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Seven Sisters
A drawing of the seven sisters of Pleiades from Aratus's book Phaenomena. The Pleiades are daughters of the Greek titan Atlas. (Courtesy of Leiden University Library/WikiMedia Commmons)
The Pleiades are a prominent cluster of stars most visible in the winter in the Northern Hemisphere and in the summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The star cluster has been well-known since antiquity to almost all cultures and is associated with a host of myths and legends.
The Pleiades were recorded by the Chinese (as the hairy head of the White Tiger of the West), Japanese (Subaru), Turks (Ülker), Persians (Soraya), Vikings (Freyja’s hens), the Maya (Tzab-ek), Native Americans, and the ancient Greeks (Pleiades).
Pleiades, the seven nymphs accompanying goddess Artemis, were daughters of Atlas. According to one myth, the sisters became stars after they committed suicide due to sadness brought on by the fate of their father, Atlas—forced to carry the weight of heaven on his shoulders—and the loss of their siblings, the Hyades.
In the cluster, only six stars shine brightly. One legend states that the seventh—Merope, the youngest sister—is dull due to her shame of having an affair with a mere mortal.
The great poet Hesiod wrote in the Works and Days (700 B.C.), “When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising, begin your harvest, and your ploughing when they are going to set. Forty nights and days they are hidden and appear again as the year moves round, when first you sharpen your sickle. This is the law of the plains, and of those who live near the sea, and who inhabit rich country, the glens and dingles far from the tossing sea…”
Only four degrees off the ecliptic, the Pleiades are easily spotted by the naked eye. Several Pleiads are surrounded by mesmerizing blue filaments of light, due to starlight reflecting off minute grains of interstellar dust near the stars.
Great Bear and the Navajo
For Native Americans, the sky serves as a guide, a calendar, a clock, and a teacher. The stars told the arrival of seasonal changes and defined the best times for rituals, hunts, and harvests.
In the barren desert of Southwestern United States, the Navajo people once gazed at the Ursa Major constellation (the Great Bear or the Big Dipper) and envisioned three brothers pursuing a bear. The stars Alioth, Mizar, and Alkaid represented the three brothers, each holding a spear.
Navajo legend tells of these three hunters capturing the bear in autumn. They then slay the bear, and its blood drips down from the heavens and colors the leaves of maple trees crimson. They then cook the bear’s meat in a bonfire, from which its ashes whiten blades of grass, alluding to frost formation in the early winter.
