04/07/2026
One morning this week, before dawn, I will be on a hilltop wrapped in three blankets, hot ginger tea in my mug, watching the north-east hills for a little cluster of stars.
The Pleiades have been gone from our sky since early May. Seven weeks of no sisters in the sky at all. And now, this week, they are back - rising in the east just before the sun, newly returned after their long absence.
I have compulsively searched the sky for this little star cluster since I was a kid, growing up in Kiama on Dharawal Country, where these stars are known as the Seven Sisters. Six or seven stars visible to the naked eye, a blur of light that sharpens when you look slightly away from it.
And so many cultures hold this smudge of stars close. The Pleiades. Subaru. al-Thurayya. Kungkarangkalpa. Matariki. Whole calendars have turned on its risings and settings - again, and again.
Across the sea in Aotearoa, its dawn return during the Tangaroa nights of the lunar month of Pipiri marks the Māori new year - and this year those nights fall in early July, with the public holiday landing this Friday. Names of those who have died in the past year are called out to the rising stars, so they have good company on their final journey. Then feasting, remembering, and planning for the year to come. (Most of what I understand about Matariki I have learned from the work of Dr Rangi Matamua and other knowledge holders - go straight to the sources, they are wonderful.)
Down here in southern lutruwita Tasmania it is midwinter - mushroom season, seed-sorting season. A good time of year for sitting with endings, and for trusting the promise of return.
New piece up on the Substack this week, on all of the above: heliacal risings, the Seven Sisters, and half the world's calendars. Link in the comments!
And the lovely thing: at its rising, this moment is hemisphere-proof. Tasmania or Madrid, New York or Kyoto - the Pleiades rise low in the north-east for all of us, this same week.
So: where will you be watching from?
Mānawatia a Matariki. 🌌
