Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/548

412 At the end of every period of fifty-two years, in the month of November when the Pleiades would culminate at midnight, these rude people imagined the world would end. Human sacrifices were offered, while the entire population passed the night upon their knees awaiting their doom.

Far removed from the Aztecs we find the people of Japan in their great national festival, the Feast of Lanterns, a feast that is alive to-day, commemorating at this same season of the year some great calamity which was supposed to have overwhelmed the race of man, in the far distant past, when these seven little stars were prominent in the heavens.

In the Talmud we find a curious legend associating the Pleiades with an all-destroying flood, expressed as follows:

"When the Holy One, blessed be He, wished to bring the deluge upon the world. He took two stars out of the Pleiades and thus let the deluge loose, and when He wished to arrest it. He took two stars out of Arcturus and stopped it."

As we have seen, the ancient Hindus, the Aztecs, and the Japanese all had memorial festivals in the month of November. These generally occurred on the 17th of the month.

Among the ancient Egyptians the same day was observed, and although their calendar was subsequently changed, the occasion was not lost sight of. The date of their celebration was determined by the culmination of the Pleiades at midnight, and on this date the solemn three days' festival commenced. With them, as with the three pr^iously mentioned nations, the festival was associated with the tradition of a deluge or race-destroying calamity. Blake says in regard to this that "when we connect the fact that this festival occurred on the 17th day of Athyr, with the date on which the Mosaic account of the deluge of Noah states it to have commenced, in the second month of the Jewish year, which corresponds to November, the 17th day of the month, it must be acknowledged that this