What do you think?
Rate this book
The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades: Stories from Around the World
The legends of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades that poets, priests, prophets, shamans, storytellers, artists, singers, and historians have told throughout time are retold in this compilation of the stories that have found their inspiration in nine beautiful stars clustered together in the night sky. While particular attention in this cross-cultural study is paid to the influence of the Pleiades cluster on the living traditions of indigenous people in North America, Australia, Japan, and the Pacific, much ancient mythology passed down through written and visual sources from ancient Egypt, India, Greece, and South America is also explored. Appearances of the myths in the modern world are also mentioned, including American presidential elections, Halloween, Atlantis, the Titanic, and Subaru automobiles. Serious astronomical research complements the variety of mythological explanations for the stars' existence by providing the modern world's scientific understanding of them.
368 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2005
33 people are currently reading
241 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 2, 2018
Short version: this book has now joined the very tiny club of books I haven't finished (Anna Karenina, The Hunt for Red October, and Rainbow Six). I believe in seeking out diversity of viewpoint. I usually complete even poorly written books because I felt like I should read the whole work before criticizing it.
Alas, I grow older and less patient with tripe now. Let's call that personal growth.
I was excited to read this book. The Pleiades have a rich worldwide mythology associated with them and I was looking forward to reading more than just the Greek story.
Unfortunately, the myths here are buried in all sorts of cockamamie. The author wouldn't know evidentiary proof or the scientific method if it stared her in the face. After reading her quoting out-of-context scientific figures with no understanding of what they were talking about, I finally got fed up when she started quoting notorious New Age figures as wise authorities. I skipped the rest of the introduction (!) and started reading the chapters that centered around the myths. That started out alright but quickly devolved into nothing but the author's unsupported opinion and more New Age ridiculousness.
Her line of thought generally goes something like this:
1 - Myth, with lots of her opinion thrown in, ignoring any contradictions in various versions or scholarly accounts of their origin.
2 - Some modern terms that are etymologically derived from said myth.
3 - A characteristic of that term/subject that is factual but has no relation to the original myth.
4 - Tenuous symbolic "meaning" of said characteristic, generally derived from suspect sources.
5 - New Age-y or ancient "wisdom" that isn't deep and is so general as to be meaningless but that the author asserts must be the deeper meaning of the myth!
Repeat ad nauseum.
Thus, half way through Chapter 1, after her demand that readers suspend their critical thinking and see the truth in the idea that Atlantis was real and that we're a "fifth race" and blah blah blah, I quit. The only value I can see in this book is as a dense source of logical fallacy examples for high school or college students.
Glad I can move on to a new Star Wars novel... at least that author knows the book is fiction.
Alas, I grow older and less patient with tripe now. Let's call that personal growth.
I was excited to read this book. The Pleiades have a rich worldwide mythology associated with them and I was looking forward to reading more than just the Greek story.
Unfortunately, the myths here are buried in all sorts of cockamamie. The author wouldn't know evidentiary proof or the scientific method if it stared her in the face. After reading her quoting out-of-context scientific figures with no understanding of what they were talking about, I finally got fed up when she started quoting notorious New Age figures as wise authorities. I skipped the rest of the introduction (!) and started reading the chapters that centered around the myths. That started out alright but quickly devolved into nothing but the author's unsupported opinion and more New Age ridiculousness.
Her line of thought generally goes something like this:
1 - Myth, with lots of her opinion thrown in, ignoring any contradictions in various versions or scholarly accounts of their origin.
2 - Some modern terms that are etymologically derived from said myth.
3 - A characteristic of that term/subject that is factual but has no relation to the original myth.
4 - Tenuous symbolic "meaning" of said characteristic, generally derived from suspect sources.
5 - New Age-y or ancient "wisdom" that isn't deep and is so general as to be meaningless but that the author asserts must be the deeper meaning of the myth!
Repeat ad nauseum.
Thus, half way through Chapter 1, after her demand that readers suspend their critical thinking and see the truth in the idea that Atlantis was real and that we're a "fifth race" and blah blah blah, I quit. The only value I can see in this book is as a dense source of logical fallacy examples for high school or college students.
Glad I can move on to a new Star Wars novel... at least that author knows the book is fiction.
October 4, 2022
I had high hopes - I love mythology and stargazing, and I was hoping to read "stories from around the world." What I got instead was an unorganized mish-mash of mentions of myths and legends but few actual stories. This book is full of illogical, superstitious, rambling "spiritual" pseudoscience and nonsense theories. An example: the author cites Wikipedia and encyclopedias for facts such as the Pleiades are 400 light-years away, and then goes on to suggest that this fact is evidence of lost ancient knowledge because the number 400 shows up in some myths. The writing is like a poor example of a student research paper, with heavy use of quotes and lots of disreputable cited sources. I would actually give this book zero stars. Not worth it.
February 20, 2018
Loved all the dreaming stories and their careful analysis from the cultural perspective. Munya Andrews did quite a bit of research comparing the stories of Pleiades from all over the world (Egypt, India, Japan, South and North America etc.) and it is a very interesting comparison. It was repulsive and physically painful to read about European scholars claiming the Aboriginal stories of the Seven Sisters were copied from the European ones, so much disrespect. The only thing that spoilt the book was all the unnecessary mysticism with alien visits, astrology and starlight possessing intelligence.
November 26, 2023
A *lot* of pseudoscience here. I’d have loved a comparative anthropology/literarcy/soc analysis but such reaches!
July 12, 2023
Although an interesting book, I struggled to remain focused on it. This book was not what I expected which was a collection of stories from around the world presented and expanded on. You get some but overall they aren't the biggest focus. The author also tends to go on tangents from something vague to something very specific and then widens back out. You will also learn a lot about Madame Blavatsky as the author mentions her at almost every turn. Not the worst read but it's more about theories than stories.
May 29, 2017
Well researched and written.
June 18, 2019
I found them interesting and stimulating. Relaxing read.
to-be-continued
September 5, 2014Can't deal with you right now, book. It's not you, it's me.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews