The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades Read online

  THE SEVEN SISTERS OF THE PLEIADES

  Stories from around the world

  MUNYA ANDREWS

  Spinifex Press Pty Ltd

  504 Queensberry Street

  North Melbourne, Vic. 3051

  Australia

  [email protected]

 

  Copyright © Munya Andrews 2004

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

  Edited by Averil Lewis, Melbourne

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond by Claire Warren, Melbourne

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  CIP

  Andrews, Munya, 1960– .

  The seven sisters of the Pleiades: stories from around the world.

  Bibliography.

  ISBN 978-1-74219-175-1 Master e-book ISBN

  ISBN 978-1-74219-462-2 (ePub Format)

  ISBN 1 876756 45 4.

  1. Pleiades – Mythology. 2. Mythology, Aboriginal Australian.

  I. Title.

  202.12

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  For my beloved Pleiadian grandmother, Canice Cox Ishiguchi, her great granddaughter, Cordelia Andrews, and her great, great, granddaughters, Paige and Georgia Newton, for them, to keep the ‘Dreaming of the Seven Sisters’ alive and to pass on the traditions.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Heartfelt thanks to the following people:

  Christine Franks, for her wonderful friendship and support

  Crystal, Levi and Amanda Bok, for sharing their home and resources

  Carrie Maddison, for her assistance with picture research

  Kylie Toomey, for retyping the manuscript following a computer virus!

  John Ley, for his usual brilliance and generosity of spirit, for his editorial assistance in reworking the Greek chapter, and as someone with whom to share and discuss intellectual ideas and theories

  Chris Sitka, for introducing me to the work of Marija Gimbutas and shared discussions of the ‘Bird Goddess’ in European cultures

  Ashirirea San in Nibutani, Hokkaido, for her wonderful Ainu hospitality

  Georgie Stevens, for her translation of Japanese and Ainu starlore

  Riteria Nikora, for information on Maori starlore

  Averil Lewis, for her superb editing skills

  Nigel Andrews, Jean Gardiner, Maureen and Phil Newton for sharing their computer resources

  Will Bon, Blanche Bowles, Nytunga Phillips, Diana Scifleet and Jan Testro, for their encouraging words of love and support

  To all the cultural traditions featured in the book, for sharing their stories of the Pleiades so that the world may come to realise our common humanity and origins

  To my Aboriginal elders and teachers in this and Spirit world — Aunty Lorraine Mafi-Williams, Robert Mate-Mate, David Mowaljarlai, Violet Newman and Daisy Utemorrah

  To Susan Hawthorne — for believing in me and taking the risk

  And to my kantrimin — the Pleiades

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue A GRANDMOTHER’S TALE: Seven Stars for Seven Sisters

  1. THE SWEET INFLUENCE OF THE PLEIADES: Unravelling the Mystery

  2. PLEIADES: Seven Daughters of Atlas and Pleione

  3. MAIMAI: Seven Sisters of the Dreamtime

  4. MATEO TIPI: Seven Star Girls of Devils Tower

  5. KRITTIKA: Seven Wives of the Seven Rishis

  6. ATHURAI: Seven Cows of Ancient Egypt

  7. MATARIKI: Seven Little Eyes of Heaven

  8. SUBARU: The Story of the Lost Sister

  9. THE PLEIADES CALENDAR: Keeping Time with the Seven Sisters

  References

  PROLOGUE A Grandmother’s Tale

  Seven Stars for Seven Sisters

  As a little girl growing up in the bush in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, I would spend many nights with my family looking up at the sheer majesty and glory of the heavens. It is here, far away from the light pollution of the towns and cities that the night skies are the clearest and brightest you will ever see. It was here that my adoptive grandmother, Canice Cox Ishiguchi, a Nyigina woman from Noonkanbah,1 would often relate Dreamtime stories of the stars and our relationship with them. Our favourite story was that of the Seven Sisters, the Kungakungaranga, otherwise known in Western astronomy as the Pleiades star cluster in the constellation of Taurus.2

  ‘Look up there Munya,’ she would say, ‘up there in the night skies — the Seven Sisters. Can you see them?’

  I would look up to the ‘saucepan’, as Orion is sometimes irreverently described, to that familiar celestial region where I knew the Sisters were located nearby. ‘Where are they Granny?’

  ‘Over there,’ she would reply, ‘to the left of the hunter’s belt, low in the north-west.’ Then she would add, quite excitedly, ‘there they are — the Girls. Your kantrimin, your relatives.’3

  ‘But how are they our kantrimin Granny?’

  ‘Because we are the same mob as them Munya. We are the same people. One people. We come from the same country.’4

  Ah yes, country.

  Now I understood.

  Whenever Aboriginal people speak about country, they are not necessarily just referring to a sovereign nation state like Australia, Canada or the United States of America, which is the general meaning of the term in Standard English. In an Aboriginal English context, the word ‘country’ takes on a more significant, cultural meaning. It describes and encompasses the overall spiritual, physical and emotional connection that an Aboriginal person has with the land.5 It is this relationship that gives Aboriginal people their identity.

