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Ika-Roa
In Māori mythology, Ikaroa is the long fish that gave birth to all the stars in the Milky Way or the Mother Goddess of all the stars – ornaments of the Sky God. Ika-Roa is also an alternative name for the Milky Way. Ika-roa was also called ''Mangōroa'' ("long shark") or ''Mangōroa i ata'' ("long shark in the early dawn Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the appearance of indirect sunlight being scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc has reached 18° below the observer's hori ..."). Notes References * E. Shortland, ''Maori Religion and Mythology'' (Longmans: London), 1882. * E.R. Tregear, ''Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary'' (Lyon and Blair: Lambton Quay), 1891. Māori mythology Fish deities {{deity-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Māori Mythology
Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern fantastic tales relating to the origins of what was the observable world for the pre-European Māori, often involving gods and demigods. Māori tradition concerns more folkloric legends often involving historical or semi-historical forebears. Both categories merge in to explain the overall origin of the Māori and their connections to the world which they lived in. Māori had yet to invent a writing system before European contact, beginning in 1769, so they had no method to permanently record their histories, traditions, or mythologies. They relied on oral retellings memorised from generation to generation. The three forms of expression prominent in Māori and Polynesian oral literature are genealogical recital, poetry, and narrative prose. Experts in these subjects were broadly known as . The rituals, beliefs, and gen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The term ''Milky Way'' is a translation of the Latin ', from the Greek ('), meaning "milky circle". From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with an estimated D25 isophotal diameter of , but only about 1,000 light years thick at the spiral arms (more at the bulge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mother Goddess
A mother goddess is a goddess who represents a personified deification of motherhood, fertility goddess, fertility, creation, destruction, or the earth goddess who embodies the bounty of the earth or nature. When equated with the earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as the Mother Earth or Earth Mother, deity in various animistic or pantheistic religions. The earth goddess is usually the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky Father or ''Father Heaven''. In some polytheistic cultures, such as the Ancient Egyptian religion which narrates the cosmic egg myth, the sky is instead seen as the Heavenly Mother or Sky Mother as in Nut and Hathor, and the earth god is regarded as the male, paternal, and terrestrial partner, as in Osiris or Geb who hatched out of the maternal ''cosmic egg''. Excavations at Çatalhöyük Between 1961 and 1965 James Mellaart led a series of excavations at Çatalhöyük, north of the Taurus Mountains in a fertil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sky God
The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky. The daytime sky deities are typically distinct from the nighttime ones. Stith Thompson's '' Motif-Index of Folk-Literature'' reflects this by separating the category of "Sky-god" (A210) from that of "Star-god" (A250). In mythology, nighttime gods are usually known as night deities and gods of stars simply as star gods. Both of these categories are included here since they relate to the sky. Luminary deities are included as well since the sun and moon are located in the sky. Some religions may also have a deity or personification of the day, distinct from the god of the day lit sky, to complement the deity or personification of the night. Daytime gods and nighttime gods are frequently deities of an " upper world" or "celestial world" opposed to the earth and a "netherworld" (gods of the underworld are sometimes called "chthonic" deiti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shark
Sharks are a group of elasmobranch fish characterized by a cartilaginous skeleton, five to seven gill slits on the sides of the head, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the clade Selachimorpha (or Selachii) and are the sister group to the rays. However, the term "shark" has also been used to refer to all extinct members of Chondrichthyes with a shark-like morphology, such as hybodonts and xenacanths. The oldest modern sharks are known from the Early Jurassic. They range in size from the small dwarf lanternshark (''Etmopterus perryi''), a deep sea species that is only in length, to the whale shark (''Rhincodon typus''), the largest fish in the world, which reaches approximately in length. Sharks are found in all seas and are common to depths up to . They generally do not live in freshwater, although there are a few known exceptions, such as the bull shark and the river shark, which can be found in both seawater and fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dawn
Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the appearance of indirect sunlight being scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc has reached 18° below the observer's horizon. This morning twilight period will last until sunrise (when the Sun's upper limb breaks the horizon), when direct sunlight outshines the diffused light. Etymology "Dawn" derives from the Old English verb ''dagian'', "to become day". Types of dawn Dawn begins with the first sight of lightness in the morning, and continues until the Sun breaks the horizon. This morning twilight before sunrise is divided into three categories depending on the amount of sunlight that is present in the sky, which is determined by the angular distance of the centre of the Sun ( degrees below the horizon) in the morning. These categories are ''astronomical'', ''nautical'', and ''civil dawn''. Astronomical dawn Astronomical dawn begins when the Sun i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
