In Indian astrology, the lunar mansion of Krittika is the same as Pleiades.
In Vedic astrology, there are 12 houses and 27 lunar mansions or nakshatras. They are the daughters of Daksha, one of the progenitors of humans. He was also responsible for the procreation of the universe, stars, gods, demons and all things living.
The world is born and destroyed again and again. One day of the creator is one epoch. When he closes his eyes to sleep and rest, a great flood engulfs all the worlds he has created and erases it all.
He dreams up the next world and when he wakes up, he assigns a progenitor to recreate that world. Daksha was one such progenitor.
He gave his 27 daughters in marriage to Chandra, the moon god. Each one of them is a lunar mansion..or part of what we see as a constellation of star in the night sky. The moon visits each one of them every night. That’s why the lunar calender month is 27. There is also a 28th sister who disappeared.
The third daughter is Krittika whose mythology is tied to pleiades. The story goes that Agni, the fire god was the representative of all the gods in heaven. When anyone made a sacrifice, it had to be made to agni who will take it to the heavens and distribute it to all the other gods.
All sacrifices to gods were shared amongst them all and the blessings from the gods will be divided equally amongst those who made the sacrifices. They were consigned to the flames of agni and agni ate up the sacrifices.
Agni was beautiful and resplendent. He was also single and because of his nature coveted everything and ate everything. Every epoch has Seven Sages. They were the ones who represented humans and made sacrifices on their behalf.
The Seven Sages each had a wife. And Agni coveted them all. His flames of desire leapt higher and higher at the sacrifices as he wanted the seven wives for himself. There is also a verse in the vedas that says Agni is the fire with seven tongues. seven flames.
Unbeknownst to Agni, one other daughter of Daksha was infatuated with him. She watched him with unblinking eyes as his flames danced for the seven pious wives of the sages. The desire he could never reach. Just like her...because he didn’t even notice her.
Her name was Swaha. Being a celestial herself, she had the power to shape shift. So one day, she changed her form to resemble the first of the wives. Agni was delighted. They snuck to a celestial magical grove and had a jolly good time. The next day, Swaha took the form of the second wife and went back to their love nest. And again and again. She has taken the form of all six of wives. But try as she might..she couldn’t transform into the seventh one.
Anusuya..the wife was Sage Atri was so chaste that even by sleight of hand and in someone’s imagination, she couldn’t be seen as the illicit lover of a man who wasn’t her husband.
So now the secret was out. Swaha was reprimanded and Agni is now smitten with Swaha. But the lovers are together now. The alter egos Swaha created were left behind in the celestial grove but because they can’t wander in a world where the real wives existed, they were prisoners inside the glorious celestial grove.
Swaha didn’t trust Agni still and insisted that she will be present too at all sacrifices made to agni henceforth so he wasn’t making side eyes at the sages wives. She becomes the gaping mouth of agni who will swallow all the sacrifices. That’s why..even today..all sacrificial fires are fed with incantations that end with ‘swaha’. It is not a sacrifice if Swaha isn’t present.
Meanwhile the six shadow wives live in the grove called Saravana.(sara = thicket of reeds. vana = grove/forest. it was a forest with lakes and a lot of water bodies with thickets of reeds) Shiva and Parvati start visiting it for their love making. Their lovemaking created a spark so bright and hot that it couldn’t be contained in any of the worlds. It was dropped in the cooling waters of Sara Vana. There the krittikas each picked a piece of it and raised them as six babies. When the children were old enough, they merged as one. With six heads and twelve arms to become the warrior god, Muruga aka Kartikeya. The one who came from the krittikas.
The sisters feel that they have nothing else to do and ask that they become stars in the heavens. So muruga flings them into the skies and they become the pleiades cluster. They become one. They are now known as Krittika.
Many snapshot predictions are possible when krittika star is present in astrological chart. The mythology helps me remember them. Without going into details, Elon musk..for example..has a prominent Krittika. And the snapshot techniques archetype fits perfectly. There are many examples.
Tesla, for example..has a moderately similar chart to Elon Musk(and so it was a neat coincidence his star company is called Tesla..they share the same
Birth date too altho diff years.)..but it shifts by one nakshatra pada which took his life in an entirely different direction even though they shared ascendents.
I like to think that we are all living in a simulation. And I would very much like astrology to be the code that hacks it. But who knows? I am just reading and learning for now. I don’t know exactly what astrology is but I am certainly not dismissive of it anymore.
Anyways..that’s the Krittika/Pleiades myth in Indian mythology.