We're All Connected Through the Stars
In Neil Diamond’s song “Done too Soon” he sings a list of 25 famous people, then says,
they have sweated beneath the same sun,
looked up in wonder at the same moon…
So have we all.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro’ the mellow shade,. Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1837–8, Locksley Hall
The sun, moon, stars, galaxies have been precessing for billions of years, and for who knows how many years humans have been looking at them.
My focus today is on the Pleiades, a group of stars in a particular configuration that has been significant to many ancient peoples. This star grouping is nearly 400 light-years away, but it’s clear in the night sky. They are the first of the winter constellations (summer in southern skies)/
Ancient civilizations responded to the movement of stars by giving them meaning. (We humans are great meaning-makers.)
The image below shows how ancient astronomers found meaning in the Pleiades.
The Oldest Known Image of the Pleiades
Lascaux cave in France, dating back 16,500 years, has many paintings of birds, antelope, bulls, and men on its walls. But it also has a prehistoric map of the night sky and what looks suspiciously like the Pleiades. Scroll down this BBC news article on the Ice Age Star Maps discovery to see the image.
They are also a distinctive part of the constellation Taurus, and are sometimes pictured with Taurus, as at Lascaux, above.
The Pleiades as the Seven Sisters
To many people, the Pleiades cluster looks like a tiny dipper of six little stars, sometimes seen as seven. The Greeks turned the Pleiades configuration into a group of women called the Seven Sisters. They were the daughters of Atlas, a Titan who held up the scient, and Pleione, protectress of sailing. their names were Maia, Electra, Alcyone, Taygete, Asterope, Cleo, and Merope.
Berber nomads in the Sahara desert call this group Cat ihed, meaning “daughters of the night.”
You can probably think of several examples of the Seven Sisters, including the group of American historically women’s college.
In biology there is a seven sisters oak, a Jungle babbler bird (called seven sisters in northern India, and a cinum americanum plant known as the seven sisters.
There are a group of small mountains in Queensland, Australia, a mountain chain in County Donegal in Ireland, and a group of waterfalls in Norway, each called the Seven Sisters. The Seven Sisters Peaks in British Columbia, Canada is pictured above.
There’s even a lovely Seven Sisters Rose:
The Pleiades and Seven Sisters in Many Cultures
The ancient Greeks used celestial navigation to note the rising of the Pleiades as the start of the sailing season.
In Chinese constellations, they are the Hairy Head of the white tiger of the West.
The Swahili of East Africa call them “kilimia” from a verb meaning “dig” or “cultivate,” as they become visible at planting time.
Several references in the Bible mention “Kimah,” including the book of Job (Job 9:9, Job 38:31), as God speaks directly to Job in a challenge: “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?”
The Celts associated the Pleiades with mourning and funerals at Samhain (Halloween/All Souls Day).
Ukrainian folklore calls them “Volosozhary,” the ones whose hair is glowing, and their legend is of the seven sisters.
Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas have legends and cultural practices that include the Pleiades/Seven Sisters:
- The Inca associated the Pleiades with abundance.
- The Aztecs based their calendar on the Pleiades, beginning their year when priests first remarked their rising in the east.
- A Cherokee myth says the Pleiades originated from seven puppies, which a chief’s daughter gave birth to after mysteriously being visited by a dog in human form. She vowed, “Wherever you go, I go.” (Sound familiar?)
- Kiowa legend links the origin of the Pleiades to Devils Tower ( the tower in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind).
The Pleiades are called the star of fire in India, and their ruling deity is the fire god Agni.
Several Australian cultural/language groups tell stories about the origins of the Pleiades among the Aboriginal people, usually referring to them as the Seven Sisters.
Subaru, the Japanese carmaker, uses the Pleiades in its logo, and the word “Subaru” is the Japanese name for this star cluster.
The Pleiades Connection and Us
Next time you look at the sky at night, if you can find the Pleiades through the muck, think about the many countless humans who viewed the same stars in wonder, who created their legends around these stars.
We are all connected all the way back to the prehistoric people who inscribed their star map on the caves of Lascaux.
