3. thurayyā ثريا • the pleiades

Lost Pleiad (1884) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, via Wikipedia

Letter: ج jīm

Indicator: Alcyone (η Tauri), the brightest star in the Pleiades, but the Pleiades as a whole indicate this station

Plants: Plants that we interact with in the form of many little seeds, such as flax and nigella (given by al-Buni). Fennel is given by Hermes on the 15 Stars, but consider all the other plants with that distinctive flavor such as licorice and anise as well.

Substances: clear quartz, silver and gold, reflective glassy, glittery, sparking things, other lucky things

Animals: fish, cattle, doves

Angel: ابولسيث • Abūlsīth by Ibn al-Ḥātim or ابولسيت • Abūlasīt by Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm.

This station’s name in Arabic is simply the Arabic name for the asterism we call The Pleiades in English, very straightforward. In English, we could call this station “The 7 Sisters” or perhaps one of the many translations of its Arabic name (something like “the Many Little Ones”).

It can be used to make wish-granting talismans. It is especially well suited to gather people together and to join things, for safe travel by air or water, and to make medicine (especially cooling medicine, says al-Bunī). It is one of the stations known to support the “acquisition of all good things.” Several sources mention using this one to make a magic silver ring. Al-Bunī says this spirit runs both hot and cold.

As you will see in the stories below, there are some general themes that seem to emerge regarding these stars cross culturally:

• They are often represented as a group of women. The image of sisters in particular appears repeatedly. Sometimes they’re children or orphans instead. They have also been said to rear a number of gods in different cultures.

• Their story often includes being saved by the divine from danger.

• They represent a portal between the everyday world and the spirit world. Perhaps they connect us to the ancestors or the world of the fairies. Perhaps they even govern that portal.

• They are related to vision, that of spirits, the metaphorical knowledge of secrets, or physical eyesight.

• They have a profound connection with the observation of time and the development of calendars. Their heliacal rise and set often indicates the beginning or ending of culturally important seasons and festivals. Their myths may be some of the oldest in human culture.

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personal gnosis

I have long been drawn to The Sisters, even before I had learned enough Arabic to understand Thurayyā’s close relationship to the Pleiades. Many people point towards Thurayyā as a friendly and supportive station to work with and I’ve become one of them. I always tell anyone who is interested in getting involved with the stations to schedule their first working with either 3 Thurayyā, 7 Dhirā’ or 24 Su’ūd, stations whose spirits I have found to be very approachable.

For my stroll through the stations, I approached Thurayyā during the full Moon of November 2023. Interestingly, the exact moment of the full Moon would technically occur in the first degree of Dabarān, the 4th station, but would rise and culminate in my location that night in Thurayyā. As I do to solve all of these problems, I divined an answer. Months in advance, when I realized this technical question I cast a geomantic figure to answer which spirit would be easiest to contact during my gnosis ritual. For Dabarān: Carcer (Jail). For Thurayyā: Via ([the] Way). Seemed clear to me!

The presiding spirit of November’s full Moon wasn’t the only technical issue I was considering. As the year went on I realized that I didn’t have astrologically obvious times to connect with many of the early stations. During 2023, there was not a full or crescent Moon falling in stations 1, 2, or 4. Additionally, the crescent Moon in the wily 5th had evaded my calculations in May, so I was also missing its gnosis session (a story for its own entry). What I was led to via contemplation and divination was building a 5 night ritual surrounding Thurayyā’s full Moon to collect gnosis of the first five stations (Sharaṭain, Buṭain, Thurayyā, Dabarān and Haq’a).

I lit my candle, suffumigated my phylactery with incense and performed the Invocation of the Moon.

Beautiful demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo), via Wikipedia

a koi pond, the light of the full moon reflecting off the water. the fish flash and sparkle. one suddenly leaps from the water and snatches a damselfly. a dog barks in the distance.

“I AM the many glimmering ones,

like a table set with candles

and sparkling crystal.

i am gentle, kind and friendly,

i gather the helpful ones

and encourage the hopeless to wish.

i am the swirling incense smoke rising to heaven

from the silver censor.

make a wish on my spark, dear traveler.”

In all of my encounters with Abūlsīth, I found the spirit to arrive in a chorus of feminine voices. The image I scried this time was very busy, full of creatures and movement and glinting light, and the voice I heard sounded like a chorus of women speaking at the same time in a calming voice. I feel comforted and hopeful when I connect with this angel. In a holistic sense, they really do feel like twinkling and uplifting sparkles. In comparison to other stations, I found contact with Thurayyā to be quite gentle on my energy body. After doing my divination and taking my notes and thanking them, I put out the candle and covered the phylactery and was able to lay down in my bed for a perfect night of restful sleep. Considering this was a full Moon ritual, this seems like a good representation of their very gentle touch. Not all of the stations are so gentle in their touch!

My divination with the Tarot of the PGM highlighted a few elements of this station. The keystone card for this station was the 7 of Pentacles, reaping a reward. The Homeric Oracle for that card reads “a thing delayed late of fulfillment whose fame will never perish” (Iliad 2:325), and its talisman is a magical egg which brings prosperity from PGM XII 96-106. The heart of this station is the Moon, specifically Selene in the Tarot of the PGM.

Last year’s gnosis ritual was not my first encounter with the Sisters. From my earliest forays into the pattern of 28, the 3rd station has always stood out to me as a magical ally. They’re a wonderful septet to work with as a component of any kind of folk magic, sorcery or witchcraft with benevolent aims. When I was new to this whole astromagic thing, I would often select the day the Moon was in the 3rd station as an easy choice of a day when I had a magical working in mind and just needed a generally auspicious day to do it.

I have made many magical oils with Thurayyā as well as a number of charms, amulets, and other magically charged substances but I’ve only made one ensouled object that could properly be called a talisman. It is actually a talismanic book, a notebook which I inscribed on the back cover with a complex talismanic image which centers on the Arabic letter ج jīm. I use this book as tool and ally for building my career and it has had incredible effects, especially in terms of putting me in seemingly chance contact with people who have offered me a lot of support in my work. I hope to write more about this specific talisman soon (and hopefully share some ideas for creating your own talismanic notebook blessed by a spirit in Abūlsīth’s court).

The song I settled on for Thurayyā, at least for the purposes of this essay, is called “God in Everything.” The 3rd station is a very musical one and surely I will end up with a Pleiades playlist before this is all said and done, but this was the song that came up the loudest on the day I gathered gnosis of them. This album had come out a few months before my session with at-Thurayyā but I hadn’t encountered it til the day of the full Moon. It was recommended to me by Spotify when I was making my plans for the ritual that night. It’s all about finding the divine in earthy and sensual things.

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on thurayyā • ثريا

There is an element of collection to this station. Thurayyā likes to bring people together into containers. In my experiences with them in magic, I’ve found this to be true and in very lovely ways. They bring lovers together, create spaces for connection. Thurayyā is a wonderfully ally for any kind of mutual aid. That being said, Ashmole 396 says that if you’re arrested while the Moon is in this station, you will long abide in prison. Putting people in containers isn’t always so lovely.

There is a connection between Thurayyā and sparkling, glistening, or glassy things. In Arabic, the word thurayyā is one of the words for chandelier, referencing the appearance of the Pleiades. De Quindecim Stellis gives quartz as the stone for the Pleiades. I have personally found that reflective and sparkly things draw Abūlsīth’s attention and I try to include plenty of them when making altars for them.

The Pleiades are said to be bad for the eyesight in nativities, yet they can be used in talismans to cure blindness. These types of contradictions are common with the fixed stars in the astrological tradition. I really like the way my colleague Chloe Margherita called them “unveilers of the subtle” which also bring “the truth and difficulty that real seeing reveals.” Thurayyā lets you see things a different way, things that you might not usually be able to see. Certainly not without their help. I haven’t tried it but I’ve often wondered about using elections in this station for exploring with entheogens. I imagine they could show a great deal through altered states of consciousness.

Al-Buni connects Thurayyā to flaxseeds and nigella, while the Pleiades are associated with fennel and frankincense. I have personally found the connection to flax to be very prominent. It could be taken advantage of by eating flaxseeds, anointing with linseed oil, or using linen cloth to connect with Thurayyā. I might wear linen during a 3rd manzil ritual, offer bread topped with flaxseeds to Abūlsīth and anoint my talismans with a dab of linseed oil. Nigella and fennel have a very ephemeral and unique flavor that’s hard to place, which feels perfect for Thurayyā. Nigella sort of tastes like a smoky and oniony cumin, while fennel is sweet and earthy and licoricey. All of these can be good additions to incense blends. As for common incense resins, frankincense is traditional as I said, but I also like white copal. Abūlsīth seems to enjoy the thick white smoke that these make, which to me sort of resembles the luminous dust cloud that we see the Pleiades through here on Earth. Fennel is said to chase away spirits

Finally, there is a profound connection between water and Thurayyā. You could say that the Pleiades glisten like a koi pond under the moonlight 😉 Electional texts say that the Moon in Thurayyā is dangerous for travel by sea, while magical texts say that it makes talismans to make seafaring safe. Many contemporary astrologers [Lee Lehman Magic of Electional Astrology] have had success with interpreting astrological guidance regarding sea travel to apply to travel by air as well, so perhaps Thurayyā could help with airline travel. It’s an experiment I’d like to try someday.

Ptolemy says that the Pleiades are ruled by the Moon and Mars. Thurayyā is a wish-granter, but especially the wishes born from desperation and hopelessness. The most heartfelt wishes often arise from situations of despair.

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a collection of starlore

The Pleiades refers to an open star cluster of B-type stars that has been officially named Messier 45 by astronomers. B-type stars are extremely hot and luminous stars that appear bluish to the naked eye. They don’t typically live very long, which means they’re most often found in clusters (because they don’t have time to move very far from where they were born). The stars of Thurayyā are one of the nearest star clusters to Earth and, in fact, the closest Messier Object to us.

Messier Objects refer to a catalog of the brightest astronomical objects that can be seen in the northern hemisphere. Essentially these objects are everything bright that isn’t a star or something in our solar system, so it includes things like star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae. The list was formed by Charles Messier and his assistant in the 18th century, hence the name. I’m sure I’m not alone in initially thinking the name referred to the fact that these objects weren’t stars or comets but instead all the other “messier” things in the sky.

The Pleiades factor heavily into starlore around the world, especially in the northern hemisphere and I’ve always found it a bit curious. What is so special about them? They aren’t the biggest or the brightest. It seems like part of the answer is about their proximity to us. Because they are so close and so tightly clustered together, they were easily identified by our ancestors. Entire books have been written on comparative legends of the Pleiades, but here’s a quick grab bag of stories I’ve encountered about them.

The Greeks gave them the name we use in English. To them, αἱ Πλειάδες were a group of seven nymph sisters who accompanied Artemis, a goddess who is often identified with the Moon. They were associated with rain and the season for seafaring. They were part of the lineage of Dionysus as teachers and caregivers, with their sisters the Hyades (who are associated with the next station). Greek mythology tells us that their father was Atlas and their mother Pleione, but it appears that the sisters were present in Greek culture before their mother (who was likely named after them, rather than the other way around). One of the stories of their origin in Greek culture is that they were being chased by Orion, so Zeus transformed them first into doves, then into stars to get away from him (unfortunately, Orion ended up in the sky too, so now he’s stuck in pursuit of them).

In the ancient Mesopotamian star catalogues, these stars were used for intercalation. Over the centuries of Mesopotamian civilization, the calendar had to be periodically corrected to stay in sync with the Sun, otherwise it would drift over time. We have leap years in our calendar for the same reasons. There were three stars used to calculate leap years in Babylonian astronomy, but the Pleiades was the most notable of them all. So much so that its name in Cuneiform, conventionally romanized as MUL.MUL, simply meant “Star of Stars.”

This nakshatra is named Kṛttikā in Indian starlore. The six Kṛttika of the Pleiades raised the Hindu god Kārtikeye, their god of war. His name actually means “of the Kṛttika.” The month named after them, Kartik, brings us the famous festival of Diwali. One source notes that in Chinese culture, they were venerated by girls and women as “the Seven Sisters of Industry” (Star Names 393). The Pleiades are also (likely) mentioned in the Tanakh, called כימה Kimah by Iyyov. al-Bunī records an Arabic rhyme that says “when Thurayyā rises at night, give your shepherd a cloak; when it rises at dawn, give him a water-skin.”

To the Diné (or Navajo) people, the Pleiades were the first constellation. Dilyéhé, whose name means something like “pinlike sparkles,” was a timekeeping star for them. Navajo and Cherokee astronomer Dr. Nancy C. Maryboy notes a traditional saying, “don’t let Dilyéhé see you plant your seeds.” The heliacal set of the Pleiades in late spring marked the beginning of the planting season in Dinétah, their homeland.

The asterism figures heavily into the Anishinaabe creation story, representing a hole between the earth and the star world. Bagonegiizhig, “hole in the sky”, was the place that the goddess Giizhigookwe lowered the first humans onto the earth through. This doorway is also the portal through which the souls of the dead entered the afterlife to be with their ancestors. The Anishinaabe also observed seven sisters in this asterism—here they were guardians of this sacred portal.

The Mexica (or Aztec) used two calendric systems, the xiuhpohualli (the agricultural calendar) and the tonalpohualli (the sacred calendar), and used the Pleiades to sync them together in 52 year cycles. On the night the calendars synced, they celebrated a festival in which they kept vigil through the night until the Tiānquiztli (meaning “marketplace” or “tianguis”) reached their zenith, which represented the rebirth of the world. This was one of the many components of the New Fire ceremony.

In Dakota and Lakota starlore, the Pleiades were a group of sisters who were being chased by a bear. Their name for this asterism, Wičhíŋčala Šakówiŋ, means Seven Girls (though we know they’re sisters from the story). To escape the bear, they climbed on top of a rock and prayed to Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka for help. The spirits made the rock rise into the sky to save them from the bears, and when the sisters reached the sky they became these stars. This is an origin story of Matȟó Thípila, Bear Lodge.