θ Cor. Borealis (235.3), γ Lupi (235.6), GEMMA, ZUBEN ELAKRAB = γ Librae, QIN = δ Serpentis, ε Tr. Austr. (235.7), μ Cor. Borealis (235.8), υ Librae (235.9)

SIRRAH

GIENAH

ACRUX

Poporo. A plant (Solanum forsteri); poporo haha, a sort of golden thistle. Vanaga. A berry whose juice is mixed with ashes of ti leaves in tattoing. Ta.: oporo, a capsicum plant. The Tahiti oporo is not a degradation of poporo but is the original poro stem augmented by that o which in Tahiti is word-formative in a sense too elusive to find expression in European ideas. Mgv.: poporo, the July season when the leaves fall. Mq.: pororo, dry, arid. Sa.: palolo-mua, July. Ma.: paroro, cloudy weather. Poporohiva, milk thistle. Churchill.

... Kava will make the eyes more sensitive, generating an illusion of returning light ...

When Metoro said 'hia' it was probably an instruction for Bishop Jaussen on Tahiti to 'Count!' For instance:

 ... Ecclesiastically, the equinox is reckoned to be on 21 March (even though the equinox occurs, astronomically speaking, on 20 March in most years) ... → 3-20 ↔ right ascension day *320 at the south pole star Dramasa.

... A very detailed myth comes from the island of Nauru. In the beginning there was nothing but the sea, and above soared the Old-Spider. One day the Old-Spider found a giant clam, took it up, and tried to find if this object had any opening, but could find none. She tapped on it, and as it sounded hollow, she decided it was empty. By repeating a charm, she opened the two shells and slipped inside. She could see nothing, because the sun and the moon did not then exist; and then, she could not stand up because there was not enough room in the shellfish. Constantly hunting about she at last found a snail. To endow it with power she placed it under her arm, lay down and slept for three days. Then she let it free, and still hunting about she found another snail bigger than the first one, and treated it in the same way. Then she said to the first snail: 'Can you open this room a little, so that we can sit down?' The snail said it could, and opened the shell a little. Old-Spider then took the snail, placed it in the west of the shell, and made it into the moon. Then there was a little light, which allowed Old-Spider to see a big worm. At her request he opened the shell a little wider, and from the body of the worm flowed a salted sweat which collected in the lower half-shell and became the sea. Then he raised the upper half-shell very high, and it became the sky.

... The correspondence between the winter solstice and the kali'i rite of the Makahiki is arrived at as follows: ideally, the second ceremony of 'breaking the coconut', when the priests assemble at the temple to spot the rising of the Pleiades, coincides with the full moon (Hua tapu) of the twelfth lunar month (Welehu). In the latter eighteenth century, the Pleiades appear at sunset on 18 November. Ten days later (28 November), the Lono effigy sets off on its circuit, which lasts twenty-three days, thus bringing the god back for the climactic battle with the king on 21 December, the solstice (= Hawaiian 16 Makali'i). The correspondence is 'ideal' and only rarely achieved, since it depends on the coincidence of the full moon and the crepuscular rising of the Pleiades ...

... Antares, visible in the morning sky of December-January, came to stand for summer heat; hence the saying, 'Rehua cooks (ripens) all fruit' [hakatupu]. The generally accepted version of the Rehua myth, according to Best, is that Rehua had two wives, the stars on either side of Antares. One was Ruhi-te-rangi or Pekehawani, the personification of summer languor (ruhi), the other Whaka-onge-kai, She-who-makes-food-scarce before the new crops can be harvested ...

no star listed (258)

...We should now of course take a look at June 6 according to Ca10-5 (260) and also at December 6 (340) where the planet Mars was bound to cross over his own path.

*259

ALRISHA

CURSA (*76.4)

ψ (65) ERIDANI

THUBAN

ARCTURUS

Kiore. Rat. Vanaga. Rat, mouse; kiore hiva, rabbit. P Pau., Mgv.: kiore, rat, mouse. Mq.: kioē, íoé, id. Ta.: iore, id. Churchill.

... In China, with Capricornus, Pisces, and a part of Sagittarius, it [Aquarius] constituted the early Serpent, or Turtle, Tien Yuen; and later was known as Hiuen Ying, the Dark Warrior and Hero, or Darkly Flourishing One, the Hiuen Wu, or Hiuen Heaou, of the Han dynasty, which Dupuis gave as Hiven Mao. It was a symbol of the emperor Tchoun Hin, in whose reign was a great deluge; but after the Jesuits came in it became Paou Ping, the Precious Vase. It contained three of the sieu, and headed the list of zodiac signs as the Rat, which in the far East was the ideograph for 'water', and still so remains in the almanacs of Central Asia, Cochin China, and Japan ...

... The decoded meaning of the names 'the dark rat' (i.e., the island king as the recipient of gifts) and 'the gathering place of the island population' (for the purpose of presenting the island king with gifts) links them with the month 'Maro', which is June ...