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TRANSLATIONS
Next chapter is hanau:
Terra firma is the opposite of the sea. The Hittites were an ancient people and understood the old common language. In rongorongo, I suspect, hanau is the opposite of tagata:
With tagata as a fully grown male warrior, standing firm on dry land, the fluid Hittite people who avoided battle were all of them like Hylas - female in character and no warriores at all. The water-pitcher lying abounded by the side of the pool is very similar to the hemispherical wooden bowl left at the entrance of the 'anthill'. Ogotemmêli: "... The four males and the four females were couples in consequence of their lower, i.e. of their sexual parts. The four males were man and woman, and the four females were woman and man. In the case of the males it was the man, and in the case of the females it was the woman, who played the dominant role. They coupled and became pregnant each in him or herself, and so produced their offspring. But in the fullness of time an obscure instinct led the eldest of them towards the anthill which had been occupied by the Nummo. He wore on his head a head-dress and to protect him from the sun, the wooden bowl he used for his food. He put his two feet into the opening of the anthill, that is of the earth's womb, and sank in slowly as if for a parturition a tergo. The whole of him thus entered into the earth, and his head itself disappeared. But he left on the ground, as evidence of his passage into that world, the bowl which had caught on the edges of the opening. All that remained on the anthill was the round wooden bowl, still bearing traces of the food and the finger-prints of its vanished owner, symbol of his body and of his human nature, as, in the animal world, is the skin which a reptile has shed. Liberated from his earthly condition, the ancestor was taken in charge by the regenerating Pair. The male Nummo led him into the depths of the earth, where, in the waters of the womb of his partner he curled himself up like a foetus and shrank to germinal form, and acquired the quality of water, the seed of God and the essence of the two Spirits. And all this process was the work of the Word. The male with his voice accompanied the female Nummo who was speaking to herself and to her own sex. The spoken Word entered into her and wound itself round her womb in a spiral of eight turns. Just as the helical band of copper round the sun gives to it its daily movement, so the spiral of the Word gave to the womb its regenerative movement. Thus perfected by water and words, the new Spirit was expelled and went up to Heaven. All the eight ancestors in succession had to undergo this process of transformation; but, when the turn of the seventh ancestor came, the change was the occasion of a notable occurrence. The seventh in a series, it must be remembered, represents perfection. Though equal in quality with the others, he is the sum of the feminine element, which is four, and the masculine element, which is three. He is thus the completion of the perfect series, symbol of the total union of male and female, that is to say of unity. And to this homogenous whole belongs especially the mastery of words, that is, of language; and the appearance on earth of such a one was bound to be the prelude to revolutionary developments of a beneficial character. In the earth's womb he became, like the others, water and spirit, and his development, like theirs, followed the rhythm of the words uttered by the two transforming Nummo. 'The words which the feamale Nummo spoke to herself', Ogotemmêli explained, 'turned into a spiral and entered into her sexual part. The male Nummo helped her. These are the words which the seventh ancestor learnt inside the womb.' The others equally possessed the knowledge of these words in virtue of their experiences in the same place; but they had not attained the mastery of them nor was it given to them to develop their use. What the seventh ancestor had received, therefore, was the perfect knowledge of a Word - the second Word to be heard on earth, clearer than the first and not, like the first, reserved for particular recipients, but destined for all mankind. Thus he was able to achieve progress for the world. In particular, he enabled mankind to take precedence over God's wicked son, the jackal. The latter, it is true, still possessed knowledge of the first Word, and could still therefore reveal to diviners certain heavenly purposes; but in the future order of things he was to be merely a laggard in the process of revelation. 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. The numbers indicated the future rates of increase of the families; the appearance of the teeth was a sign that the time for new instruction was drawing near." The wooden bowl is a cap, the water-pitcher is a cup. Together they form a sphere. The 2nd Word was destined for all mankind. The 1st Word was esoteric. The appearance of the teeth (at the opening in the west) was a sign that the time for new instruction was drawing near.
