The Pleiades
BehenianEta Tauri (Alcyone) · Taurus
Position (2026)
♊ 0°22' Gemini
Magnitude
2.85
Planetary Nature
Moon / Mars (robson)
Alvidas: Mars / Moon / Sun (Mars, Moon and Sun in opposition)
Spectral Type
B7III
Appearance
A blue-white open cluster on the shoulder of the Bull, with six to seven stars visible to the unaided eye
Behenian Correspondences
Gemstone
Rock crystal
Plant
Fennel
Read: The 15 Behenian Stars → background on Agrippa's list, the magical tradition, and how each star was historically used.
Name Origin
Language
Greek
Original Form
Πλειάδες (Pleiades)
Meaning
Debated: possibly from πλεῖν (to sail) marking the sailing season, or from πλέος (full, many)
Allen notes the name has been explained as from the Greek for 'to sail,' because their heliacal rising in May opened the ancient sailing season, and their setting in November closed it. Others derive it from πλέος meaning 'full' or 'many.' The mythological derivation from Pleione, mother of the seven daughters of Atlas, is also ancient. The Arabic Al Thurayya (the Many Little Ones) became the basis for the star's use as a test of eyesight.
Known As
The Pleiades in Astrology
The Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, carry themes of grief, mystical knowing, and collective consciousness. They bestow sensitivity to group dynamics, an awareness of loss as a teacher, and connection to something larger than yourself. Their Moon-Mars nature combines receptive intuition with protective instinct, creating individuals who feel deeply and act on behalf of the group. The Pleiades grant artistic sensitivity, psychic receptivity, and a bittersweet wisdom that acknowledges both the beauty and the sorrow of embodied existence.
When The Pleiades Is Angular
The Pleiades carries additional weight when it falls on one of the chart angles, independent of any planet conjunction.
If Rising
The Pleiades rising on the Ascendant bring an intense, turbulent quality to the personality, with heightened vulnerability to injuries affecting the eyes and face. The native may experience exile, displacement, or forced separation from familiar surroundings, yet there is also potential for martial distinction and the kind of fame that arises from enduring extraordinary hardship. Health matters, particularly involving vision and fever, require careful attention throughout life.
If Culminating
The Pleiades culminating at the Midheaven warn of professional disgrace and the potential for violent disruption to the career. However, when the luminaries join this configuration, the same placement can indicate extraordinary military or political command, producing leaders who rise to power through turbulent circumstances. The outcome depends heavily on the overall chart: either remarkable elevation or devastating ruin, rarely anything moderate.
Mythology & History
The Pleiades were seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the ocean nymph Pleione, devoted companions of the goddess Diana. When the hunter Orion pursued them relentlessly across the earth, the gods took pity and placed the sisters among the stars, forever beyond his reach. Another tradition holds they wept so bitterly for their father Atlas, condemned to bear the heavens on his shoulders, that Zeus immortalized their grief as a cluster of celestial lights.
The Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, are among the most universally recognized star clusters in human history. The Greeks named them after the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione: Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. The name may derive from the Greek plein, to sail, as their heliacal rising in May marked the opening of the Mediterranean sailing season. Nearly every culture on earth has mythology about this cluster: the Aboriginal Australians see them as a group of young women pursued by Orion, Japanese tradition calls them Subaru (united), and the Aztecs knew them as Tianquiztli, using their midnight zenith passage to time the New Fire ceremony.
As a Behenian star (represented by Alcyone, the brightest member), the Pleiades were associated with rock crystal and fennel in medieval stellar magic. Their astrological reputation has always been mixed: they confer distinction and ambition but carry a persistent association with sorrow, particularly grief related to loss. Ancient Greek poets described the sisters weeping for their father Atlas, condemned to hold up the sky, and this theme of grief beneath outward brilliance pervades their astrological meaning. The Pleiades were also among the most important agricultural markers in the ancient world, with their rising and setting governing planting and harvest across the Mediterranean.
Taurus Context
The Pleiades ride on the shoulder of Taurus the Bull, forming a distinctive cluster visible to the naked eye as a tiny, misty patch of light. Though part of the Taurus constellation, their mythology is distinct: they represent the seven sisters pursued across the sky by the hunter Orion, with the bull sometimes interpreted as their protector. The cluster's position near the ecliptic means planets frequently pass through or near it, making it one of the most active fixed star regions for astrological interpretation. Alcyone, the central and brightest star, serves as the representative for the entire group.
Learn more about Taurus and its stars.
Natal Conjunctions
Find your conjunctions →The Pleiades Conjunct Sun
The Pleiades conjunct the Sun forge an identity defined by the tension between radiant visibility and private sorrow. You are a figure others watch -- ambitious, distinguished, marked for public life -- yet beneath that brightness you carry an awareness of grief that most people spend their lives avoiding. Like the weeping daughters of Atlas, your fame and your sorrow are inseparable, and your most authentic self emerges when you stop pretending one can exist without the other.
