Seeking the Pleiades

By Irvin Owens Jr., Island City Lodge No. 215

Introduction As a child, I attended a Quaker school. As is typical with Quaker education, we spent a good amount of time learning to respect and understand the impacts that nature would have on us, as well as the impact that we could have on nature. My first experience with the Pleiades was when our science teacher brought an astronomer into our class who began telling us about the constellations. I was mesmerized as he began showing us those ancient twinkling orbs through his telescope. When he got to the Pleiades, I was captivated by the beauty of the six clustered blue stars, as well as the heart-wrenching story of their flight from the lecherous Orion. I failed to understand how things were better for the Pleiades after Zeus turned them into a flock of doves.

As I became interested in Masonry and began to study the Entered Apprentice tracing board, I noticed that Jacob's ladder pointed to the Moon surrounded by the Pleiades in many depictions. This is a powerful and beautiful symbol, which is important to understand more deeply in order to truly appreciate the power of the first degree.

Mythology Ancient Greece and Rome The Pleiades feature prominently in Greek literature, beginning with Homer’s second book of the Georgics of Hesiod. In this poem, he describes the Pleiades as an aid to understanding when to harvest:

“When, Atlas’ birth, the Pleiades arise, Harvest begin, plow when they leave, the skies. Twice twenty days and nights these hide their heads; The year then turning, leave again their beds, And show when first to whet the harvest steel. This is likewise the law the fields must feel, Both with sea-dwellers, near and high, and those Whose winding valleys Neptune overflows, That a fenny grounds and marshes dwell upon, Along fat and fruitful region. But, wheresoever thou inhabit’st, ply The fields before fierce winter’s cruelty …”

In this passage, Homer is encoding information, described by Hesiod, which would be critical to any farmer hoping for success in growing crops in his region of ancient Greece. In that region of the world, the Pleiades arise in the month of June, and they leave in November – a growing season of approximately five months.

This was the first known mention of the Pleiades in Western literature. Hesiod called the star cluster the Atlageneis, or Atlas’ Daughters; however, in ancient Greek, the daughters of Atlas would have been called the Atlantides as “daughter-of” would have been added to the father’s name which was the most common method of describing one’s daughters. (As sometimes daughters were described using the mother’s name and their mother was Hesperia, they were also known as the Hesperides. According to myth, Atlas had many children by different goddesses, some of them overlapping in different tales as with the Pleiades.

In Greek myth, Atlas was the god of “endurance and astronomy.” According to Hesiod, Atlas stood at the ends of the earth towards the West. A misconception is that Atlas was depicted as being forced to hold a globe, or the earth, when more accurately he was depicted as holding the celestial spheres which were the “fundamental entities of the cosmological entities developed by Plato … et. al.”

Hesperis (Hesperia) was the daughter/son of Astraeus and Eos, and was called Vesper (Venus) by the Romans. She was later identified with Phosphorous – “Lucifer” in Latin – the bringer of light, the morning star. (The word “Lucifer” in Latin was applied to individuals other than the angel Lucifer before his fall; indeed, even Jesus was referred to as “Lucifer” in according to its meaning as a light-bringer, with light symbolizing truth.)

When written from the perspective of the maritime, the Pleiades were referred to in the form of the daughter of Pleione, who lived in southern Greece on a mountain called Arcadia. Pleione was an Oceanid nymph, according to Greek mythology. The Oceanids were the patronesses’ rivers, lakes, streams, and oceans. With Atlas, Pleione gave birth to the Pleiades and was the protector of sailing. Greek navigators of the Mediterranean took the rising of the Pleiades as a good omen for sailing, due to the pedigree of these daughters.

As the story goes, the fate of these daughters of Atlas was fairly dire. Orion, the hunter, struck a fancy to them and chased them across the sky so relentlessly that the gods decided to intervene. (In early versions of the myth, Orion is infatuated with Pleione herself.) Zeus ended the Pleiades’ torment by turning the sisters first into rock doves, and finally into stars so that Orion could not catch them.

According to some early writers, this transformation began when Zeus punished their father for siding with the Titans in the Olympian rebellion, forcing him to hold up the sky for eternity. According to Greek mythology, the Pleiades were not supposed to marry. Orion’s reason for chasing them isn’t difficult to work out, as he has a mythological reputation for rape and little self-control. Were Homer and Hesiod cautioning against loss of self-control with their tale, or were they instead cautioning against grieving too much over a just punishment?

