4. The red cloth (tapa mea) of the sun probably should be contrasted with the 'black cloth' of night. The day is the time for living, the night the time of death. The eye is quickly moving, but during the night you are still and sleeping. Red is the colour of life, as seen in the morning when the newborn sun is colouring the sky, or - the other side of the coin - when he as an old man dies in blood at the western horizon in the evening. The stuff of life is 'water', without water you will die. Light and water apparently must be close in kind. Sun delivers both sun beams and refreshing rain. When the sun child during a.m. is feeding himself (it is his own arm), it presumably means that he is 'eating' (kai) the water vapour created from his heat:
The close of the cycle comes when sun - as a last act before he is 'going to sleep' - is releasing in form of rain (ûa) what he has taken in:
Ua has a double set of three 'fingers' - of the same kind as the single set used in kai. |