The Pleiades Conjunct Moon
The Pleiades conjunct the Moon create an emotional life of startling depth and permeability. You absorb the grief of those around you instinctively, and your nurturing patterns are shaped by an intimate familiarity with loss -- you mother the wounded because you recognize their pain as your own. Home is a place where tears are permitted, and your emotional security depends on being allowed to feel fully rather than performing composure. Dreams are vivid, often carrying ancestral weight.
The Pleiades Conjunct Mercury
The Pleiades conjunct Mercury bestow a mind attuned to subtle emotional currents and unspoken communications. You perceive what lies between the words and process information through feeling as much as thought. Writing and speech carry an evocative, poetic quality that touches others at emotional depths.
The Pleiades Conjunct Venus
The Pleiades conjunct Venus create a refined aesthetic sensibility tinged with melancholy and longing. You are drawn to beauty that carries an element of sorrow, the ephemeral, the bittersweet, the achingly lovely. Artistic expression is deeply emotional and often connects to themes of love, loss, and remembrance.
The Pleiades Conjunct Mars
The Pleiades conjunct Mars activate the fierce protectiveness of the hunted sisters. You know what it feels like to be pursued, and this knowledge has forged you into someone who fights with a desperate, visceral courage born from vulnerability rather than dominance. The Orion myth runs through your body -- you protect your people the way the Pleiades protect each other, as a group that survives by refusing to be separated. Physical danger is a real theme, and your aggression ignites most ferociously when those you love are threatened.
The Pleiades Conjunct Jupiter
The Pleiades conjunct Jupiter expand the capacity to hold grief without being destroyed by it. You are the meaning-maker in the aftermath of collective loss, the one who finds faith not despite sorrow but through it. Your optimism is hard-won and credible precisely because it does not flinch from tragedy. Teaching, philosophy, or spiritual leadership becomes a way of helping others understand that grief and gratitude can coexist, and your influence widens as you demonstrate that expansive joy does not require the denial of pain.
The Pleiades Conjunct Saturn
The Pleiades conjunct Saturn crystallize the awareness of loss into structured wisdom. You learn early that grief is a teacher and build your character through disciplined engagement with sorrow. Over time, this produces a resilient, deeply empathic individual who serves as an anchor for others in times of collective difficulty.
The Pleiades Conjunct Uranus
The Pleiades conjunct Uranus produce sudden, electric awakenings to collective grief and shared trauma that most people manage to ignore. You are struck by lightning-bolt awareness of systemic suffering -- a generation's unprocessed loss, a community's buried sorrow -- and you cannot unknow what you have seen. Revolutionary impulses emerge from this awareness, driving you to build radically new forms of collective healing or to dismantle the structures that perpetuate shared pain.
The Pleiades Conjunct Neptune
The Pleiades conjunct Neptune dissolve boundaries between self and collective, granting extraordinary psychic sensitivity and mystical awareness. You access deep wells of communal feeling and may experience direct perception of the interconnected nature of all beings.
The Pleiades Conjunct Pluto
The Pleiades conjunct Pluto intensify collective themes to transformative levels. You confront group shadow material and serve as a catalyst for collective healing and renewal. Experiences of communal loss become vehicles for profound transformation.
The Pleiades Conjunct North Node
The Pleiades conjunct the North Node mark a karmic arc from emotional isolation and self-protective detachment toward full participation in collective feeling. You are growing away from the instinct to guard yourself against grief by staying separate, and toward the courage to let the sorrow of the group move through you without resistance. The soul's direction requires you to become a vessel for shared emotional experience -- to weep with the Seven Sisters rather than watching from a safe distance, and to discover that your individual gifts find their purpose only in service to the whole.
The Pleiades Conjunct Ascendant
The Pleiades on the Ascendant give a luminous, immediately noticeable presence that carries an undertone of wistful depth. Others sense both your ambition and your sensitivity on first meeting -- you project the radiance of someone marked for distinction alongside an unmistakable air of having known sorrow. The life path involves visible engagement with collective emotional themes, and your public identity becomes inseparable from the tension between outward achievement and inner vulnerability.
The Pleiades Conjunct Midheaven
The Pleiades on the Midheaven mark a career that places you before the public eye, often achieving notable fame or professional distinction that carries an undercurrent of sacrifice. You are recognized for work that touches the emotional core of communities and speaks to universal themes of love and loss. Professional ambition runs strong, but your legacy is defined less by status than by the depth of feeling your work transmits -- the audience remembers not just your achievement but how it made them grieve, hope, or remember.
Paran Interpretations
Parans describe what happens when The Pleiades and a planet simultaneously occupy the four angles (rising, culminating, setting, nadir) at a given location.
The Pleiades in Paran with Sun
Rising
The Pleiades rising with the Sun mark an individual born into acute awareness of collective emotional currents.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with the Sun place empathic leadership at the peak of public achievement.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with the Sun deepen collective wisdom over a lifetime of shared emotional experience.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with the Sun conceal vast reservoirs of collective feeling at the foundations of the psyche.
