On Spacefaring Legends and Superstitions
Space is unknown and unpredictable, and like a bunch of sentient beings dealing with the unknown and unpredictable, astraea void-sailors have traditionally relied heavily on superstition to cope. Many beliefs regarding best practice in space were established in the era of merely interplanetary exploration, ages before most of the stories I tell on here take place.
Although some superstitions--particularly those speculating on the interactions of gravity and matter with the vacuum--arise from popular interpretations of cosmonist belief, many come from sheer observation or older belief systems. Sources of superstitions are also diverse--sailors come from everywhere and so do their stories. (Full disclosure: a few bits of this are copied from my older posts because I want all this info in one place.)
Launch
Astraeas all around the galaxy plan spaceship launches based on precise alignment to points in the visible “celestial dome” on the launch date--blasting off toward a particular star or planet’s position, for instance, which lies at the best angle from which to begin their route. It’s both a way of conceptualizing where a ship is going relative to the rotation of the body she’s launching from, and a way to mentally join the astronomy and astrology of a mission, connecting visual landmarks that the gravitybound culture assigns meaning to with physical bodies in space that the sailor can encounter and contend with. In a lot of ways it marks a transition between the two halves of the duality of the astraea (and especially Cosmonist) psyche--home and away, land and sea, matter and void.
Also critical at launch is meticulous checking--and, if you ask a sailor, good luck--for the launch rockets. Their interior casings are often festooned with handmade charms sold in spaceports; in the Elorican asteroid fields, there is a tradition of pumping in the first fuel of the mission with a degree of ceremony, as one would offer hospitality to a spirit. Although materials science has improved the situation, these critical parts of the ship are of course highly volatile and often unstable, and if not in perfect repair they can easily claim ships, cargoes, and lives. As with the vacuum herself, rockets amass superstition because of their unpredictability.
Like human astronauts, most astraea cultures mark launch with a countdown to liftoff, but it’s usually not straightforward staving off numbers--they embed countdowns into little rhythmic rhymes that coincide with each bit of the launch sequence.
Spaceship life
A little day-to-day superstition we see from Lux now and then in the novels is tracing the constellation of Aviana’s bow over the doorways into the airlocks as a ward for safe passage home.
There are numerous schools of thought regarding what’s good and bad luck to have aboard. The controversial but extremely perennial one: it’s bad luck to bring any symbols of Orellistia or gravity into interstellar space. The reasoning is that it isn’t her domain, things float around willy nilly, if she wanted her stuff on her wife’s side of the material plane she’d have put some stars or planets there. As Levinoxia has become more of an oppositional/trickster figure it’s also said that symbols of gravity offend her and will cause her to play havoc with your ship’s systems, get you lost, and generally ruin your mission. This is a BIG problem for pious destigravitational cosmonists as symbols of gravity are kind of Their Thing, but most experienced sailors, especially older ones, swear by it. When artificial gravity systems started to be introduced it was common to overhear grizzled grey-haired captains, pilots, and boatswains, who’d come into their own in the solar-sailing days, in the public houses swearing up and down that they would NEVER contract to sail a ship with that newfangled fake-your-own-planet tech, it’s just ASKING for an instrument malfunction in black hole territory.
It’s thought that electromagnetic signals that are transmitted too far out in the vacuum to reach a receiver are received directly by Levinoxia, goddess of the void and protector of sailors and travelers. At the midpoint between the last lighthouse on the Andromedan coast and the first on the Milky Way’s, pilots both religious and not so much have a tradition of praying the Dodecacet, a series of twelve short hymns to her punctuated with the petition “masri mitesa levina Levinoxia” (“may we be protected by the veil/void of Levinoxia”), into their radios. For many working-class folks who were practically raised “at sea”, it’s the only prayer they know.
Sights & creatures of the vacuum
Many believe that dark stars and neutron stars and their systems are dead, but still inhabited by the spirits of their solar goddesses and all the life that might once have been in that system in attendance to them. If a crew doesn’t maintain respectful silence while passing through, their ship might become uncontrollably trapped in the dead sun’s pull.
In a similar vein are legends of the noxtaias (pretty directly “void-spirits”), who are alternatingly messengers of Levinoxia, spirits of void-touched sailors, or (in a flavoring that may actually be Ashtivan in origin) physical manifestations of the mental taxation of the void on sailors themselves. Although they are sometimes spooky but benevolent harbingers who warn of coming danger, there are also stories about them playing havoc with radios, mimicking distress calls or the voices of loved ones to lure pilots into danger; or appearing as sweet-talking mirages during spacewalks who convince people to cut their own tethers. Despite their tricky nature, many sailors still see noxtaias as a kind of mascot for their way of life, and they’re popularly depicted in nautical-themed decorations (the Revelator’s figurehead is an example!)
Then there are the actual material void creatures. Reality and legend REALLY mixed in this department during the era of Lux’s childhood when long-range interstellar and intergalactic exploration was relatively new. People sold little books in spaceports with pictures and descriptions of dozens of space cryptids that some expedition or other had kind of seen. Some, like the giant philyra species, turned out to be legit. The majority didn’t.
Luxmotes, which are little jellyfish-like creatures with a Light on them in a similar way to astraeas (and most animals in andromeda) that live in the vacuum, clustering around a ship are a good omen–they show the goddess of gravity’s favor on a mission.