|
TRANSLATIONS
Barthel made an interesting observation regarding glyphs of this type
on the Santiago Staff: "Auffälligerweise beginnt keiner der fast hundert Unterabschnitte dieses Textes mit dem Schriftzeichen für die Frau." However, this observation may be interpreted quite differently (than a confirmation of the meaning = 'Frau'). It might be that the hairdo is silvery (white) rather than blond (golden). The metal of sun is gold and the metal of moon is silver. The reason why this type of glyph never occurs in the ure (X) position - in the triads of XYZ - on the Santiago Staff may be (and indeed very probably is) that we should read 'priest' (or 'priestess'): a silvery haired and wise old person. '... ín the second half of life, when, as Dr. Jung has so frequently stated, 'man's values and even his body tend to undergo a reversal into opposite'. Old men become womanish, old women mannish, the fear of life becomes a fear of death. And so now it is the dry branches, not the green, of the universal tree around which the heavens spin that must be grasped and painfully climbed.' In addition a priest cannot 'come near a woman' because she would instantly destroy his tapu charge. A priest must be in a state of tapu.
A conclusion of this is that the tapu charge of a priest (or other 'vessel of the gods') is connected with the moon. A woman is the moon and therefore a close encounter with her will destroy the thread of tapu connecting priest and distant moon. "All saints revile her, and all sober men / Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean - / In scorn of which I sailed to find her / In distant regions likeliest to hold her / Whom I desired above all things to know, / Sister of the mirage and echo. It was a virtue not to stay, / To go my headstrong and heroic way / Seeking her out at the volcano's head, / Among pack ice, or where the track had faded / Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers: / Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's, / Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips, / With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips. Green sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir / Will celebrate the Mountain Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; / But I am gifted, even in November / Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense / Of her nakedly worn magnificence / I forget cruelty and past betrayal, / Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall." (The White Goddess) Wehewehe: Kea 1. White, clear; fair-complexioned person, often favorites at court; shiny, white mother-of-pearl shell, cfr. keakea, kekea, Mauna Kea. Po'o kea, towhead, gray-haired person. One kea, white sand (this is shortened to ōkea or kea, as in the expression kea pili mai, drift gravel - vagabond). (PPN tea). 2. Breast milk. See Nu'a-kea. 3. A variety of sugar cane, among Hawaiians one of the best-known and most-used canes, especially in medicine: clumps erect, dense, of medium height; pith white. Ua ola ā 'ō kō kea, living until kea cane tassels (until the hair turns gray). 4. Name listed by Hillebrand for kolomona (Mezoneuron kavaiense); see uhiuhi. A towhead means a head with hair like flaxen fibres and the flowers of the common flax are 'pure pale blue' (according to Wikipedia). "... flax is one of the few plant species capable of producing truly blue flowers (most 'blue' flowers are really shades of purple), although not all flax varieties produce blue flowers..." Curiously, in the English language 'flaxen hair' means 'blond' (yellow) hair, but: "Linen fabrics have a high natural luster and their natural color ranges between shades of ivory, tan, or grey. Pure white linen is created by heavy bleaching which is not good for the fabric." (Wikipedia) "Linen is the oldest textile material in the world. Its history goes back many thousands of years. Fragments of straw, seeds, fibres, yarns and various types of fabrics which date back to about 8000 B.C. have been found in Swiss lake dwellings. Linen was used in the Mediterranean in the pre-Christian age. Linen was sometimes used as currency in ancient Egypt. Egyptian mummies were wrapped in linen because it was seen as a symbol of light and purity, and as a display of wealth. Some of these fabrics, woven from hand spun yarns, were extremely fine and the fineness of the yarns in them cannot be produced on spinning machines." (Wikipedia) Sugar cane has to do with old age: '3. A variety of sugar cane, among Hawaiians one of the best-known and most-used canes, especially in medicine: clumps erect, dense, of medium height; pith white. Ua ola ā 'ō kō kea, living until kea cane tassels (until the hair turns gray).' This way we have reached a new explanation of why Metoro said toa: He meant tôa, sugarcane. Because, I think, at a certain high old age the hair turns gray - just like the 'hair' of the tea variant of sugar cane. One might even question if there is not a play on words here: tea (golden ? light) during the day and tôa (silvery white) during the night, combined with tea (te'a, teka, crossbeam) during the day and to'a (warriors, supporters, knights) during the nights. There seems to be a connection between kea (the white sugarcane) and uhi (the red yam): Uhiuhi An endemic legume (Mezoneuron kauaiense), a tree with pink or red flowers and thin, broad, winged pods. The wood is hard and heavy and formerly was used for hōlua (sleds), spears, digging sticks, and house construction. Also kawa'ū, kea, kolomona, and the weedy herb Phaseolus lathyroides (Niihau). Ho'o uhiuhi, to prepare uhiuhi wood for house posts. Wehewehe. Uhi 1. Covering, cover, veil, film, lid, solid tattooing, tent; to cover, spread over, engulf, conceal, overwhelm; to don, as a feather cloak. Fig., to deceive, hide the truth. Kākau uhi, to tattoo solidly. Uhi mai ka lani pō, the night sky spreads forth (ignorance). Ua uhi 'ia kō lāua mau mana'o i ke aloha, their thoughts were overwhelmed with love. Uhi i ka moe, to make a bed. 2. Large, bluish-brown birthmark. 