Some take heart and comfort in the moon as it provides light and sight in the deep dark night, some love to watch the clouds move laboriously over the land with seemingly little care or purpose.
However, most of us are looking towards the stars themselves, so far away and yet so bright, that we cannot help but marvel at the patterns that they show us throughout the night.
Humans have attributed many meanings to these little dots of light throughout the centuries, but none have captured our imagination as much as a shooting star.
But what exactly does a shooting star mean? Is it a good sign? Or one of impending trouble?
In this article, we seek to find the answer to these questions and provide the meaning of moving light within the darkness.
The Meanings Behind Shooting Stars
A shooting star is a bright streak of light that you may see lighting up the night sky as it passes overhead.
For a lot of cultures, these bursts of light can be seen as signs of good luck and good fortune that you may want to appear in your life.
For others, they are a symbol of new life or love appearing to you in the coming days.
Whatever the case may be, there are lots of meanings that could be divulged from seeing a shooting star appear. Here are some of the most common:
New Souls Appearing
Some cultures believe that shooting stars are not in fact streaks of light, but instead the release of a new soul into our reality.
For devout Christians, this isn’t so much a new soul, as a freed soul, as many believe that shooting stars represent souls being released from purgatory.
These souls are then allowed to enter the gates of heaven after their release, and this is what people see in the flash of light.
Other cultures believe that these souls are brand-new souls that are coming to earth.
Somewhere on the planet, a baby is born, and the shooting star is their soul hurtling towards them in order to complete them once they are alive.
Life Changes
It might be that the sight of a shooting star may indicate a dramatic change appearing in your life. This change could be quite vast, so you will have to prepare yourself for it when it comes.
Unfortunately, this change requires an action on your part. You may already know what the change is, but you will need to act soon, or you will lose control of it.
If the shooting star is falling, then it may be a message from the universe itself. It is reminding you that you are still connected to it, no matter where you go.
Whether you are in the big city, out in the boonies, or just wandering around the wilderness, your feet will still touch the ground and connect you to the world around you.
Wish And Dreams
As mentioned earlier, many people tie shooting stars directly to faith itself, and a lot of people see shooting stars as an indicator of God’s presence in the universe.
As such, many people think that shooting stars can grant wishes, dreams, or help you out of the situation you are in.
It may appear in the movie ‘Pinocchio’ as a plot device, but it comes from a real source. Once you see a shooting star fly through the sky, close your eyes and say your wish with no one in earshot.
The other suggestion is to say the word ‘money’ three times to be led out of poverty and to be more financially secure.
Message From Someone Who Has Passed On
A shooting star may be an indication that someone who is deceased and their soul has left the physical world has not yet passed over to the other side.
There may be a number of reasons for this, from a tragic death to a fear of passing on, but the main reasons are always emotional ones.
An unwillingness to abandon those who relied on them, unfinished work, a want to help those around them, many souls refuse to pass on without knowing that their friends, family, or partners are okay.
We, as humans, are closely connected to the spiritual realm, both spiritually and emotionally, and these souls can be clear to us at the right time.
Weather
Humans have used the sky as a way of understanding the world and the weather for thousands of years, long before the internet, the meteorological offices, messages, and even before bureaucracy.
Stars have played a crucial role in a lot of these predictions about the weather, with their position and brightness telling us a lot about it.
Many cultures saw the great star of Sirius, one of the brightest and most prominent stars in the night sky, as predicting the length and severity of droughts, when it shone brightest.
A consistent low hanging evening star through summer portrayed a poor harvest in the autumn. Even that the constellations themselves could aid in the prediction of coming rains.
These beliefs have been held for centuries, and people still say the same phrases their ancestors did thousands of years earlier when they see the signs.
Sailing And Sailors
The life of a Mariner is one that is steeped in superstition and an all consuming trust in the sky is telling them.
This is hardly surprising considering that weather is one of the birthplaces of ‘Chaos Theory’ and it is one of the hardest things to predict.
Considering how much weather affects the life of a mariner, they constantly have to look up to the sky and the stars for answers before things become problematic.
When sailors see a shooting star, they pinpoint the direction of the wind by looking at which direction the star is heading.
Pinpointing the direction can help them find the latitude they are at and figure out what the time is, which provides them with a navigational tool for their journey.
Love
Stars can also be a symbol of luck in both love and physical connection, with the idea being that should you see a shooting star, an intense feeling of love will surround your body and soul.
Some groups of people say that an unmarried or single person who counts the number of stars in the sky for the next seven days will meet their soulmate the day after the last.
Sometimes the luck in physical connection can simply signify luck in your ambitions with your physical body, and whatever you put your mind to, you will succeed at.
Watching A Shooting Star With Someone Else
Many of the meanings behind shooting stars are directed at the individual seeing them, not at a pair of people watching or even a group.
This isn’t to say that there can’t be meaning behind a couple of people witnessing shooting stars, but the meanings are often deeply personalized and that can be lost in a pair.
However, there are a couple of meanings that do apply to more than one person. The most prominent of these meanings is that of good luck and prosperity to be shared between the pair of you.
If the person you are with is your partner, then this luck would be shared within your union.
On the other hand, if this person is simply a friend or a colleague, then it may be luck within shared experience. Maybe you would have a great holiday together or work on a project well together.
