
years, man has looked to the sky for knowledge, understanding, and wisdom –
about who he is, what he comes from, and where he is going. Since long before
the emergence of today’s major religions, worship of the cosmos formed a remarkably
universal theme in spiritual practices around the world. The sky was a metaphor
for ancient peoples, as “both the symbol of the principles that they felt
ordered their lives and the force behind those principles.” They connected the
clues above to their earthly existence, regarding the sky as “the mirror of our
mind’s own eye,” a reflection of our consciousness. [1.0] Wherever ancient man
set foot, he built sites to observe and measure cosmic events, and performed rituals
to celebrate the intrinsic and indivisible linkage between celestial forces and
the human experience. One of the most important of these events was the
solstice.
