The picture in Hancock 3 of the 'Candelabra of the Andes' caught my eye because I thought I recognized this type of glyph:
I think that in the right 'arm' of the 'candelabra' there are two creatures, one on the left side and another one on the right side of the 'arm'. The one at left looks like the 'sun-cat', with mouth open as if just about to grasp the oblong 'fruit' growing above its head. The creature at right seems to be of another kind, with a long bushy tail and short front legs (like a squirrel). However, I think this one is an opossum: "Partly within the constellation's boundaries, and at the point of the nearest approach of the Milky Way to the south pole, is the pear-shaped Coal-sack, or Soot-bag, 8o in length by 5o in breadth, containing only one star visible to the naked eye, and that very small, although it has many that are telescopic, and a photograph taken at Sydney in 1890 shows about as many in proportion as in the surrounding region. This singular vacancy was first formally described by Peter Martyr, although observed in 1499 by Vicente Yañes Pinzon, and designated by Vespucci as 'il Canopo fosco', and perhaps alluded to by Camões. Narborough wrote of it in 1671 as 'a small black cloud which the foot of the Cross is in'; but before him it was Macula Magellani, Magellan's Spot, and fifty years ago Smyth mentioned it as the Black Magellanic Cloud. Froude described it in his Oceana as 'the inky spot - an opening into the awful solitude of unoccupied space'. A native Australian legend, which 'reads almost like a Christian parable', says that it was 'the embodiment of evil in the shape of an Emu, who lies in wait at the foot of a tree, represented by the stars of the Cross, for an opossum driven by his persecutions to take refuge among its branches'." (Allen) |