Alcyone and the Pleiades – Fire in the Dark

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Astrological talismans of Alcyone and the Pleiades
Carved quartz eye stone set in solid sterling silver on a 20″ sterling silver chain

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The Pleiades star cluster, with Alcyone as its brightest star, has held vast and rich cross-cultural significance throughout history. The ancient Greeks identified the Pleiades as the Seven Sisters, daughters of Atlas and Pleione, who were transformed into stars to escape the hunter Orion. In Greek astrology, the heliacal rising and setting of the Pleiades marked the beginning and end of agricultural seasons, underscoring their influence over cycles of birth and decay. One could spend a lifetime exploring the lore of this asterism and its legion of spirits and still barely scratch the surface of its depths. Therefore, I will focus my writing here primarily on my personal experiences with these stars and the events surrounding the creation of these talismans.

I elected these talismans around March of 2024, and directly before the election, which occurred on July 2, I attended the Viridis Genii Symposium, a wonderful herbal magic conference I had been wanting to attend for many years. During the conference, I participated in a workshop led by the amazing Sfinga of With Cunning and Command and The Frightful Howls You May Hear, which involved crafting a charm bag connected with the Pleiades through her ancestral tradition of Balkan magic.

When I returned home to create the talismans, it seemed only natural that this charm should assist in their creation. During the electional window, I inscribed quartz stones, carved in the shape of an eye, with the sigil of the Pleiades. Quartz is the stone associated with talismans of these stars, and their connection with both physical and mystical vision, as well as protection from the evil eye made these a fitting choice. The stones were then enspirited and suffumigated with frankincense and fennel. In the election, Alcyone culminated on the midheaven with the Moon applying to conjoin it. The Moon was exalted in Taurus, fast and unafflicted, and applied to a sextile with Mercury, the ruler of the ascendant and the midheaven, who was also unafflicted. Although the Moon was waning, this was mitigated by the presence of benefic Jupiter on the midheaven, which greatly fortunates all elections overall and overcomes all difficulties with the Moon, per the Picatrix. The chart is available to view in the gallery.

My original design for the talismans’ jewelry was the form of a ring, with flames surrounding the stone, as a reference to the associated talismanic image of a lamp. The talismans had other plans, however, and the art quickly took on a life of its own, with the spirits directly guiding their form. I scrapped the initial prototype ring and went back to the drawing board, realizing that these stones wanted to be set into a larger pendant. I knew that I wanted the jewelry to incorporate flames as the rings did and so I began to sketch. My jewelry designs typically begin as drawings, and while I was sketching out the flames, the image of a woman began to emerge. This excited me as the other talismanic image of the Pleiades besides a lamp, is a woman.  As I completed the drawing, I noticed an unexpected similarity between this figure, with her arms raised and surrounded by flames, and the Anima Sola (the Lonely Soul), a Catholic devotional image depicting a soul in purgatory.

the early stages of the wax sculpture and the Anima Sola

I knew instinctively that there was a deeper mystery here for me to unravel, and I was reminded of a passage from Bernadette Brady’s Brady’s Book of Fixed Stars:

The Celts also used the acronychal rising of the Pleiades to mark their month of mourning for dead friends. Prayers for the dead were said on the first day of what we now know as November. This custom is still echoed today with All Hallows Eve (October 31), All Saints Day (November 1), and All Souls Day (November 2), still celebrated as the feast days of the dead”.

While the heliacal rising of a star marks its first visibility, the acronychal rising marks its final visibility. This is the moment when the star touches the cross of matter and walks among us one last time before descending into the underworld. It represents a pivotal threshold between the upper and lower worlds, and the fact that this occurs around the time of many cross-cultural festivals of the dead holds deep significance. This is why I chose to wait until this time of year to release the talismans. All Souls’ Day also holds personal significance for me, as it is the day I was born. As such the holy souls have been a source of fascination and inspiration for me since childhood through my Catholic upbringing, and have greatly informed my engagement with Catholicism magically as a fundamentally necromantic cult. Inspired by Sfinga’s Balkan folklore, I decided to explore Slavic traditions surrounding both the Pleiades and purgatory, as my father was a Polish immigrant, and the source of my Catholic ancestry.

I came upon the following passage in a paper entitled The Pleiades In The Belarusian Tradition: Folklore Texts And Linguistic Areal Studies by Tsimafei Avilin which can be found here.

While describing this star cluster, sources often draw an obvious parallel between the holes in a sieve and the stars: “Sitečko. So, it looks like sifted flour. The same in the sky: many stars in a heap” (Avilin 2015); “there are also [the Little Sieve, Blr. Maloe Sita] holes, small stars” (ibid.); “The Sieve (Blr. Sita) of stars … the stars [in the Sieve] as the holes, there are many of them” (ibid.); “Siciečka (a little Sieve) – many, many stars as intertwined” (ibid.); “[Why was it called the Sieve?] So, I don’t know, maybe because it begins to sow corn from the autumn for the winter. Close to autumn, after the Sieve has risen, it began to sow corn” (ibid.). Also notice a quite popular Belarusian riddle: “How many stars in the sky, so many holes in the ground” (key – a stubble (the lower part of the grass stem after harvesting). In the Słuck and Homiel regions some beliefs indicate this sieve is a place where souls are being sifted: “The Sieve is fiery candles in the sky in the place where righteous souls get together. Angels sift here the righteous souls from the wicked” (Sieržputoŭski 1930: 7); “The souls are sifted – the wicked to hell, and the righteous to paradise” (Avilin 2015). Meteors were interpreted in a similar way: if a star falls, it indicates that the human soul flies from Purgatory. The famous Polish-Belarusian writer Mickievič described this heavenly sieve as a reminder about the first creations of God: “To the north shines the circle of the starry Sieve, through which God, as they say, gifted grains of corn, when he cast them down from heaven for Adam our father, who had been banished for his sins from paradise” (Mickiewicz 1834: 136–137).

my fennel plant with some caterpillar friends

These and many other discoveries made during this extended working illuminated the numerous connections between the Pleiades, the dead, and mediumship—echoed in their talismanic uses as described in Hermes on 15 Fixed Stars:

“Fennel seed with frankincense and quicksilver placed under a crystal with the appropriate character [engraved on it], with the Moon conjunct the Pleiades rising or at midheaven, preserves the eyesight, summons demons and the spirits of the dead, calls the winds, and reveals secrets and things that are lost.”

Agrippa also reflects this: “Under the constellation of Pleiades, they made the image of a little Virgin, or the figure of a lamp; it is reported to increase the light of the eyes, to assemble spirits, to raise winds, and to reveal secret and hidden things.”

The talismans were created for granting deep insight and visionary mediumship. They may also be used to assist with ancestor work. They were hand-sculpted in jeweler’s wax and cast in solid sterling silver. Carved quartz eye stones were set into the pieces, with a fennel seed placed beneath each stone. These seeds were gathered ritually from a plant I personally grew from seed during the months-long process of creating these talismans. The back of the talisman has a hole aligned with the center of the eye stone to allow light to pass through the eye. Each piece is approximately 1.75 inches tall and comes on a 20-inch sterling silver chain along with a copy of the devotional artwork above printed on card stock. 10 were made.

Here is a playlist of resonant music that aided in their creation and can be used to further connect with their spirit.

May the daimon of these talismans grant you insight and visionary mediumship

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