Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/545

Rh

In the New Testament we find the "Seven Stars" also mentioned. In the first chapter of the Revelation, the Apostle St. John writes that "he saw seven golden candle-sticks and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of Man ... and He had in his right hand Seven Stars. The Seven Stars are of the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches."

The Seven Stars in a simple compact cluster, says Maunder, stand for the church in its many diversities, and its essential unity. Modern almanacs designate the Pleiades "the 7*" or "seven stars."

The Pleiades were among the first mentioned stars in the astronomical literature of China, one record of them bearing the early date of 2357, when Aceyone, the lucida of the group, was near the vernal equinox. The Chinese young women worshipped these stars as the Seven Sisters of Industry.

As might be expected, this celebrated group was the object of worship in Egypt. There the Pleiades were identified with the goddess Nit, meaning the shuttle, one of the principal divinities of Lower Egypt.

The Great Pyramid, which was without doubt erected for astronomical purposes, is closely associated with the Pleiades, as Proctor has shown.

In the year 2170 the date at which the Pleiades really opened the spring season by their midnight culmination, they could be seen through the south passageway of this gigantic mausoleum. It has even been suggested that the seven chambers of the Great Pyramid commemorate these seven famous stars. Blake says: "Either the whole of the conclusions respecting the pyramids is founded on pure imagination, or we have here another remarkable