Story Notes

Content Warning
This work contains themes of death, loss, grief, sacrifice, animal suffering, violence, destruction, creation, existential uncertainty, and religious and mythological imagery. Some hymns contain references to hunting, bloodshed, death, and the suffering of living creatures.
The violence is primarily symbolic and mythological rather than graphic, and there is no explicit sexual content.

Summary

The Seven Forgotten Hymns is the book read by the Jupiter Book Club. Seven voices, seven confessions, seven gazes toward the sky—from the Sun who fell, to the Moon who rose in its place, from the Venus who demands sacrifice, to the Jupiter who has been forgotten. These hymns are not only an ancient text within a novel—they are a mirror held up to its characters. And perhaps to anyone who has ever looked up at the sky and seen something of themselves there. A reconstructed edition of the book carried by the members of the Jupiter Book Club. (Part of The Seven Mythos, a collection of stories connected by a shared mythology, recurring figures, and a world shaped by seven forgotten forces.)

Genre: Poetry

Author: Stella Hart

Status: Complete

Chapters: 7

Rating: n/a

Age Rating: 18+

The First Hymn: The Sun

Before the world existed, the Greatest One created two jewels; and set the newborn Sun as a covenant—a witness over their continuance and their end. The first jewel was placed high in the sky and was called the Highest, while the lesser jewel was cast down to the ends of the earth and named the Lowliest.

And the Sun—who bore the weight of the Highest and kept it from falling to the earth—one day grew weary of carrying so heavy a burden. So it fled to a corner, and the Highest came crashing down.

As a result of that first fall, the stars, with tearful eyes, rushed after it and rained down upon the people of the earth. The skies, deprived of the Sun and the stars, turned to darkness, and many of the earth’s inhabitants perished—from the falling children of the sky, and from the enduring dark.

One of the perished, by the breaking of the covenant, was a white bull who, from the first day of his life, had gazed upon the Sun with longing. From the blood of that white bull, spilled upon the earth, the Moon was born. The Moon then lifted the Highest onto his shoulders and carried it back to the sky. The stars, rejoicing at the Highest’s return, followed behind him and set off toward their former homes. The sky grew bright once more, and the people of the earth found peace again.

But this new covenant did not endure as the first had. Veiled in sorrow, in the shadow of the extinguished Sun, it carried life onward.

And after that, no eye ever saw the Sun again. The Sun remained hidden, fading from memory. And some believed that from the moment it first felt weariness, it had already begun to die.

Yet there are those who tell the story otherwise—and they say the Sun’s final hymn, before its death, was this:

I—

the brightest,

the purest,

the most praised by the Greatest One,

and I—

the mightiest,

the most singular creature in all the world.

I carried the first jewel upon my shoulders,

and for years unnumbered

I was the light of the world.

I was an oath

upon the joy of the stars,

and I was a need

at the farthest edge of every earthly prayer.

And still I lay upon my golden throne

when I beheld the troubled gaze

of that First One upon the lowly places.

The precious jewels of my celestial court

I found faint and lifeless,

some already fallen,

some trembling at the edge of ruin.

I followed that curse,

I followed what had slipped from my grasp,

and after that,

I found the world

slumbering in the depths of darkness.