The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades Read online

  More popularly known as the ‘Seven Sisters’ in world mythology, their official name in astronomy comes from Greek legends where they were known as the Seven Daughters of Atlas and Pleione.11 Atlas, one of Seven Titans who plotted and fought against Zeus the king of the Greek gods and his Olympian associates, was severely punished and made to bear the burden of the world upon his shoulders for eternity.12 The underlying symbolism of this heroic act is looked at in more detail in that chapter. In the meantime the Sisters, who were in train to the goddess Artemis as young nymphs, each went on to influence the course of human history by marrying kings and giving birth to gods and heroes who laid the foundation of many civilisations, including the ancient city-state of Troy.

  The world’s leading theosophist of the nineteenth century, Helena Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky as she is more popularly known, has much to say about the role of the Pleiades in history and cosmology in her celebrated treatise The Secret Doctrine. Often referring to the Pleiades as the Atlantides (after their father Atlas and because of their connections with Atlantis), she maintains that the Seven Sisters play a vital role in the unfolding of human destiny and in the karma of nations and individuals.13 Just what this outcome entails is considered throughout the book, although given the sometimes encryptic disposition of her writings much of it remains conjecture and therefore subject to different interpretations. Whatever the true nature of her claims there can be no denying the prophetic roles ascribed to the stars of the Pleiades throughout history by a diverse range of peoples and cultures.

  In honour of their special role in navigation, the ancient Greeks referred to the Pleiades as the ‘sailing stars’ and designated their Oceanid mother Pleione the ‘sailing queen.’14 This naval tradition continues to be observed in Germany, where they are still called by their maritime nickname Schiffahrts Gestirn (sailor’s stars) even though their official name is Plejaden.15 At other times they are simply referred to as Das Siebengestirn or ‘seven stars’.

  Of all the sailing nations, however, including the Phoenicians who were famed for their seafaring prowess, none could match the extraordinary maritime achievements of the Polynesians who turned sailing by the stars into an exact science. Although they relied on several individual bright stars and constellations besides the Pleiades to guide them across the vast Pacific, their love of these illustrious stars is reflected in their cultures, languages and especially in their chants and songs. The valuable role which the Pleiades played in Polynesian navigation is looked at in more detail in the chapter on Matariki, as they are known in Aotearoa (New Zealand). In Bandaiyan (Australia) they are known by many different names to reflect the prolific number of Aboriginal languages (fully fledged and complete languages in themselves, not ‘dialects’ as often mistakenly thought).

  Navigation aside, the Greek legends of the Pleiades have given us words like electron, electrum, electricity and atlas. Not only is their father commemorated in the collection of maps that bears his name16 but his memory is evoked whenever we speak of the Atlas Mountains in northern Africa, the Atlantic Ocean or even the lost continent of Atlantis.17 The cultural affiliations of these stars in fashion and the media are present in ancient and contemporary times. In England the only street in London that turns itself into a ‘lane’ solely on weekends, known for its wares and collectibles — Petticoat Lane — actually derives its name from the Pleiades because the Romans named the garment hanging outside brokers’ shops for this star cluster.18 Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, in the popular cinematic love story Titanic, sailed as fictitious young lovers Rose and Jack on the ill-fated ship. The great vessel, which received its unfortunate epithet ‘unsinkable,’ derived its name from the very race of giants from whom the Pleiades are descended. Even our name for the month of May comes from these stars after Maia, the eldest and most beautiful of the Seven Sisters in the Greek legend.19 In one way or another, either directly or indirectly, and irrespective of our ethnic origins, the stars of the Pleiades have had an enormous influence on human cultures and languages. An examination and analysis of world mythology surrounding them reveals many universal themes, which suggest a very likely common human origin. At the very least, we are more alike than some of us care to admit and perhaps our so-called cultural differences may largely be of our own making.

