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The
hourglass picture is a good map for those who live close to the
equator, because when Sun is right above, in summer, it is indeed
very hot. I.e., he must be close:
A cooler climate
rules when Sun is very young, and when he has been liquidated (in
the 2nd half of the cycle).
Sun moves from the
top (the topic of Cancer) to the bottom (the tropic of Capricorn) -
according to those who live north of the equator. For those who live
south of the equator it should be the opposite - Sun moves from the top at
Capricorn to the bottom at Cancer. When you move across the equator
the hourglass must be turned upside down.
When Sun has moved
from top to bottom his 'year' is over'. He has only 1 'leg'. To
return to the top high in the sky is no easy task, and to see him in a
state of 'rotten' (pe) is out of the question. He must be
splendid and young (pi).
"For the planting folk of the fertile steppes and
tropical jungles ... death is a natural phase of life, comparable to
the moment of the planting of the seed, for rebirth. As an example
of the attitude, we may take the composite picture presented by
Frobenius of the sort of burial and reliquary rites that he observed
everywhere among the horticulturists of South and East Africa:
When an old kinsman of
the sib dies, a cry of joy immediately fills the air. A banquet is
arranged, during which the men and women discuss the qualities of
the deceased, tell stories of his life, and speak with sorrow of the
ills of old age to which he was subject in his last years. Somewhere
in the neighorhood - preferably in a shady grove - a hollow has been
dug in the earth, covered with a stone. It now is opened and there
within lie the bones of earlier times. These are pushed aside to
make room for the new arrival. The corpse is carefully bedded in a
particular posture, facing a certain way, and left to itself then
for a certain season, with the grave again closed.
But when time enough
has passed for the flesh to have decayed, the old men of the sib
open the chamber again, climb down, take up the skull, and carry it
to the surface and into the farmstead, where it is cleaned, painted
red and, after being hospitably served with grain and beer, placed
in a special place along with the crania of other relatives. From
now on no spring will pass when the dead will not participate in the
offerings of the planting time; no fall when he will not partake of
the offerings of thanks brought in at harvest: and in fact, always
before the planting commences and before the wealth of the harvest
is enjoyed by the living.
Moreover, the silent
old fellow participates in everything that happens in the farmstead.
If a leopard kills a woman, a farmboy is bitten by a snake, a plague
strikes, or the blessing of rain is withheld, the relic is always
brought into connection with the matter in some way. Should there be
a fire, it is the first thing saved; when the puberty rites of the
youngsters are to commence, it is the first to enjoy the festival
beer and porridge.
If a young woman
marries into the sib, the oldest member conducts her to the urn or
shelf where the earthly remains of the past are preserved and bids
her take from the head of an ancestor a few kernels of holy grain to
eat. And this, indeed, is a highly significant custom; for when this
young, new vessel of the spirit of the sib becomes pregnant, the old
people of the community watch to see what similarities will exist
between the newly growing and the faded life ... '
Frobenius terms the attitude of the first order
'magical', and the latter 'mystical', observing that whereas the
plane of reference of the first is physical, the ghost being
conceived as physical, the second renders a profound sense of a
communion of death and life in the entity of the sib. And anyone
trying to express in words the sense or feeling of this mystic
communion would soon learn that words are not enough: the best is
silence, or the silent rite.
Not all the rites conceived in this spirit of the
mystic community are as gentle, however, as those just described.
Many are appalling, as will soon be shown. But through all there is
rendered, whether gently or brutally, an awesome sense of this dual
image, variously turned, of death in life and life in death: as in
the form of the Basumbwa Chief Death, one of whose sides was
beautiful, but the other rotten, with maggots dropping to the
ground; or in the Hawaiian tree with the deceptive branches at the
casting-off place to the other world, one side of which looked fresh
and green but the other dry and brittle."
(Campbell)
From the perspective
of this kind of reality it is possible to guess why the last
Quiché capital was named Rotten Cane:
"... 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." (Tedlock in his
comments on Popol Vuh)
A cane is a kind of
stick and with age it becomes brittle or rotten.
Also a branch is a
kind of stick, and when this stick is paired with Y the offcome is a
'beetle living in rotten wood' (according to the creation chant, cfr
at poporo):
...
Veke by lying with Water-beetle made the dragonfly,
Stinging-fly by doing it with Swarm-of-flies produced the fly,
Branch by lying with Fork-of-tree
made Beetle-that-lives-in-rotten-wood,
Lizard-woman by lying with Whiteness made the gannet ...
In China the tail of the Dolphin was Pae Chaou, the
Rotten Melon:
"Delphinus,
the Dolphin, is Dauphin in France, Delfino in
Italy, and Delphin in Germany; all from the Greek
Δελφίς
and Δελφίν,
transcribed by the Latins as Delphis and Delphin...
In Greece it also
was Ιερος 'Ιχθύς,
the Sacred Fish, the creature being of as much religious
significance there as a fish afterwards became among the early
Christians; and it was the sky emblem of philanthropy, not only
from the classical stories connected with its prototype, but
also from the latter's devotion to its young.
It should be
remembered that our stellar Dolphin is figured as the common
cetacean, Dolphinus delphis, of Atlantic and Mediterranea
waters, not the tropical Coryphaena that Dorado
represents ...
Delphinus lies east
of Aquila, on the edge of the Milky Way, occupying, with the
adjoining aqueous figures, the portion of the sky that Aratos
called the Water. It culminates about the 15th of
September. Caesius placed here the Leviathan of the 104th
Psalm; Novidius, the Great Fish that swallowed Jonah, but
Julius Schiller knew some of its stars as the Water-pots of
Cana. Popularly it now is Job's Coffin, although the date
and name of the inventor of this title I have not been able to
learn. The Chinese called the four chief stars and
ξ
Kwa Chaou, a
Gourd ...
ε,
a 4th magnitude, although lying near the dorsal fin of our
present figure, bears the very common name Deneb, from
Al Dhanab al Dulfim, the Dolphin's Tail. But in Arabia it
also was Al 'Amud al Şalib, as marking the Pillar of the
Cross. In China it was Pae Chaou, the Rotten Melon."
(Allen)
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