The Seven Sisters

I'm not sure if I ever explained my fascination with the Seven Sisters (the constellation known as the Pleiades). If I have, please forgive and read on!

Image:
Pleiades - Elihu Vedder - 1885)

For one thing, I love to look at the stars - the universe is an amazing place to me, as is planet Earth - but I'm not good at picking out the constellations, even the big, identifiable ones... however, for some reason, even though it's tiny and far away, I can always pick out that little cluster of seven stars (actually there are eight visible to the naked eye, but the eighth one is very hard to see).

Seven has always been my favorite (and lucky) number - three of my four names have seven letters; my parents were married for seven years before I was born; and, as it turns out, other people have also noticed that seven is an auspicious number (seven colors in the rainbow, seven energy centers, or chakras, in the body, etc.). Other folks may prefer the number 8 or even 9 (depending on if you fancy even or odd) but for me it's always been 7.

For a while, I realized that I had six really, really good female friends. That number has gone up and down over the years, but I felt that the seven of us could weather any ordeal and accomplish any quest if we had each other. So I created my little pseudo "company" - something I could call myself and whatever I might create... So here, for your edification, is a lovely painting of the Seven Sisters by Elihu Vedder in 1885 - and the Nebra sky disc, an amazing artifact that features what is believed to be the earliest depiction (3,500 years ago) of the constellation Pleiades.

I offer some information (there are many more myths that I won't subject you to - click on the links to learn more) as I prepare a blog post to commemorate the Summer Solstice (which I celebrated with friends just this week) and the upcoming Midsummer's Eve. Happy stargazing!

The Nebra Sky Disk is a bronze disk of around 30 cm diameter, with a blue-green patina and inlaid with gold symbols. These are interpreted generally as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, and stars (including a cluster interpreted as the Pleiades). Two golden arcs along the sides, marking the angle between the solstices, were added later. A final addition was another arc at the bottom surrounded with multiple strokes (of uncertain meaning, variously interpreted as a Solar Barge with numerous oars, as the Milky Way or as a rainbow).

The disk is attributed to a site near Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt in Germany, and associatively dated to c. 1600 BC. It has been associated with the Bronze Age Unetice culture.

The disk is unlike any known artistic style from the period, and had initially been suspected of being a forgery, but is now widely accepted as authentic.

The disk is possibly an astronomical instrument as well as an item of religious significance. The blue-green patina of the bronze may have been an intentional part of the original artifact.

If authentic, the find reconfirms that the astronomical knowledge and abilities of the people of the European Bronze Age included close observation of the yearly course of the Sun, and the angle between its rising and setting points at summer and winter solstice. While Stonehenge and the Neolithic "circular ditches" such as the 5th millennium BC Goseck circle were used to mark the solstices, the disk is the oldest known "portable" instrument to allow such measurements.

Another view is that the Nebra disk can be linked to the solar calendar reconstructed by Alexander Thom from his analysis of standing stone alignments in Britain. MacKie has argued that several aspects of the disk support this view, following up the work of Prof. Wolfhard Schlosser. The first is that the Mittelberg – the hill on which the disk is supposed to have been found – is so situated that when the sun sets at two distant mountain peaks in the north-west, both midsummer and May Day are accurately marked (and therefore also the old Celtic harvest festival on Aug. 2nd); these are three important dates in the 16 'month' Thom solar calendar. The second feature is the two golden arcs on either side of the disk which subtend angles of about 82 degrees; this is the angular distance between sunrise and sunset at midsummer and midwinter at the latitude of Mittelberg. This surely implies a detailed knowledge of the yearly solar cycle on the part of the disk's designer. The third feature is the 32 golden 'star spots' on the disk. Although Thom found really clear evidence for only sixteen subdivisions of the solar year (of 21 or 22 days) in the standing stone alignments, there were some indications of a further subdivision into 32 parts of 10 or 11 days.

Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, the stars of Pleiades represented the Seven Sisters.

Norse mythology

To the Vikings, the Pleiades were Freyja's hens, and their name in many old European languages compares them to a hen with chicks.

Western astrology

In Western astrology they represent coping with sorrow and were considered a single one of the medieval fixed stars. As such, they are associated with quartz and fennel.

In esoteric astrology the seven solar systems revolve around Pleiades.

Celtic mythology

A bronze disk, 1600 BC, from Nebra, Germany, is one of the oldest known representations of the cosmos. The Pleiades are top right. See Nebra sky disk

In Japan, the Pleiades are known as Subaru, and have given their name to the car manufacturer whose logo incorporates six stars to represent the five smaller companies that merged into one. Subaru Telescope, located in Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii, is also named after the Pleiades.

For more information on the Pleiades, click on this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_in_folklore_and_literature

To the Bronze Age people of Europe, such as the Celts (and probably considerably earlier), the Pleiades were associated with mourning and with funerals, since at that time in history, on the cross-quarter day between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice (see Samhain, also Halloween or All Souls Day), which was a festival devoted to the remembrance of the dead, the cluster rose in the eastern sky as the sun's light faded in the evening. It was from this acronychal rising that the Pleiades became associated with tears and mourning. As a result of precession over the centuries, the Pleiades no longer marked the festival, but the association has nevertheless persisted, and may account for the significance of the Pleiades astrologically.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia