Alcyone

Eta Tauri — brightest of the Pleiades, the eldest sister

Position (J2000)

0°00′ Gemini

Magnitude

2.87

Colour

Blue-white

Spectrum

B7 IIIe

Distance

440 light-years

Nature

Moon · Mars

In the sky

Alcyone is the brightest member of the Pleiades at magnitude 2.87, a hot blue-white giant about four hundred and forty light-years away. The Pleiades are a true open cluster rather than a chance alignment: more than a thousand confirmed members, formed from one cloud of gas and still travelling together, with a faint blue haze around the brighter members produced by dust they are passing through. Six or seven are visible without instruments. The group appears as a small misted knot on the shoulder of Taurus on winter evenings, and is commonly mistaken for the Little Dipper at first sight.

The myth

The Greeks made the Pleiades seven sisters, pursued until the gods removed them to the sky. The Japanese name for the cluster is Subaru; Kiowa tradition describes seven girls carried up a rock away from bears; Babylonian records call the group simply the Stars.

These traditions had little contact with one another, and a striking number of them describe the sisters as weeping. The astrological reading follows that detail. Alcyone is treated as a star of sight, and specifically of sight that carries a cost: the old texts state both that it opens the eyes and that it gives its natives cause for grief. These are best read as one observation rather than two, since heightened perception necessarily includes perception of what is painful. The tradition adds that the relationships of this placement are frequently its schoolroom: enchantment and disappointment arrive in alternation, and both sharpen the sight.

What it gives

• Accuracy about people The native registers what is actually occurring in a situation rather than what is being presented — anxiety behind a cheerful manner, or distress behind competent behaviour. Most report having done this since childhood, before they had any account of how.
• Aptitude for representational work Any occupation that requires setting things down as they are rather than as they are supposed to be draws on this faculty: painting, photography, portraiture, documentary writing, and much of clinical assessment.
• Resistance to being misled Because the native notices when a person's manner and their actual state fail to match, presentation alone rarely convinces them.
• Help that fits the trouble Assistance offered by someone who has correctly identified the difficulty tends to land; assistance offered without that reading tends to miss. Natives of this star are unusually often the person a friend goes to first.

What to watch for

• Perception with no outlet The placement is hardest to carry when a great deal is noticed and nothing is done with any of it. Unused observation accumulates and turns into a general heaviness the native cannot trace to a cause.
• Attempts to become less sensitive These natives are commonly advised to toughen and commonly try. The attempt does not succeed, and each attempt costs some of the faculty itself.
• Conclusions reached too far ahead of evidence The instinct is usually sound, but acting on it before it can be explained to anyone else creates avoidable friction, and occasionally the instinct is simply wrong.
• Strain on the eyes The tradition consistently associates this cluster with the physical eyes. This is best treated as ordinary practical caution rather than as a prediction.

How to work with it

Give what is noticed somewhere to go. Photography, writing, painting, or a well-timed remark to the right person all serve the same purpose, which is to convert observation into something outside the native's own head.

Protect the sensitivity rather than attempting to reduce it, and be selective about company instead. Choosing whom to spend time with is the effective form of self-protection here; blunting the faculty is not.

When acting on an early impression, say plainly that it is an impression. This preserves the advantage of noticing early without staking more on it than it can bear.

Rest the eyes as a matter of routine.

In brief

Alcyone gives accurate perception, particularly of people, together with the discomfort that accurate perception brings. The tradition's warnings about weeping describe the cost rather than a punishment, and the cost falls hardest on natives who observe a great deal and do nothing with it. Put to use — in art, in assessment, in the practical help of others — the same faculty is among the most valuable a person can have, and it is the foundation of sympathy that actually works.