Miraculously the Gregorian calendar had now come into tune with the stars. Its dates were connected to the correct cardinal strings. The Rear Spout was at 0h and 366 / 2 = 183 days later was Alchita. When Algenib Pegasi was at the Full Moon there were 100 days remaining to day 364 (= 4 * 91), and this was the place for the 'Root of the Tail'.
Here Metoro informed Bishop Jaussen: koia - ki te hoea. Perhaps we can, at the beginning of the G text, read about the end of another such tail of the year at the time of the Bull, as illustrated in Ga1-1.
... In Bayer's Uranometria from the year 1603 the Bird of Paradise is depicted among the constellations in the southern sky. The name Apus means 'without feet'. The great paradise birds of East India have exceedingly beautiful feathers but very ugly feet. When anciently the natives tried to sell these birds to the Europeans they therefore first cut off their feet ... The Chinese list has a Crow at its 19th station Net. The Crow could be the proper bird of spring, in contrast to Raven in autumn: ... There was no water in the village. The lakes and rivers were dry. Raven and Crow, two young girls who were having their first menstrual courses, were told to go and draw water from the ocean. Finding the journey too long, Raven decided just to urinate into her basket-bucket. She decieved no one and was severly scolded. Crow returned much later but with drinking water. As a punishment, Raven was condemned never to find water in the summer; only in winter would she find something to drink. For that reason the Raven never drinks during the hot months; she speaks with a raucous voice because of her dry throat ... In the Tahitian star (ana) list Aldebaran was the rear pillar - at the foot of which was the place of tattooing:
A pruning knife (hoe pikopiko) could have been used to cut off the 'foot' (people have no tails) where the nightside journey over the ocean was beginning. In a canoe you were sitting down and feet were useless:
Aldebaran could have corresponded to Shu (Hercules, etc) and as we can see in the picture above the left foot of Shu was protruding into the water, no longer in sight, covered up as if by a shoe.
... They walked in crowds when they arrived at Tulan, and there was no fire. Only those with Tohil had it: this was the tribe whose god was first to generate fire. How it was generated is not clear. Their fire was already burning when Jaguar Quitze and Jaguar Night first saw it: 'Alas! Fire has not yet become ours. We'll die from the cold', they said. And then Tohil spoke: 'Do not grieve. You will have your own even when the fire you're talking about has been lost', Tohil told them. 'Aren't you a true god! Our sustenance and our support! Our god!' they said when they gave thanks for what Tohil had said. 'Very well, in truth, I am your god: so be it. I am your lord: so be it,' the penitents and sacrificers were told by Tohil. And this was the warming of the tribes. They were pleased by their fire. After that a great downpour began, which cut short the fire of the tribes. And hail fell thickly on all the tribes, and their fires were put out by the hail. Their fires didn't start up again. So then Jaguar Quitze and Jaguar Night asked for their fire again: 'Tohil, we'll be finished off by the cold', they told Tohil. 'Well, do not grive', said Tohil. Then he started a fire. He pivoted inside his sandal ... ... Hercules first appears in legend as a pastoral sacred king and, perhaps because shepherds welcome the birth of twin lambs, is a twin himself. His characteristics and history can be deduced from a mass of legends, folk-customs and megalithic monuments. He is the rain-maker of his tribe and a sort of human thunder-storm. Legends connect him with Libya and the Atlas Mountains; he may well have originated thereabouts in Palaeolithic times. The priests of Egyptian Thebes, who called him Shu, dated his origin as '17,000 years before the reign of King Amasis' ...
Thus ki te hoea (to be tattooed, to be covered in black) meant to go inside, to go down to the world below, to leave - to be cut off from - the world in the light above. ... He continued travelling until he reached the house of Uetonga, whose name all men know: he was the tattoo expert of the world below, and the origin and source of all the tattoo designs in this world. Uetonga was at work tattooing the face of a chief. This chief was lying on the ground with his hands clenched and his toes twitching while the father of Niwareka worked at his face with a bone of many sharpened points, and Mataora was greatly surprised to see that blood was flowing from the cheeks of that chief. Mataora had his own moko, it was done here in the world above, but it was painted on with ochre and blue clay. Mataora had not seen such moko as Uetonga was making, and he said to him, 'You are doing that in the wrong way, O old one. We do not do it thus.' 'Quite so,' replied Uetonga, 'you do not do it thus. But yours is the way that is wrong. What you do above there is tuhi, it is only fit for wood. You see,' he said, putting forth his hand to Mataora's cheek, 'it will rub off.' And Uetonga smeared Mataora's make-up with his fingers and spoiled its appearance. And all the people sitting round them laughed, and Uetonga with them ...
... The four males and the four females were couples in consequence of their lower, i.e. of their sexual parts. The four males were man and woman, and the four females were woman and man. In the case of the males it was the man, and in the case of the females it was the woman, who played the dominant role. They coupled and became pregnant each in him or herself, and so produced their offspring. But in the fullness of time an obscure instinct led the eldest of them towards the anthill which had been occupied by the Nummo. He wore on his head a head-dress and to protect him from the sun, the wooden bowl he used for his food. He put his two feet into the opening of the anthill, that is of the earth's womb, and sank in slowly as if for a parturition a tergo. The whole of him thus entered into the earth, and his head itself disappeared. But he left on the ground, as evidence of his passage into that world, the bowl which had caught on the edges of the opening. All that remained on the anthill was the round wooden bowl, still bearing traces of the food and the finger-prints of its vanished owner, symbol of his body and of his human nature, as, in the animal world, is the skin which a reptile has shed ...
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