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TRANSLATIONS
The pages found by following
the link 'link':
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I would like to begin by quoting from The Golden Bough:
"When
we survey the existing races of mankind from Greenland to Tierra del
Fuego, or from Scotland to Singapore, we observe that they are
distinguished one from the other by a great variety of religions,
and that these distinctions are not, so to speak, merely coterminous
with the broad distinctions of race, but descend into the minuter
sub-divisions of states and commonwealths, nay, that they honeycomb
the town, the village, and even the family, so that the surface all
over the world is cracked and seamed, sapped and mined with rents
and fissures and yawning crevasses opened up by the disintegrating
influence of religious dissensions.
Yet when we
have penetrated through these differences, which affect mainly the
intelligent and thoughtful part of the community, we shall find
underlying them all a solid stratum of intellectual agreement among
the dull, the weak, the ignorant, and the superstitious, who
constitute, unfortunately, the vast majority of mankind.
One of the
great achievements of the nineteenth century was to run shafts down
into this low mental stratum in many parts of the world, and thus to
discover its substantial identity everywhere. It is beneath our feet
- and not very far beneath them - here in Europe at the present day,
and it crops up on the surface in the heart of the Australian
wilderness and wherever the advent of a higher civilisation has not
crushed it underground. This universal faith, this truly Catholic
creed, is a belief in the efficacy of magic.
While
religious systems differ not only in different countries, but in the
same country in different ages, the system of sympathetic magic
remains everywhere and at all times substantially alike in its
principles and practice."
The Egyptian pharaoh inside the dark temple of 'The Opener of the
Way', in the middle of a maitaki sign, is no strange
coincidence, of that I am certain. The ancient view of cosmos was an
integrated - indeed fundamental - part of magic (the precursor of
science).
"... a
great step in advance has been taken when a speical class of
magicians has been instituted; when, in other words, a number of men
have been set apart for the express purpose of benefiting the whole
community by their skill, whether that skill be directed to the
healing of diseases, the forcasting of the future, the regulation of
the weather, or any other subject of general utility.
The
impotence of the means adopted by most of these practitioners to
accomplish their ends ought not to bind us to the immense importance
of the institution itself. Here is a body of men relieved, at least
in the higher stages of savagery, from the need of earning their
livelyhood by hard manual toil, and allowed, nay expected and
encouraged, to prosecute researches into the secret ways of nature.
It was at once their duty and their interest to know more than their
fellows, to acquaint themselves with everything that could aid man
in his arduous struggle with his life.
The
properties of drugs and minerals, the causes of rain and drought, of
thunder and lightning, the changes of the seasons, the phases of the
moon, the daily and yearly journeys of the sun, the motions of the
stars, the mystery of life, and the mystery of death, all these
things must have excited the wonder of these early philosophers, and
stimulated them to find solutions of problems that were doubtless
often thrust on their attention in the most practical form by the
importunate demands of their clients, who expected them not merely
to understand but to regulate the great processes of nature for the
good of man."
They must have used every possible means to obtain from
their colleagues in neighbouring communities such pieces of
knowledge which could be useful. They did not compete but cooperate
and ideas must have spread quickly and efficiently, eventually
across the whole globe.
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If any people was able to communicate it was the Polynesians, their
ancestors even reached Madagascar (as hard evidence in form of
language testifies). They must have had access to an enormous amount
of ideas, delivered through contact with very many different peoples
and cultures - indirectly covering the whole earth.
They did not become a civilization,
and they moved away from such threats as the multiplying
citygoverned hords at the margin of the seas, out to hard to find
and small islands. They needed to remember not only the old routes
and the stars which were followed but as much as possible of the old
ways - which might come in handy (or even be necessary for survival)
when the migrations went on to next island.
So they continued ackumulating
knowledge, adding to the old as time went on. When Western
Civilization at last sought them out, killing most of them by
diseases and slave raids, Hawaii remained a last resort. But Easter
Island did not offer much of interest and its location at the corner
in the southeast must have resulted in the island mostly being left
alone also by the Polynesians themselves.
