16 1. In my living-room stands a low table with a copperplated surface and on this surface there is drawn an old map over the world. I bought the table long ago and the old map has since been there to remind me about the progress of time. The outlines of the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and the New World are quite realistically drawn, but in the south there is an unrecognizable land mass with the legend TERRA AUSTRALIS INCOGNITA, the unknow southern continent. In a way we are to make a journey of discovery into this unknown southern world (Polynesia lies predominantly south of the equator). But it is not an unknown land mass we wíll visit - it is an unknown 'land of time'. In a game of chess you have 8 + 8 = 16 pieces to move and the field has 8 * 8 = 64 black and white squares. An Easter Islander of old should instantly have recognized its deeper meaning.
2. One of the rongorongo tablets (Keiti) has a sequence of 16 glyphs which can be used as a our first text example:
The meaning can be explained on a superficial level by using a myth from Hawaii: "When the man, Ulu, returned to his wife from his visit to the temple at Puueo, he said, 'I have heard the voice of the noble Mo'o, and he has told me that tonight, as soon as darkness draws over the sea and the fires of the volcano goddess, Pele, light the clouds over the crater of Mount Kilauea, the black cloth will cover my head. And when the breath has gone from my body and my spirit has departed to the realms of the dead, you are to bury my head carefully near our spring of running water. Plant my heart and entrails near the door of the house. My feet, legs, and arms, hide in the same manner. Then lie down upon the couch where the two of us have reposed so often, listen carefully throughout the night, and do not go forth before the sun has reddened the morning sky. If, in the silence of the night, you should hear noises as of falling leaves and flowers, and afterward as of heavy fruit dropping to the ground, you will know that my prayer has been granted: the life of our little boy will be saved.' And having said that, Ulu fell on his face and died. His wife sang a dirge of lament, but did precisely as she was told, and in the morning she found her house surrounded by a perfect thicket of vegetation. 'Before the door,' we are told in Thomas Thrum's rendition of the legend, 'on the very spot where she had buried her husband's heart, there grew a stately tree covered over with broad, green leaves dripping with dew and shining in the early sunlight, while on the grass lay the ripe, round fruit, where it had fallen from the branches above. And this tree she called Ulu (breadfruit) in honor of her husband. The little spring was concealed by a succulent growth of strange plants, bearing gigantic leaves and pendant clusters of long yellow fruit, which she named bananas. The intervening space was filled with a luxuriant growth of slender stems and twining vines, of which she called the former sugar-cane and the latter yams; while all around the house were growing little shrubs and esculent roots, to each one of which she gave an appropriate name. Then summoning her little boy, she bade him gather the breadfruit and bananas, and, reserving the largest and best for the gods, roasted the remainder in the hot coals, telling him that in the future this should be his food. With the first mouthful, health returned to the body of the child, and from that time he grew in strength and stature until he attained to the fulness of perfect manhood. He became a mighty warrior in those days, and was known throughout all the island, so that when he died, his name, Mokuola, was given to the islet in the bay of Hilo where his bones were buried; by which name it is called even to the present time." (Joseph Campbell The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology.) A myth cannot be explained in full, though. It is a story possible to observe from a thousand and one different angles. And the thinking (and feeling) must be a private matter. |
