Sun moves from the top (the topic of Cancer) to the bottom (the tropic of Capricorn) - according to those who live north of the equator. For those who live south of the equator it should be the opposite - Sun moves from the top at Capricorn to the bottom at Cancer. When you move across the equator the hourglass must be turned upside down.

When Sun has moved from top to bottom his 'year' is over'. He has only 1 'leg'. To return to the top high in the sky is no easy task, and to see him in a state of 'rotten' (pe) is out of the question. He must be splendid and young (pi).

"For the planting folk of the fertile steppes and tropical jungles ... death is a natural phase of life, comparable to the moment of the planting of the seed, for rebirth. As an example of the attitude, we may take the composite picture presented by Frobenius of the sort of burial and reliquary rites that he observed everywhere among the horticulturists of South and East Africa:

When an old kinsman of the sib dies, a cry of joy immediately fills the air. A banquet is arranged, during which the men and women discuss the qualities of the deceased, tell stories of his life, and speak with sorrow of the ills of old age to which he was subject in his last years. Somewhere in the neighorhood - preferably in a shady grove - a hollow has been dug in the earth, covered with a stone. It now is opened and there within lie the bones of earlier times. These are pushed aside to make room for the new arrival. The corpse is carefully bedded in a particular posture, facing a certain way, and left to itself then for a certain season, with the grave again closed.

But when time enough has passed for the flesh to have decayed, the old men of the sib open the chamber again, climb down, take up the skull, and carry it to the surface and into the farmstead, where it is cleaned, painted red and, after being hospitably served with grain and beer, placed in a special place along with the crania of other relatives. From now on no spring will pass when the dead will not participate in the offerings of the planting time; no fall when he will not partake of the offerings of thanks brought in at harvest: and in fact, always before the planting commences and before the wealth of the harvest is enjoyed by the living.

Moreover, the silent old fellow participates in everything that happens in the farmstead. If a leopard kills a woman, a farmboy is bitten by a snake, a plague strikes, or the blessing of rain is withheld, the relic is always brought into connection with the matter in some way. Should there be a fire, it is the first thing saved; when the puberty rites of the youngsters are to commence, it is the first to enjoy the festival beer and porridge.

If a young woman marries into the sib, the oldest member conducts her to the urn or shelf where the earthly remains of the past are preserved and bids her take from the head of an ancestor a few kernels of holy grain to eat. And this, indeed, is a highly significant custom; for when this young, new vessel of the spirit of the sib becomes pregnant, the old people of the community watch to see what similarities will exist between the newly growing and the faded life ... '

Frobenius terms the attitude of the first order 'magical', and the latter 'mystical', observing that whereas the plane of reference of the first is physical, the ghost being conceived as physical, the second renders a profound sense of a communion of death and life in the entity of the sib. And anyone trying to express in words the sense or feeling of this mystic communion would soon learn that words are not enough: the best is silence, or the silent rite.

Not all the rites conceived in this spirit of the mystic community are as gentle, however, as those just described. Many are appalling, as will soon be shown. But through all there is rendered, whether gently or brutally, an awesome sense of this dual image, variously turned, of death in life and life in death: as in the form of the Basumbwa Chief Death, one of whose sides was beautiful, but the other rotten, with maggots dropping to the ground; or in the Hawaiian tree with the deceptive branches at the casting-off place to the other world, one side of which looked fresh and green but the other dry and brittle." (Campbell)

From the perspective of this kind of reality it is possible to guess why the last Quiché capital was named Rotten Cane:

"... In the present context 'mouth' has an additional connotation, given that it refers in part to Heart of Earth, the deity called 'Mundo' today. This is the great Mesoamerican earth deity, the ultimate swallower of all living beings, depicted in Classic Mayan art (in the Palenque relief panels, for example) as an enormous pair of jaws upon whose lips even the feet of great lords must rest in precarious balance, and into whose throat even great lords must fall.

Turning to the contemporary scene, daykeepers who visit the main cave beneath the ruins of Rotten Cane, the last Quiché capital, speak of the danger of falling into 'the open mouth of the Mundo' there, which is said to be more than four yards wide." (Tedlock in his comments on Popol Vuh)

A cane is a kind of stick and with age it becomes brittle or rotten.

Also a branch is a kind of stick, and when this stick is paired with Y the offcome is a 'beetle living in rotten wood' (according to the creation chant, cfr at poporo):

... Veke by lying with Water-beetle made the dragonfly,

Stinging-fly by doing it with Swarm-of-flies produced the fly,

Branch by lying with Fork-of-tree made Beetle-that-lives-in-rotten-wood,

Lizard-woman by lying with Whiteness made the gannet ...

In China the tail of the Dolphin was Pae Chaou, the Rotten Melon:

"Delphinus, the Dolphin, is Dauphin in France, Delfino in Italy, and Delphin in Germany; all from the Greek Δελφίς and Δελφίν, transcribed by the Latins as Delphis and Delphin...

In Greece it also was Ιερος 'Ιχθύς, the Sacred Fish, the creature being of as much religious significance there as a fish afterwards became among the early Christians; and it was the sky emblem of philanthropy, not only from the classical stories connected with its prototype, but also from the latter's devotion to its young.

It should be remembered that our stellar Dolphin is figured as the common cetacean, Dolphinus delphis, of Atlantic and Mediterranea waters, not the tropical Coryphaena that Dorado represents ...

Delphinus lies east of Aquila, on the edge of the Milky Way, occupying, with the adjoining aqueous figures, the portion of the sky that Aratos called the Water. It culminates about the 15th of September. Caesius placed here the Leviathan of the 104th Psalm; Novidius, the Great Fish that swallowed Jonah, but Julius Schiller knew some of its stars as the Water-pots of Cana. Popularly it now is Job's Coffin, although the date and name of the inventor of this title I have not been able to learn. The Chinese called the four chief stars and ξ Kwa Chaou, a Gourd ...

ε, a 4th magnitude, although lying near the dorsal fin of our present figure, bears the very common name Deneb, from Al Dhanab al Dulfim, the Dolphin's Tail. But in Arabia it also was Al 'Amud al Şalib, as marking the Pillar of the Cross. In China it was Pae Chaou, the Rotten Melon." (Allen)