My Secret Seven Sisters

by Richard Seifried

Signal Hill Musings

October, 2008

Hurricane Gustov presented Signal Hill with a little over eight inches of rain and virtually no wind.  When the three days of fine precipitation ceased, the skies were studded with constellations, planets, and the Milky Way.

Every night, while the ruby-throated hummingbirds are here, I go outside, onto our open porch, and take down the feeders so the raccoons don’t tear them apart.  Then, depending what time of the warm season it is, I get up around five or six a.m. and reposition the feeders so the hummers will be able to enjoy breakfast (which lasts until dark).

This past week, after Gustov, my five a.m. outside task was a labor of love.  There, above me, so tiny within the huge Taurus constellation, hung the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters.  They were so small that I could only observe them when I looked their way out of the corner of my eye.  As you know, direct viewing sometimes results in night vision becoming blurred or non-existent. 

I am a poor finder of constellations.  I know where the North Star is, and the Big Dipper, and in the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Cross.  These are within my “finding” capabilities – but that’s it. 

Right now, the Seven Sisters are hovering directly above me at, a tiny cluster hanging on the Bull’s shoulder.  But you can’t prove that by me.  I only recognize the dim cluster, Pleiades, and every time, I smile.  They are like old friends.

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All through history, the Pleiades have been important to man.  Greek seamen called them the “sailing stars.”  They would only set sail when the Seven Sisters were visible.  At other times, they said storms too were likely.  The Mediterranean Sea must be different from the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico because Gustov and a whole gang of other storms are devastating the Caribbean right now.

Tonight, after the moon has set below the western horizon (it is waxing now, September 7), I can look out of the corner of my eyes and observe seven individual stars (there are actually nine, but two can’t be seen unaided).  Astronomers tell us that thousands of years ago man could see nine distinct objects.  The Greeks gathered this information from very old legends.

I’m not the only one who is in love with the Seven Maidens, the Sisters. Alfred Lord Tennyson once waxed poetic about them:

“Many a night I saw the Pleiades, rising thro’ the mellow shade

Glitter like a swarm of fireflies, tangled in a silver braid.”

The lovely Sisters, named Alcyone, Merope, Celaeno, Sterope, Electra, Taygete, and Maia, were so sensual that the sexually ambitious, worshipping Orion pursued them. The sisters, terrified, pleaded for help and the great god Zeus turned them into pigeons.  Dissatisfied, and to comfort their father Atlas, Zeus placed them as stars in the sky.

If you look at the Pleiades through binoculars, you will be able to see more than seven objects.  With a telescope, the observer discovers that there are hundreds of stars in the cluster.  You can also observe that they are partly obscured by gases and dust.

Polynesian mythology had its own explanation of how the Pleiades came about.  The Pleiades was once a single star, the brightest in all the sky.  The Polynesian god Tane, angry at this star’s braggadocio, smashed it into the pieces we see today.

For the Celts, the Pleiades spelled transition.  Rising in May, they marked the return of summer and light.  However, in late fall, they launched the journey into darkness.  So, when they shone at their brightest, on October 31^st at midnight, the feast of Samhain was celebrated, and the Celts welcomed a new year.

And, people who have had contact with Star People say that the strangers revealed that they are from the Pleiades.  They told me that.

You don’t have to believe me.

So, late tonight, when the quarter moon sinks below the western horizon, I will look up and once again, I will smile at the Seven Sisters – and my faraway friends.