Myths of the Cherokee · 22 of 220

Myth 10

ORIGIN OF THE PLEIADES AND THE PINE Long ago, when the world was new, there were seven boys who used to spend all their time down by the townhouse playing the gatayû′stĭ game, rolling a stone wheel along the ground and sliding a curved stick after it to strike it. Their mothers scolded, but it did no good, so one day they collected some gatayû′stĭ stones and boiled them in the pot with the corn for dinner. When the boys came home hungry their mothers dipped out the stones and said, “Since you like the gatayû′stĭ better than the cornfield, take the stones now for your dinner.” The boys were very angry, and went down to the townhouse, saying, “As our mothers treat us this way, let us go where we shall never trouble them any more.” They began a dance—some say it was the Feather dance—and went round and round the townhouse, praying to the spirits to help them. At last their mothers were afraid something was wrong and went out to look for them. They saw the boys still dancing around the townhouse, and as they watched they noticed that their feet were off the earth, and that with every round they rose higher and higher in the air. They ran to get their children, but it was too late, for they were already above the roof of the townhouse—all but one, whose mother managed to pull him down with the gatayû′stĭ pole, but he struck the ground with such force that he sank into it and the earth closed over him. The other six circled higher and higher until they went up to the sky, where we see them now as the Pleiades, which the Cherokee still call Ani′tsutsă (The Boys). The people grieved long after them, but the mother whose boy had gone into the ground came every morning and every evening to cry over the spot until the earth was damp with her tears. At last a little green shoot sprouted up and grew day by day until it became the tall tree that we call now the pine, and the pine is of the same nature as the stars and holds in itself the same bright light.

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Themes

◆Animismcosmology

The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.

The narrative is fundamentally animistic, depicting spirits that respond to prayer, boys transforming into stars, and a tree possessing the same nature and light as celestial bodies, reflecting a worldview where natural phenomena are inhabited by divine agents.

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◆Correspondencecosmology

The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.

The text establishes a direct structural and qualitative link between the stars above and the pine tree below, asserting they share the same nature and light.

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◆Cosmogonycosmology

Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.

The text serves as an etiological narrative explaining the origin of specific cosmic features (the Pleiades) and natural elements (the pine tree) from a primordial time when the world was new.

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◆Divine Lighttheology

The uncreated luminous quality of the divine, sometimes experienced directly in mystical states; illumination as revelation.

The passage explicitly states that the pine tree holds in itself the same bright light as the stars, attributing a luminous, divine quality to the natural world.

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◆Prayerpraxis

Direct address to the divine, whether petitionary, contemplative, or liturgical; speech and silence offered upward.

The boys explicitly engage in prayer to the spirits while dancing around the townhouse, which acts as the catalyst for their transformation and ascent.

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◆Shapeshifting Transformationtheology

Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.

The core of the myth involves the metamorphosis of seven boys into the Pleiades stars and one boy into a pine tree, illustrating the fluidity of form between human, celestial, and botanical states.

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◆Spiritual Ascentpraxis

A staged journey of the soul upward through heavenly realms or levels of being toward the divine source.

The boys physically and spiritually ascend from the earth to the sky through a ritual dance, leaving the material world behind to become celestial bodies.

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