Pegasus – The constellation of the Goddess Rhiannon-Epona: She who rides Her star-winged dreams.
Ever since we as humans have gazed up to the stars, we have tried to find meaning, to give form to these guiding ancestor lights in the night sky. Constellations are group of stars visible from Earth with the naked eye, that form a perceived outline or pattern, typically representing an animal, or mythological person or creature, associated with the wisdom stories that guide different cultures and tribes of different lands.
For the Babylonians, the constellation of Pegasus, was known as Iku, the field, in Arabia, Al Dalw, the Water-bucket and in China it was seen as part of the Tortoise of the North. For the Arawak people it was the great square of a cooking fire place. In ancient Persia, it was a complete horse, facing East. For the Hittite and others, it was a half hidden winged white horse of lightning Pihassas.
For the Celts, this was Llyr, white horse of the sea God, ridden by Epona-Rhiannon.
Our proto-Celtic horse Goddess Rhiannon-Epona probably originates from the early merging of Cucuteni and Kurgan cultures around 3000BCE (source Maria Gimbutas), and later became associated with the constellation Pegasus in some parts of the Celtic world.
This star horse, that rides into our dreams at night, is the Night–Mare of Rhiannon as Queen of the underworld. Here to help us face our fears and become conscious of our hidden shadow patterns, of power-over thinking and wounding behaviour. This horse of the Tribal Star Queen Goddess will carry us to the very essence of our truth and teach the underworld journey of de-conditioning, integration. Ultimately, it will guide us to the treasures of the crown jewels of our authenticity.
Pegasus is also the White Mare of Rhiannon, in Her shining Star Queen aspect, bringing the empowerment of freedom.
Freedom from conditioning and expectation, freedom from having to be burdened by projection or shamed by ill treatment. Her star horse offers you the empowerment to dare to choose the freedom to own your worth, to follow and life your dream, your truth, and to allow the patterns of the dance of life while not being perturbed by them.
You may receive the wisdom, as guided by the dance of Rhiannon-Epona’s constellation in the stars, to unfold into empowerment with grace, when you leap onto the back of this celestial mare, and initiate as rider of your dreams.
As the 7th largest constellation out of those 88 now recognised, Pegasus is one of the oldest, and holds on it’s back Andromeda, both the constellation and galaxy, which our Celtic ancestors from many European lands saw as Epona/Rhiannon. Befitting the Star Queen Goddess, this form of the Goddess, the Andromeda Galaxy, is the farthest object a human eye can see from earth, and gives the clear vision perspective on our place within the much bigger picture of the Cosmos that the Star Queen holds as Her realm.
Pegasus of the Greek myths, seen half rising out of the sea, is a proto-Indo-European (and proto-Celtic) name, meaning that is has not changed much from it’s origins. It holds the root word ‘pègè’ –spring or well.
As horse-form of the Goddess of fertility and inspiration, Pegasus, true to it’s name, would make sweet water burst forth as healing springs and wells, where ever it’s hoofs touched the Earth. Water that would allow wisdom and words of beauty, poetry and healing to fall from the mouths of those who drank of it’s source.
The horse has long been a symbol of power, fertility and freedom. Long before the domestication of wild horses, thought to have been around 6000BCE, by the Botai Culture of what is now Kazakhstan, our long ago ancestors painted horses in their sacred initiation and dreaming caves, such as the magical white mares of Pech Merle in France.
Perhaps it is a leap of the imagination to think the spotted hides as marked by stars, linking the deep cave magic of the earth to the mystery of the heavens, as a way of our ancestors to draw star maps onto stone.
What is clear is that here they left their handprints, perhaps a way to ceremonially ‘touch their dreaming’, their spirit journeys with these power animals, or to mark their initiation into the mystery of Horse medicine.
Later in time, perhaps these mysteries continued in the form of making the Horse of the Stars visible as sacred initiation landscape on earth. To make Her mark, your mark, as sovereign upon the land, as we can see and experience to this day in the Uffington Horse carved into the chalk hills in the UK.
I like to feel into the ancestral ceremonial initiations that speak to me of merging with the empowerment of the Horse Goddess of the Star Tribes, of riding the dream of the Tribal Star Queen Goddess, and what it may mean, what it will take, to manifest that dreaming into reality, into lived presence on earth, as connecting to Rhiannon-Epona of the ancestors, in this time and place now.
May Her star horse Pegasus guide and bless us all in that endeavour.
Pech Merle
Uffinton horse
Pegasus
Epona/Rhiannon