Mata what?
Oh. It's actually about M45, aka the Pleiades.
It seems just about every civilisation, culture, society, nationality, community, group, mob, gang, and random pack of people gave M45 their own name.
M45, the Pleiades.
Quote:
Other names
Many other civilizations have given names to the cluster:
Kartikeya (Skanda): is the Hindu god of masculinity and warfare - he is the leader of the armies of the gods. Born out of a magical spark created by Shiva, his name means "him of the Pleiades". (Indian)
Mao (昴), the hairy head of the white tiger of the West - alternatively, the Blossom Stars and Flower Stars. (Chinese)
Kimah: a cluster (כימה). (Hebrew)
Al-Thurayya: a cluster (الثريا). (Arabic)
Subaru: 'gathered together'. This was adopted as the trading name of a car manufacturer. (Japanese)
Hoki Boshi: 'dabs of paint on the sky', literally, the brush stars. (Japanese)
Ălker: Mankind being afflicted with much evil and suffering, Tangri Ulgen (the creator god) met with the Sky Spirits of the West in the Pleiades (Ălker). There they resolved to relieve these afflictions by sending an eagle as the first Shaman. To Turkic nomadic tribes the Pleiades was thus both a source of solace and their original point of contact with the realms of the gods. (Turkish)
Kungkarungkara: the ancestral women. (Australian aboriginal: Pitjantjatjara tribe)
Makara: the wives of the stars in the Orion constellation. (Australian aboriginal: Adnyamathanha tribe)
Khuseti: the stars of rain, or rain bearers. (Southern Africa: Khoikhoi tribe)
Tianquiztli: the 'marketplace' or 'gathering place'. (Aztec)
The seed scatterer or sower. (Inca)
To the ancient Egyptians the Pleiades represented the goddess Net or Neith, the 'divine mother and lady of heaven'.
The Bunch of Grapes / The Spring Virgins. (Classical Roman)
The Hen and Chicks. (Old English, Old German, Russian, Czech and Hungarian)
Freya's hens. (Viking)
The Ancestors: an ancient Paraguayan tribe, the Abipones, even worshipped them as ancestors. A singularly poor choice of origin, as it happens, since the youth of the stellar cluster indicates that it is extremely inhospitable to life, with other than rudimentary planetary formation [reference] anywhere in the cluster being highly improbable.
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NZHerald Article on 'Matariki'