  Whenever my grandmother spoke of ‘the Girls’, as she affectionately called the Pleiades, she would do so with such warmth and love, I half expected an aunt, cousin or niece to literally drop out of the sky to visit us. It was not uncommon to have family and friends drop in unannounced from nearby Broome, Noonkanbah or Fitzroy Crossing. These townships are, at the very least, 200 kilometres or more from the small town of Derby in the West Kimberley, where I grew up. Which is much closer than the estimated 410 light-years that the Pleiades are from Earth!6

  My grandmother would ask, ‘How many stars can you see Munya?’

  I would begin to count. ‘One … two … three … four … five … six. I can see six stars Granny.’

  ‘Well if you look closer you will see that there is another fainter star.’

  ‘Another star Granny?’

  ‘Yes Munya, but most people can only see six. That’s because the seventh star is the youngest sister. She doesn’t shine so bright because she is lost. She’s got a little behind and is trying to catch up with her older sisters.’

  ‘But why is she trying to catch up to them Granny?’

  ‘Ah, Munya, that’s because of what happened in the Dreamtime.’

  ‘What happened in the Dreamtime, Granny?’

  ‘Well that is the Dreaming of the Seven Sisters.’

  She would pause and then begin with the familiar phrase: ‘Long, long ago in the Dreamtime …’ Her voice would fill the Kimberley night air, her words lighting up the dark skies like Lejmorro, the Milky Way, as my grandmother retold the ancient, timeless tale. A tale of the earthly and celestial exploits of the Seven Sisters who ca
me down to Earth from the Pleiades.

  In grandmother’s story, the Seven Sisters would often come down from the sky and always landed on a high hill.7 This was no ordinary hill for it was hollow inside as it contained a cave. A secret passageway leading into the cavern from the outside enabled the Sisters to come and go between the worlds. This cave served as their temporary home while they were on Earth.

  On one of these visits, the Sisters went hunting for food in the bush. They were excellent hunters and soon gathered enough meat and other bush foods to eat. On their way back to the cave, an old man saw them but the Sisters were too busy collecting food and other things and did not notice him at all. The old man decided to follow the young women, as he wanted a wife. When they were camped by a creek he jumped out from behind a bush and grabbed the youngest sister. The other Sisters started running toward the cave in the hill to escape. They ran into the secret passageway and climbed to the top of the hill. The remaining Sisters flew off into the sky with their digging sticks.

  In the meantime the youngest sister was still struggling with the old man, trying to escape. She called out to her older sisters to come and help her but did not realise they had already left.

  ‘Tjitja (Sisters), please help me,’ she cried as she fought with the old man. The youngest sister started to hit the old man; she kicked and punched him as hard as she could until she managed to break free. She ran into the cave and took off after her sisters. The old man gave chase and followed her.

  She called out once more, ‘Tjitja (Sisters), an old man is chasing me.’ He followed her up into the sky, back to their country in the stars.

  If you look hard you can see her in the distance trying to catch up with her older sisters. Sometimes you cannot see her at all and when that happens it is because she has lost her way back to her country. You can still see that old man in the sky, still chasing the girls, still trying to grab the seventh sister and make her his wife. According to our elders, you can still see that old man in the night skies as they point to the evening and morning star (Venus). There he goes, they say, still chasing the Seven Sisters.

  You see him as the Evening and Morning star because he comes and goes in the night skies as he continues to pursue the Seven Sisters.

  Notes

  1. One of several hundred Aboriginal tribes or nations of Bandaiyan (Australia) that each in turn have their own languages as opposed to a dialect; hence there are literally hundreds of different Aboriginal language names for the Pleiades.

  2. This story is similar to many western desert stories of the Seven Sisters, in particular that of the Kukatja myth recorded in Tjarany Roughtail Lizard. The simple explanation for this is that my adoptive grandmother’s tribe, the Nyigina people of the Fitzroy River basin area of Western Australia, have strong cultural and linguistic ties with several western desert peoples such as the Waldmadjarri and the Kukatja near Balgo. On one of my visits to Balgo in 1987 I met with one of my grandmother’s relatives who fondly remembered her and was equally thrilled to meet two of Canice’s granddaughters — myself and my cousin, Colleen Sariago. Quite clearly, the similarity between the stories indicates the extent of these linguistic and cultural affiliations in this region of Australia. My biological mother’s people are the Bardi and Nyul Nyul peoples of the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. See also the similarities with The Legend of the Seven Sisters: A Traditional Aboriginal Story from Western Australia by May O’Brien.

  3. Kantrimin is an Aboriginal English, or Kriol term, that derives from the English term ‘country men’ to signify one’s kin. In Aboriginal terms kinship can be based on a number of factors besides biology — including geographical ties — whereby people who come from the same locale or elsewhere are connected to particular stretches of land via various Dreamings or sacred sites.

