To pre-Vedic India they were the seven mothers who judged men and sometimes wounded them with moon-shaped razors. To the Egyptians they were seven goddesses whom the dead had to encounter and by whom they had to be judged.40 Under the Greeks, the Pleiades were part of an early cult of Aphrodite, who gave birth to seven daughters and turned them into a flock of doves that became the seven stars of the Pleiades. The leader of these doves was a dove-goddess, Alcyone, who was said to bring good weather for the planting season.41 The seven visible stars of the Pleiades were also seen as a smaller version of the great She-Bear goddess, Ursa Major, with her seven stars, is no chance coincidence, and that the exact date here stated must have been regulated by the Pleiades, as was the Egyptian date. "Surely this is an interesting reference ence to the history of these stars.
The Persians formerly called the month of November "Mordad," meaning "the angel of death," and that month. marked the date of their festival of the dead. On the day of the midnight culmination of the Pleiades, Nov. 17th, no petition was presented in vain to their ancient kings.
In Ceylon, and in far distant Peru, a like festival took place at this season of the year. In the latter country the observation of the rising and setting of the Pleiades was the basis of their primitive calendar.The Society Islanders commenced their year on the first day of the appearance of the Pleiades, which occurred in November. This star group also marked a festival in commemoration of the dead which took place annually about the end of October in the Tonga Islands of the Fiji group.
Blake tells us that the first of November was with the ancient Druids of Britain a night full of mystery, in which they annually celebrated the reconstruction of the world. Although Druidism is now extinct the relics of it remain to this day, for in our calendar we still find Nov. Ist marked as "All Saints' Day," and in the pre-Reformation calendar the last day of October was marked "All Hallow Eve," and the 2d of November as "All Souls'," indicating clearly a three days' festival of the dead, commencing in the even ing, and originally regulated by the Pleiades.
In France, the Parisians at this festival repair to the cemeteries and lunch at the graves of their ancestors. Prescott in his History of the Conquest of Mexico, states that the great festival of the Mexican cycle was held in November at the time of the midnight culmination of the Pleiades, and the Spanish conquerors found in Mexico a tradition that the world was once destroyed when the Pleiades culminated at midnight, the identical tradition
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