6. Maybe we cannot go ahead from Cancer to Leo. Maybe the origin of time was at Cancer and there was nothing earlier. With Gemini at the March equinox and the birth star of Cancer (*) at the very beginning of time the arrow of precessional time would in turn point to Gemini, Taurus, Aries, etc. Through the millenia of precession spring equinox would move earlier and earlier in the year:
584 - 219 = 365. The date complementary to 'August 7 should be 'May 26 (146) because 219 + 146 = 365:
Up in the sky, with the Gods, there was no such arrow of time. Instead their time was moving in cycles. Down on earth, where we humans live, time was not cyclical, and after a death there was no return: ... When the new moon appeared women assembled and bewailed those who had died since the last one, uttering the following lament: 'Alas! O moon! Thou has returned to life, but our departed beloved ones have not. Thou has bathed in the waiora a Tane, and had thy life renewed, but there is no fount to restore life to our departed ones. Alas ... Our arrow of time could have originated (the ancients may have thought) with π Cancri, 26 days earlier than Castor. If we assume Castor is standing on the western bank of the Milky Way and if this River once represented March 21, then the heliacal rising of Castor would have been in day 81:
However, basically our time is generated by the diurnal cycle. Sun is born in the east, rises (grows taller) for half his journey, and then - from noon - grows older, finally to bend down in the west. Such is also our life. In 'September the heliacal rise of Raven announced the beginning of a new 'shell' (halfyear):
The first men are here shown compressed inside a bivalve, and we can guess autumn equinox represents the space between these shells (pure). The great bend of Hydra indicates where this was:
... After the great flood had at long last receded, Raven had gorged himself on the delicacies left by the receding water, so for once, perhaps the first time in his life, he wasn't hungry. But his other appetites, his curiosity and the unquenchable itch to meddle and provoke things, to play tricks on the world and its creatures, these remained unsatisfied. Raven gazed up and down the beach. It was pretty, but lifeless. There was no one about to upset, or play tricks upon. Raven sighed. He crossed his wings behind him and strutted up and down the sand, his shiny head cocked, his sharp eyes and ears alert for any unusual sight or sound. The mountains and the sea, the sky now ablaze with the sun by day and the moon and stars he had placed there, it was all pretty, but lifeless. Finally Raven cried out to the empty sky with a loud exasperated cry. And before the echoes of his cry faded from the shore, he heard a muffled squeak. He looked up and down the beach for its source and saw nothing. He strutted back and and forth, once, twice, three times and still saw nothing. Then he spied a flash of white in the sand. There, half buried in the sand was a giant clamshell. As his shadow fell upon it, he heard another muffled squeak. Peering down into the opening between the halves of the shell, he saw it was full of tiny creatures, cowering in fear at his shadow ... Far back in time the interval between the pair of shells was marked by the band of our galaxy, the Milky Way. A quarter of 26,000 years later the Milky Way was no longer a River for the souls but a Tree, leaning slightly. However, the Shells of winter and summer were still in place, creating a horizontal gap between them. Anyhow, 'September should be the month of Raven (Corvus). In rongorongo times the first Raven star (α, Alchita) arrived half a year after 'March 21 and in K there is indeed a vacant space immediately before Raven:
From the first star of Raven to its last star there are 189.7 - 183.1 = 6.6 days. In this interval the southern spring equinox occurred. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