  4. ‘Country’ or Kantri (in its kriolised form) is another of those Aboriginal English terms, which — although derived from the English language — is used in another context, as explained further on in the story.

  5. I use the term ‘connection’ in its broadest sense, to encompass the spiritual and material realms. In no way is it restricted to its legal sense, such as in the leading Australian Native Title case of Mabo, where it was decided that Indigenous people had to show a continuous connection to their land in order to claim Native Title.

  6. David Levy, Skywatching, p. 215. A light-year in astronomical terms is the distance that light travels in one year in a vacuum; that is, a mere nine-and-a-half trillion kilometres, or six trillion miles.

  7. This particular story was told to me as a child and is essentially a children’s story, as opposed to the more intricate and complex secret sacred stories of women’s business. As an Aboriginal child reaches adolescence she is introduced to more complicated elements of the myth. In some regions of Bandaiyan there is an emphasis on eroticism in stories of the Seven Sisters that is not suitable for young children. I have chosen to share this particular children’s version with readers that provided my introduction as a child to the mystery of the Dreaming of the Seven Sisters.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Sweet Influence of the Pleiades

  Unravelling the Mystery

  Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,

  Did I look on great Orion, sloping slowly to the west.

  Many a night I saw the Pleiads. Rising through the mellow shade,

  Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.

  Here about the beach I wander’d, nourishing a youth sublime

  With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

  When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;

  When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

  When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;

  Saw the Vision of the World, and all the wonder that would be.

  — from Locksley Hall by Lord Alfred Tennyson1

  No other stars in the passage of time seem to have captivated and enthralled our imaginations quite like those of the Pleiades. Revered and worshipped by many diverse peoples, cultures and civilisations, this small cluster of stars has had an enormous influence on the human psyche and on our collective unconscious, where they continue to charm and fascinate. Throughout millennia their gentle glow in the night skies has inspired and guided sailors over the seven seas and other explorers on land in search of their hopes and dreams during the endless migrations of humanity across the globe. People looked to the Pleiades to tell them when to sow and harvest their produce, when the important rains would come and when to keep their sacred ceremonies. Poets, priests, prophets, shamans, storytellers, singers and historians have all sung their praises down through the ages from Homer to Hesiod, Mohammed to Milton, Plato to Edgar Allen Poe.2 Other acclaimed writers moved and mused by their presence include the Romantic poets Byron, Keats, and Tennyson. Artists have depicted these famous stars on bark paintings, in caves, on petroglyphs, in sculptures, on canvas and, in modern times, in cyberspace. Many important buildings, temples and other ancient monuments were aligned to the Pleiades including the Temple of the Sun in Mexico, the Great Pyramid in Egypt, the Parthenon in Greece, the ‘Golden Enclosure’ of the ancient Mayan capital in Peru and the pyramid of Chichén Itzá in the Yucatan, to name just a few.3 These faint, gentle stars have touched all our lives on a multitude of levels. Their celestial influence in all spheres of life is prolific while their esoteric, spiritual nature in world mythology is profound. Beyond their symbolic meaning, the practical application of the Pleiades in the sciences — especially in measurements, geodesics, geometry, architecture and navigation — is considerable.

  Their association with timekeeping in particular is multitudinous and legendary. In the fifth century the Greek dramatist Euripides referred to them as ‘nocturnal timekeepers’, and a century before the poet Sappho noted the passage of time during the night while observin
g the Pleiades, which she recollects in a melancholic poem.4 Such was their reputation that the 26,000-year cycle of precession was named in their honour, where it was once known as the ‘Great Year of the Pleiades’ in the ancient world. Elsewhere their rise and setting marked the seasons of the calendar year, including the end of the old and commencement of the New Year. Many well known festivals owe their origins to the observation and worship of the Pleiades, including Halloween and other feasts of the dead.5 Even Japanese and Indian lantern festivals can be traced back to earlier celebrations involving these stars.6 Their influence on the development of world calendars, especially the acclaimed Mayan Calendar, is only just beginning to be realised largely through the writings of Mayan scholar John Major Jenkins who has identified the key role that the stars of the Pleiades played in Mesoamerica.7 Exactly thirty-four years earlier, Gertrude and James Jobes went so far as to suggest that a Pleiades Calendar ‘may have preceded the lunar and solar calendars.’8 If proven to be true then it would establish the Pleiades Calendar as one of the world’s oldest calendars. This connection with time meant that in some cultures the Pleiades took on a prophetic aspect, as in ancient Egypt where they were regarded as the Seven Fates who foretold the destiny of every newborn child,9 or in India where they govern the world ages or yugas embodied in the game of dice.10 These connections with fate, time and destiny are explored in more detail in the Egyptian and Hindu chapters. The last chapter examines the role the Pleiades played in many world calendars and prophecies.