The nose (ihu) of the shark (mago) refers to the firstborn (ihu):
The eldest son of king Hotua Matua is the one who rules the 4th quarter and the one who will succeed the king, while the youngest son will rule the 1st quarter (spring). The youngest son is like a shark, but the eldest son is like a 'nose', ihu (who dives deep, ihu). The long nose of the shark is what comes first. All 4 children are one and the same, just personifications of different ages. Atariki should be the precursor of the spring shark. And maybe 'the shadow king' can be regarded as an opposite to the similarly sounding Matariki (the Pleiades), given we translate that word as mata-riki, 'the rulers of light' - mata are eyes, as we can see in e.g. normal tagata glyphs. Atariki could be watched for in the morning sky and Matariki in the sky of evening. |