TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

6. South of the equator the souls ought to travel to the south pole - the trip will then not be longer than for the souls north of the equator. The Milky Way stretches across the southern sky up from the region around Antares towards the south pole (marked with X in the picture below), and then down again to the region around Orion:

(ref. Your Sky)

Antares and Aldebaran - in Taurus immediately to the right and above Orion (with the sky oriented as above, i.e. with north at the top) - have always marked the beginning and the end for all ancient peoples not living close to the poles. Antares lies inside the Milky Way and Aldebaran outside, therefore (presumably) Antares is the location for the souls leaving and Aldebaran the location of birth.

There is a Tahitian list of 10 'pillars' (stars) which includes Antares as 'the entrance pillar' (Ana-mua).

According to Makemson the 10 'star pillars' (ana) of the Tahitian cosmology were:

1	Ana-mua, entrance pillar	Antares, α Scorpii	-26° 19' 16h 26
2	Ana-muri, rear pillar (at the foot of which was the place for tattooing)	Aldebaran, α Tauri	16° 25' 04h 33
3	Ana-roto, middle pillar	Spica, α Virginis	-10° 54' 13h 23
4	Ana-tipu, upper-side-pillar (where the guards stood)	Dubhe, α Ursae Majoris	62° 01' 11h 01
5	Ana-heu-heu-po, the pillar where debates were held	Alphard, α Hydrae	-08° 26' 09h 25
6	Ana-tahua-taata-metua-te-tupu-mavae, a pillar to stand by	Arcturus, α Bootis	19° 27' 14h 13
7	Ana-tahua-vahine-o-toa-te-manava, pillar for elocution	Procyon, α Canis Minoris	05° 21' 07h 37
8	Ana-varu, pillar to sit by	Betelgeuse, α Orionis	07° 24' 05h 52
9	Ana-iva, pillar of exit	Phaed, γ Ursae Majoris	53° 58' 11h 51
10	Ana-nia, pillar-to-fish-by	North Star, α Ursae Minoris	89° 02' 01h 49

Ana

1. Cave. 2. If. 3. Verbal prefix: he-ra'e ana-unu au i te raau, first I drank the medicine. Vanaga.

1. Cave, grotto, hole in the rock. 2. In order that, if. 3. Particle (na 5); garo atu ana, formerly; mee koe ana te ariki, the Lord be with thee. PS Sa.: na, an intensive postpositive particle. Anake, unique. T Pau.: anake, unique, to be alone. Mgv.: anake, alone, single, only, solely. Mq.: anake, anaé, id. Ta.: anae, all, each, alone, unique. Anakena, July. Ananake, common, together, entire, entirely, at once, all, general, unanimous, universal, without distinction, whole, a company; piri mai te tagata ananake, public; kite aro o te mautagata ananake, public; mea ananake, impartial; koona ananake, everywhere. Churchill.

Splendor; a name applied in the Society Islands to ten conspicious stars which served as pillars of the sky. Ana appears to be related to the Tuamotuan ngana-ia, 'the heavens'. Henry translates ana as aster, star. The Tahitian conception of the sky as resting on ten star pillars is unique and is doubtless connected with their cosmos of ten heavens. The Hawaiians placed a pillar (kukulu) at the four corners of the earth after Egyptian fashion; while the Maori and Moriori considered a single great central pillar as sufficient to hold up the heavens. It may be recalled that the Moriori Sky-propper built up a single pillar by placing ten posts one on top of the other. Makemson.

Three little sisters lived in a well and they lived on treacle, said the Dormouse. Time is a general (ananake) phenomenon.

The 10 ana of Tahiti cover together ⅔ of the year, the dark part. The rest of the sky, ⅓, surely must be raised by the sun pillar, and it is natural to think of a divison into 10 parts also for the solar domain. 10 pillars in the night + 10 subdivisions of the sun 'pillar' makes 20 in all, a nice figure.

16h covered by the 10 ana equals 240º, and the sun part must therefore be 120º.

Two of the little sisters lived in the dark, one of them in the sun-light, I imagine. Each one was assigned 8h or 120º. Each one had a ⅓ of the sun.

Or, judging from the 4 turtles (suns) on the Ifá board, the three little sisters were distributed evenly and fairly around the perimeter: each one had a part (⅓) of each turtle. I.e., in each month one of the sisters ruled together with a sun.