This is a map of the equatorial sky
which I found in The Raw and the Cooked:
At bottom left we find Scorpio
("the big snake" in South America according to The Raw and the
Cooked). I have the idea that Scorpio could be the origin of
GD26:
Although 'the big
snake' does not appear - in the map above - as a creature with a
big jaw, I think the flexible jaws of an anaconda (appropriately
living in the water, but like the whales needing to breathe once
in a while) can manage giant swallows.
Lockyer (we perhaps
remember) has thought about Scorpio:
'... A Scorpion-Man
plays also another part in the cosmology of the Babylonians. The
Scorpion-Man and his wife guard the gate leading to the Maśu
mountain(s), and watch the sun at rising and setting. Their
upper part reaches to the sky, and their irtu (breast?)
to the lower regions (Epic of
Gistubar
60,9). After Gistubar
has traversed the Maśu
Mountain, he reaches the sea. This sea lies to the east or
south-east.
However obscure
these conceptions may be, and however they may render a general
idea impossible, one thing is clear, that the Scorpion-Men are
to be imagined at the boundary between land and sea, upper and
lower world, and in such a way that the upper or human portion
belongs to the upper region, and the lower, the Scorpion body,
to the lower. Hence the Scorpion-Man represents the boundary
between light and darkness, between the firm land and the water
region of the world.
Marduk,
the god of light, and vanquisher of
Tiamat,
i.e. the
ocean, has for a symbol the Bull = Taurus, into which he entered
in spring. This leads almost necessarily to the supposition that
both the Bull and the Scorpion were located in the heavens at a
time when the sun had its vernal equinox in Taurus and its
autumnal equinox in Scorpio, and that in their principal parts
or most conspicuous star groups; hence probably in the vicinity
of Alderbaran and Antares, or at an epoch when the principal
parts of Taurus and Scorpio appeared before the sun at the
equinoxes. [Cited from Jensen in his 'Kosmologie der
Babylonier']
If my suggestion be
admitted that the Babylonians dealt not with the daily fight but
the yearly fight between light and darkness - that is, the
antithesis between day and night was expanded into the
antithesis between the summer and the winter halves of the year
- then it is clear that at the vernal equinox Scorpio setting in
the west would be watching the sunrise; at the autumnal equinox
rising in the east, it would be watching the sunset; one part
would be visible in the sky, the other would be below the
horizon in the celestial waters. If this be so, all obscurity
disappears, and we have merely a very beautiful statement of a
fact, from which we learn that the time to which the fact
applied was about 3000 BC, if the sun were then near the
Pleiades ...'
Further earlier
information (from Allen):
'... The Akkadians
called it [Antares] Girtab, the Seizer, or Stinger, and
the Place
where One Bows Down, titles indicative of the creature's
dangerous character; although some early translators of the
cuneiform text rendered it the Double Sword. With later
dwellers on the Euphrates it was the symbol of darkness, showing
the decline of the sun's power after the autumnal equinox, then
located in it. Always prominent in that astronomy, Jensen thinks
that it was formed there 5000 BC, and pictured much as it now
is; perhaps also in the semi-human form of two Scorpion-men, the
early circular Altar, or Lamp, sometimes being shown grasped in
the Claws, as the Scales were in illustrations of the 15th
century ...'
And my own reflections:
'Perhaps the shape
of Y originated in the claws
of
Scorpio? The Lamp (= sun?) was grasped in these claws. The
ancient Egyptians connected Antares (and also
α
Centauri) with Selket (picture from Lockyer):
Here, possibly, the
egg of the sun is seen secured
between
the 'horns' of Selket.
Notice also
that the sun-symbols on her back are 36, whereof we can see 3 *
6 = 18. Those are certainly her eggs (the next years periods).
Checking where scorpions carry their eggs I find that she indeed
carries her spawn of her back (picture from Brehm "Djurens
liv"):
But this one (from
the Philippines) carries 34 youngsters on her back. Eggs are
never
there on her back,
the eggs are hatched at once after birth. Certainly the ancient
Egyptians knew that. Is it a coincidence that there
are 9 straws
visible at the base of her tail?'
In The Raw and the Cooked we can
read about the Pleiades (who define the beginning of the year):
"... it will be
remembered that the myth [no. 124 out of 187 discussed in the
book] ends with the episode of the hero's brothers disporting
themselves in water to the west, after which 'they appear in the
heavens, new and clean, as Sururu, the Seven Stars (the
Pleiades).'
In his monograph on
the Sherente, Nimuendaju (6, p. 85) makes it clear that Asare
[the hero in the myth] is the star
χ of the Orion constellation [close to the feet of Gemini], and
that in native thought the χ of Orion is in opposition to the
Pleiades: the former is associated with the deified sun and
with the 'foreign' clan Prase belonging to the
Shiptato moiety; the Pleiades are associated with the
deified moon and the 'foreign' clan Krozake belonging to
the Sdakran moiety ...
... it is clear from M124
that the two constellations both stand in the same relation to
the contrast between the rainy season and the dry season, since
their return coincides with the beginning of the latter. An
unexplained detail in the myth confirms the association:
Asare's brothers try in vain to quench his thirst by
cracking open nuts of a tucum palm (Astrocaryum) so that
he can drink the water inside.
Remember how the Hawaiians
had a ceremony of 'breaking the coconut' at the rising of the
Pleiades. (Remarkably, 'astro' - in Astrocaryum - means
star.)
"...
