A dose of weird

"Seven Queens wear Seven Rings as the Seven Stars in Heaven."

This is a rhyme that popped into my head last summer. Originally, the rhyme was:

"Seven Rings... Seven Kings... Seven Stars under Heaven."

It was a fragment. Just like trying to remember an old song or something that you heard once and could only pick out some of the information.

I wrote it in my journal and basically forgot about it.

Until today.

While watching a NatGeo program on the Nebra Sky Disk, I saw something that got my attention (aside from the fact that it's a as-yet unexplained artifact); a seven-dot cluster that was used to help identify the other markings on the disk. The seven-dot cluster was used in the ancient world to identify the Pleiades star cluster.

I leaned up from my computer chair and tried to rattle off the rhyme as I remember it. However, this time I said "Seven Queens" rather than "Seven Kings." I knew that it was one of the two and reached up to find the journal entry. In the program, an astronomer commented that Pleiades was also called the "Seven Sisters" and the whole thing seemed to fall into place.

The Pleiades cluster actually has thousands of stars in it, but we can usually only see seven of them.

When I looked up the cluster to read more about it, I saw the cluster of stars and immediately saw a pattern in the arrangement of the brightest of the stars; a crook.

I have associated the Crook as a symbol representing a quest or the search for knowledge. The crook (as either the crook and flail or the crozier) is also seen everyday as a modern question mark. When I saw the arrangement of the stars as a crook, my curiosity was aroused a bit more.

Unfortunately, the discovery of a possible connection between my interest in symbology, ancient astronomy and a rhyme from last summer has left me with even more questions.

FOLLOW UP:

I cross-referenced the cultural identity of the Seven Sisters cluster against Mayan Astronomy. Since the Maya were one of the most well-documented Astronomers (Mayan Astonomy, 2012, etc.) The Maya watched Tianquizli (Pleiades) closely to ensure that the world wouldn't end. They watched for the signs of the apocalypse and that demons of darkness would descend to the earth and devour the world of man.

The Cigarette Diaries

From MSNBC:

"This book contains notes of a nature meaningless, I believe, to anyone else but myself. You are perfectly welcome to read them; however, don’t say I didn’t warn you."

Cigarette Diaries
On Sept. 13, 1944, the B-24 with bombardier Second Lt. Frank J. Pratt was shot down by the Germans over Poland. These are excerpts from the diaries he kept in captivity—many of which were written on the backs of paper wrappers from cigarette packs.

I love hearing that another 'survivor' journal has been found and made public. Though the contents may not be displayed for all to see, the fact that someone held themselves together and made record of such a traumatic moment in their lives with a journal is the closest I think I'll ever come to understanding a religious moment.

A journal is a prayer you make to yourself and to those who come after you. It says within its pages that there was hope and that history shall not be forgotten.

-Me