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7. The 'feelers' of the Lobster was said to be so conspicious so as to reveal his hiding inside a hole in the coral reef. But there are no such revealingly bright stars in the sky:  I guess the creator of this amusing little story has played a joke on us. The feelers are conspicious by being not visible. And the idea of a Lobster here at first seems to be quite out of place, there should be a rounded body (like full moon). The form of a Lobster's feelers is similar to threads, which might indicate they could have been regarded as female in character. Instead of the firm broad limbs of Sun they are flimsy weak things. Yet they are centered on the Lion's head, and we should remember (cfr at The Golden Fleece) how the ancient Egyptians depicted the morning Sun as being uplifted from the primeval waters by female arms (strong in Egypt which had everything 'upside down'):  In the chapter Kai Viri I found reason to quote from The White Goddess and some of it should here be repeated: ... It will be objected that man has as valid a claim to divinity as woman. That is true only in a sense; he is divine not in his single person, but only in his twinhood. As Osiris, the Spirit of the Waxing Year, he is always jealous of his weird, Set, the Spirit of the Waning Year, and vice versa; he cannot be both of them at once except by an intellectual effort that destroys his humanity, and this is the fundamental defect of the Apollonian or Jehovistic cult. Man is demi-god: he always has either one foot or the other in the grave; woman is divine because she can keep both her feet always in the same place, whether in the sky, in the underworld, or on this earth. Man envies her and tells himself lies about his own completeness, and thereby makes himself miserable; because if he is divine she is not even a demi-goddess - she is a mere nymph and his love for her turns to scorn or hate. Woman worships the male infant, not the grown man: it is evidence of her deity, of man's dependence on her for life. She is passionately interested in grown men, however, because the love-hate that Osiris and Set feel for each other on her account is a tribute to her divinity. She tries to satisfy both, but can only do so by alternate murder, and man tries to regard this as evidence of her fundamental falsity, not of his own irreconsolable demands on her. Thus the male infant is another 'cock', and a Bright Fire, a new 'Osiris', is reborn in spring and presumably he will soon evolve into a great ferocious Lion:
In spring the glans ('eye') of the Old Cock is immortalized: ... ξ [at Ga3-15], another [ín addition to μ, Heap of Fuel at Ga2-28] 5½-magnitude, with λ Leonis, formed the seventh manzil Al Tarf, the End, or as some translate it, the Glance, i.e. of the Lion's Eye, the ancient Asad, which occupied so large a portion of the sky in this neighborhood. They also were the Persian Nahn, the Nose, and the Coptic Piautos, the Eye, both lunar asterisms ... 2 is a Sign for woman (because she is pregnant), while 1 is a Sign for a man (because he has a twin). We should remember (from Popol Vuh): ... They walked in crowds when they arrived at Tulan, and there was no fire. Only those with Tohil had it: this was the tribe whose god was first to generate fire. How it was generated is not clear. Their fire was already burning when Jaguar Quitze and Jaguar Night first saw it: 'Alas! Fire has not yet become ours. We'll die from the cold', they said. And then Tohil spoke: 'Do not grieve. You will have your own even when the fire you're talking about has been lost', Tohil told them. 'Aren't you a true god! Our sustenance and our support! Our god!' they said when they gave thanks for what Tohil had said. 'Very well, in truth, I am your god: so be it. I am your lord: so be it,' the penitents and sacrificers were told by Tohil. And this was the warming of the tribes. They were pleased by their fire. After that a great downpour began, which cut short the fire of the tribes. And hail fell thickly on all the tribes, and their fires were put out by the hail. Their fires didn't start up again. So then Jaguar Quitze and Jaguar Night asked for their fire again: 'Tohil, we'll be finished off by the cold', they told Tohil. 'Well, do not grive', said Tohil. Then he started a fire. He pivoted inside his sandal ...
Only by dying can Man be reincarnated - his life implies his death: ... And then she looked in her hand, she inspected it right away, but the bone's saliva wasn't in her hand. It is just a sign I have given you, my saliva, my spittle. This, my head, has nothing on it - just bone, nothing of meat. It's just the same with the head of a great lord: it's just the flesh that makes his face look good. And when he dies, people get frightened by his bones. After that, his son is like his saliva, his spittle, in his being, whether it be the son of a lord or the son of a craftsman, an orator. The father does not disappear, but goes on being fulfilled. Neither dimmed nor destroyed is the face of a lord, a warrior, craftsman, an orator. Rather, he will leave his daughters and sons. So it is that I have done likewise through you. Now go up there on the face of the earth; you will not die. Keep the word. So be it, said the head of One and Seven Hunaphu - they were of one mind when they did it ... The curious appellation 'One and Seven' could refer to the front side ('daytime') respectively to the back side ('nighttime'). |
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