The Golden Age was in the past. A new awareness made existence more grim. Heracles had killed for being refused a plough-ox. The dawn of agriculture changed everything. The age of Taurus had entered. Time had began to move. When later bronze age turned into iron age, the male war took possession of the land. ... 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 ... The 7th ancestor is Saturn. He determines. He creates strict order. He accomplished the task of moving mankind into the singular light, and the wicked Jackal was overcome. But man lost one of his eyes in the process. Like Odin when he had to leave one of his eyes (like a cap at the pool side): "... This tree whose foliage was always green was the ash tree Yggdrasil. One of its roots reached down into the depths of the subterranean kingdom and its mighty boughs rose to the heights of the sky. In the poetic language of the skalds Yggrasil signified the 'Steed of the Redoubtable' (Odin) and the gigantic tree received its name because, they said, Odin's charger was in the habit of browsing in its foliage. Near the root which plunged into Niflhel, the underworld, gushed forth the fountain Hvergelmir, the bubbling source of the primitive rivers. Besided the second root, which penetrated the land of giants, covered with frost and ice, flowed the fountain of Mimir, in which all wisdom dwelt and from which Odin himself desired to drink even though the price demanded for a few draughts was the loss of an eye. Finally under the third root of Yggdrasil - which according to one tradition was in the very heavens - was the fountain of the wisest of the Norns, Urd. Every day the Norns drew water from the well with which they sprinkled the ash tree so that it should not wither and rot away. In the higher branches of the tree was perched a golden cock which surveyed the horizon and warned the gods whenever their ancient enemies, the Giants, prepared to attack them. Under the ash tree the horn of the god Heimdall was hidden. One day this trumpet would sound to announce the final battle of the Aesir against all those who wished to cause their downfall. Near the vigorous trunk of the tree there was a consecrated space, a place of peace where the gods met daily to render justice. In its branches the goat Heidrun browsed; she gave Odin's warriors the milk with which they were nourished. Malevolent demons continually schemed to destroy the ash Yggdrasil. A cunning monster, the serpent Nidhögg, lurked under the third root and gnawed at it ceaselessly. Four stags wandered among its foliage and nibbled off all the young buds. Thanks however to the care and attention of the Norns the tree continued to put forth green shoots and rear its indestructible trunk in the centre of the earth." (Larousse) The 3 roots of the ash are equivalent to the 3 Words of Ogotemmêli. Polyphemus appears at the site where Hylas disappeared. The name coincides with that of the one-eyed giant cyclope who swallowed people in the Odyssey: ... Odysseus and his fleet were now in a mythic realm of difficult trials and passages, of which the first was to be the Land of the Cyclopes, 'neither nigh at hand, nor yet afar off', where the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, son of the god Poseidon (who, as we know, was the lord of tides and of the Two Queens, and the lord, furthermore, of Medusa), dwelt with his flocks in a cave. 'Yes, for he was a monstrous thing and fashioned marvelously, nor was he like to any man that lives by bread, but like a wooded peak of the towering hills, which stands out apart and alone from others.' Odysseus, choosing twelve men, the best of the company, left his ships at shore and sallied to the vast cave. It was found stocked abundantly with cheeses, flocks of lambs and kids penned apart, milk pails, bowls of whey; and when the company had entered and was sitting to wait, expecting hospitality, the owner came in, shepherding his flocks. He bore a grievous weight of dry wood, which he cast down with a din inside the cave, so that in fear all fled to hide. Lifting a huge doorstone, such as two and twenty good four-wheeled wains could not have raised from the ground, he set this against the mouth of the cave, sat down, milked his ewes and goats, and beneath each placed her young, after which he kindled a fire and spied his guests. Two were eaten that night for dinner, two the next morning for breakfast, and two the following night. (Six gone.) But the companions meanwhile had prepared a prodigous stake with which to bore out the Cyclops' single eye; and when clever Odysseus, declaring his own name to be Noman, approached and offered the giant a skin of wine, Polyphemus, having drunk his fill, 'lay back', as we read, 'with his great neck bent round, and sleep that conquers all men overcame him.' Wine and fragments of the men's flesh he had just eaten issued forth from his mouth, and he vomited heavy with drink. 'Then', declared Odysseus, I thrust in that stake under the deep ashes, until it should grow hot, and I spake to my companions comfortable words, lest any should hang back from me in fear. But when that bar of olive wood was just about to catch fire in the flame, green though it was, and began to glow terribly, even then I came nigh, and drew it from the coals, and my fellows gathered about me, and some god breathed great courage into us. For their part they seized the bar of olive wood, that was sharpened at the point, and thrust it into his eye, while I from my place aloft turned it about, as when a man bores a ship's beam with a drill while his fellows below spin it with a strap, which they hold at either end, and the auger runs round continually. Even so did we seize the fiery-pointed brand and whirled it round in his eye, and the blood flowed about the heated bar. And the breath of the flame singed his eyelids and brows all about, as the ball of the eye burnt away, and the roots thereof crackled in the flame. And as when a smith dips an ax or adze in chill water with a great hissing, when he would temper it - for hereby anon comes the strength of iron - even so did his eye hiss round the stake of olive. And he raised a great and terrible cry, that the rock rang around, and we fled away in fear, while he plucked forth from his eye the brand bedabbled in much blood. Then maddened with pain he cast it from him with his hands, and called with a loud voice on the Cyclopes, who dwelt about him in the caves along the windy heights. And they heard the cry and flocked together from every side, and gathering round the cave, called in to ask what ailed him. 'What hath so distressed thee, Polyphemus, that thou criest thus aloud through the immortal night, and makest us sleepless? Surely no mortal driveth off thy flocks against thy will: surely none slayeth thyself by force or craft?' And the strong Polyphemus spake to them again from out of the cave: 'My friends, Noman is slaying me by guile, nor at all by force.' And they answered and spake winged words: 'If then no man is violently handling thee in thy solitude, it can in no wise be that thou shouldst escape the sickness sent by mighty Zeus. Nay, pray thou to thy father, the lord Poseidon.' On this wise they spake and departed; and my heart within me laughed to see how my name and cunning counsel had beguiled him ... It was cunning which saved Mr Noman, not strength. 6 months into the year one eye will be gone. The 2nd eye, filled with fluid wisdom, remains. In the light of this 2nd remaining eye the alternative older view is worth nothing. But without two eyes you no longer can see in depth. Life becomes superficial. |
