TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

The shape in Ca8-29 is like a fiery snake:

end of moon	Ca8-28 -- 29
end of sun	Ca5-18 -- 19
end of sun	Ab8-84

At the top end the output nourishes the young new moon and at the bottom end the outflow is negligible. The young new moon is a separate part from the 'snake' and he grows from the 'elbow' of the snake.

The 'arm' of the snake is straight (as the straight and bone-hard guiding light from a ruler).

'... According to the Cariri myth, through acquiring an articulated skeleton men became truly human, and they can ensure that they are not cast off completely from the sky by making offerings accompanied by tobacco ...'

In an agricultural society men must work together in an ordered way, something difficult without strong leadership.

The 3 fingers (without visible thumb) pointing towards the mouth in GD52 (kai) are connected through the body of the sitting person to the 3 toes which must symbolize the inflow necessary for getting an outflow through the fingers:

Remember Ogotemmêli's words:

... The rays of light and heat draw the water up, and also cause it to descend again in the form of rain. That is all to the good. The movement created by this coming and going is a good thing. By means of the rays the Nummo draws out, and gives back the life-force. This movement indeed makes life. The old man realized that he was now at a critical point. If the Nazarene did not understand this business of coming and going, he would not understand anything else. He wanted to say that what made life was not so much force as the movement of forces. He reverted to the idea of a universal shuttle service.

'The rays drink up the little waters of the earth, the shallow pools, making them rise, and then descend again in rain.' Then, leaving aside the question of water, he summed up his argument: 'To draw up and then return what one had drawn - that is the life of the world' ...

... The Nazarene made more than one fruitless effort to understand this part of the cosmogony; he could not discover any chink or crack through which to apprehend its meaning. He was moreover confronted with identifications which no European, that is, no average rational European, could admit. He felt himself humiliated, though not disagreeably so, at finding that his informant regarded fire and water as complementary, and not as opposites ...

Maybe the 3 toes has a watery inflow. The wave-form of the legs could indeed be a sign showing 'water'. I have earlier thought about the possibility that the wave-form in the wings of GD11 (manu rere) is expressing 'rain', e.g. in Aa4-56:

Though 'rain' equals darkness and therefore the undulations equally well may symbolize 'darkness':

... 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 ...

The Pleiades were anciently regarded as heralding rain:

... 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 - in order to appease the hero's thirst ...

When light (fingers) replaces darkness (toes) we see a rainbow:

... In South America the rainbow has a double meaning. On the one hand, as elsewhere, it announces the end of rain; on the other hand, it is considered to be responsible for diseases and various natural disasters [dis-aster]. In its first capacity the rainbow effects a disjunction between the sky and the earth which previously were joined through the medium of rain. In the second capacity it replaces the normal beneficient conjunction by an abnormal, maleficient one - the one it brings about itself between sky and earth by taking the place of water

The body of GD52 must be the rainbow!

Toko

"The higher-ranked of the two largest political units on Rapa Nui was the Ko Tu'u Aro Ko Te Mata Nui. This literally translates as The Mast/Pillar/Post [standing] Before the Greater Tribes. Toko te rangi, or Sky Propper, is named by Métraux in his corrected Miru genealogy as the thirteenth king of Easter Island and as one of the lineages or subgroups of the Miru. Although we have no record of the Sky Propper legend on Rapa Nui, other Polynesian legends of the Sky Propper are widely known, and they are formative elements in the basic cosmogenic theory of Polynesian beleif.

Sky (rangi) and Earth (papa) lay in primal embrace, and in the cramped, dark space between them procreated and gave birth to the gods such as Tane, Rongo and Tu. Just as children fought sleep in the stifling darkness of a hare paenga, the gods grew restless between their parents and longed for light and air. The herculean achievement of forcing Sky to separate from Earth was variously performed by Tane in New Zealand and the Society Islands, by Tonofiti in the Marquesas and by Ru (Tu) in Cook Islands.

After the sky was raised high above the earth, props or poles were erected between them and light entered, dispelling the darkness and bringing renewed life. One detail which is iconographically of interest is whether the god responsible for separating Earth and Sky did so by raising the Sky with his upraised arms and hands, as in Tahiti and elsewhere, or with his feet as in New Zealand.

The actual props, pillars or posts which separated the sky and earth are called toko in New Zealand, to'o in the Marquesas Islands and pou in Tahiti. In Rapanui tuu and pou are known, with pou meaning column, pillar or post of either stone or wood. Sometimes the word is applied to a natural rock formation with postlike qualities which serves as an orientation point. The star Sirius is called Te Pou in Rapanui and functions in the same way.

