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“Things don't always look as they seem. Some stars, for example, look like bright pinholes, but when you get them pegged under a microscope you find you're looking at a globular cluster—a million stars that, to us, presents as a single entity. On a less dramatic note there are triples, like Alpha Centauri, which up close turns out to be a double star and a red dwarf in close proximity.

There's an indigenous tribe in Africa that tells of life coming from the second star in Alpha Centauri, the one no one can see without a high-powered observatory telescope. come to think of it, the Greeks, the Aboriginals, and the Plains Indians all lived continents apart and all, independently, looked at the same septuplet knot of the Pleiades and believed them to be seven young girls running away from something that threatened to hurt them.

Make of it what you will.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

“There is an electricity in the air that I feel every time I come to Italy. It enraptures your soul with its incredible history, a sense of the unknown, and a yearning for exploration. But there is also a renewed feeling of life, as if you are born again as your better self, a more authentic self. Somehow your core values are restored, and you are no longer afraid to believe in the things you cannot see.”
― Rosella Testa, The Lost Pleiades: Seven Sisters and the Sibyls

“Black is not just for mourning as people say. It also symbolizes the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. Such as the phases of the moon...”
― Rosella Testa

“When the masses consciously decide to be unconscious, the masses decide to be annihilated by conscious will. And by the laws of the universe, their desire must be fulfilled, for they have used freewill against themselves.”
― Robin Sacredfire

“I should like to end this description of the stars with the Pleiades, which I once saw rising up out of the sea. When and where in Holland is the atmosphere ever so free from dust and mist that you can see the stars clearly right down to the horizon? One evening I saw a point of light appearing on the horizon, followed a moment later by another one. I thought they were the lights of a ship sailing by in the distance. But then a third light appeared, and a fourth, and finally there were seven altogether; it was then that I recognised the Pleiades, making for the heavens in full sail, like a ghost ship.”
― M.C. Escher, Leven en werk van M.C. Escher : het levensverhaal van de graficus : met een volledig geïllustreerde catalogus van zijn werk

“Magic is the first language of the world. It was the language before words, before mathematics. Humanity can accept concepts like space travel to other galaxies, and yet magic can only be real in the minds of those who believe it, or in the imagination of children.”
― Rosella Testa, The Lost Pleiades: Seven Sisters and the Sibyls

“As fear runs through me I become acutely aware of a stillness. I don’t think I ever realized that there is a stillness in darkness. It feels as if fear and freedom are the same. I wonder if death holds this kind of infinite silence and solitude.”
― Rosella Testa, The Lost Pleiades: Seven Sisters and the Sibyls

“And now the Pleiades shall weep." -Sali-Mand”
― Jesse R. Page

“Stars of Fire by Stewart Stafford

At the Gate of Pleiades,
Lies the playground of the Deities,
At The Golden Gate of the Ecliptic,
The Gods' plot and remain cryptic.

Between the claws of Scorpio and Cancer,
At the mercy of the great Zodiacal dancer.
The dilemma on the horns of Aries,
Brushes asides all adversaries.

Venus trails stardust from her hair,
As a supernova across the galaxy flares,
A shooting star is the spear of Orion,
More is the mane of Leo the lion.

Man's Gemini may someday show before us,
As chaste Virgo or the mighty Taurus,
Or be inanimate as the scales of Libra,
Or spread as Cancer or an unchecked fever.

Perhaps these pilgrims have visited us before,
When Sagittarius took the form of the wise Centaur,
Or when Pisces flopped in an Aquarian boat,
Or on a lazy hill to the Capricorn goat.

© Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Everything seemed to move. The chimney-stacks swept across the Great Bear, the Pleiades were entangled in the elm’s boughs, a shooting star fell with a trail of gold, the trees dropped lower and lower as they climbed above them.”
― Alison Uttley, The Country Child

“The Bright Lights of Sarajevo

After the hours that Sarajevans pass
queuing with empty canisters of gas
to get the refills they wheel home in prams
or queuing for the precious meagre grams
of bread they’re rationed to each day,
and often dodging snipers on the way,
or struggling up sometimes eleven flights
of stairs with water, then you’d think the nights
of Sarajevo would be totally devoid
of people walking streets Serb shells destroyed,
but tonight in Sarajevo that’s just not the case �

The young go walking at stroller’s pace
black shapes impossible to mark
as Muslim, Serb or Croat in such dark
in unlit streets you can’t distinguish who
calls bread hjleb or hleb or calls it kruh.
All take the evening air with stroller’s stride
no torches guide them, but they don’t collide
except as one of the flirtatious ploys
when a girl’s dark shape is fancied by a boy’s.

Then the tender radar of the tone of voice
shows by its signals she approves his choice.
Then match or lighter to a cigarette
to check in her eyes if he’s made progress yet.

And I see a pair who’ve certainly progressed
beyond the tone of voice and match-flare test
and he’s about, I think, to take her hand
and lead her away from where they stand
on two shell scars, where, in 1992
Serb mortars massacred the breadshop queue
and blood-dunked crusts of shredded bread
lay on this pavement with the broken dead.

And at their feet in holes made by the mortar
that caused the massacre, now full of water
from the rain that’s poured down half the day,
though now even the smallest clouds have cleared away
leaving the Sarajevo star-filled evening sky
ideally bright and clear for bomber’s eye
in those two rain-full shell-holes the boy sees
fragments of the splintered Pleiades,
sprinkled on those death-deep, death-dark wells
splashed on the pavement by Serb mortar shells.

The dark boy-shape leads dark girl-shape away
to share one coffee in a candlelit café
until the curfew, and he holds her hand
behind AID flour-sacks refilled with sand.”
― Tonny Harrison