The other meaning behind seeing a shooting star with another person is love. That person could be inexplicably tied to your being, both physical and incorporeal, as your true love or soulmate.
Its passage overhead may bring a light that makes you see each other for the first time as a romantic coupling to pursue, and that love will only grow over time.
The Symbolism Of A Shooting Star
With so many meanings behind shooting stars and so much interest taken by humanity in them, there is a lot of symbolism that surrounds these strange and brief flashes during the night.
For many cultures and many different people, the symbolism behind is almost more important than the meaning itself, as without the symbols there is no meaning to them at all.
For most, the symbolism of a shooting star is that of positive energy and change in your life.
The stars are distant dots that blinker with the power of a sun, yet are somewhere we can never reach, but shooting stars are constantly moving from their position and lighting up the night sky.
They like us to pursue what they wish and so when we see shooting stars, we are seeing the potential to pursue and then achieve our dreams as long as we go for them in some capacity.
Even if we fail as we see it, unexpected events may come our way to help us out.
As stated earlier, a shooting star may also symbolize a new soul appearing in the world or an old soul leaving.
They appear as transitory passages of light, either bringing someone’s spirit into the world or helping them leave.
Every time a baby is born or a loved one has died, looking up at the night sky and seeing a shooting star may bring you a small sense of comfort.
Sometimes these leaving souls are said to join their brethren in the night sky, adding another star to its canvas and shining light onto the world.
Even though these people are gone from our lives, their light will continue to shine on us as long as we still look up.
As you can see, there is a lot of symbolism around shooting stars and what they mean to us.
Most of these are to do with our dreams, our wishes, constant change, new life, and goodbye to loved ones.
None of these are bad, but it can be scary to see a different story play out from the one you wanted or knew of.
Spiritual Meaning Of Shooting Stars To The Cultures Throughout History
Shooting stars have been around as long as there is a sky to view the stars in.
Since humanity has been around a significantly less time than that, every human civilization has looked at the stars, the sun, and the moon and simply wondered about them.
The views and ways in which each civilization and culture looked at shooting stars and documented them has changed throughout history – sometimes these views are positive, while others are distinctly negative – but they always viewed them with an eye for the future, as if they were predictions or great omens.
The Roman civilization existed for an exceedingly long time and viewed shooting stars through many lenses throughout their history.
One of the earliest Roman astronomers, Claudius Ptolemy, contributed a number of different works to science and mathematics that became of great importance to, not only the Romans, but the Byzantines, the Islamic, and the Western scientific worlds.
His view was that shooting stars were in fact not stars at all, but all that our mortal eyes could see of the gods peeking in on our world.
He believed that they were the sign of the God’s peeling back the sky, so they could examine events on our world and see if they needed to intervene.
Later, Romans came to believe that these shooting stars symbolized divine favor of the gods and protection by them against events that have not yet come.
As such, many people took them as signs that their actions would be approved by heaven if they went through with them.
Ancient Chinese mythology had a deep spiritual connection to the sky and the earth, with the Ancient primordial deity, Pangu, separating both at the start of creation and forming mountains and rivers from the split.
His body came from the cosmic egg that sat in the formless, featureless primordial state of the universe before that moment.
When he died 18,000 years after the egg’s opening, different parts of his body became all of the forces that exist in the universe today, including the stars themselves.
With stars so directly tied into this mythos, shooting stars have become the symbols of the birth (You might also want to check out the Types Of Birthmarks And Their Spiritual Meanings) or the death of a very important person when they appear in the night.
This spiritual connection to shooting stars is also present in many Native American cultures.
The difference is that in Native American cultures, it is not only important figures that shooting stars have come to symbolize.
When you look up and see a shooting star as a member of these groups, it is said that you are watching the souls of those who have passed on being given passage to the afterlife.
While the loss is said, the comfort derived from knowing they made it to the other side lifts spirits significantly.
Although many of these beliefs are positive, there are some groups of people that view them in a different light.
A few East African people consider a shooting star not a symbol of fortune or luck, but a very bad omen.
Once seen, it would signify that something bad was rapidly approaching and considering the temperamental nature of the continent’s weather, people had good reason to fear this.
Others from the African continent – namely those who practice the old religions and animism – believe that while it is a bad omen, the result is a worse sign.
These people believe that a shooting star shows that a powerful god is manifesting itself on the material plane.
While gods are not inherently bad, any being of immense supernatural power is never a good sign for this world. Their mere presence could uproot mountains, dam rivers, and doom entire countries.
In almost every instance of a culture having an avid interest in shooting stars, the resulting meteorite that may come from is considered a sacred object, whether that be evil or good.
In ancient times, these rocks were called Baetylus – from the Semitic word ‘Bet El’ meaning House of God.
Supposedly, these sacred stones gave the holder access to a deity and considered symbols of the gods themselves.
Many of these stones have been stored in temples, sacred groves, and ancient tombs, with the finders only able to claim such precious rocks due to their following of the tail of a shooting star above the earth.
Conclusion
Shooting stars have long held an intense spiritual meaning for the human race. Since our first words and steps as a species, we have looked up at these bright flashes of light and wondered what they meant to us.
Many cultures have decided different things about these stars, but all of them agree that – whether bad or good – the meaning was incredibly important.
Iesha is grounded in the holistic belief of individual connection to others and to the world as a whole. This blog is inspired by her thoughts and actions in sharing her personal journey through spirituality and much more!