Aguaje palm-bast (Mauritia flexuosa,
Mauritia minor, or swamp palm) and
the frond spears of the Chambira palm (Astrocaryum
chambira, A. munbaca, A. tucuma,
also known as Cumare or Tucum) have been used
for centuries by the Urarina of the Peruvian
Amazon to make cordage, net-bags hammocks, and
to weave fabric.
Among the
Urarina, the production of woven palm-fiber
goods is imbued with varying degrees of an
aesthetic attitude, which draws its
authentication from referencing the Urarina’s
primordial past. Urarina mythology attests to
the centrality of weaving and its role in
engendering Urarina society. The myth of
post-diluvial creation accords women’s weaving
knowledge a pivotal role in Urarina social
reproduction. Even though palm-fiber cloth is
regularly removed from circulation through
mortuary rites, Urarina palm-fiber wealth is
neither completely inalienable, nor fungible
since it is a fundamental medium for the
expression of labor and exchange. The
circulation of palm-fiber wealth stabilizes a
host of social relationships, ranging from
marriage and fictive kinship (compadrazco,
spiritual compeership) to perpetuating
relationships with the deceased ..." (Wikipedia)
Now, further to the
southwest (latitude 18° to 24° S), about the middle of the
eighteenth century, the Caduveo used to observe important feast
days in mid-June, in connection with the return of the Pleiades
and, according to an early nineteenth-century source, with the
ripening of the palm nuts (Acrocomia; Ribeiro I, p. 68)
...
... In connection with the
Sherente [from which the myth of Asare arrives], we have
extremely detailed information to help understand the text of M124
which, from the astronomical point of view, is rather puzzling.
They count the months by
lunar periods, and their year begins in June with the appearance
of the Pleiades, when the sun is leaving the constellation of
Taurus. They call the Pleiades Sururu, and this
constellation is known to all natives of Brazil.
About a week later appear
the pluvias Hyades and Orion's swordbelt, also known to
the Sherente. When these stars appear in the morning, it is
believed to be a sign of wind.
Various legends are
related about the Pleiades. Their heliacal rising (before the
sun) and also their cosmic rising (with the sun) are observed.
Between two such risings of Sururu the Sherente count
thirteen moons (thirteen oá-ité), and this forms a year =
oá-hú (hú 'collection'?).
They divide the year into
two parts: (1) four moons of dry weather, more or less, from
June to September; (2) nine moons of rain (á-ké-nan) from
September to May. In the first two dry months the large trees of
a piece of forest land are felled, to free it for cultivation.
In the following two months the ground is cleared by burning the
scrub, and then seeds are sowed to profit by the rains at the
end of September and October ...
... In Amazonia, the
Pleiades disappear in May and reappear in June, thus heralding
floods, the molting of birds, and the renewal of vegetation ...
the natives think that the Pleiades, during their short period
of invisibility, hide at the bottom of a well where the thirsty
can come to drink. This well is reminiscent of the one dug by
Asare's brothers - who were incarnations of the Pleiades -
on order to appease the hero's thirst ..."
If GD26 (tara hoi) is
Scorpio, then GD11 (manu rere) should be another
constellation:
|
|
- |
|
- |
|
Aa5-15 |
Aa5-16 |
Aa5-17 |
Aa5-18 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ab7-34 |
Ab7-35 |
Ab7-36 |
Ab7-37 |
Ab7-38 |
Ab7-39 |
The Raw and the Cooked gives the
necessary information (which was the origin of my idea that GD26
may be Scorpio):
"... The hero of the
Bororo myth [M1]
is called Geriguiguiatugo, a name whose possible
etymology I have already discussed ... I indicated at that point
that the etymology put forward by the Salesians would eventually
be confirmed. They break down the name into atugo
'jaguar' (a detail whose significance has been stressed, since
the Bororo hero occupies the position of master of fire, like
the jaguar in the Ge myths) and geriguigui 'land
tortoise' which is also the name of the southern constellation,
Corvus. It is therefore possible that Geriguiguiatugo is
Corvus, just as Asare is χ Orionis ..."
Corvus is Latin for raven etc we
learned from The White Goddess:
'... The Latin
Cronos was called Saturn and in his statues he was armed with a
pruning-knife crooked like a crow's bill: probably a rebus on
his name. For though the later Greeks liked to think that the
name meant chronos, 'time' because any very old man was
humorously called 'Cronos', the more likely derivation is from
the same root cron or corn that gives the Greek
and Latin words for crow - corone and cornix.
The crow was a bird
much consulted by augurs and symbolic, in Italy as in Greece, of
long life. Thus it is possible that another name for Cronos, the
sleeping Titan, guarded by the hundred-headed Briareus, was
Bran, the Crow-god.
The Cronos myth, at
any rate, is ambivalent: it records the supersession and ritual
murder, in both oak and barley cults, of the Sacred King at the
close of his term of office; and it records the conquest by the
Achaean herdsmen of the pre-Achaean husbandmen of Greece. At the
Roman Saturnalia in Republican times, a festival
corresponding with the old English Yule, all social restraints
were temporally abandoned in memory of the golden reign of
Cronos.
I call Bran a
Crow-god, but crow, raven, scald-crow and other large black
carrion birds are not always differentiated in early times.
Corone in Greek also included the corax, or raven,
and the Latin corvus, raven, comes from the same root as
cornix, crow. The crows of Bran, Cronos, Saturn,
Aesculapius and Apollo are, equally, ravens ...'