... 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 ...

The head is the first part of a constellation to rise in the east and therefore also the first part to be buried.

Heart and entrails are then following - that of Ulu to be buried 'close to the door of the house', probably close to where a new solar year is beginning.

Examples of constellation 'heads' are Ras Elaset (The Head of the Lion, ε and μ Leonis) and Ras Algethi (The Head of the Kneeler, referring to the figure of Hercules):

Ras Alhague is similarly the Head of Ophiuchus:

This picture, by Ignace-Gaston Pardies (Globi Coelestis, Paris 1674) according to Linda Hall's site, shows the pair of heads (Ras Algethi and Ras Alhague) close together, but with that of Hercules upside down, according to convention.

Ophiuchus and 'the Lion' (Hercules wears a lion's skin) are oppositely oriented, they are contrasted with each other. I think it could mean the Lion (summer) is succeeded by winter (the Serpent). There are 2 sides of the year and at the proper point in time Hercules must be succeeded by his other self, his adversary (tanist or weird - see Kai Viri):

... 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'.

He carries an oak-club, because the oak provides his beasts and his people with mast and because it attracts lightning more than any other tree. His symbols are the acorn; the rock-dove, which nests in oaks as well as in clefts of rocks; the mistletoe, or Loranthus; and the serpent. All these are sexual emblems.

The dove was sacred to the Love-goddess of Greece and Syria; the serpent was the most ancient of phallic totem-beasts; the cupped acorn stood for the glans penis in both Greek and Latin; the mistletoe was an all-heal and its names viscus (Latin) and ixias (Greek) are connected with vis and ischus (strength) - probably because of the spermal viscosity of its berries, sperm being the vehicle of life.

This Hercules is male leader of all orgiastic rites and has twelve archer companions, including his spear-armed twin, who is his tanist or deputy. He performs an annual green-wood marriage with a queen of the woods, a sort of Maid Marian. He is a mighty hunter and makes rain, when it is needed, by rattling an oak-club thunderously in a hollow oak and stirring a pool with an oak branch - alternatively, by rattling pebbles inside a sacred colocinth-gourd or, later, by rolling black meteoric stones inside a wooden chest - and so attracting thunderstorms by sympathetic magic ...

The manner of his death can be reconstructed from a variety of legends, folk-customs and other religious survivals. At mid-summer, at the end of a half-year reign, Hercules is made drunk with mead and led into the middle of a circle of twelve stones arranged around an oak, in front of which stands an altar-stone; the oak has been lopped until it is T-shaped. He is bound to it with willow thongs in the 'five-fold bond' which joins wrists, neck, and ankles together, beaten by his comrades till he faints, then flayed, blinded, castrated, impaled with a mistletoe stake, and finally hacked into joints on the altar-stone. His blood is caught in a basin and used for sprinkling the whole tribe to make them vigorous and fruitful. The joints are roasted at twin fires of oak-loppings, kindled with sacred fire preserved from a lightning-blasted oak or made by twirling an alder- or cornel-wood fire-drill in an oak log.

The trunk is then uprooted and split into faggots which are added to the flames. The twelve merry-men rush in a wild figure-of-eight dance around the fires, singing ecstatically and tearing at the flesh with their teeth. The bloody remains are burnt in the fire, all except the genitals and the head. These are put into an alder-wood boat and floated down the river to an islet; though the head is sometimes cured with smoke and preserved for oracular use. His tanist succeeds him and reigns for the remainder of the year, when he is sacrificially killed by a new Hercules.

If the death of Hercules is connected with the Hercules constellation, then what once happened at midsummer should nowadays have been pushed later in the year by the precession.

And the Black Rat is perhaps the kuhane of Hercules, maybe corresponding to his tanist.