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

[martha noyes]

ooops . . . er, seven origin caves
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "martha noyes" <marthanoyes at hawaii.rr.com>
To: <Aztlan at lists.famsi.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 12:58 PM
Subject: [Aztlan] pleiades in astronomical thinking - and Bob Hall's 
question about Aztlan


> 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.
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