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Saturn (= Chronos, Time) is effectively telling the time by
cutting it to pieces with his scythe, and the Babylonian spring sun god Marduk
divided the night Tiamat (the ocean god in form of a great
water monster) in half by a slash:
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"...
Marduk, die Frühsonne des Tages und des Jahres,
wurde eben wegen dieses seines Charakters der
Lichtbringer am Weltmorgen.
Marduk,
der die leblose, chaotische Nacht, die keine
Gestaltungen erkennen lässt, besiegt, der den Winter mit
seinem Wasserfluten, den Feind des Naturlebens,
überwindet, wurde der Schöpfer des Lebens und der
Bewegung, der Ordner des Regellosen, der Gestalter des
Unförmlichen am Weltmorgen ...
Die
Sonne, die des Morgens das Weltmeer durchschreitet und
besiegt und das Licht bringt, lässt aus dem Chaos der
Nacht zuerst den Himmel, dann erst die Erde
hervortreten, spaltet das gestaltlose Reich der Nacht in
die zwei Hälften, den Himmel und die Erde ..." (Jensen) |
The Apophis snake is similarly ‘finished’ by ‘knives’:
Wilkinson comments that magic knives were involved in destroying the
enemies of the sun at each dawn and the two sycomore trees
between which the sun rises each morning were called the 'two
knives'.
In
South America the rainbow is compared to a
kind of snake, responsible for lifting the sky up from earth
to let light in (not an altogether beneficient action):
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"... The
Katawihi distinguish two rainbows: Mawali in the west,
and Tini in the east. Tini and Mawali were twin brothers
who brought about the flood that inundated the whole
world and killed all living people, except two young
girls whom they saved to be their companions. It is not
advisable to look either of them straight in the eye: to
look at Mawali is to become flabby, lazy, and unlucky at
hunting and fishing; to look at Tini makes a man so
clumsy that he cannot go any distance without stumbling
and lacerating his feet against all obstacles in his
path, or pick up a sharp instrument without cutting
himself ...
... The
Mura also believed that there were two rainbows, an
'upper' and a 'lower' ... Similarly, the Tucuna
differentiated between the eastern and the western
rainbows and believed them both to be subaquatic demons,
the masters of fish and potter's clay respectively ...
... In
South America the rainbow has a double meaning. On the
one hand, as elsewhere, it announces the end of rain; on
the other hand, it is considered to be responsible for
diseases and various natural disasters [dis-aster]. In
its first capacity the rainbow effects a disjunction
between the sky and the earth which previously were
joined through the medium of rain. In the second
capacity it replaces the normal beneficient conjunction
by an abnormal, maleficient one - the one it brings
about itself between sky and earth by taking the place
of water ..."
(The Raw and the Cooked) |
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The serpent
(rainbow) is responsible for the dis-junction. The
paradisical normal state of watery darkness uniting sky
and earth is disrupted by light, letting in all sorts of
'maleficient' creatures. |
We can now better understand the role of Rigi, the great
worm who lifts up the sky roof during the 2nd quarter, then dies
and becomes the salty sea:
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