To My Love: The Greek Muses

Urania

Urania, or Ourania, means "heavenly" or "of heaven." She was the Muse of Astronomy and the Constellations in Greek mythology and the philosophical one of her sisters. Urania was the daughter of Zeus by Mnemosyne and also a great granddaughter of Titan Uranus/Caelus. Some accounts list her as the mother of Greek god Hymenaeus and the musician Linus by Apollo or Amphimarus, son of Poseidon.

Honestly, Linus is a mystery- as evident by his nigh constant re-appearance genealogically with the Muses. Wikipedia lists 10- ten- possible parental lineages for this guy and Uranus has three of those spots- one with Apollo, one with Amphimarus, and one with Hermes. I'm seriously considering writing Linus' story.... To make it worse, the man who has been identified as his brother, Orpheus, might actually be Linus' great-grandson through Pierus, his son, and then Oeagrus, his grandson.

Greeks.

Anyhow, whatever the case is with Linus, Urania is often associated with Universal Love and the Holy Spirit. Due to this, combined with her association with celestial bodies including Venus, which is associated with Aphrodite, the infamous Goddess of Love, Urania is sometimes interchangeably identified as Aphrodite herself. 

Urania has also been identified as the eldest of the divine sisters, since she inherited Zeus' majesty and power and the beauty and grace of her mother Mnemosyne. She dresses in a cloak embroidered with stars and keeps her eyes and attention focused on the Heavens. She is usually represented with a celestial globe, or/and compass, to which she points with a staff and is able to foretell the future by the arrangement of the stars. Urania is also drawn with stars, or looking towards the Heavens.

Those who are most concerned with philosophy and the heavens are dearest to her. Those who have been instructed by her she raises aloft to heaven, for it is a fact that imagination and the power of thought lift men's souls to heavenly heights. Or at least it is believed so by ancient Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily in his book of universal mythical history the Bibliotheca Historica.

During the Renaissance, Urania began to be considered the Muse for Christian poets. In the invocation to Book 7 of John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, the poet invokes Urania to aid his narration of the creation of the cosmos, though he cautions that it is "[t]he meaning, not the name I call".

According to the traditions and beliefs of the Ancient Greeks, astronomers would invoke the aid of Urania as the Muse of Astronomy to guide and assist them in their work. The invocation took the form of a prayer for divine inspiration. Many of the ideas of Ancient Greek astronomy were based upon theology and astronomers were also philosophers; along with many of the greatest inventors and thinkers of the Greco-Roman and Arabic Age. The Ancient Greeks were concerned with what was happening and when, without addressing the reasons, other than vaguely attributing it to the gods. Much of their energy was spent on predicting events like eclipses and explaining natural phenomenon like the rising and descent of the sun.