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Sinking down is not necessarily the result of loosing a game at
checkerboards. It can be a voluntary (but obscure) development of events:
"... 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 female 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
..." (Ogotemmêli)
A few of the conclusions which I have drawn from this difficult
to understand explanantion - but which may be necessary in order to
understand the rongorongo texts - are:
The round wooden bowl
left at the border of the 'anthill' is a cap, the opposite of the water-pitcher of
Hylas left at the border of the 'pool' which is a cup. Together they form
a sphere. The Underworld is the cup (normally filled with water),
the Sky is the cap.
The appearance of teeth
(at the opening in the west I presume) was a sign that the time for
new instruction was drawing near. I think this idea is in harmony with the
'grasping hand' (Mayan manik, the 7th day sign) and the
'swallowing mouth' variant of tapa mea:
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