The Bible The Bible weighs in on the Pleiades, with the book of Job posing the question, “Cans’t thou bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades or loosen the bands of Orion?” According to the Bible, God is speaking directly to Job, enumerating the limitations of Job and challenging him with the above, insinuating that while Job cannot limit the appeal of feminine beauty, or release male desire, God in fact could. In the following verses, however, he questions Job about his knowledge of astronomy. Perhaps God is speaking literally about having the ability to manage the heavens? This explanation holds, as long as the reader will acknowledge Venus as exemplifying of femininity and Orion as male. Within these passages, Job is being accused of being evil and defending himself. He first asks about allowing his heart to be taken up by another and allowing his wife to “grind for someone else” or “gazing upon a virgin,” mentioning fidelity and control. Job doesn’t ask about astronomy, though God mentions both, “Or who stretched the line upon [the earth],” and asking, “On what were [earth’s] bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone?” It would seem by the following that God is referring to celestial matters, while Job is mired in the strictly terrestrial.

China To the Chinese, the Pleiades are known as the “hairy head” (昴宿), referring to the maned head of the white tiger. To provide a bit of context, ancient Chinese astronomers divided the sky ecliptic – the path the sun seems to trace through the stars when viewed from earth. (From the vantage point of ancient astronomers before the nature of celestial motion became apparent, the ecliptic was a method of observing the sun’s “motion” through the 365 days of the year.)

These ancient astronomers divided the sky into four quadrants, with the white tiger in the western quadrant, corresponding with the association of the color white with the west in the Wu Xing theory. (Wu Xing is also known as the five elements, five stages, or five planets, and is reminiscent of the representations of the five senses or five types of columns found in the Fellow Craft degree. It is often depicted as a five-pointed star consisting of wood at the top with water fire opposing each other at the top points, metal below fire, and earth below water. It was used to describe interactions or relationships between phenomena and is often used in Feng Shui, astrology, traditional Chinese medicine, music, military strategy, and martial arts.)

The white tiger is often presented with the symbol 王, which is composed of three strokes representing heaven, man, and earth, with a fourth crossing all of them representing the king, which connects them together. In Chinese culture, the tiger is the king of the beasts, similar to the lion in Western cultures. In Chinese mythology, the white tiger would only appear if the emperor ruled with perfect virtue, or there was peace throughout the world. The tiger became white after it had lived 500 years of age and its tail had already become white with age. It was considered to be a mythological guardian of the west.

India In India, the Pleiades were known as “Kṛttikā,” or “the cutters,” as translated into English. They were ruled by the fire god Agni, the god of sacrifice and knowledge. Agni was often described as fire rising from water. He was responsible for disseminating knowledge, as represented by the first principle of thought – speech. The Pleiades cluster was one of the most prominent nakshatra (time units), grouping of pranas, a period of around four seconds. The term nakshatra also describes lunar mansions in Hindu astrology. They are divided into 28 sectors along the ecliptic. Of these, the Pleiades – known as Kṛttikā – is the first. The six stars represent the six wives of the six sages who, through meditation, became aware of universal truths that they composed into hymns. These six wives ultimately fell in love with Agni, which led to the name star of fire.

Africa In Eastern Africa, in Swahili, the Pleiades were called “Kilimia” which comes from “Lima,” meaning “to dig.” Their presence was a reminder to the Eastern Africans to plant their crops, because the rains were near. In Southern Africa, their disappearance meant that the cold season was coming and that it was time to harvest.

In many of these examples around the world, the Pleiades were associated with a story about women on the run, perhaps to remind early farmers of the necessity for haste when getting their crops into the ground, as the Pleiades’ time in the sky was limited. The myths surrounding this star cluster are almost as old as known human civilization. They were with us when we stopped hunting, settled down, and began to sow the earth with seed, completing our transition from animal to man.

Early Humans To some of the earliest humans, the Pleiades had special meaning. In France’s famed prehistoric Lascaux cave paintings, they can be found over the shoulder of Bull 18. The prominence of the various star clusters to early homo sapiens who lived somewhat nomadic lives makes sense from the perspective that people needed to move with the seasons to maintain their ability to find nourishment throughout the year. As such, when particular star clusters were visible, it would have been prudent for these tribes of early humans to leave or remain. It would have been of critical importance to have representations of these early symbols at each destination of the tribe to remind them of when they should arrive, and when they should leave. Arriving at a destination too early could lead to starvation, as would arriving too late.

