One of the most striking illustrations of the universality of goddess lore, and evidence of its origin early in human history is the widespread story of the Seven Sisters, about the Pleiades, a cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus. All versions of the story say there are seven Pleiads, but only six stars are visible to the naked eye, and so some astronomers suggest that one of the seven has faded, but if that is so, it must have happened before the time of the Greeks, for they explain that one of the seven, Electra, has personal reasons for being in hiding. One of the Australian Aboriginal versions of the story also has a explanation for the missing sister...she has been detained by an amorous kidnapper, who after some time of being amazed by her strange powers, realises that she is a water spirit, a goddess.

In the Greek story of the Pleiades, the seven sisters are named Alcyone, Electra, Celaeno, Maia, Sterope, Merope and Taygete, and they are identified as the virgin companions of Artemis. As Artemis is in myth the most feminist/separatist form of the goddess, the seven sisters symbolise in their circle an exclusively female part of goddess lore, that is, secret womens' business.

To the Greeks and those before them, these stars were important sky markers because they are near the north celestial pole, the point in the sky that the "sphere of the fixed stars" appears to rotate about, when observed night by night. Thus they indicated North to Minoan sailors, and provided an annual calendar as they dipped below and then re-emerged above the northern horizon as viewed from say, Crete or the Nile.

The solar calendar of days (which marked out the life of the sun god) and the lunar calendar of nights (which gave the moods of the moon goddess) were of central importance in ancient times. In some of the goddess-cultures, during at least part of their history, sacrifices, sometimes human, were made at a time indicated by the rising of the Pleiades. The sacrifice (be it man or bull) then rose to heaven, where it (he) could be seen as the constellation Taurus, whose crescent-moon horns are those of the sacrificial bull offered to the goddess by the Minoans. The Pleiades represented a special goddess place in the heavens where she was hostess to this man-become-god, signified by Taurus. In the Arthurian equivalent, this goddess place is a island... the apple isle, Avalon.

The blessed damozel lean'd out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters still'd at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

HE THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS WHEN A PART OF THE CONSTELLATIONS OF HEAVEN

I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.
O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,
Must I endure your amorous cries?

W B Yeats