Cultures  ·  Māori
Aotearoa · Māori · Culture 01 of 11

Matariki, and the rising of the year.

When the Pleiades return to the pre-dawn sky over Aotearoa, a new year begins — and the dead are remembered, the harvest is read, and the future is sung into being.

The cluster · M45
Region
Aotearoa New Zealand
Cluster
Pleiades · M45
Visible
Late June, pre-dawn
Tradition
Living, observed annually

For most of human history, the night sky was a calendar, a map, a graveyard, and a promise. The Māori of Aotearoa kept all four in a small smudge of light called Matariki — a cluster of stars that disappears below the horizon for about a month each year, and rises again in the cold pre-dawn of late June.

That return is the new year. Not a date on a printed page, but a moment you have to be awake for, looking east, into a sky still bruised dark.

What the cluster holds

Western astronomy calls it the Pleiades, or Messier 45 — a young open cluster about 444 light-years away, six or seven stars visible to a sharp eye, hundreds more through a telescope. In Māori tradition, it holds nine. Each one carries a name, and each name carries a domain.

The nine stars of Matariki

i.

MatarikiThe mother. Reflection, hope, wellbeing.
ii.

PōhutukawaConnected to those who have died this year.
iii.

TupuānukuFood grown in the soil.
iv.

TupuārangiFood from the trees and the sky.
v.

WaitīFresh water and the creatures within it.
vi.

WaitāThe ocean and its food.
vii.

Waipuna-ā-rangiRain.
viii.

UrurangiThe winds.
ix.

Hiwa-i-te-rangiThe wishing star. The year ahead.

The brightness or haze of each star, observed in the cold morning air, was read by tohunga kōkōrangi — sky experts — as a forecast. A clear Tupuānuku promised a strong harvest. A dim Waitā hinted at a thin year for fishing. Hiwa-i-te-rangi was the star you whispered your wishes into.

“Matariki hunga nui — Matariki of many people.”Whakataukī · traditional saying

The grief and the planting

Before celebration, mourning. The names of those who had died since the last rising were called out to the stars, so that Pōhutukawa could carry them. Only after that grief was placed could the feast begin — and only after the feast could the new season’s planting be timed by what the cluster had told the watchers.

This is what makes Matariki different from a holiday. It isn’t a date imposed on the year. It is the year, observed.

If you’d like to see them

From the southern hemisphere, late June before sunrise, looking east-northeast. From the northern hemisphere, the cluster sits high in winter evenings, in the shoulder of Taurus. With the naked eye you’ll see a tight, hazy smudge — six stars if your eyes are sharp, sometimes seven. A pair of good binoculars will show you dozens, scattered like spilled salt, and is honestly the better instrument for this particular cluster than a telescope.