The page in my
'preliminary
reading' continues
as follows directly
after Worthen's
description:
The nakshatra method - by which it was possible to determine where the Sun was by looking in the night at the right ascension stars determined by the face of the Full Moon - could easily have been used by people on Easter Island. In my supporting dates I have added 183 in order to move from a nakshatra day number to its corresponding heliacal day number (or the other way around). For instance was the heliacal star position of St John's Eve (June 24) exactly half way around the year compared to the night sky of Christmas Eve, when Tejat Posterior was vertically aligned with the Full Moon. 175 (June 24) + 183 = 358 (Christmas Eve). 358 + 183 - 366 = 175. To make my method work properly we have to subtract 366 (= 2 * 183) instead of 365¼. Though had I not found evidence in the rongorongo texts for a cycle measuring 366 I would not have dared to suggest this simple and practical method. In the night sky of June 24 the stars in Sagittarius (the Archer) were close to the Full Moon, i.e. they would rise with the Sun around Christmas. The bow and quiver (cfr at Castor and Pollux) is precisely what an Archer needs, but he was absent and instead present at the opposite side of the year:
Kaus Medius is δ Sagittarii at the hand of the Archer and Kaus Australis is ε further south on his serpentine bow:
When using the nakshatra method it is useful to have associations across the sky roof. Lucia, for instance, is celebrated in the darkest of times and opposite to the season when the Sun is very high up (in the northern sky). In December 13 and close to the Full Moon were the bright and easy recognizable 3 stars in the Belt of Orion - Mintaka (δ), Alnilam (ε), and Alnitak (ζ):
Though the Chinese appear to have referred only to Alnitak in their 21st station Three Stars. More to the point, however: counting 5 days forward from Alnitak was the vertical line which at 6h (in our time) would be easy to find by looking from δ Aurigae (Praja-pāti), down to Menkalinan (β) and Mahashim (θ):
The blue descending 'river valley' of the Milky Way is today overcrossed at 6h by the blue ecliptic 'road' of the Sun (and the rest of the planets). In rongorongo times it would not have been very much different. Praja-pāti at the top of the 6h (midsummer) line means 'The Lord of Created Beings'.
There were thus 3 stars more or less horizontally oriented in the Belt of Orion and 3 stars precisely vertically oriented in Auriga, which made it possible to allude to the fact that once upon a time the 'horizontal' ecliptic road must have gone right through the 3 stars in the center of Orion at the sky equator (0º). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
