12/24/2025
The Pleiades in Mythology
In the clear and unpolluted night skies of antiquity the Pleiades star cluster was an object of wonder & interest. It was the subject of myth & legend in almost every culture on the planet.
As the Pleiades cluster is close to the ecliptic (within 4°) in the constellation of Ta**us it is a spring & autumnal 'seasonal' object in both the northern & southern hemispheres. Being close to the ecliptic, there are frequent occultations of the cluster with the Moon & planets. To our superstitious ancestors these were, no doubt, portentious events. Likewise, the apparent annual motion of the cluster would have been highly significant. The heliacal (near dawn) rising of the Pleiades in spring in the northern hemisphere has from ancient times augured the opening of the seafaring & farming season:
While its dawn autumnal setting marked the season's end.
The Pleiades are among the first stars mentioned in literature, appearing in Chinese annals of about 2350 BC. The earliest European references are somewhat later, in a poem by Hesiod in about 1000 BC & in Homer's Odyssey & Iliad.
The Bible contains 3 direct references to the Pleiades in (Job 9:9), (Job 38:31), (Amos 5:8) & a single indirect reference in the New Testament. This latter passage (Revelation 1:16) describes a vision of the coming of the Messiah – who holds, in his right hand, 7 stars…
The etymological derivation of the name Pleiades (Πλειαδεσ) is uncertain. Robert Graves, the late English poet & writer, records in his 'The Greek Myths' (1955) that it may be derived from either the Greek 'plein' for 'to sail', or 'pleios' meaning 'many'. Another possible root is from Pindar, an early Greek poet, who named the cluster the Peleiades – 'a flock of Doves' – & this is, perhaps, the original form. A nearby cluster has retained its animalistic classical name of the Hyades, 'the Piglets'.
The 19th century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson probably did not realise how metaphorically close to the truth he was when he described, in his poem Locksley Hall, the rising Pleiades:
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Poetic & apt – recent telescope observations have revealed that this most famous of open clusters is comprised of some 400 stars wreathed in complex nebulæ of dust & gas.[1]
The 7 Sisters
In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were 7 sisters:
Maia, Electra, Alcyone, Taygete, Asterope, Celaeno & Merope. Their parents were Atlas, a Titan who held up the sky, & the oceanid Pleione, the protectress of sailing.
After a chance meeting with the hunter Orion, the Pleiades & their mother became the object of his pursuit. Enamoured with the young women he pursued them over the face of the Earth. In pity for their plight, Zeus changed them into a flock of doves, which he set in the heavens. Thus the olympian added the penalty of the absence of his wife & family to the Titan's original punishment of eternally supporting the heavens from the Earth.
Only 6 stars are distinctly visible to the naked eye. The ancient Greeks explained the sudden disappearance of the 7th star in various narratives. According to 1, all the Pleiades were consorts to gods, with the exception of Merope. She deserted her sisters in shame, having taken a mortal husband, Sisyphus, the King of Corinth. Another explanation for the 'lost' star related to the myth of the Electra, an ancestress of the royal house of Troy. After the destruction of Troy, the grief stricken Electra abandoned her sisters & was transformed into a comet – everafter to be a sign of impending doom.
The Greek legends of the disappearing star are echoed in Jewish [2], Hindu & Mongolian folklore:
Their basis in an actual event seems to be corroborated by astronomical evidence that a clearly visible star in the cluster became extinct towards the end of the 2nd millennium BC.
In an alternative myth, the Pleiades were the virgin companions of Artemis, to the ancient Greeks, the goddess of hunting & the Moon. Whilst stalking a hind, the great hunter Orion crept into a sunlit glade, disturbing the innocent play of the sisters. They fled in alarm. His immoderate passions enflamed by their beauty & grace, he pursued them relentlessly, as was fitting for the greatest mortal hunter. In frustration, Artemis pleaded with Zeus to for his intervention. With characteristic olympian sarcasm, he did. As the hunter closed in on his prey, Zeus transformed the sisters into a flock of doves. They flew into the heavens, beyond the reach of their pursuer, but also removed from earthly companionship with the goddess!
