Episode 47 - Wish Upon a Star

You were planning a trip. A weekend away in the mountains with a few friends, to relax around the fire and hike through the woods of the area.

The trip was a fairly spontaneous thing, but you were excited about it, ready to get out of the city for a little while. It had been a long time since you’d been camping.

When the day came to pick up your friends and get on the road, you loaded your car quickly: packing a tent, a sleeping bag, a few days of clothes and starting the trip. One of your group brought the food and drink, another some climbing gear. Soon, you were all loaded and on the road out of the city and into the hills. The mountains loomed ahead of you, and you breathed deep. There was something special about the deep wilds, and while you weren’t hiking more than a few miles from where you’d be parking the car, that was enough to get at least a slight feeling of isolation.

Finally, in the early afternoon, you pulled into the parking lot that sat at the trailhead, parked and unloaded the car, and set off into the woods - heading toward your campsite.

Another hour or so of hiking and you reached the campsite, pitched the tents, and prepared a meal. Up here, you could breathe freely, and although you hardly noticed it, the tension had drained from your shoulders like water. You were relaxed as evening fell on your first night of what you were already sure was going to be a fantastic weekend. And as darkness fell, you looked up, and you saw the stars.

Stars are massively important in mythology and folklore. They are the subject of dozens of superstitions, central to stories from cultures across the world, and fascinating to people across history.

Whether they are believed to be gods, souls, or something else entirely, their stories make it clear: stars have always held power. And so it only makes sense that people attributed to them certain, specific qualities, even beyond the mundane, useful role they played in navigation. Sometimes they could be leveraged to avoid bad luck, or if interacted with improperly, they could bring down death.

In some cultures, the stars were read to predict whether the year’s harvest would be weak or healthy.

And sometimes they were wish-granters. Ready to receive wishes, as long as certain rules were followed, and sometimes grant them if they were paid the proper respect.

Stars have not only been a source of fascination for people for centuries, they have also been useful. We use the stars to navigate. We study them to learn more about our past, and it can be hard not to imagine the future if we gaze out into the vast, night sky and the countless stars.

Many cultures mythology holds that the stars are gods themselves. Or perhaps the souls of those who have come before us. They are granted magical importance, and can be used to predict many things, from luck in love to the harvest’s quality. And among these many and sundry interpretations grew the idea that stars could grant wishes, under the right circumstances of course.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I am excited to invite you to join me as I pass Through the Veil and wish upon a star.

It had been a long time since you spent a night outside of a city. You traveled some, but usually just to another city or town. Places large enough to blind you to some of the grandeur of the night sky.

Nothing like out here.

As night truly began, and you and your friends let the fire burn low, you found yourself turning your gaze upward. The gleaming crescent of the moon crept slowly upward, but did nothing to hide the splendor of the stars. You’d nearly forgotten how many of them there really were when you were out in the darkness and away from the many lights of civilization.

Here and there, you spotted a pattern you recognized. Some constellation with a dozen different names. For awhile, your group pointed out constellations, coming up with new names for them and laughing at the ever-growing absurdity of some of the titles. But eventually you all fell quiet. You were all drawn into contemplation by the sheer vastness of the sight before you. There was only one word for what you felt: Awe.

There are many superstitions surrounding stars. And even more about so-called shooting stars. Across the world, cultures, and time, we see a wide-variety of beliefs. It is thought that many are rooted in the belief that stars were gods, or at the least, related to the gods.

From there, it was no large leap to believe they were sources of power for better or ill.

As long as we have had traditions about shooting stars, they have contradicted one another. In parts of western Europe, shooting stars were believed to be human souls falling to Earth, a soul for a newborn baby. In Romania, it was believed to be the opposite. Each person had a star in the sky, and seeing a star falling from the sky meant that person had died. Records of early adherents to Judeo-Christian religions site falling stars as angels or devils coming to Earth to perform their works, representing among one culture both the best and the worst of omens.

Ptolemy, a Greek Scholar from the Roman Empire, claimed that shooting stars were the result of the gods spying on you, and as they watched, they let lights fall through the cracks of the heavens. He does not claim one way or the other whether the gods watching was good or bad, only that it meant they were interested at least for a moment, in your actions.

In other places, the superstitions are more specific than simply claiming stars are a good or bad omen. Some believed it was incredibly bad luck, even possibly foretelling death, to point at the stars. Pointing at the gods could make them upset, you see, and they would punish the pointer with a curse.

Farmers for centuries thought the patterns of the stars could be used to predict the weather, establishing all manner of rule related to various constellations and their appearance at different times of the year.

Some stories claim that counting the stars is considered a deadly risk, unless you are unmarried and looking for love. In which case there were specific methods of counting the stars you could perform which would help you find love and marriage. Most commonly, stories reference such a person counting seven stars on seven consecutive nights, although other variants exist.

And of course, there are wishes. Seeing a shooting star means you have a rare opportunity, to make a wish with a near guarantee of it coming true. At least that  is what some stories claim. Some places replace shooting stars with the first star visible at night, but the former is far more common. Different cultures have different wishing rituals, but most involve some specific phrase or particular action a person must take to attract the results they are seeking.

You realized, some time later, you had no idea how long had passed. You and your group had been engrossed by the sky. A minute could have passed, or an hour, and it would have made no difference. Finally, drowsiness began to claim members of your group. Slowly the number around the now-dead fire dwindled down as people made their way to their tents, until it was just you. Still watching, trying your best to etch this beautiful visage into your mind.

And then you saw the brilliant streak of light. It slashed across the sky in an instant. A falling star.

You stood from your fire-side seat, peering at the dark spot where the star had burned out. And then, remembering a silly story from your childhood about shooting stars, you clenched your eyes shut and muttered a wish. The wish was yours alone. There was nobody left around the fire to hear it. But still, you said it out loud, as you knew you had to, if you wanted it to come true.

If you didn’t say it out loud, how would the star hear it to make it real?

Every culture that had stories about stars, falling or otherwise, had some reason for it.

In many cases, it was rooted in religion. Different cultures associated the stars with the heavens and the gods. Even looking at commonly known names for constellations reveals the relation. Many such constellations are named for mythic figures and creatures. As I mentioned earlier, in Greece and Rome it was believed that shooting stars were caused by the gods opening the heavens to watch the world and letting some stars escape.

In the Americas, many nations of indigenous people held beliefs tying the stars to powerful figures.For example: the Wintu, from what is now northern California, thought meteors and falling stars were the souls of shamans traveling to the afterlife. The Shawnee, who roamed the area of the Ohio Valley, thought meteors were beings fleeing from an enemy or disaster, and so they took it as a bad omen to see a shooting star. And the Blackfeet, in the northwest, believed meteors foretold great sickness.

It is clear from rock petroglyphs in what is now the western United States that many nations there witnessed large meteor showers and attributed importance to them, because they featured heavily in that type of artwork.

For as long as people have recorded, we have looked to the night sky with wonder. How could we not? It is vast, and strange, and beautiful. It is no surprise to me that the wonder those people must have felt became something closer to worship and fear. Throughout our history, across this beautiful place we call home, stars have played many roles. The omen of impending doom, of death… the signal of good fortune and blessings. They have been gods. And they have been souls coming down to inhabit a new-born, and souls leaving this world for whatever comes after.

They have been used for navigation and prediction, leading so many people where they were trying to go.

And they have listened to whispered wishes, perhaps granting them, perhaps not.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes weekly wherever you listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, myth, and magic.

Music this week was: A Peaceful Sanctuary by Tristan Lohengrin.

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.