The celestial märchen affords a direct record of the impression made by celestial phenomena on the consciousness of an age whose ideas were as yet circumscribed by the environment. By the environment, however, must as yet be understood the entire visible world--sun, moon, and stars, as well as hills and valleys, animals and men. The distant, moreover, was always likened to that which was near at hand and immediately accessible. Animals and men were supposed to inhabit the clouds and the heavenly bodies, precisely as they do the earth, and the relations which they were there held to sustain to one another are identical with those described in the animal tale. When the new moon appears, a wolf is devouring the moon; in an eclipse of the sun, the sun is swallowed up by a black monster; and when, in the evening, the sun disappears behind a dark cloud, it likewise is overpowered by a monster, and the red glow of the sunset is the blood which it sheds. _Three_ themes in particular are dominant in the most primitive celestial tales: the ascension of man into the heavens, his descent from heaven, and the devourment of the great heavenly bodies, in particular of the sun, at sunset. One of the earliest of these conceptions is the journey to heaven. This is indicated by the very fact that the means for this journey are always derived directly from nature, or consist of the weapons and implements of primitive culture. There is a conception current in Australia and Oceania that beings have climbed to heaven by means of high trees, or have allowed themselves to be raised up by the branch of a tree that had been bent down to the earth. Where the bow and arrow exist, as in Melanesia and America, the arrow-ladder is frequently employed for the celestial journey. A hunter shoots an arrow into the heavens, where it remains fixed; he then sends a second arrow which catches into the notch of the first, then a third, a fourth, etc., until the ladder reaches to the earth. The downward journey is not so difficult. This is generally accomplished by means of a basket or a rope sustained by cords; it is thus that the celestial inhabitant is enabled to descend to the earth. Many märchen relate that the sun and the moon were originally human beings who journeyed to the heavens. Here they are thought to remain, or occasionally, perhaps, to return to the earth while other human beings take their place.