The rongorongo texts could
offer the only remaining key to unravel the old magic cosmos. If so,
then old myths and ideas from other parts of the world should be
embedded in the texts. Such a myth will be used here.
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I need to quote a long text from Hamlet's Mill (the chapter 'The
Dephts of the Sea'). The beginning comes here:
"Hast thou entered into
the springs of the Sea? Or hast thou walked in the search of the
depths? (Job XXXVIII. 16)
It will help now to take
a quick comparative look at the different 'dialects' of mythical
language as applied to 'Phaeton' in Greece and India. The
Pythagoreans make Phaeton fall into Eridanus, burning part of its
water, and glowing still at the time when the Argonauts passed by.
Ovid stated that since
the fall the Nile hides its sources. Rigveda 9.73.3 says that the
Great Varuna has hidden the ocean. The Mahabharata tells in its own
style why the 'heavenly Ganga' had to be brought down. At the end of
the Golden Age (Krita Yuga) a class of Asura who had fought against
the 'gods' hid themselves in the ocean where the gods could not
reach them, and planned to overthrow the government. So the gods
implored Agastya (Canopus, alpha Carinae = Eridu) for help.
The great Rishi did as
he was bidden, drank up the water of the ocean, and thus laid bare
the enemies, who were then slain by the gods. But now, there was no
ocean anymore! Implored by the gods to fill the sea again, the Holy
One replied: 'That water in sooth hath been digested by me. Some
other expedient, therefore, must be thought of by you, if ye desire
to make endeavour to fill the ocean ..."
At this point I saw Aa6-66 in front
of me:
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Aa6-66 |
The ua sign (rain water)
is streaming down from above, as if
the Holy One had arrived at a second thought. The ua sign can
be regarded as the 'Y' of kai - a double set of 3 'fingers'.
As Ogotemmêli said:
'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'.
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"... It was this sad
state of things which made it necessary to bring the Galaxy 'down'.
This is reminiscent of the detail in the Jewish tradition about Eben
Shetiyyah, that the waters sank down so deeply that David had to
recite the 'fifteen songs of ascension' to make them rise again ..."
The
Galaxy, being a kind of river, would provide the necessary water to
refill the sea. Suddenly we have improved our understanding of
Aa6-66, where Metoro said that the Galaxy (Goe) 'went
asleep' (moe):
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Aa6-64 |
Aa6-65 |
Aa6-66 |
Aa6-67 |
Aa6-68 |
Aa6-69 |
Aa6-70 |
| i to moa |
ko te vai hopu o te
moa |
e he goe kua moe |
ki to vaha o to ika
mea |
o te maitaki |
kua noho te ariki |
e mago |
The
Galaxy 'went asleep' because it disappeared from the sky. Also the
Tahua creator identified, it seems, the Galaxy with a source
of water (cfr vai in Aa6-65).
In
Aa6-67 the 'red fish' (ika mea) also disappears because water
from the river in the sky is refilling the dry bottom of the ocean
deep down - ki to vaha o to ika mea ('into the mouth of the
red fish'). Metoro is using the old article to instead
of te, he is citing from the old tradition. |
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"... Now Agastya, the
great Rishi, had a 'sordid' origin similar to that of Erichtonios
(Auriga), who was born of Gaia, 'the Earth', from the seed of
Hephaistos, who had dropped it while he was looking at Athena
¹.
¹ Besides Greece and India, the
motif of the dropped seed occurs in Caucasian myths, particularly
those which deal with the hero Soszryko. The 'Earth' is replaced by
a stone, Hephaistos by a shepherd, and Athena by the 'beautiful
Satana', who watches carefully the pregnant stone and who, when the
time comes, calls in the blacksmith who serves as midwife to the
'stone-born' hero whose body is blue shining steel from head to
foot, except the knees (or the hips) which are damaged by the pliers
of the smith. The same Soszryko seduces a hostile giant to measure
the depth of the sea in the same manner as Michael or Elias causes
the devil to dive, making the sea freeze in the meantime.
In the case of the
Rishi:
He originated from the
seed of Mitra and Varuna, which they dropped into a water-jar on
seeing the heavenly Urvashi. From this double parentage he is called
Maitrāvaruni, and from his being born
from a jar he got the name Khumbasambhaya¹ (Khumba is the name of
Aquarius in India and Indonesia, allegedly late Greek influence.)
¹
... let us mention that the Egyptian Canopus is himself a jar-god;
actually, he is represented by a Greek hydria ...
On the very same time
and occasion there also was 'born' as son of Mitra and Varuna - only
the seed fell on the ground not in the jar - the Rishi Vasishta.
This is unmistakably zeta Ursae Majoris, and the lining up of
Canopus with zeta, more often with Alcor, the tiny star near zeta
(Tom Thumb, in Babylonia the 'fox'-star) has remained a rather
constant feature, in Arabic Suhayl and as-Sura. This is the 'birth'
of the valid representatives of both the poles, the sons of Mitra
and Varuna and also of their successors ..."
On
Easter Island high summer is dry and sun is far south, 'close to
Canopus'. From there water comes back. The time anciently was equal
to Aquarius. North of the equator Aquarius marked the time of water
because sun was as far away south as possible, south of the equator
it was seen as if in a mirror - sun quite too hot and the dry earth
in need of being reimpregnated.
Stone
or earth, the heavenly rain saved the situation. Twins were born,
one representing the southern sea and one representing the northern
sky.
"... To follow up the
long and laborious way leading from Rigvedic Mitrāvaruna
(dual) to the latest days of the Roman Empire where we still find a
gloss saying 'mithra funis, quo navis media vincitur' -
'mithra is the rope, by which the middle of the ship is bound',
would overstep the frame of this essay by far.
Robert Eisler relying upon his
vast material, connected this fetter or 'rope', mithra, right away
with the 'ship's belt' from the tenth book of Plato's Republic.
Of the inseparable dual Mitrāvaruna, Varuna is still of greater
relevance, particularly because it is he who 'surveyed the first
creation' (RV 8.41.10), he who hid the Ocean - Ovid had it that the
sources of the Nile were hidden - and he who is himself called 'the
hidden Ocean' (RV 8.41.8).
Varuna states about himself: 'I fastened the sky to the seat of the
Rita' (RV 4.42.2). And at that 'seat of Rita' we find Svarnara, said
to be 'the name of the celestial spring ... which Soma selected as
his dwelling'.¹
¹
... Soma is addressed as 'lord of the poles', and to Agni is given
the epithet svarnaram thrice ... But we did hear about 'Agni,
like the felly the spokes, so you surround all the gods', and Soma
and Agni supplement each other ...
This is no other 'thing' than Hvarna (Babylonian melammu)
which the 'bad uncle' Afrasiyab attempted to steal by diving to the
bottom ot Lake Vurukasha, although Hvarna belonged to Kai Khusrau
... Thus in whichever dialect the phenomenon is spelled out, the
fallen ruler of the Golden Age is held to dwell nearest to the
celestial South Pole, particularly in Canopus which marks the
steering oar of Argo, Canopus at the 'confluence of the rivers'.
This is true whether Varuna fastened the sky to the seat of the Rita
(and his own seat), whether Enki-Ea-Enmesharra, dwelling in Eridu,
held all the norms and measures (Rita, Sumerian me: Akkadian:
parsu) - Thorkild Jacobsen called him very appropriately the
'Lord modus operandi' - or whether Kronos-Saturn kept giving 'all
the measures of the whole creation' to Zeus while he himself slept
in Ogygia-the-primeval."
Maybe
Varuna is equal to some old word (now lost) varu-ga ('the place of 8'). |
I think Fornander wrote
somewhere, after having studied the words for different winds, that
probably the Polynesians once had direct knowledge of monsoon rains.
A quick look in Wikipedia
establishes that the middle of summer is just the time when the monsoon
rains can be expected, if you live in India:
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