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Old 06-21-2007, 08:19 PM
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Matariki and Alcyone

The Matariki/Pleiades/Subaru/ Seven Sisters, are now in visible in the northern sky from down this way and mark the beginning of our Maori New Year. To understand the significance of our Alcyone star, within Pacific history ----

http://www.matariki.net.nz/
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Last edited by Trevor; 06-21-2007 at 08:21 PM.
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Old 06-22-2007, 08:09 AM
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Thanks for sharing that.
Gene
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Old 06-22-2007, 10:33 AM
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Historical

Seems it is important to many different cultures. I still am confused over the pronunciation of Alycone--I have found a couple different ways to say it and neither was the way I pronounced it.

In folklore

The Subaru car company uses the Pleiades as their logo ("Subaru" is the Japanese word for "Pleiades").[14]The Pleiades' high visibility in the night sky has guaranteed it a special place in many cultures, both ancient and modern. In Greek mythology, they represented the Seven Sisters, while to the Vikings, they were Freyja's hens, and their name in many old European languages compares them to a hen with chicks.

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 accounts for the significance of the Pleiades astrologically.

The early Monte Alto Culture and others in Guatemala such as Ujuxte and Takalik Abaj, made its early observatories, using the Pleiades and Eta Draconnis as reference, they were called the seven sisters, and thought to be their original land.(Source: Maya Astronomy)

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 diskHeliacal risings very often mark important calendar points for ancient peoples. The heliacal rising of the Pleiades (around June) also begins the new year for the Māori of New Zealand, who call the Pleiades Matariki. There is an analogous holiday in Hawaiʻi known as Makaliʻi. The ancient Aztecs of Mexico and Central America based their calendar upon the Pleiades. Their calendric year began when priests first remarked the asterism rising heliacally in the east, immediately before the sun's dawn light obliterated the view of the stars.

Indigenous Australians
Depending on the tribe or clan, some Indigenous Australian peoples believed the Pleiades were a woman who had been nearly raped by Kidili, the man in the moon.

Another version, often painted by Gabriella Possum Nungurayyi as this is her dreaming (or creation story), daughter of the late Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri from the Central desert art movement of Papunya, depicts the story of seven Napaltjarri sisters being chased by a man named Jilbi Tjakamarra. He would practice love magic to seduce the sisters but they had no intention of being with him and ran away. They sat down at Uluru to search for honey ants but when they saw Jilbi, they went to Kurlunyalimpa and with the spirits of Uluru, transformed into stars. Jilbi transforms himself into what is commonly known as the Morning Star in Orion's belt, thus continuing to chase the seven sisters across the sky. (Source:Aboriginal Fine Art Gallery)

Native Americans
The Sioux of North America had a legend that linked the origin of the Pleiades to Devils Tower. According to the Seris (of northwestern Mexico), these stars are seven women who are giving birth. The constellation is known as Cmaamc, which is apparently an archaic plural of the noun cmaam "woman".

It was common among the indigenous peoples of the Americas to measure keenness of vision by the number of stars the viewer could see in the Pleiades, a practice which was also used in historical Europe, especially in Greece.


Other cultures
In Japan, the Pleiades are known as 昴 Subaru, and have given their name to the car manufacturer whose logo incorporates six stars. Subaru Telescope, located in Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii, is named after the Pleiades also. In Chinese constellations, they are 昴 mao, the Hairy Head of the white tiger of the West, while the name of the Hindu God Kartikeya means him of the Pleiades.

In the Swahili language of East Africa they are called "kilimia" which means "digging stars" as their visibility was taken as a sign to prepare digging as the onset of the rain was near.

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 Indian astrology the Pleiades were known as the asterism (nakshatra) Krittika (which in Sanskrit is translated as "the cutters.") The Pleiades are called the star of fire, and their ruling deity is the Vedic god Agni, the god of the sacred fire. It is one of the most prominent of the nakshatras, and is associated with anger and stubbornness.

The word has acquired a meaning of "multitude", inspiring the name of the French literary movement La Pléiade and an earlier group of Alexandrian poets, the Alexandrian Pleiad.

In the Sesotho language of the Southern Africa's Basotho people the Pleiades is called "Seleme se setshehadi" ("the female planter"). Its disappearance in April (the 10th month) and the appearance of the star Achernar signals the beginning of the cold season. Like many other Southern African cultures, Basotho associate its visibility with agriculture and plenty.

Lee
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Old 06-22-2007, 04:24 PM
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Surely all of the above is very interesting stuff relative to this site and our car. As a result it should be incorporated within the the "How Too", section under say history. This could be extended with other historical information on the SVX as is available.
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