{"id":145,"date":"2025-04-23T11:00:05","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tracefleemangarcia.com\/trXiv\/?p=145"},"modified":"2025-04-23T11:00:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T11:00:05","slug":"ghost-astrology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tracefleemangarcia.com\/trXiv\/2025\/04\/23\/ghost-astrology\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghost astrology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A curious idea which is attested across all continents is that of a “lost Pleiad”, in which one of the stars in the Pleiades cluster– generally called sisters, virgins, maidens, and so one — fades, either from death, abduction, or even shame. Often, they are menaced by men identified with the constellation Orion.1<\/a><\/sup> The astronomer Keith P. Hertzog writes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A drop in the hierarchical progression of Pleiades luminosities ensures that most people will report six, keen eyed, tenacious observers nine or ten, but almost nobody would stress seven. Yet this has not always been the case. The combined testimony of numerous societies, spanning continents and millennia, for a seventh easily visible Pleiad which subsequently dimmed, is explainable either by an unknown type of cyclical variation, or by cultural diffusion on a scope utterly unprecedented in human annals.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This unprecedented cultural diffusion would have began 100,000 years ago, when Europeans and Indigenous Australians last shared a common ancestor.3<\/a><\/sup> This proposal is interesting, and reminds me of a myth transmitted by Klamath people which accords, quite surprisingly, with the eruption of Mount Mazama about 7,000 years BP.4<\/a><\/sup> (Outside of this event, geomythology is generally hogwash — the very definition of confirmation bias. See Witton & Hing.5<\/a><\/sup>) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If indeed there is an ancient seed at the root of this mytheme, it illustrates longevity of particular cultural complexes. The great semiotician Thomas Sebeok, observing that ritual (incl. religion) seems to be the best form of preserving cultural memory, proposed forming an “atomic priesthood” to deter future humans, perhaps thousands of years in the future, from disturbing nuclear waste sites.6<\/a><\/sup> In other words, myth and ceremony have the unique ability to attest changes in deep time, or at least close to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is particularly notable for astrology-astronomy, as the Pleiades example suggests. Though humans have generally relied on the consistency of the firmament for navigation, time-keeping, and of course divination, it is not only precessing from our vantage point on Earth, but also shifting in real space as well. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the constellations will mutate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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