![]() Next, with the rising of the Lyre, there floats forth from Ocean the shape of the tortoise-shell testudinis, which under the fingers of its heir gave forth sound only after death once with it did Orpheus, Oeagrus’ son, impart sleep to waves, feeling to rocks, hearing to trees, tears to Pluto, and finally a limit to death. Wherefore it has honor in heaven and power to match its origin: then it drew in its train forests and rocks now it leads the stars after it and makes off with the vast orb of the revolving sky. One may see among the stars the Lyre, its arms spread apart in heaven, with which in time gone by Orpheus charmed all that his music reached, making his way even to the ghosts of the dead and causing the decrees of hell to yield to his song. ![]() Its location is noted as one of the various regions of concentration of stars with banded spectra, Secchi’s 3d type, showing a stage of development probably in advance of that of our sun. Lyra is on the western edge of the Milky Way, next to Hercules, with the neck of Cygnus on the east, and contains 48 stars according to Argelander, 69 according to Heis. ![]() Aratos called it Khelus olige, the Little Tortoise or Shell, thus going back to the legendary origin of the instrument from the empty covering of the creature cast upon the shore with the dried tendons stretched across it. Bartsch’s map has the outline of a lyre on the front of an eagle or vulture. Its common title two centuries ago was Aquila cadens, or Vultur cadens, the Swooping Vulture, popularly translated the Falling Grype, and figured with upturned head bearing a lyre in its beak. Chrysococca wrote of it as kathemenos, the Sitting Vulture, and it has been Aquila marina, the Osprey, and Falco sylvestris, the Wood Falcon. But the Arabs’ title, Al Nasr al Waki’ - Chilmead’s Alvaka, - referring to the swooping Stone Eagle of the Desert, generally has been attributed to the configuration of the group alpha, epsilon, zeta, which shows the bird with half-closed wings, in contrast to Al Nasr al Ta’ir, the Flying Eagle, our Aquila, whose smaller stars, beta and gamma, on either side of alpha, indicate the outspread wings. The association of Lyra’s stars with a bird perhaps originated from a conception of the figure current for millenniums in ancient India, - that of an Eagle or Vulture and, in Akkadia, of the great storm-bird Urakhga before this was there identified with Corvus. Manilius seems to have made two distinct constellations of this, - Lyra and Fides, - although we do not know their boundaries, and the subject is somewhat confused in his allusions to it. By the Kabalists it is associated with the Hebrew letter Daleth and the 4th Tarot Trump, The Emperor.Ĭonstellation Lyra Lyra, the Lyre or Harp, anciently represented the fabled instrument invented by Hermes and given to his half-brother Apollo, who in turn transferred it to his son Orpheus, the musician of the Argonauts… Ovid mentioned its seven strings as equaling the number of the Pleiades… Still it has been shown with but six, and a vacant space for the seventh, which Spence, in the Polymetis, referred to the Lost Pleiad. This constellation was often called Vultur Cadens, or the Falling Grype by the ancients.Īccording to Ptolemy Lyra is like Venus and Mercury (idealistic, psychic, handsome, neat, lovable, refined, genteel, intelligent.) It is said to give an harmonious, poetical and developed nature, fond of music and apt in science and art, but inclined to theft. After Orpheus was slain by the Thracian women, Jupiter placed the lyre in heaven at the request of Apollo and the Muses. He made a lyre of similar shape, having three strings, and gave it to Orpheus, the son of Calliope, who by its music enchanted the beasts, birds and rocks. Mercury found the body of a tortoise cast up by the Nile, and discovered that by striking the sinews after the flesh was consumed a musical note was obtained. Lyra spans 22 degrees of the Zodiac in the Signs of Capricorn and Aquarius, and and contains 5 named stars. ![]() Constellation Lyra Constellation Lyra AstrologyĬonstellation Lyra the Harp, is a northern constellation sitting above constellation Aquila, between constellation Hercules and constellation Cygnus.
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