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Let us now return to the fact that the constellations in the sky are rotated when we pass the equator. Or rather: they are not rotated, but we rotate 180° around to look north if we earlier looked south, because the constellation has shifted towards north.

Can the constellations survive being turned upside-down?

"How does it happen that in one hemisphere Orion is associated with celestial water in accordance with meteorological experience, while in the other hemisphere, without there being any possibility of establishing a connection with experience, symmetry is preserved by means of an apparently incomprehensible link between Orion and water which is chthonic in origin - that is, celestial water conceived of, as it were, upside down?

A preliminary hypothesis can be put forward and straightaway dismissed. Prehistorians believe that the American Indians came from the Ancient World during the middle Paleolithic; and we might suppose that the mythology relating to Orion goes back to that period and was brought to America. The Indians may simply have adapted it to fit the new astronomical and meteorological conditions of the southern hemisphere.

The problem posed by the precession of the equinoxes would not give rise to serious difficulties; on the contrary, the global cycle is in the region of twenty-six [26] thousand years, which corresponds roughly to the time when people first appeared in the New World (at least according to the present state of knowledge).

At that period therefore, the position of the constellations on the zodiac was approximately the same as it is today.

On the other hand, there is nothing to prove - and a good deal to contradict - the supposition that meteorological conditions were the same in South America at that time as they are now, or that they have remained the same throughout the ages.

But the suggested explanation comes up against another, and much more serious, difficulty. In order to associate Orion with the origin of terrestrial water, the distant ancestors of the Sherente would have had to do more than merely reverse the meteorological symbolism of the constellation: they would have had to have known that the earth was round and then - logically, but only on this one condition - to have changed the rain that fell from the sky on the Old World into water that, in the New World, rose up from the dephts of the earth.

We are thus forced to come back to the only acceptable explanation. The Sherente myth about Orion, in which the stars fulfill a function whose relation is symmetrical with that assigned to them in the northern hemisphere, must be reducible to a transformation of another myth belonging to the southern hemispher, in which the role assumed by the hero is exactly identical with that played by Orion in the other hemisphere.

Now such a myth exists, and we are perfectly familiar with it, since it is the key myth about the Bororo bird-nester who was responsible for creating storms, wind, and rain; he is a hero to whom the epithet nimbosus applies perfectly: Orion, too, was called nimbosus in the Mediterranean area - and 'fearful star' according to Pliny." (The Raw and the Cooked)

First, a comment about the 'fearful star': Every luminous 'person' in the sky seems to have been a threat to humanity anciently. To be a 'fearful star' is no characteristic:

'... Für den Assyro-Babylonier war mit dem Begriff des Glanzes und des Lichtes fast notwendig der des Schreckens, der Wut verbunden. Ich erinnere nur an die mannigfachen Ausdrücke im Assyrischen, die nicht mit 'Glanz', auch nicht mit 'Schrecken' allein, sondern mit 'schrecklicher Glanz' zu übersetzen sind.

Das bekannteste Beispiel is mílammu. Es ist wohl auch nicht zufällig, dass gir = mir 'funkeln' bedeutet, ebenso wie 'wütend' (allerdings mit einem anderen Ideogramm).

Der Tag selbst oder das Tageslicht konnte als schrecklich bezeichnet werden ... Wie so viele Naturerscheinungen personificiert wurden, so wurden die Tage zu schrecklichen, wütenden Wesen gemacht und, da unter den Tieren die Löwen und Leoparden als reissende Tiere die 'Wut' mehr als andere zu veranschaulichen vermochten, kam man dazu, die Tage als Löwen oder Leoparden oder irgend welche reissende Tiere zu bezeichen, ja schliesslich die Löwen als Tage. Diese Entwicklung ist eine so naturgemässe, dass man gar nicht gezwungen ist, unter ūmu = 'Löwe' ein von ūmu = 'Tag' verschiedenes Wort zu sehen ...'