The Pleiades in Paran with Moon
Rising
The Pleiades rising with the Moon awaken exceptional emotional and psychic sensitivity from infancy.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with the Moon bring intuitive and empathic gifts to their fullest public expression.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with the Moon indicate deepening psychic receptivity and emotional wisdom in the mature years.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with the Moon harbor ancestral emotional memories that permeate the unconscious.
The Pleiades in Paran with Mercury
Rising
The Pleiades rising with Mercury bestow early facility with emotionally evocative language and intuitive communication.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with Mercury elevate poetic or empathic communication to career-defining prominence.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with Mercury deepen communicative sensitivity over time, with the most touching expressions arriving in maturity.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with Mercury process collective emotional information at subconscious levels of remarkable depth.
The Pleiades in Paran with Venus
Rising
The Pleiades rising with Venus initiate early experiences of beauty suffused with longing and emotional depth.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with Venus achieve recognition through art that captures the bittersweet essence of human connection.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with Venus bring enduring relationships defined by deep emotional bonding and shared sensitivity.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with Venus conceal profound aesthetic and emotional sensitivity beneath the surface of daily life.
The Pleiades in Paran with Mars
Rising
The Pleiades rising with Mars produce a fierce protector of the group from the earliest years.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with Mars achieve peak recognition through championing collective welfare and communal defense.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with Mars channel protective instincts into sustained service to community over a lifetime.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with Mars conceal fierce protective impulses that activate only when the group is threatened.
The Pleiades in Paran with Jupiter
Rising
The Pleiades rising with Jupiter expand collective awareness into spiritual purpose from the beginning of life.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with Jupiter achieve widest influence through teaching about interconnection and shared human experience.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with Jupiter bring expanding wisdom about collective life in the mature years.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with Jupiter build on hidden foundations of vast spiritual understanding of group consciousness.
The Pleiades in Paran with Saturn
Rising
The Pleiades rising with Saturn demand early engagement with loss, building resilience through youthful experiences of grief.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with Saturn achieve lasting authority as anchors of stability during collective difficulty.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with Saturn build an enduring legacy of structured wisdom about loss, community, and renewal.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with Saturn establish deep foundations of emotional resilience through disciplined engagement with sorrow.
The Pleiades in Paran with Ascendant
Rising
The Pleiades rising with the Ascendant imprint the personality with visible empathic sensitivity and collective attunement.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with the Ascendant project emotional and psychic sensitivity onto the broadest stage.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with the Ascendant attract others who recognize and are comforted by your empathic presence.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with the Ascendant ground identity in deep wells of collective feeling and ancestral memory.
The Pleiades in Paran with Midheaven
Rising
The Pleiades rising with the Midheaven launch a career defined by service to collective emotional and spiritual needs.
Culminating
The Pleiades culminating with the Midheaven represent the summit of professional achievement through collective healing or art.
Setting
The Pleiades setting with the Midheaven indicate a professional legacy of compassionate service that endures across generations.
At the Nadir
The Pleiades at the nadir with the Midheaven build career success on hidden foundations of profound emotional intelligence.
Star Connections
The Sisters and the Lion's Heart
When the Sun conjoins the Pleiades while Saturn or Mars stands with Regulus, or when the Pleiades are in the seventh house under the same condition, the ancient texts warn of blindness or severe affliction to the eyes. The Sisters' cluster, already associated with weeping and veiled sight, amplifies this danger through its resonance with the Lion's demanding heart.
Notable Charts
Frida Kahlo
Moon conjunct the Pleiades
Embodied Pleiades themes of creative brilliance fused with suffering, channeling devastating physical pain into visionary artwork that gave collective voice to sorrow
Bob Dylan
Jupiter conjunct the Pleiades
Jupiter expanded Pleiades themes of visionary sight and group consciousness into prophetic songwriting that channeled collective grief and social upheaval
Frequently Asked Questions
What do the Pleiades mean in astrology?
The Pleiades cluster in Taurus is associated with collective sorrow, visionary experience, and sensitivity to group suffering. Traditionally linked to eyesight problems (metaphorical blindness to mundane reality), the Pleiades often appear prominently in charts of mystics, musicians, and those with acute sensitivity to the suffering of others.
What degree are the Pleiades at in 2026?
The Pleiades cluster center (Alcyone) is at approximately 0 degrees 23 minutes of Gemini in 2026. The cluster spans roughly one degree, so planets between 29 degrees Taurus and 1 degree Gemini are considered in conjunction.
What does the name The Pleiades mean?
The name The Pleiades comes from Greek: Πλειάδες (Pleiades), meaning "Debated: possibly from πλεῖν (to sail) marking the sailing season, or from πλέος (full, many)." Allen notes the name has been explained as from the Greek for 'to sail,' because their heliacal rising in May opened the ancient sailing season, and their setting in November closed it. The star is known by 13 different cultural names across world traditions.
Lunar Mansions
The Pleiades serves as the determinant star for these 3 lunar mansions across different traditions.
Check if The Pleiades is active in your chart
Enter your birth data to see which fixed stars conjoin your natal planets.
Track the stars that shape your chart
Fixed stars activate when transiting planets cross them. Create a free account to track daily transits, get personalized readings, and see how stellar influences unfold over time.