3. The yam (Dioscorea alata), from southeast Asia, a climber with square stems, heart-shaped leaves, and large, edible, underground tubers. The plant is widely distributed through islands of the Pacific, where it is commonly grown for food. Also pālau, ulehihi. In the past botanists have applied the name uhi incorrectly to the hoi kuahiwi. 4. Mother-of-pearl bivalve, mother-of-pearl shank. 5. Turtle shell piece used for scraping olonā. 6. Mark made by the gall of raw pūpū 'awa (a shellfish) on tapa or on the skin as an ornament. Wehewehe. The uhi tapa mea (according to Metoro) is - as I understand it - the day time equivalent of the 'black cloth' signifying death etc. Therefore it is reassuring to find the association between uhi and covering. But the idea of cloth is necessarily connected with secrecy (hidden beneath a cloth) and that which is hidden you are ignorant of: 'uhi mai ka lani pō, the night sky spreads forth (ignorance)'. The word uhiuhi points to pink and red, also to winged pods, and the hard wood was used for spears and house construction (house posts). Clearly uhiuhi has a male character. To return to the priest glyph
I would like to make clear that the meaning 'priest' (or similar) was in my mind long before I had reason to question what Barthel had to say about the matter. (I am currently rereading his book in order to compare my own interpretations against his.) My impressions were founded on the way (in Tahua) this 'person' often appears in what seems to be ceremonial functions, e.g. (Aa3-72 -- Aa4-11):
I guess that these three lines of glyphs may be a description of the three seasons ('wives') of the year. The first two lines are qualitatively different from the last one, although all three begin with a 'priest', because there is no 'double-sun' (meaning double double-month?) in the last line. The uplifted arm of the 'priest' in the first line is similar to the 'arm' in the last glyph in the third line (connecting like alpha and omega), but different in shape from the uplifted arms of the 'priests' in the 2nd and 3rd lines. If the uplifted arm of the 'priest' in the last line is adorned with two half-circles to indicate that one year is ending and the next one beginning (during her period), then the adornments on the arms of the first two 'priests' also ought to indicate some ends and beginnings. Just for the fun of it we may imagine that these three lines of glyphs should be mapped onto the months like this:
Autumn equinox (tara) in Tarahau (March) would then be reflected in the strange deformations at the ends of rei miro (GD13):
The 'dark' October (Tangaroa Uri) may explain the po glyph (GD46) in the first line:
The asymmetry in form of the 1st wedge being marked would then mean the 1st season of the year. The two 'water' months (Vaitu Nui and Vaitu Potu) would explain the watery characteristics of:
Barthel proposed another glyph type as candidate for the priestly role, viz.:
"Die stehenden Gestalten in Seitenansicht vom Typ 300 [see above] scheinen ältere Personen darzustellen. Ihr Profilkopf gleicht dem der Seeschwalbe (Typ 400)." Barthel's no. 400 is the variant of GD11
which I have proposed to mean kena (The Masked Booby, Sula dactylatra). '... spectacular divers, plunging diagonally into the ocean at high speed. They mainly eat small fish, including flying fish. This is a is fairly sedentary bird, wintering at sea, but rarely seen far away from the breeding colonies...' The kena probably is connected with old age (as Anakena also is in the sacred geography of Easter Island). On the other hand I read 'Seeschwalbe' as the sooty tern, manu tara, and that bird is associated with (very) early age. In glyph representation this bird must have a tara-like beak, as for example in this variant of GD11 (Ab7-27 -- 32):
The parallel lower line of glyphs (Aa5-8--13) - on the other hand - should visualize kena. Barthel's observation that the 'head-in-profile' of his 'priest' sometimes is similar to the head of a kind of bird is correct. They even could go hand in hand:
as this example (from the 3rd line earlier above) shows. But they both look like kena, and they may allude to the month Anakena. Barthel shouldn't have written about manu tara ('Seeschwalbe') as a sign of old age. And old age does not automatically imply priesthood. Instead, I think, manu tara represents the two equinoxes (cfr the two tara-ends of rei miro above). As we have two 'years', a 'summer-year' and a 'winter-year', we must have two beginnings, two tara. In the beginning of the Tahua text (Aa1-1 -- 8) we indeed find signs of two such 'half-years' with tara heads:
The four toko te ragi (GD32) probably represent the four seasons resulting from a division of the two half-years in their middles. At birth we are close to the salty ocean, close to the level of the horizon. There we find the three islets and manu tara. The glyphs cannot describe everything and the tara heads should be enough (as pars pro toto) for us to understand. In the middle of the week we find find Mercury, the quicksilver planet, and - significantly - the only fluid metal. Mercury is always close to the horizon. We may therefore now understand the meaning of the 'person standing and eating' (Hb9-34):
He is not eating, he is taking in ('drinking' rather than 'eating') the wisdom ('light') of his elders. He is still like a newborn (close to the sea). He is definitely not a priest, he is too young for that. The wisdom is delivered by where at left, at the back of the head, 'light' is flowing out. This is a priest who knows (is enlightened). He stands for the output, the young ones stands for input (of 'light). But, after all, shouldn't I have written 'she'? The wisdom may be delivered together with the breast milk:
|
