226 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
civilizations. They were known around the world for their culture-creating sons
by numerous peoples who never knew of each other, but who nevertheless ex-
perienced a common impact from Atlantean survivors. Even the remote tribes of
Java preserve a tradition that tells how one of the Pleiades mated with a mortal
man to sire the human race.
Atlas’ consort was Pleione, from the Greek word, pleio, “to sail,” appropriately
enough, because the constellation of the Pleiades is particularly visible from May
to November, the sailing season. Pleione means “Sailing Queen”; Pleiades, the
“Sailing Ones.” By their very definitions, they exemplify the Atlanteans’ outstanding
cultural characteristic; namely, maritime prowess. In fact, the Pleiades appear in
Odysseus’ sailing instructions to Phaeacia, Homer’s version of Atlantis (Odyssey,
Book V, 307).
A common theme among the Pleiades was the extraordinary destinies of their
offspring, who, like the Atlanteans themselves, were founders of new kingdoms in
distant lands. Paralleling Kleito in Plato’s narrative, Alkyone, the leader of the
Pleiades, bore royal sons to Poseidon, the sea-god. Her sisters were no less fertile.
All their sons or grandsons founded or rebuilt numerous cities and kingdoms.
Maia was venerated in Rome until the last days of the Empire as the patroness of
civilization itself through her son, Mercury, the god of organized society. The
expanse of the Atlantean imperium was encompassed by the Pleiades and their
children.
As the Greek scholar Diodorus Siculus wrote in his first-century B.C.Geography:
All the rest likewise had sons who were famous in their times, some
of which gave beginning to whole nations, others to some particular
cities. And therefore not only some of the barbarians, but likewise
some among the Greeks refer the origin of many of the ancient
heroes to these daughters of Atlas. They lay with the most renowned
heroes and gods, and they became the first ancestors of the larger
part of humanity” (Blackett, 103).
In other words, Western Civilization was born from Atlantis. Diodorus’ char-
acterization of the Pleiades suggests they were not originally mythic figures, but
real women, wives of Atlantean culture-bearers, who dwelt in kingdoms which
comprised the Empire of Atlantis, and generated the royal lineages of those realms.
Long after their deaths, they were regarded as divine, and commemorated as a
star cluster.
The Pleiades’ stellar relationship to Atlantis has been cited in Odysseus’ sailing
instructions to Phaecia. But their Atlantean significance predated the Odyssey,
and spread far beyond Homer’s Greece. The Sumerians associated the constel-
lation of the Pleiades with their version of Atlas, Adad, the volcanic fire-god. The
rising of the Pleiades signaled the New Year among the Mayas and Aztecs, as they
did for the pre-Inca Chimu and Nazca civilizations of the Andes. Known to the
Mayas as Tzab, the Aztecs sighted them along a water channel running parallel to
the Sirius-Pleiades Line at Teotihuacan, the imperial capital long since covered
by modern Mexico City. When the Seven Sisters ascended the middle of the sky at