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TRANSLATIONS
The figure with a heavy-looking 'fire generator' at the top of his head has a back which either indicates a very old man or a heavy burden - it is severely bent:
We should remember Ca8-29:
Ca8-29 is expressing the new moon, I guess. The severly bent ('crooked') back implies a maximum of darkness. At the top end (future) the new light is generated, at the lower end (past) the darkness is complete. But the new light (uplifted straight kai arm) is just a continuation of the crooked old darkness. It is the head part which is new (feeding from the old month). In Ab8-84 we have in the right two limbs the shape of 'cup', in the left two limbs the shape of 'hill'. The contrast means that the right part is the opposite of the left part. Located as it is as the last glyph on side b we should understand that the continuation (of the cyclical text of Tahua) on side a begins with the opposite of what we just have read on side b. The Tiahuanacuans had the hill sign at the end of the first half of the solar year (according to the central figure on the Gateway of the Sun). Orienting yourself with face looking south you at the same time look up (to see the sun or a star). A reasonable guess, therefore, is to assume that the left 'hill' sign in Ab8-84 means the end of the 2nd half of the year. The 'hill' means midsummer, which inaugurates the 2nd half of the cycle. We saw this also in Aa1-26 where a.m. sun at noon is struck a deathly blow by a female instrument:
Futhermore, in Aa1-1 we should recognize the 'cup' form at bottom left in the glyph:
This 'cup' is oriented (open) towards left (darkness), presumably meaning that the new light (the top part of the glyph) is a product of darkness. In Aa5-17 the 'cup' is open in the other direction (upwards and towards right), more or less in the same direction as ike in Aa1-26:
A change of orientation occurs at midsummer. We have seen this in the fact that pre-midsummer glyphs have 'elbows' pointing at left, while post-midsummer glyphs have the 'corner' pointing towards right. Maybe, even, we should understand the sign of an open hand towards right as expressing 'post' too, as in e.g. Aa1-30:
The thumb in that case may express something similar to the 'knee' ('corner'). The open hand is like an open cup and like the top part of Aa1-26. If there is a change in orientation at midsummer, then there must be one at midwinter too. But the Easter Islanders seem to have used the 'hill' sign at midwinter, not at midsummer (because there we find the 'cup' sign). Even the sign of Y at the top of the sun at noon (in Aa1-26) and during p.m. (in Aa1-30) probably indicates the 'cup', the female receiver. The outstretched hand with thumb pointing towards west (and the coming darkness) tells us the same story: The dark receiver and regenerator is female. The 'black cloth' must be female, as cloth (both white and black) is a product of the female. We should here recapitulate: ... There are two English words 'swallow', one of which means a kind of bird while the other means to 'take into the stomach through the mouth and gullet' (English Etymology). That is not so strange in itself, but reading further one finds "... ON. svelgr whirlpool, devourer, sylgr draught ... draught ... act of drawing ... that which is drawn or pulled ... move at chess ... pl. game played on a board ... picture, sketch ... design, plan ... cesspool ... current of air ... I know that swallows swallow flying insects. But the act of swallowing has a mythical meaning. We may e.g. refer to the Hawaiian new year ceremonies: ... Close kinsman of the king as his ceremonial double, Kahoali'i swallows the eye of the victim in ceremonies of human sacrifice (condensed symbolic trace of the cannibalistic 'stranger-king') ... Should the swallow be located at new year? ... In the present context 'mouth' has an additional connotation, given that it refers in part to Heart of Earth, the deity called 'Mundo' today. This is the great Mesoamerican earth deity, the ultimate swallower of all living beings, depicted in Classic Mayan art (in the Palenque relief panels, for example) as an enormous pair of jaws upon whose lips even the feet of great lords must rest in precarious balance, and into whose throat even great lords must fall. Turning to the contemporary scene, daykeepers who visit the main cave beneath the ruins of Rotten Cane, the last Quiché capital, speak of the danger of falling into 'the open mouth of the Mundo' there, which is said to be more than four yards wide .... The old year has to pass through the 'door' marked 'exit' (deguchi) and in symbolic writing we therefore find a sign saying: 'mountain upon mountain' (i.e. an extremely old person) and 'mouth':
Is the kind little swallow an incarnation of the terrible Mundo? ... The potent second Word developed the powers of its new possessor. Gradually he came to regard his regeneration in the womb of the earth as equivalent to the capture and occupation of that womb, and little by little he took possession of the whole organism, making such use of it as suited him for the purpose of his activities. His lips began to merge with the edges of the anthill, which widened and became a mouth. Pointed teeth made their appearance, seven for each lip, then ten, the number of the fingers, later forty, and finally eighty, that is to say, ten for each ancestor ... ...Above the door of the temple is depicted a chequer-board of white squares alternating with squares the colour of the mud wall. There should strictly be eight rows, one for each ancestor. This chequer-board is pre-eminently the symbol of the 'things of this world' and especially of the structure and basic objects of human organization. It symbolizes: the pall which covers the dead, with its eight strips of black and white squares representing the multiplication of the eight of human families; the façade of the large house with its eighty niches, home of the ancestors; the cultivated fields, patterned like the pall; the villages with streets like seams, and more generally all regions inhabited, cleared or exploited by men. The chequer-board and the covering both portray the eight ancestors ... Maybe the 'mountain upon mountain' Chinese sign is expressing the same general idea as what we see depicted in Ab8-84:
But if so, then the Chinese 'mountain' ought to be mirrored as a 'cup' in the rongorongo script. |
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