Seiya Kou - Astrology and Mythology
| Seiya and His/Her/Its Sunsign Seiya is a Leo (Leo - the Lion - fifth sign of the zodiac). I really don't know Seiya well enough to say exactly how well he/she/it matches the Leo persona and frankly I think Naoko made Seiya a Leo just so he/she/it would have the same zodiac sign as Mamoru, but at first glance Seiya does seem to fit. Leos are enthusiastic, ardent, and powerful, with a need for creative self-expression (which ties in with Seiya's involvement with the Three Lights). They are flamboyant but in a dignified way, and they can be stubborn and dogmatic at times - all qualities that Seiya has. Leos are also supposedly unable to get along with Aquarians, which is connected to the fact that Seiya and Haruka (an Aquarius) hate each other till almost the very end of BSSM. The ruling planet of Leo is the sun. Seiya's Mythology Unlike the Inner and Outer Senshi, Seiya and the Starlights do not have specific planets that they take their Senshi names from - they come from a distant solar system where their home planet is Kinmoku, and I don't think they have planets in their solar system named Fighter, Maker, and Healer. :p However, the Starlights do have ruling planets for their zodiac signs, so we can discuss the mythology related to those ruling planets (in Seiya's case, mythology about the sun gods). Helios, a Greek sun god (or more accurately, a personification of the sun itself), is the child of Hyperion and Thea, two of the twelve first Titans, and he is the first sun god, with Apollo being the second. His two sisters are Selene (the Moon) and Eos (Dawn). Although there is some mythology about Helios and quite a lot for Apollo, I can say with complete confidence that none of it has any connection whatsoever to Seiya and his/her/its character, so it's probably best to go on to the next section. Mythology Behind the Constellation Leo Heracles, most famous of the Greek heroes, had killed his wife Megara and their three sons in a fit of madness inflicted on him by Hera, queen of the gods, who was upset over the fact that Heracles was the offspring of an affair her husband Zeus had had with Alcmene, princess of Argos and wife to the Theban general Amphitryon. Although many forgave him for murdering his family since it happened during a fit of madness he had no control over, Heracles did not forgive himself and wanted to atone so badly that he asked the oracle at Delphi what he should do to be cleansed of his sin. The priestess told him to go to his cousin Eurystheus, King of Mycenae, and to do whatever Eurystheus told him he needed to do in order to be cleansed. With encouragement from Hera, Eurystheus told Heracles that the only way to atone for his crime was to undertake a series of near-impossible tasks - tasks which were to be later known as the Twelve Labors of Heracles. The first labor was to kill the lion of Nemea, an animal whose skin could not be cut by any weapon. Heracles killed the beast by choking it to death, and he managed to skin the lion with its own claws, which were the only thing that could penetrate the hide. Thereafter Heracles used this strong lionskin as a cloak (the head portion of the skin formed a hood of sorts) and it became his trademark. Also, for whatever reason they may have had, the gods placed the Nemean Lion in the sky as the constellation Leo - the Lion. |