Constellation Andromeda, represented as long-haired woman, head tilted slightly toward her left, upper torso nude, lower part of body covered by draped robe, wrist of left arm and both arms chained to rocky sides, stars represented by dots along arms, shoulders, rib cage, legs and feet. Appllodorus (II) tells that Perseus found Andromeda, the daughter of King Cepheus of Ethiopia, set out to be the prey of a sea monster. Cassiopea, her mother, had vied with the Nereids in beauty and boasted that she was more beautiful than them all. Hence the Nereids were angry and Poseidon sharing their wrath, sent a flood and a monster to invade the land. Ammon predicted deliverance from the calamity if Andromeda were exposed as prey to the monster, so Cepheus was compelled by the Ethiopians to do so and bound his daughter to a rock. When Perseus beheld her, he fell in love with her and undertook to kill the monster if Cepheus would give him the rescued damsel for wife. These terms having been sworn to, Perseus slew the monster and released Andromeda.Pseudo-Eratosthenes in his Catasterismi relates that all the persons involved in this event, Cepheus, Cassiopea, Andromeda, and Perseus, were set among the stars by Athena. Aratus in his Phaenomena describes the constellation Andromeda: “So bright is her head and so clearly marked are both the shoulders, the tips of her feet and all her belt. Yet even there she is racked, with arms stretched far apart, and even in heaven bonds are her portion. Uplifted and outspread there for all time are those hands.”
Unknown, polygonal stone and upright triangular stone, Cornwall, 3000 to 2001 BC
Large perforated stones standing upright; left one locally known as “Menetol”, polygonal in form, pierced by circular hole sculpted through center; right one known as “Tolven”, similarly pierced; b) drawing showing outlines of stones and perforations at “centers.Giedion observes that the perforations appear to have been shaped by sculpting from both sides as in countersinking so that the center of the hole is also the center of the stone. He writes that these megaliths are believed to have possessed magic properties of healing and rebirth. As ritual objects it is thought that they may have been early sacrificial stones or altars. According to Neumann, the feminine symbol of the dolmen and gate is always connected with rebirth through the woman’s womb, thus the act of passing through signifies a journey to renewal. Giedion states that within memory Menetol has been used for curing infirm children by passing them through the aperture and for healing lame people by lifting them sunward through Menetol’s ring. According to Levy the anointing and circumambulation of monolithic stones has been practiced until recent times. this leads to the belief that they were endowed with sacred meaning from earliest times, when the setting up of a stone for the habitation of a spirit, as a place kept sacred to him, to which be could be summoned by rites, was practiced. Layard Cn writes that the rough-worked stone, or the stone "cut out without hands” of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, carries with it the meaning of the immanence of the spirit which fills the whole earth like a great mountain. Stones carry within them the spirit of the living men who erect them and their contact with the earth kept them within holy ground. [- - Levy.]