One monolithic basalt statue is called Pou Hakanononga, a somewhat obscure and probably late name thought to mean that the statue served to mark an offshore tuna fishing site.

The Rapanui word tokotoko means pole or staff. Sacred ceremonial staves, such as the ua on Rapa Nui, were called toko in Polynesia.

Based upon the fact that toko in New Zealand also means 'rays of light', it has been suggested that the original props which separated and held apart Sky and Earth were conceived of as shafts of dawn sunlight.

In most Polynesian languages the human and animate classifier is toko-, suggesting a congruence of semantic and symbolic meaning between anthropomorphic form and pole or post. Tane as First Man and the embodiment of sunlight thus becomes, in the form of a carved human male figure, the probable inspiration for the moai as sacred prop between Sky and Earth.

The moai as Sky Propper would have elevated Sky and held it separate from Earth, balancing it only upon his sacred head. This action allowed the light to enter the world and made the land fertile.

Increasing the height of the statues, as the Rapa Nui clearly did over time, would symbolically increase the space between Sky and Earth, ensuring increased fertility and the greater production of food. The proliferating image, consciously or unconsciously, must have visually (and reassuringly) filled the dangerously empty horizon between sea and land, just as the trees they were so inexorably felling once had." (Van Tilburg)

Tokotoko, stick, cane, crutches, axe helve, roller, pole, staff. P Pau.: tokotoko, walking stick. Mgv.: toko, a pole, stilts, staff. Mq.: tokotoko, toótoó, stick, cane, staff. Ta.: too, id. Churchill.

The miracle is how rising from the watery darkness down below the renewed morning sun can have any fire left. Is he protected by sailing in a canoe like Noah?

The immense feat of raising the sky to let in light again is performed by Saturn. In Saturday the new fire must be alighted, because in Saturday the old fire is put out. In this version of the myth there is no canoe - sun is killed; however to be reborn again as Sunday proves.

In Ab8-84 we now recognize in the two right limbs the 'eating gesture' of kai (GD52), while the two left limbs suggest the 'rain'-inhaling phase. The rain is needed for plants to grow and without rain there will be no food to eat for the farmer's family:

In Ca5-20 the 'crossing over place' (hakapekaga mai), also for the sun, may then possibly depict the 'rain' differently, like waves below and above a central sun:


Ca5-9	Ca5-10	Ca5-11	Ca5-12

Ca5-13	Ca5-14	Ca5-15	Ca5-16

Ca5-17	Ca5-18	Ca5-19	Ca5-20

Ca5-21	Ca5-22	Ca5-23	Ca5-24

I have painted the ordinal number 20 with red to indicate a possible sign for the seating of a new period (in the Mayan sense).

Interestingly, we find the triplet GD13 (rei miro), GD11 (manu rere) and GD37 (henua) also at the end of Saturday:

GD24 (pú) has the location corresponding to 'the crossing over place' (or as Metoro expressed it at Ab8-43, o te pito motu (the cut-off navel cord):

We must, however, also accept that Mercury lives on the surface of the water (like an otter), and that he therefore must have a role similar to Saturn:

... They were Ranginui, the Sky Father, and Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother, both sealed together in a close embrace. Crushed between the weight of their bodies were their many children, whose oppression deepened. They yearned to be free; they fought their parents and each other to break loose. Tuumatauenga, virile god of war, thrust and shouted; Tangaroa of the oceans whirled and surged; Tawhirirangimaatea howled with many raging winds; Haumiatiketike and Rongomatane, of wild foods and cultivated crops tried their best but were not successful; and Ruamoko, god of earthquakes, yet to be born, struggled in the confinement of his mother's womb ...

Hawaiian Islands

Society Islands

Tuamotus

New Zealand

Pukapuka

Ukali or Ukali-alii 'Following-the-chief' (i.e. the Sun)

Kawela 'Radiant'

Ta'ero or Ta'ero-arii 'Royal-inebriate' (referring to the eccentric and undignified behavior of the planet as it zigzags from one side of the Sun to the other)

Fatu-ngarue 'Weave-to-and-fro'

Fatu-nga-rue 'Lord of the Earthquake'

Whiro 'Steals-off-and-hides'; also the universal name for the 'dark of the Moon' or the first day of the lunar month; also the deity of sneak thieves and rascals.