  Many great works of literature including the various mystical traditions, philosophies, codices and other religious writings such as the Kabbalah, Koran, Hermetica, Rig Veda and the Zohar all contain references to these stars. They are mentioned several times throughout the Bible, especially in the Book of Revelations, where they are implicated through their special relationship with the magical number seven. The Book of Job, in particular, asks the rhetorical question ‘Canst thou bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades or loosen the bands of Orion?20 Intrigued by the riddle of this biblical phrase, many academics, writers and theologians have sought to understand its hidden meaning. Academy-award winning actress and New Age author Shirley MacLaine seizes upon this passage to pose the question, ‘Why is the influence of the Pleiades denoted as sweet when Orion’s depiction is constricting?’21 Although the biblical phrase does not refer to the Pleiades as female and Orion as male, their representation in world mythology suggests there is a sexual division based on gender to which these characteristics may be perceived in traditional terms. Thus Orion is often portrayed as a man or more importantly as a warrior or hunter and the Pleiades as a group of young maidens.

  According to Lloyd Motz and Carol Nathanson there may be an astronomical explanation for the phrase ‘loosening’ the bands of Orion. This is because one of the Belt Stars, Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) ‘is moving away from both Alnilam and Mintaka,’ (Epsilon and Delta Orionis) along with other stars in the Orion system.22 What this means effectively is that ‘the entire constellation will alter its shape, owing to the stars’ changing positions; and an equal factor in Orion’s altered appearance will be the evolutionary development of those stars.’23 Therefore, say the authors, ‘the Lord will indeed, one day hundreds of thousands of years hence,’ loosen the bands of Orion.24 The stars of the Pleiades, on the other hand, are all relatively speaking the same astronomic age and were born from the same starry womb.25 And while their individual stars will one day grow apart from one another and disperse themselves across the night skies, they are at the very least all travelling through space in the same direction.26 So far as the alleged sweet nature of the Pleiades is concerned, an essential clue is what I have identified as the ‘honey theme’ in all these stories.

  Taurean star clusters

  In astronomy, as in mythology, the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades continue to impress and mystify. One of the most celebrated star clusters in the sky and designated on star maps as M 45, they can be seen in the constellation of Taurus the Bull.27 Their alphabetic and numeric designation refers to their astronomic classification in the Messier Catalogue, named for the eighteenth-century French astronomer whose inventory of 110 celestial objects largely includes star clusters, nebulae and distant galaxies.28 As their name suggests, star clusters are a group of stars bunched together in a relatively small area of the sky. Basically there are two kinds of star clusters — open and closed (or globular).29 Taurus contains two sets of open clusters, the Pleiades and their lesser known celestial neighbours and siblings, the Hyades.30 The identification of this particular region of the night sky with a bull or cow is widespread throughout Europe, including India and the earlier civilisations of Mesopotamia.

  Just how far back in time this association goes is not entirely certain, but some writers like cosmologist Frank Edge and Michael Rappenglueck suggest a far more remote period stretching back thousands of years before the appearance of the early Mesopotamian civilisations of ancient Sumer, Akkadia and Babylon. In his research paper Aurochs in the Sky, Edge examines the prehistoric cave paintings of aurochs (a prehistoric animal related to our modern bull) in Lascaux in southern France, and argues that the cluster of six dots above an aur
och’s back may in fact represent the Pleiades.31 He points out that not only are they the same number of visible stars (as seen from that location) but their configuration closely resembles the same ‘spatial relationships’ of individual stars within the cluster.32 As well, ‘they have approximately the same relationship as the Pleiades to the head and face of the related bull.’33 The Lascaux caves house one of the oldest prehistoric cave paintings in Europe that is estimated to have been painted more than 17,000 years ago.34

  What this effectively means, says Graham Hancock in Heaven’s Mirror, is that the cave dwellers would have painted the aurochs ‘more than 14,000 years before the supposed first invention and naming of the twelve constellations of the zodiac by the ancient Babylonians and Greeks.’35 If correct, this would make the cave paintings one of the oldest representations of Taurus and the Pleiades in Europe and possibly one of the earliest star maps of that region from which other European traditions, including ancient Greece, followed. In early Northern Hemisphere European drawings and in modern star charts, the Pleiades represent the Bull’s shoulder.36 The Hyades, on the other hand, are the set of stars that form the distinctive V-shaped pattern of Taurus that depicts the bull’s head with the beautiful orange star, Aldebaran, marking the eye of the bull.37 The symbolism behind this asterism will become much clearer when we consider some of the universal themes found in an assortment of different cultural stories of the Pleiades.

  Universal Pleiadian themes

  Despite the existence of a number of common Pleiadian themes among world mythologies, only a select handful of writers have attempted to draw parallels between the various Pleiadian legends and fewer still have made any kind of inter-tribal comparison of the Aboriginal legends. The late nineteenth century Australian author, Katherine Langloh Parker, who published a general collection of Aboriginal Dreamtime stories in Australian Legendary Tales (1896) and More Australian Legendary Tales (1898), paved the way for such a comparison.38 Her views on Aboriginal people and their cultures were unusually enlightened for the times. For one, she regarded Aboriginal myths to be on an equal par with ancient Greece and believed they were just as complex and sophisticated in their storytelling as other ancient civilisations. As a consequence, she was one of the first white Australian authors to recognise and comment on the similarities between Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and ancient Greek mythology.

  In Wise Women of the Dreamtime, Johanna Lambert draws upon the well of Aboriginal stories collected by Langloh Parker and analyses them from an intercultural, anthropological and spiritual perspective. Her intention, she states, was to follow Langloh Parker’s ‘insight and interpret her translations comparatively with other world mythologies.’39 This she does most eloquently throughout her book, and especially in the chapter ‘Where the Frost Comes From’, where she examines one particular Aboriginal legend of the Pleiades — that of the Bundjalung peoples of northern New South Wales on the east coast of Australia.40 This is the story of the Maimai women of the Pleiades and the Berai-Berai men of Orion who fell in love with them. In this chapter, Lambert makes several connections between ancient Greek, Indian and Egyptian legends and those of the Bundjalung stories of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades.

  Twelve years prior to Lambert, Jennifer Isaacs, the editor of Australian Dreaming, included a general, brief discussion on the Pleiades with reference to three different Aboriginal legends.41 Although her comparative analysis is limited, she makes some interesting observations from a broader, bigger-picture perspective. She notes, for instance, that the majority of the stories are essentially about young women, seven in number, with one sister who is either missing or lost, and that they are pursued either by an older man or else a group of men. Lambert, on the other hand, identifies specific mythic aspects including the Sisters’ relationship with honey in the Australian Aboriginal and Greek legends, and their description as female judges in ancient Hindu, Egyptian and Greek mythologies. Noting similar attributes among the Maimai, she focuses on their portrayal as strong warrior women in Aboriginal mythology who act as role models for young Aboriginal girls approaching womanhood.

  Lambert also comments on the connection between the Pleiades and music, in particular the use of drums in ancient Mesopotamia. This is particularly significant because of the involvement of sound with creation in world mythology and science, and the fact that the playing of this instrument was once exclusively the domain of women in several cultures, including Aboriginal Australia. Other writers such as Richard Allen, William Tyler Olcott and Robert Burnham Jr have commented on individual related themes such as the link between the Pleiades and rain or their depiction as birds, but have done no more with their observations. More recently, Diane Bell has written on the significance of the Seven Sisters Dreaming in South Australia, specifically in relation to the Ngarrindjeri people’s beliefs of the waters surrounding Kumarangk (Hindmarsh Island). In Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin she touches on some of these Pleiadian themes, namely their association with water, their role in denoting the seasons and their directives or ‘sacred orders’ to young Aboriginal women, especially during initiation ceremonies.42 I have taken these observations, along with my own, expanded on each in the following sections and incorporated these familiar themes throughout this book and within specific chapters.