I remember my idea that Polynesian umu (cooking pit) was in some way related to the Babylonian ūmu (lion) - both are connected with fire. From reading the Raw and the Cooked my suspicions have been strengthened:

"... the individuals who are 'cooked' are those deeply involved in a physiological process: the newborn child, the woman who has just given birth, or the pubescent girl.

The conjunction of a member of the social group with nature must be mediatized through the intervention of cooking fire, whose normal function is to mediatize the conjunction of the raw product and the human consumer, and whose operation thus has the effect of making sure that a natural creature is at one and the same time cooked and socialized:

Unlike the deer, the Tarahumara does not eat the grass, but he interposes between the grass and his animal hunger a complicated cultural cycle involving the care and the use of domestic animals ... Nor like the coyote does the Tarahumara avail himself of meat torn from a scarcely dead animal and eaten raw. The Tarahumare interposes between his meat and his hunger a cultural system of cooking. (Zingg, p. 82)

This perceptive analysis, which is based on the observation of a Mexican tribe, could be applied to many other communities, as is suggested by the fact that almost identical conceptions expressed in very similar language are to be found in a Philippino tribe:

The Hanunoo regard as a 'real' food only that which is prepared for human consumption by cooking. Hence, ripe bananas which must be eaten raw are considered as 'snack' foods. Real foods such as pre-ripe bananas, root crops, cereals, cucumbers, tomatoes and onions are never eaten raw. A meal must include cooked food. In fact, meals are usually enumerated by the term: pag'apuy, 'fire making'. (Conklin, p. 185)

We must add the mediatory function of utensils to that of symbolic cooking: the head-scratcher, the drinking tube, and the fork are intermediaries between the subject and his body, which is now 'naturalized', or between the subject and the physical world.

Although normally unnecessary, their use becomes indispensable when the potential charge of the two poles, or of one of them, has increased to such an extent that insulators must be inserted to prevent the possibility of a short curcuit.

This function is also performed by cooking, in its peculiar way: when food is cooked, meat does not need to be directly exposed to the sun. [Once, some said, sun had been closer to the earth and then exposure to the sun was enough to 'barbecue' the food.] Exposure to the sun is generally avoided by women who have just given birth and by pubescent girls.

Among the Pueblo Indians an individual who had been struck by lightning - that is, who had entered into conjunction with celestial fire - was treated by means of raw food.

It often happens, too, that conjunction is manifested in the form of a saturation of the individual by himself: he is too full of humors that threaten him with decay, hence such necessary practices as fasting, scarification, and the swallowing of emetics - at puberty or on the birth of the first child. In the Carib speech of the West Indies the phrase that was used to refer to a first-born child meant literally 'my fasting-matter'.

Even today the Carib Negroes of British Honduras forbid pregnant women to bathe in the sea in case they should provoke a storm. The old Carib communities of the West Indies referred to the periods of retreats and fasting prescribed at puberty or at the birth of a first child, and also on the loss of a close relative or the murder of an enemy, as iuenemali 'withdrawal from exposure': the exposure results from an excess of body heat, which makes the subject too directly and intensely 'vulnerable' to others and to the external world (Taylor, pp. 343-9). In this sense the problem is how to prevent overcommunication.

It will be objected that traditional custums are less logical than primitive customs. The latter always operate along the same lines: the 'cooking' of women and adolescent girls corresponds to the need for their relations with themselves and the world to be mediatized by the use of 'hypercultural' utensils; whereas in Europe the placing of the unmarried elder sister on the stove, on the one hand, and the removal of the shoes and the feeding with raw food, on the other, should, according to my interpretation, be given opposite meanings.

It should be noted, in the first place, that the unmarried elder sister is in a symmetrical but reverse situation to the one in which the young mother or pubescent girl finds herself. The unmarried sister calls for mediatization because of the deficiency from which she is suffering, and not because of a superfluity ...