Te Mata-pili-loa-ki-te-la 'Star-very-close-to-the-Sun'

Rua(u)moko, the god of earthquakes, is Mercury (also: 'the snatcher of entrails') and like Ohiro (Whiro) - and Oroi - a shadowy character

'... During his descent the ancestor still possessed the quality of a water spirit, and his body, though preserving its human appearance, owing to its being that of a regenerated man, was equipped with four flexible limbs like serpents after the pattern of the arms of the Great Nummo.

The ground was rapidly approaching. The ancestor was still standing, his arms in front of him and the hammer and anvil hanging across his limbs. The shock of his final impact on the earth when he came to the end of the rainbow, scattered in a cloud of dust the animals, vegetables and men disposed on the steps.

It was an old Maori belief that a change of seasons was often facilitated by earthquakes. Ruau-moko, a god of the Underworld, was said to bring about changes of season, punctuating them with an earthquake. Or as another Maori saying summed up the matter, 'It is the Earth-mother shaking her breasts, and a sign of the change of season.'

When calm was restored, the smith was still on the roof, standing erect facing towards the north, his tools still in the same position. But in the shock of landing the hammer and the anvil had broken his arms and legs at the level of elbows and knees, which he did not have before. He thus acquired the joints proper to the new human form, which was to spread over the earth and to devote itself to toil ...'

The 'four flexible limbs like serpents after the pattern of the arms of the Great Nummo' is quite like the arms we see in Ca5-20.

Interestingly, the word ruau (as in Ruaumoko) seems to mean woman:

Hina

Grey or white hair. Korohua hina tea, ruau hina tea, hoary old man, hoary old woman. Hinarere, great-grandson. Vanaga.

Mgv.: White, gray hair. Ta.: hina-hina, id. Mq.: hina, id. Sa.: sina, id. Ma.: hina, id. Churchill.

It is a matter of no slight interest to find that a stem which in Polynesia serves to designate the lesser luminary is used in Melanesia to denote the sun. In this connection our linguistic material has left two records. One that la, the general Polynesian word for the sun, was not carried in the Proto-Samoan migration, for it has left no trace in the Melanesian halting-places. The other is that masina, the general Polynesian word for the moon, was brought into Polynesia, in its present derivative form, by the Tongafiti migration, for it is only in Sesake that we find masina as moon. Our Polynesian records show us that sina was a sun name, i.e. the shiner. Churchill 2.

"To discuss with a woman is like trying to sit and read the paper in gusty winds." (Herbert Tingsten)

GD87 (moko) probably represents a lizard or similar (notice the thick, probably pregnant, stomach which always is there):

Moko

1. Lizard; moko manu uru, figurine of a lizard (made of wood). 2. To throw oneself on something, to take quickly, to snatch; to flee into the depths (of fish); tagata moko, interloper, intruder, someone who seizes something quickly and swiftly, or cleverly intrudes somewhere; ka-moko ki te kai, ka-moko, ka-aaru, quickly grab some food, grab and catch. 3. To throw oneself upon someone, to attack: he-moko, he-reirei, to attack and kick. 4. Moko roa: to make a long line (of plantation); moko poto, to make a short line. 5. Ihu moko; to die out (a family of which remains only one male without sons); koro hakamao te mate o te mahigo, he-toe e-tahi tagata nó, ina aana hakaara, koîa te me'e e-kî-nei: ku-moko-á te ihu o te mahigo. when the members of family have died and there remains only one man who has no offspring, we say: ku-moko-á te ihu o te mahigo; to disappear (of a tradition, a custom), me'e ihu moko o te tagata o te kaiga nei, he êi, the êi is a custom no longer in use among the people of this island. Vanaga.

1. Lizard. 2. To stun, to be dizzy. 3. Hakamoko, to accomplish. Churchill.

MOKO

"A more or less crooked, and rarely completely straight, piece of toromiro was not infrequently carved into the shape of a long, slim animal with four legs drawn up underneath or alongside its body.

The animal is so conventionalized that its zoological species cannot in any way be recognized, but the modern Rapanui term for this creature is moko, the general Polynesian term for any reptile, including the tiny local lizards. Some of these wooden figures actually assume the form of a rat and are recognized as such by the modern islanders. Many have ears like a mammal.

All have a rounded triangular head with a long, thin anthropomorphic nose branching into prominent curving eyebrows that sometimes continue as spirals representing eyes. More often, however, the eyes are inlaid as on the human figurines with bone or shell rings enclosing obsidian disks.

