The Pleiades and the Dreamtime: an Aboriginal Women's Story and Other Ancient World Traditions Antonella Riem Natale

In myths all ages, societies and cultures of the world, celestial bodies, with their movements, itineraries and transits are of fundamental importance for structuring beliefs and weaving meanings into our everyday life. This essay focuses on the symbolic and archetypal features of an ancestral Aboriginal women’s story, as it was transcribed by Katie Langloh Parker, in order to study the symbolic relations and archetypal consonance and connections it has with analogous stories and myths of other traditions dealing with stars and constellations. In the Aboriginal world there are many different narrations dealing with the Pleiades, and “Where the Frost comes From”, analysed here, is an interesting example.