Artemis, enraged by these 2-fold masculine affronts, revenged herself on Orion. Apollo, her brother, having been affronted by the mortal hunter's prowess, was persuaded to set a monstrous scorpion to attack Orion. Not to be outdone in this, in another characteristic display of mordant wit, Zeus set the dead hunter in the heavens in a vain pursuit of the Pleiades through the night sky for eternity, with the constellation Scorpio ever chasing after Orion. Even so the Olympian had some compassion for his daughter: the path of the Moon in the heavens passes close to the Pleiades, & thus Artemis – as the goddess of the Moon – had the solace of their frequent reunions.
North American legends
Coincidentally, a similar legend to that of the ancient Greeks is retold by the Kiowa tribe of North America. 7 maidens were transported in to the sky by the Great Spirit to save them from giant bears. The Spirit created the Mateo Tepe (the Devil's Tower National Monument, Wyoming) to place them beyond the bears. Yet the hunt continued, with the bears climbing the sheer cliffs – the vertical striations on the side of the rock formation were ascribed to be the bears' claw marks, gouged as they climbed after their prey. Seeing the bears close in on the maidens, the Spirit then placed them securely in the sky.
In Navajo legend, after the Earth was separated from the sky the Black Sky God had a cluster of stars on his ankle. These were The Flint Boys. In the Black God's 1st dance, with each stamp of his foot the Flint Boys jumped up his body, 1st to the knee, then the hip, shoulder & finally on to his forehead, where they remained as the sign that the Black God was Lord of the Sky.
The Western Mono Indians saw in the Pleiades a group of wives who were excessively fond of eating onions & were thrown out of their homes by their angry husbands. Repenting in their loneliness, the husbands sought after their wives, but in vain. They had wandered away into the sky, becoming the Pleiades.
To the Blackfoot tribe of south Alberta & north Montana the stars were known as the Orphan Boys. The fatherless boys were rejected by the tribe, but were befriended by a pack of wolves, who became their only companions. Saddened by their lives on earth they asked the Great Spirit to let them play together in the sky, & so he set them there as a group of small stars. As a reminder of their cruelty in contrast to the kindness of animals, every night the tribe were afflicted by the howling of the wolves, who pined after their lost friends.
The Inuit relate a legend that in early times a great bear threatened mankind. It was chased into the sky by a pack of dogs. As the Pleiades, they still pursue the bear through the heavens.
Other names
Many other civilizations have given names to the cluster:
Kartikeya (Skanda):
Is the Hindu god of masculinity & warfare - he is the leader of the armies of the gods. Born out of a magical spark created by Shiva, his name means "him of the Pleiades". (Indian)
Mao (昴), the hairy head of the white tiger of the West - alternatively, the Blossom Stars & Flower Stars. (Chinese)
Kimah:
A cluster (כימה). (Hebrew)
Al-Thurayya:
A cluster (الثريا). (Arabic)
Subaru:
'gathered together'. This was adopted as the trading name of a car manufacturer. (Japanese)
Hoki Boshi:
'dabs of paint on the sky', literally, the brush stars. (Japanese)
Ãlker:
Mankind being afflicted with much evil and suffering, Tangri Ulgen (the creator god) met with the Sky Spirits of the West in the Pleiades (Ãlker). There they resolved to relieve these afflictions by sending an eagle as the 1st Shaman. To Turkic nomadic tribes the Pleiades was thus both a source of solace & their original point of contact with the realms of the gods. (Turkish)
Kungkarungkara:
The ancestral women. (Australian aboriginal: Pitjantjatjara tribe)
Makara:
The wives of the stars in the Orion constellation. (Australian aboriginal: Adnyamathanha tribe)
Matariki:
Literally the 'eyes of god' (mata ariki) or alternatively 'little eyes' (mata riki). 1 legend has it that when Ranginui (the sky father) & Papatūānuku (the earth mother) were separated by their offspring, Tāwhirimātea (the god of the winds) tore out his eyes in rage, flinging them far into the heavens—so forming the star cluster. Another has Matariki as a mother goddess surrounded by her 6 daughters, who rise up from their winter oceanic home to reinvigorate the Sun (Te Rā), weary from his annual journey. Matariki is thus associated with the antipodean winter solstice & the Māori New Year festival. (New Zealand: Māori)
Khuseti:
The stars of rain, or rain bearers. (Southern Africa: Khoikhoi tribe)
Tianquiztli:
The 'marketplace' or 'gathering place'. (Aztec)
The seed scatterer or sower. (Inca)
To the ancient Egyptians the Pleiades represented the goddess Net or Neith, the 'divine mother & lady of heaven'.
