Maui temporarily lost his maro (loincloth, perhaps alluded to in the Easter Island month name Maro, June, the 'dry' - maro - month), when hauling hard to get the great 'fish' up from the deeps: ... Let go?' he cried. 'What did I come for but to catch fish?' And he went on hauling in his line, the canoe kept taking water, and his brothers kept bailing frantically, but Maui would not let go. Now Maui's hook had caught in the barge-boards of the house of Tonganui, who lived at the bottom of that part of the sea and whose name means Great South; for it was as far to the south that the brothers had paddled from their home. And Maui knew what it was that he had caught, and while he hauled at his line he was chanting the spell that goes: O Tonganui / why do you hold so stubbornly there below? The power of Muri's jawbone is at work on you, / you are coming, / you are caught now, / you are coming up, / appear, appear. Shake yourself, / grandson of Tangaroa the little. The fish came near the surface then, so that Maui's line was slack for a moment, and he shouted to it not to get tangled. But then the fish plunged down again, all the way to the bottom. And Maui had to strain, and haul away again. And at the height of all this excitement his belt worked loose, and his maro fell off and he had to kick it from his feet. He had to do the rest with nothing on ... He had to be like a newborn baby in order to be in harmony with cosmos (which was reborn here) and in rongorongo times the rising fish at the heavy Wezen (δ Canis Majoris) was stubbornly refusing to be uplifted. Wezen was no longer rising with the Sun in *MARCH 21 (80), instead the star was with the Sun in early July, 107 days later, when the Sun was far down and refused to move. The hook of Maui was probably visualized in Ga2-11, easy to recognize. 78 (*MARCH 19) + 107 = 185 (July 4). From the great toga (south) at 7h (Ga2-12) up to and including the same toga in Ga2-16 there were 5 days:
But Polynesia lies basically south of the equator and therefore the grandson of Togaroa the little eventually was brought up to the surface. The warm season would return. Although New Zealand is not close to the equator and not very warm: ... this land, Aotearoa, is now so rough and mountainous and much of it so unuseful to man. Had the brothers done as Maui told them it would have lain smooth and flat, an example to the world of what good land should be. But as soon as the sun rose above the horizon the writhing fish of Maui became solid underfoot, and could not be smoothed out again. This act of Maui's, that gave our people the land on which we live, was an event next in greatness to the separation of the Sky and Earth ... We can now better understand the comparison with the separation of the Sky and Earth. It should have been an allusion to when Wezen (as Toganui at the solstice) once had been Wezen at 0h (as Togaroa the little). As to the date for beginning the season of rising the sky, said to be April 25 by the Chorti indians, it could possibly have been referring to APRIL 25:
From December 28 to the end of the year there were 4 days and by adding 4 days to APRIL 25 a new beginning should be reached (119 = 2 * 59 + 1). Those who were entrusted with the task of raising the sky roof were 4 in number: ... Later on in this series of rituals, the Chorti go through a ceremony they call raising the sky. This ritual takes place at midnight on the twenty-fifth of April and continues each night until the rains arrive. In this ceremony two diviners and their wives sit on benches so that they occupy the corner positions of the cosmic square. They take their seats in the same order as the stones were placed, with the men on the eastern side and the women on the west. The ritual actions of sitting down and lifting upward are done with great precision and care, because they are directly related to the actions done by the gods at Creation. The people represent the gods of the four corners and the clouds that cover the earth. As they rise from their seats, they metaphorically lift the sky. If their lifting motion is uneven, the rains will be irregular and harmful ... North of the equator the task was to raise the sky roof high above the surface of the earth and south of the equator the task was to fish up the submerged land to the surfarce of the world ocean. It was up in both cases, although precession had changed all circumstances. Only for those living south of the equator was Wezen at July 6 a sign of the direction up ahead. North of the equator it was instead the beginning of the long journey downwards to the winter solstice. "... Mysingr ('son of the Mouse') loaded Grotte on his ship, and with him he also took the giantesses. He ordered them to grind again. But this time they ground out salt. 'And at midnight they asked whether Mysingr were not weary of salt. He bade them grind longer. They had ground but a little while, when down sank the ship,' 'the huge props flew off the bin, // the iron rivets burst, // the shaft tree shivered, // the bin shot down, // the massy mill-stone rent in twain.' 'And from that time there has been a whirlpool in the sea where the water falls through the hole in the mill-stone. It was then that the sea became salt.' Here ends Snorri's tale. Three fundamental and far-reaching themes have been set: the broken mill, the whirlpool, the salt. As for the curse of the miller women, it stands out alone like a megalith abandoned in the landscape. But surprisingly it can also be found, already looking strange, in the world of Homer, two thousand years before. It is the last night in the Odyssey which precedes the decisive confrontation. Odysseus has landed in Ithaca and is hiding under Athena's magic spell which protects him from recognition. Just as in Snorri, everybody sleeps. Odysseus prays to Zeus to send him an encouraging sign before the great ordeal. Straightaway he thundered from shining Olympus, from on high from the place of the clouds; and goodly Odysseus was glad. Moreover, a woman, a grinder at the mill, uttered a voice of omen from within the house hard by, where stood the mills of the shepherd of the people. At these handmills twelve women in all plied their task, making meal of barley and of wheat, the marrow of men. Now all the others were asleep, for they had ground out their task of grain, but one alone rested not yet, being weakest of all. She now stayed her quern and spake a word, a sign to her Lord (epos phato sema anakti). 'Father Zeus, who rulest over gods and man, loudly hast thou thundered from the starry sky, yet nowhere is there a cloud to be seen: this is surely a portent thou art showing to some mortal. Fulfill now, I pray thee, even to miserable me, the word that I shall speak. May the wooers, on this day, for the last and latest time make their sweet feasting in the halls of Odysseus! They that have loosened my knees with cruel toil to grind their barley meal, may they now sup their last!' 'The weakest of all', yet a giant figure in her own right. In the tight and shapely structure of the narrative, the episode is fitted with art, yet it stands out like a cyclopean stone embedded in a house. There are many such things in Homer." (Hamlet's Mill)
For a more complete harmony there ought to be in the glyph text a nighttime view of the Full Moon close to one of her cardinal points. The Moon has not 6 faces as Murugan but 2 faces, one waxing and one waning. This pattern could have been the origin of the idea of a Gemini station for the Sun. Twice 29½ = 59 and glyph 59 is Ga2-29 - where we instead can count 2 * 29 = 58:
20h - visible close to the Full Moon in July 20 (201) corresponded to day 384 counted from January 1 in the previous year. 13 * 29½ = 383½. Whereas 13 * 29 = 377. Cfr ihe tau at Ga2-20 and nakshatra Sham (α Sagittae):
One arrow of time was pointing up and the other down. |
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