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3 The Seven Sisters and Orion in Aboriginal Australia
3.1 Aboriginal Astronomy
Astronomy is a central part of many Aboriginal cultures. An extensive review, citing
all known publications in this field at the time of writing, is given by Norris (2016).
Mountford (1976) reported that some Aboriginal people knew the name of every
star as faint as fourth magnitude, and knew myths associated with most of those
stars. Even now, some elders can name most stars in the sky visible to the naked eye,
and have an intuitive understanding of how the sky rotates over their heads from east
to west during the night, and how it shifts over the course of a year (Norris, 2016).
Maegraith (1932) says that ‘The most interesting fact about Aboriginal astronomy
is that all the adult males of the tribe are fully conversant with all that is known,
while no young man of the tribe knows much about the stars until after his initiation
is complete … The old men also instruct the initiated boys in the movements, colour
and brightness of the stars.’ Dawson (1881) reported that astronomy was ‘considered one of their principal branches of education … it is taught by men selected for
their intelligence and information’.
3.2 Orion
Most Aboriginal cultures associate Orion with a hunter, or a young man, or a group
of young men, or a male ceremony, and many have stories in which the men in
Orion are trying to chase and rape the girls of the Pleiades (e.g. Massola, 1968;
Mountford, 1939, 1976). Examples include:
• A Yolngu story that the three stars of Orion’s belt are three brothers in a canoe, with Betelgeuse
marking the bow of the canoe, and Rigel the stern. The Orion nebula is a fish, attached by a line
to the canoe, shown in Fig. 2. They were blown into the sky by the Sun-woman as punishment
for eating their totem animal, a king-fish, in violation of Yolngu law (Davis, 1989; Norris, 2016;
Wells, 1973).
• The Kaurna story (Gell, 1842; Teichelmann & Schuermann, 1840) that Orion is a
group of boys who hunt kangaroo and emu on the celestial plain.
• The Murrawarri story (Mathews & White, 1994) that Orion wore a belt, carried a
shield and stone tomahawk, and their name for the constellation (Jadi Jadi) means
either ‘strong man’ or ‘cyclone’.
• The report by Bates (1925) that people over a great area of central Australia regarded
Orion as a ‘hunter of women’, and specifically of the women in the Pleiades, and that
the male initiation ceremony includes an enactment of Orion chasing and raping
women. The ceremony may only take place when Orion is not in the sky, which is
consistent with the report (Fuller et al., 2014) that, in Kamilaroi culture, Orion’s setting in June is associated with the male initiation ceremony.
Why Are There Seven Sisters?
3 The Seven Sisters and Orion in Aboriginal Australia
3.1 Aboriginal Astronomy
Astronomy is a central part of many Aboriginal cultures. An extensive review, citing
all known publications in this field at the time of writing, is given by Norris (2016).
Mountford (1976) reported that some Aboriginal people knew the name of every
star as faint as fourth magnitude, and knew myths associated with most of those
stars. Even now, some elders can name most stars in the sky visible to the naked eye,
and have an intuitive understanding of how the sky rotates over their heads from east
to west during the night, and how it shifts over the course of a year (Norris, 2016).
Maegraith (1932) says that ‘The most interesting fact about Aboriginal astronomy
is that all the adult males of the tribe are fully conversant with all that is known,
while no young man of the tribe knows much about the stars until after his initiation
is complete … The old men also instruct the initiated boys in the movements, colour
and brightness of the stars.’ Dawson (1881) reported that astronomy was ‘considered one of their principal branches of education … it is taught by men selected for
their intelligence and information’.
3.2 Orion
Most Aboriginal cultures associate Orion with a hunter, or a young man, or a group
of young men, or a male ceremony, and many have stories in which the men in
Orion are trying to chase and rape the girls of the Pleiades (e.g. Massola, 1968;
Mountford, 1939, 1976). Examples include:
• A Yolngu story that the three stars of Orion’s belt are three brothers in a canoe, with Betelgeuse
marking the bow of the canoe, and Rigel the stern. The Orion nebula is a fish, attached by a line
to the canoe, shown in Fig. 2. They were blown into the sky by the Sun-woman as punishment
for eating their totem animal, a king-fish, in violation of Yolngu law (Davis, 1989; Norris, 2016;
Wells, 1973).
• The Kaurna story (Gell, 1842; Teichelmann & Schuermann, 1840) that Orion is a
group of boys who hunt kangaroo and emu on the celestial plain.
• The Murrawarri story (Mathews & White, 1994) that Orion wore a belt, carried a
shield and stone tomahawk, and their name for the constellation (Jadi Jadi) means
either ‘strong man’ or ‘cyclone’.
• The report by Bates (1925) that people over a great area of central Australia regarded
Orion as a ‘hunter of women’, and specifically of the women in the Pleiades, and that
the male initiation ceremony includes an enactment of Orion chasing and raping
women. The ceremony may only take place when Orion is not in the sky, which is
consistent with the report (Fuller et al., 2014) that, in Kamilaroi culture, Orion’s setting in June is associated with the male initiation ceremony.
Why Are There Seven Sisters?