05/16/2026
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Tomorrow, the New Moon occurs in Ta**us — the constellation that holds one of the most universally watched star clusters in human history.
The Pleiades.
Every major civilization on Earth tracked the Pleiades. Not because astronomers told them to. Because these seven stars — six visible to the naked eye, one slightly dimmer — reliably marked the seasons, predicted the rains, announced the planting window, and told ancient peoples when the year was beginning or ending. Independently, on every inhabited continent, humans looked at the same cluster and built their calendars around it.
Tomorrow's New Moon occurs at the edge of Ta**us, the bull — the constellation the Pleiades sit within, the same constellation that ancient stargazers watched each year as the Pleiades rose before dawn in spring or disappeared in autumn. The New Moon in Ta**us, near the Pleiades, is not simply an astronomical event. It is an annual celestial alignment that human civilizations have been watching, naming, and celebrating for at minimum 17,000 years.
Here is what six civilizations did with the Pleiades.
The ancient Greeks called them the Pleiades — the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, placed in the sky by Zeus. For Greek farmers, the heliacal rising of the Pleiades in May marked the beginning of the sailing season and the harvest. Hesiod wrote in Works and Days, around 700 BCE, that farmers should begin their harvest when the Pleiades rise at dawn — and plow their fields when the Pleiades set. The Greeks tracked two Pleiades events per year — one for planting, one for harvest — with complete precision for centuries.
The Aztec civilization built their entire 52-year calendar cycle around the Pleiades. The Aztec New Fire Ceremony — Xiuhpohualli — occurred every 52 years when the Pleiades crossed the zenith at midnight on a specific date. If the Pleiades crossed the zenith correctly, the gods had renewed the world for another 52-year cycle. If they did not — which was feared but never occurred — the world would end. The Pleiades were not a navigational tool for the Aztecs. They were the mechanism of cosmic time itself.
Aboriginal Australians developed the most sophisticated Pleiades traditions in human history — spanning an estimated 17,000 years of continuous astronomical observation, making it potentially the oldest continuous astronomical tradition on Earth. Different Aboriginal nations gave the Pleiades different names and stories, but across the continent the cluster consistently appeared as a group of women, often being chased by the stars of Orion. Aboriginal Australians used Pleiades visibility to regulate seasonal food gathering calendars — the rising and setting of the cluster marked specific times for hunting, fishing, and plant harvesting with remarkable precision.
In Japan, the Pleiades are called Subaru — yes, the car company chose this name deliberately, and its logo is six Pleiades stars. The Pleiades were called Mutsuraboshi in ancient Japan — the six-star cluster — and their appearance in the sky marked agricultural seasons. The oldest Japanese star catalog, from around 800 CE, lists the Pleiades as the first asterism — placing them at the beginning of the sky.
For the ancient Egyptians, the Pleiades were associated with Neith — the goddess of weaving and hunting — and with the afterlife. The heliacal rising of the Pleiades in autumn marked important religious festivals. Some researchers have proposed that certain pyramid orientations align with Pleiades rising positions, though this remains debated among archaeoastronomers.
The Lakota Sioux people of North America called the Pleiades Tȟaspáŋ Oyáŋke — the place of the seven stars — and connected them directly to the origin stories of their people. In Lakota cosmology, the ancestors of the Lakota people descended to Earth from the Pleiades. The cluster was not simply a calendar marker — it was home.
Tomorrow's New Moon in Ta**us places the invisible Moon directly in the same region of sky as the Pleiades. Ancient astronomers would have known this. They tracked the Moon's monthly path through the constellations the way modern people track time on a phone. A New Moon in Ta**us, near the Pleiades, would have been a noted event — the dark Moon resting among the seven sisters, the sky blank where the Moon should be, the Pleiades unobscured.
Six continents. Six languages. Six completely different religious systems. One star cluster.
The same seven stars that guided Aztec priests during the New Fire Ceremony, Aboriginal Australians during seasonal food gathering, Greek sailors preparing their ships, Japanese farmers watching the dawn sky, Egyptian astronomers marking the calendar, and Lakota oral tradition describing the origin of their people — those seven stars are in the sky tonight, above you.
What ancient calendar were your ancestors keeping?
**us
