7. The exhausted Rigi worm died from his efforts of lifting the sky shell, and we can imagine him falling on his face. What happened with his body? Did it become the horizon? Did it fall into the southern sea? One thing we can be sure of, his death must have come at midsummer, when his work was completed.

Midsummer is where a new year should begin. The season of the 'beast' is in the past and ahead lies the season of men and gods. The land is high and a sense of order has returned to this world of ours. On Hawaii new year began in winter, but that is the same time because Hawaii lies north of the equator.

The dramatic changes occasioned by Sun 'dying' (standing still) at midsummer has been so much described and commented upon in myths all over the world that we must keep a healthy distance to the subject. But it is necessary to take up one thread, viz. the Latin name for our 'tropical' bird: Phaethon rubricauda.

Once names were chosen with care and this plunge diver with a red tail made its namegiver recognize the legendary Phaethon, the reckless youth who once chaotically drove the Sun's chariot:

"In the story of Phaëton, which is another name for Helius himself (Homer, Iliad xi. 735 and Odyssey v. 479), an instructive fable has been grafted on the chariot allegory, the moral being that fathers should not spoil their sons by listening to female advice. This fable, however, is not quite so simple as it seems: it has a mythic importance in its reference to the annual sacrifice of a royal prince, on the one day reckoned as belonging to the terrestrial, but not to the sidereal year, namely that which followed the shortest day.

The sacred king pretended to die at sunset; the boy interrex was at once invested with his titles, dignities, and sacred implements, married to the queen, and killed twenty-four hours later: in Thrace, torn to pieces by women disguised as horses ... but at Corinth, and elsewhere, dragged at the tail of a sun-chariot drawn by maddened horses, until he was crushed to death. Thereupon the old king reappeared from the tomb where he had been hiding ... as the boy's successor ..." (Graves)

The chariot race took place at a solstice. The old year had ended and there was a 'dark night' before the beginning of the next year (presumably calculated to be due in day 365 = 364 + 1). The last day of the year belongs to Saturn (cfr the location of Saturday as the last day of the week).

"... And there is little doubt, in fact none, that Phaethon (in the strange transformation scenes of successive ages) came to be understood as Saturn. There is the testimony of Erastosthenes' Catasterisms, according to which the planet Saturn was Phaethon who fell from the chariot into Eridanus, and Stephanus of Byzantium calls Phaethon a Titan ..." (Hamlet's Mill)

If the year is regarded as a 'bicycle', then - I guess - there could be 2 events of 'falling down' (one at each cyclic end). Maybe the feeble and feminine Mercury is Phaethon rather than Saturn? If Saturn rules winter solstice north of the equator he could leave Mercury to rule winter solstice south of the equator. Saturn is high in the sky (indeed the planet closest to the stars) and therefore he should be located above the 'world mountain' in the north. Mercury is a liquid character and (s)he should be below the equator.