The Aztecs called the Pleiades star cluster “Tianquiztli,” which means “marketplace” in their language. They believed that as long as the Tianquiztli kept returning, the universe would not end. Aztec astronomers vigilantly monitored the movement of the star cluster, and performed a religious ceremony that they felt would ensure the continued movement of the cosmos and the rebirth of the sun. During this ceremony, it is likely that they sacrificed men to the gods to prevent the demons of darkness from descending to the Earth and devouring them all.

Astronomy, Geometry, and Physics To understand our relationship with the Pleiades in physical space, it is important to understand their location relative to our own. As discussed briefly in the preceding section, people relied upon the Pleiades for hundreds of years to set the sailing season in the Mediterranean, and for guidelines around when to plant and harvest. Much of this is due to the stars’ distinctive blue color. They possess this color because they are what astronomers call hot B-Type stars –stars that burn extremely brightly, but only for a relatively short time.

Approximately every eight years, the planet Venus passes in front of the Pleiades. It is interesting to note that these passings aren’t identical; the planet either appears to pass directly in front of the cluster, approximately 2.5 degrees from the cluster, or 3.5 degrees from the cluster. Surprisingly each variant appears to occur every eight years. This is because Venus’ orbit is about 3.4 degrees off from the earth/sun line (the ecliptic) and the Pleiades just happen to be about four degrees north of the earth/sun line.

Masonic Connection It is said that Masonry is a system of morality veiled in allegory. If we look at the definition of allegory as “a story or picture that can reveal a hidden meaning,” we see examples throughout many of great religious traditions and throughout Masonry, in particular. The tracing boards are an example of this. At its most basic, an allegory is a mechanism for compression, especially in visual allegory. The colloquialism “a picture is worth a thousand words” understates imagery’s propensity for compression; as in the Pleiades, we have millennia of information being passed down to us from previous generations. With each Masonic tracing board, there is the equivalent of thousands of pages of information painted, drawn, or etched in symbols.

The Pleiades as represented on the tracing boards from the beginning of Masonry in 1717 or 1721 were likely based upon the agricultural tradition of early humans who relied upon the star cluster first to know when to migrate to and from particular areas, then later when to plant and harvest. As even the noble-people of the time lived close to the land, these concepts would have been close to mind. Nobles bought, sold, and traded land based on its propensity for yield, so they needed to understand how their land would be harvested. They also needed to know how to protect those who depended upon their land, and for that they needed to have a sense of time. This crucial lesson is covered early in Freemasonry, when we are reminded that we have only a short time during which to sow all that we will harvest when we die. Our lives are that duration when the Pleiades are in the sky, during which we try to do all of the good that we can, when the Pleiades metaphorically set we are finished with our toil and must reap what we have sown.

Not only that, most first degree tracing boards feature Jacob’s dream of the ladder leading to the Pleiades surrounding the moon. The moon is a symbol of femininity, embodying the cycles echoing through life. The ladder in some interpretations represents the human soul, and the angels represent God’s logoi, or logic and wisdom, pulling the soul up in distress and His descending in compassion. The angels also can represent the changing circumstances of mankind. As the moon represents the cycle of life, the journey of sowing and reaping that of which life consists is further exemplified. The ladder can also exemplify a bridge to the feminine, represented by both the moon and the Pleiades. For man to be at his best, it is critical that he understand the beauty represented by the generative potential of man and woman.

Our earlier brethren would have known much about the mythology represented by the story of the Pleiades, and would want for this symbol to represent both a warning and a charge. The warning is that we should circumscribe our passions lest we end up like Orion, forever chasing after beauty and self-gratification, leading to our own personal hell. The charge is that like Zeus, we must protect all of our females from the excesses of other males; in fact, that charge may be one of the primary reasons for the existence of our august Fraternity, along with providing insurance for the families of our operative forebears.

Conclusion Through the arc of time, the Pleiades have remained one of the most important star formations in human history. Across every culture, from Asia to America, we have revered those stars. In the future, who knows, they may actually serve as a proxy by which we can learn more about our own unusual star and solar system's development. As a star generator, the Pleiades have over one thousand stars, and could serve as an interesting destination for future travelers, or additionally as a place from which we could obtain significant amounts of energy.

The rich lessons passed down through thousands of years, and reenforced by the first degree tracing boards, provide us with an important memento mori that we are only here for a short time, but that we will be held accountable for what we do in the harvest time of our lives. We are also reminded that we can create our own hell by refusing to constrain our desires. These are important Masonic lessons that we cannot afford to forget, lest the precious order that we have built in our society fall to shreds as we are all consumed by our gluttony.