The large, wide mouth runs as a groove from the front and along the sides of the snout. The lower jaw, neck, and body continue more or less on the same level. The body is long with an evenly rounded cross-section. The hind legs are carved in relief and usually have human feet. They are either carved with the knees drawn up under the abdomen or stretched out alongside the extremely thick tail. A circumcised human penis is represented.

The front limbs, with elbows drawn back along the sides of the chest, often have only four fingers on the hands, and are invariably placed side by side in a forward position under the neck and chin.

A few outstanding ribs are reminiscent of the moai kavakava, and so is at first sight the serrated ridge running down the back. However, this ridge, rather than being carved like a vertebral column, as on the human figures, is here often represented as an indented, saw-shaped dorsal comb. At its base, however, it has a round disk from which a fan-shaped tassel, otherwise symbolic of a bird's tail, radiates towards the buttocks. Some rare small moko had their dorsal comb transversally perforated for a suspension string.

At the distal end a long, straight, and extremely stout tail extends backwards from between the legs, forming a sort of grip or handle to the entire figure, which according to tradition served as a club. Métraux (1940, p. 169), in fact, lists the moko as a short-handled club, and cites evidence that it was stuck by its tail into the ground inside the door, and served principally to defend houses and to stop intruders from entering.

Moko figures are commonly about 12-15 ins. (30-40 cm.) long with a body diameter of about 1 ½ ins. (4 cm.). All surfaces are polished and left unpainted." (Heyerdahl 3)

'... Maui at first assumed the form of a kiore, or rat, to enter the body of Hine. But tataeko, the little whitehead, said he would never succeed in that form. So he took the form of a toke, or earth-worm. But tiwaiwaka the fantail, who did not like worms, was against this. So Maui turned himself into a moko huruhuru, a kind of caterpillar that glistens. It was agreed that this looked best, and so Maui started forth, with comical movements.

The little birds now did their best to comply with Maui's wish. They sat as still as they could, and held their beaks shut tight, and tried not to laugh. But it was impossible. It was the way Maui went in that gave them the giggles, and in a moment little tiwaiwaka the fantail could no longer contain himself.

He laughed out loud, with his merry, cheeky note, and danced about with delight, his tail flickering and his beak snapping. Hine nui awoke with a start. She realised what was happening, and in a moment it was all over with Maui. By the way of rebirth he met his end ...'

The 'entrail snatcher' got him because of the laughter:

... laughter caused by tickling and groans provoked by peppery seasoning can be treated as combinative variants of bodily opening and, more precisely in this case, of oral opening. Lastly, to conclude the subject of laughter, it should be noted that in South America (as in other areas of the world) certain myths establish a connection between laughter and the origin of cooking fire ...

The loud laughter (pure va) also 'finished' the figure of of king Oto Uta:

... They broke the neck of the figure, of Tautó. At that, the waves broke, the wind blew, the rain fell, the thunder rolled, and a meteorite fell on this land ...

... By going back to adjacent Polynesian idioms, as wordplays for topographic features of the area of the landing site. 'Pure O' permits a wordplay with MAO. pūreo (i.e., purero 'that which sticks out of the water'), 'Pure Ki' with MAO. pureki (i.e., pūrei 'an isolated rock'), while 'Pure Vanangananga' brings to mind TUA. vanavana 'protuberance'; TAH. vanavana 'rough, ragged'.

Put differently, the names of the three ghostly emissaries, which are actually forms of prayer, point to tangible objects in the environment, such as the cliffs and reefs in the water of the bay, which may have caused the damage done to the stone figure of the ancestor. The accident must have occured where the otherwise sandy beach of the landing site is bordered by rocky promontories or where sections of the reef jut out of the water.

If in our version 'Pure O' is said to have used a pureva (i.e., a large round stone) to sever the head of the stone figure, this must be a wordplay, intended to bring about the fourth pure association, which would complete the 'pure tetrade' of spirits living in Vai Hū.

Separating pureva into pure va indicates noisy talk (compare especially HAW. wā) or loud laughter (TON., UVE. vā), both forms of expression that have very little in common with 'prayer' and may instead indicate the failure of the undertaking. 'Pure Va' is, in this case, the opposite of 'Pure Henguingui' ...

We should also remember ka takata at Aa2-85, a kind of smile is there:

... Aa1-49--90 covers 42 glyphs and then we have the double 42 in line a2. The extra glyph in line a2 certainly, then, must be the last glyph in the line, viz. Aa2-85 ...

En passent: 3 times 42 (Aa1-49--90 + line Aa2) probably should be compared with 3 times 42 in Ab7 + Ab8-1--42, at which point Ab8-43 arrives: