My imagination was captured by the story of the Seven Sisters that lie in The Pleiades constellation. Their names are from Greek Mythology: Maia (shown here), Alcyone, Electra, Celaeno, Taygeta, Asterope, and Merope. Their father Atlas was punished by Zeus for supporting the warring Titans and condemned him to hold up the heavens for eternity. The Sisters were so saddened by their father’s demise that they committed suicide. Zeus then immortalised the Sisters by placing them in the heavens.
In ancient Greece the circle was thought of as the perfect shape – a symbol of divine symmetry and balance in nature. Pythagoras called three the perfect number, expressive of “beginning, middle, and end.” Everything has its time. I have tried to encapsulate these thoughts in my Seven Sisters series of abstracts.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson mentions ‘The Pleiades’ in his poem Locksley Hall:
‘Many a night I saw Pleiades, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.’
This beautiful constellation is most prominent in the Autumn sky.