[Aztlan] pleiades in astronomical thinking - and Bob Hall's question about Aztlan

[martha noyes]

One reason the Pleiades figure prominently in so many cultures is  
that their location near Taurus makes their heliacal rising or  
setting a herald of a solstice and a season marker for planting or  
harvesting.  Two thousand and more years ago they rose or set even  
closer to the solstices, but farther from planting and harvesting.

A number of cultures have/had beliefs that life came from the  
Pleiades.  The Pleiades association with winter solstice, whether  
December or June, associates it with the annual birth/rebirth of the  
sun, the chief of the heavenly bodies.

This sort of brings us back to Bob Hall's thought about the Big  
Dipper being the source of the seven tribes.

Although the Pleiades are often said to number seven naked eye  
visible stars, that's rarely true.  Six are visible, sometimes five.

Seven stars are visible in the Big Dipper.  For northern peoples the  
Big Dipper had/have a much greater presence than they had/have for  
tropical peoples, for whom the Big Dipper may disappear from the sky  
at one time of the year.  Another thing, and I don't know whether  
this has value re Bob Hall's designation of the stars of the Big  
Dipper representing the five origin caves, but stars in parts of  
Oceania are related to celestial caves.  In fact, in Hawaii the word  
for cave is also a word for survey, measure, and star.