The Pleiades

The Pleiades is one of the smallest, enigmatic and myth-laden star groups. The tiny cluster of inconspicuous stars is nominally a part of the constellation of Taurus, the Bull, and can be found by following westwards the line of the three stars of Orion’s Belt in a link popularly emphasised in myth.

The Pleiades were seven maidens in Greek myth, turned into stars to save them from the giant Orion, who still chases them through the sky today. In other cosmologies as far afield as the Native Australians and the Native Americans of Florida, they are interestingly also seen as seven maidens.

The sky as seen in North American lore. The Pleiades are represented in the top right, along with the sun, the moon, and the stars of Ursa Major.

The Pleiades in fact contain six stars clearly visible to the naked eye. This suggests the possibility that one star has reached its natural death and vanished from the star group. Greek legend states that the maiden Electra, the seventh star, turned her face from the sky in shame after witnessing the destruction of Troy.

The stars’ importance in myth reflects into the ritual world. Many sacred buildings including the pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico, the pyramids of Abusir in Egypt, the stones of Callanais in the Outer Hebrides, and the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia have claimed alignments to the Pleiades, although this is perhaps dubious and can be explained as finding what one is looking for. The cave paintings of Lascaux, dating to 15,000BC, include likely representations of the sky-bull (Taurus) and the Pleiades, showing that the stars’ importance far predates civilisation as we define it today.

Taurus and the Pleiades in Lascaux.

The Pleiades are linked to a dark realm in many sky-lores. Their arrangement, very similar to the stars of Ursa Major or The Plough which circles or ‘guards’ the Pole Star, has led to their equation with the counterbalance or opposite of these stars. The Pleiades is likely the location of Sokar, the dark realm and nemesis of creation discussed last week, which is at the heart of the story of Broken Skies.

The Pleiades also link to the legends of a falling star which near destroyed Earth 12,000 years ago. A myth from Suriname in South America describes a fiery serpent from the Pleaides which destroyed the earth with fire and flood. In Egyptian lore, the Pleiades was the foreleg of the bull Taurus, which had been torn from its body and caused devastation on Earth before being chained in the skies in its present location to stop it running amok again. This story may have its origin in the ancient Sumerian story of Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven.

Some Egyptian reliefs of the chained bull and the bull’s leg.

In Broken Skies, it was a star falling from Sokar which caused the Thousand Year Winter. Modern astronomy now tells us that stars and the celestial objects which impact with Earth are entirely different entities, something the ancients didn’t understand, although the Pleiad Electra, incidentally, is said to occasionally appear in the form of a comet.

Perhaps the approaching comet or flaming meteor seemed to come from this region of the sky. Perhaps the missing seventh star imploded and vanished at this coincidently key time. Perhaps, as researcher Walter Cruttenden has suggested in Lost Star of Myth and Time, there is an as-yet undiscovered dark star, the binary pair of the sun, which periodically approaches the solar system from the direction of the Pleiades with the expected consequential upheaval.

We are due its return. Perhaps we will soon find out.