  Women’s Dreaming

  By far the most prevalent theme is the correspondence of the Pleiades with what Aboriginal people refer to as ‘women’s business’ or ‘women’s dreaming’, for almost everywhere they are universally portrayed as young women. There are some exceptions to this general rule, like some Native American legends that refer to seven young boys instead of girls.43 Despite this slight mythic variation, the significance of the Pleiades to women’s dreaming remains essentially intact. Given that women are the primary caregivers and nurturers of children, it makes sense that young boys are allowed within the sphere of women’s influence, so long as they have not become men, either in the biological or initiatory sense. Bell suggests the stars of the Pleiades are largely portrayed as young women because of their astronomical nature. Their mythological status as maidens, she says, is due to the fact that, scientifically speaking, the Pleiades are relatively young adolescent stars in comparison to our middle-aged Sun and other more elderly stars in the cosmos.44 The interesting corollary to this scientific fact is that in the Ngarrindjeri tale of the Seven Sisters, the mother, as befitting a middle-aged woman, elected to stay behind on Earth after sending her daughters up into the sky.45 Is this yet another example of science verifying mythology? It makes you wonder just how much scientific knowledge and wisdom the Ancients may have possessed, and what may have been lost along the way.

  More intriguing is the Quiché Mayan reference to the Pleiades in their sacred text Popul Vuh as representing 400 heavenly youths that once fought down here on Earth before returning to their homeland in the skies.46 If we take the line of argument in Hamlet’s Mill that myths are encoded with astronomical and other scientific data, one interpretation of this particular choice of number may be a reference to the number of light-years distance that the Pleiades are from Earth. Previous estimates by astronomers like David Levy in Skywatching47 have placed the star cluster at about 410 light-years distance from us, but more recently Robert Burnham and others in Astronomy: The Definitive Guide, suggest the distance is exactly 400 light-years.48 This latest estimate would bring mythology and science more in line with one another. But even if the latest estimate is wrong and the Pleiades are more than 400 light-years away, then the Ancients might still be right, given the possible existence of wormholes in space-time that lessen enormous distances involved in space travel. Either way, it’s not a bad estimate. Another interpretation might suggest that the 400 youths represent the actual number of suns in the Pleiades star system. But once again, because these estimates vary between scientists who say there are 400 to 500 or more stars in the Pleiades (possibly as many as 3,000 stars!), this theory is less likely.49 In any event, the myth serve
s to emphasise the notion that only young boys are associated with the Pleiades, and that supports the basic mythological premise that the region is largely a women’s domain.

  Sisters seven

  Although many of the stories refer to seven sisters in the Pleiades more than any other number, some writers such as American astronomer Edwin Krupp suggest the number seven has no significance at all. Because some cultures have counted more than seven stars in the cluster — some as many as ten, thirteen or even sixteen — he believes these so-called ‘contradictory accounts’ divest the numeral seven of any credibility.50 As proof of this observation, Krupp refers to the Australian Aboriginal bark painting ‘Orion and the Pleiades’ by Minimini Mamarika that clearly shows thirteen stars and not seven. However, for reasons that are outlined in this book, and with due respect to Krupp, I believe the argument is somewhat flawed. While it is certainly true that some cultures have seen more than the obligatory seven stars, it does not diminish or take away from the numerological, spiritual or scientific significance ascribed to the number seven and its association with the Pleiades by so many others.

  Where more than seven stars in the cluster have been recorded (such as in the less populated northern and desert regions of Australia and in the mountainous terrain of South America) this is largely because conditions for optimal stargazing are more enhanced. As Anthony Aveni points out in Stairways to the Stars, thirteen Pleiades stars is ‘not an unrealistic number to be seen at this high altitude in the rarefied Andean air.’51 Certainly many other Australian Aboriginal tribes have reported seeing more than seven stars in the cluster, yet despite these observations, the Pleiades are still referred to as the Seven Sisters, not the eleven, twelve or thirteen sisters. The reasons for this are not, as Margaret Simons suggests in The Meeting of the Waters, a direct result of European colonisation and import of the universal term ‘Seven Sisters’ into Aboriginal mythology.52 Nor is it because Aboriginal languages supposedly ‘don’t have a word for “seven”, or for any numerals above three,’53 which is the standard anthropological line. She is correct in stating that the cluster ‘is often referred to as The Girls,’54 as related in my grandmother’s story, but it is not true that they were never traditionally referred to as the Seven Sisters.