Month. 



The rising of the Pleiades. To-day the South Sea 

 Pleiad- Islanders of the Society and Tonga Isles 

 divide the year by their seaward rising and 

 setting. The Matarii i nia, or season of the 

 ' Pleiades Above,' begins when in the evening 

 this stellar group appears on the horizon, and 

 while they remain above it : the Matarii i 

 rarOi or season of the ' Pleiades Below,' begins 

 when after sunset they are no longer visible, 

 and endures till once again they appear above 

 the horizon. The most spiritual and the most 

 barbaric races are at one in considering them 

 centres of the divine energy. The Hindus 

 imaged them as Flame, typical of Agni, God of 

 Fire, the Creative Energy : the several Persian 

 words, from the ancient Peru or the Parur of 

 Hafiz or the Parxvin of Omar Khayyam — 

 derive from Peru, a word signifying 'The 

 Begetters ' : and we know that the Greeks 

 oriented to them or to their lucida not only 

 the first great temple of Athene on the 

 Acropolis, but its successor four hundred years 

 later, the Hecatompedon of 1150 B.C., and 

 seven hundred years later the Parthenon on 

 the same side. [The great shrine of Dionysos 

 at Athens, the still earlier Asclepieion at 

 Epidaurus, and the temple of Poseidon at 

 Sunium, looked towards the Pleiades at their 

 setting.] But far removed from these are the 



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