The Bunch of Grapes / The Spring Virgins. (Classical Roman)
The Hen & Chicks. (Old English, Old German, Russian, Czech & Hungarian)
Freya's hens. (Viking)
The Ancestors:
An ancient Paraguayan tribe, the Abipones, even worshipped them as ancestors. A singularly poor choice of origin, as it happens, since the youth of the stellar cluster indicates that it is extremely inhospitable to life, with other than rudimentary planetary formation [reference] anywhere in the cluster being highly improbable. Following an interesting, but vulgarly intemperate correspondence, this item is under review. I now consider that the single primary source [Martin Dobrizhoffer (1763). Historia de los Abipones.] seems to have been spuriously revised by 2ndaries.
The Star Disk
A recently authenticated archaeological discovery in northern Germany may further enhance our appreciation of the significance of the Pleiades to our ancestors. Offering a glimpse into the human world of 3,600 years ago, the 'Nebra Star Disk' or 'Sangerhausen Star Disk' (Die Himmelsscheibe von Nebra) may transform our understanding of the astronomical knowledge of northern Europeans in the early Bronze Age.
The Disk is exhibited at the Sachsen-Anhalt State Museum for Prehistory in Halle, Germany.
Beyond conjecture…
The reality of the Pleiades.
Now we will turn to the reality of the Pleiades…
Notes
1: The Ancient Greek astronomer Eudoxus of Knidos (c. 400-350 BC) accurately discerned them as a distinct & true con-stellation.
2: The 'lost' star(s) in Kimah:
The Talmud Rosh Hashanah relates that God, angered by mankind's degeneracy, reformed the work of his creation by removing 2 stars from Kimah & caused the cluster to rise at daybreak, out of season. The biblical flood of Noah was the direct result.
(Job 9:9)
He is the maker of the Arcturus (bear); Orion; Pleiades, & the constellations of the south.
(Job 38:31-32)
You can bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion.
You can bring forth Mazzaroth in his season or you can guide Arcturus with his sons.
(Amos 5:8)
Seek the 1 that makes the 7 stars & Orion, & turns the shadow of death into the morning, & makes the day dark with night; that calls for the waters of the sea:
The pours them out upon the face of the earth:
The Lord is his name:
(Revelation 1:16)
He has in his right hand 7 stars; & out of his mouth came a sharp 2 edged sword:
His countenance was as the sun shining his strength
(Revelation 2:1)
To the angel (messenger) of the church of Ephesus write; these things; he that holds the 7 stars in his right hand. He walks in the midst of the 7 golden candlesticks.
I know your works, labor & patience. I know that you can NOT tolerate (bear) the ones that are evil:
You have tried those that falsely say they are apostles & found them liars.
They have carried on with persistence & without becoming weary labored for my names sake.
However, I have something against you because you have left your 1st Love.
So remember from that place you are fallen & repent. Practice the 1st works or else I will come to you quickly & remove your candlestick (lampstand) out of his place, unless you repent.
But this you have & that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
If you have an ear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. To the ones that comply I will let them eat if the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise (presence) of God.