To repeat a formula I have already used for the solution of a difficulty of the same kind ... the unmarried elder sister belongs to 'the world of rottenness', whereas the young mother and pubescent girl belong to the 'burned world'.

In the case of the first, cooking and even raw food supply something that was lacking: they move her one or two places up the scale, as it were. Cooking and raw food have the opposite effect on the others: by regulating or dulling their ardour, they correct its excesses ..." (The Raw and the Cooked)

'Fire' is ultimately originating in the sky, its opposite - 'water' - must be located in another place. Given a system of thought which works with 'polar logic' the ultimate origin of 'water' must be in the earth.

Flames rise upwards to their origin, water flows downwards.

The union of flames and water is 'cooking', with 'fire' being 'male' and 'water' being 'female'.

We remember the Polynesian ideas of being cooked in an umu, but also how woman with her noa power quenches the male tapu fire:

'... If the moral attitudes of primitive man are hard for the Western mind to grasp and translate into familiar terms, there can hardly be one more so than the Maori notion of cooked food as the lowest thing, the furthest opposite to the sacred, in fact filthy. For us to divest our minds of Christian notions of good and evil and substitute the concept of simple payment, harm for harm (or 'revenge', as we commonly call it with a misleading moral overtone), is simple enough - perhaps because every schoolchild has at some time known the latter in his horrid heart. Even the Maori custom of weeping over friends when they arrive instead of when they depart has a certain logic that is not beyond our comprehension.

But to enter, against all conditioning, into the minds of a people for whom cooked food and the act of eating could carry the overtones of meaning that we in our greater wisdom attach to their physical opposites and to sex, is a good deal harder. One has somehow to throw the mind into a state of being that is radically unlike ours. Yet if the trick can be done, a light comes on ...'

'... Noa A state without any tapu whatsoever. Tu, ancestor and patron of man as warrior, defeats his older brothers, the other sons of Rangi, who are the parents of birds, trees, fish, wild and cultivated foods. To defeat is to render noa (without tapu) and consumable. Tu is thus able to consume his brothers' offspring, power he passes on to mankind ...'

Noah escaped by boat from the water, and fire can be carried onboard a canoe. The structure of the week once again appears in my mind:

The sacred Stranger King - I once imagined and later found to be quite probable - appears in the triplet of days from Tuesday to Saturday.

In Tuesday he is like Noah sailing safely over the water:

In Wednesday he as adolescent is reaching the 'unruly waves' close to 'the coast' (borderline between 'sea' and 'earth'):

This is the 'snaky' part of the journey. The only creatures who survive and are prolific in the turbulent waters are see-weeds:

'... the rosy fingers of dawn are more similar to the 12th station, Roto Ire Are:

1. To go up; to go in a boat on the sea (the surface of which gives the impression of going up from the coast): he-eke te tagata ki ruga ki te vaka, he-iri ki te Hakakaiga, the men boarded the boat and went up to Hakakainga. 2. Ka-iri ki puku toiri ka toiri, obscure expression of an ancient curse. Iri-are, a seaweed. Vanaga.

Seaweeds may appear (at least at low tide) as long fingers on the surface of the water. And 'to go up in a boat on the sea' is just what fits in with the start of the travel of the sun. I think we should connect Roto Ire Are with the first glyph in the day calendars. Another argument leading to the same conclusion is the 11th station, Hatinga Te Kohe, which presumably means that the 'bamboo rod' is broken there, i.e. that one henua is ending and another starting.

Up to Pua Katiki ('noon') we have:

Mercury was depticted as a person with snakes in his face (Humbaba/Huwawa in the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu at left. Tlaloc at right):

 

At last, in Thursday, he takes command over the land (henua, the woman) and the 'cooking' explains why people are eating:

I have counted with the little 'suns' on GD34 (haati kava) glyphs. Two different kinds of marks (here hatchmarks and little 'suns') reasonably should not be added but multiplied with each other.