TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

The 2nd Word was destined for all mankind. The 1st Word was esoteric, for the magicians, I suppose.

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.

Later bronze age turned into iron age, and the aggression of the warrior 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 makes strict orders. He accomplished the task of moving mankind into the singular light - the man at the top is the boss - and the wicked Jackal was fading away, no longer important.

In poetic language I try to convey what what it says between the lines of Ogotemmêli. It may be my imagination only.

But man lost one of his eyes in the process. Like Odin when he had to leave one of his eyes:

"... 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 - in away - equivalent to the 3 Words of Ogotemmêli, I guess. At the bottom is 'water' (without any firmness or logic), then comes the checkerboard, the fields and habitations of agricultural man, and at the top is the firmanent.

Agriculture is hard work (hana) and firm rules must be enforced for the benefit of all. The shock of the revolution has already earlier (at rima) been described in the mythic terms of Ogotemmêli:

... During his descent the ancestor still possessed the quality of a water spirit, and his body, though preserving its human appearance, owing to its being that of a regenerated man, was equipped with four flexible limbs like serpents after the pattern of the arms of the Great Nummo.

The ground was rapidly approaching. The ancestor was still standing, his arms in front of him and the hammer and anvil hanging across his limbs. The shock of his final impact on the earth when he came to the end of the rainbow, scattered in a cloud of dust the animals, vegetables and men disposed on the steps.

When calm was restored, the smith was still on the roof, standing erect facing towards the north, his tools still in the same position. But in the shock of landing the hammer and the anvil had broken his arms and legs at the level of elbows and knees, which he did not have before. He thus acquired the joints proper to the new human form, which was to spread over the earth and to devote itself to toil ...

The 'whirlpool' (the revolving sky dome) has been described in the excursion at haati. I there referred to it while discussing the narrow hanga rave sign at Hanga Te Pau (cfr at Hatinga Te Kohe). It is here named Hvergelmir:

... Near the root which plunged into Niflhel, the underworld, gushed forth the fountain Hvergelmir, the bubbling source of the primitive rivers ...

The 'whirlpool' is the source of life, because it is the source of movement. Movement is life.

The hanau concept should therefore be closely associated with the 'whirlpool'. We have been there already, at the 'source of the rivers', in the maitaki 'chapter':

... 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 ...

There is a complex problem here. Saturn is the 7th ancestor, the clever one who rules Jupiter and through him the rest of them. So much we learned from Hamlet's Mill, and the Polynesians thought he was the ruler too:

... Fetu-tea [Pale Star = Saturn] was the king. He took to wife the dome of the sky, Te-Tapoi-o-te-ra'i, and begat stars that shine (hitihiti) and obscure, the host of twinkling stars, fetu-amoamo, and the phosphorescent stars, te fetu-pura-noa. There followed the star-fishes, Maa-atai, and two trigger-fishes that eat mist and dwell in vacant spots in the Milky Way, the Vai-ora or Living-water of Tane. The handsome shark Fa'a-rava-i-te-ra'i, Sky-shade, is there in his pool and close by is Pirae-tea, White Sea-swallow (Deneb in Cygnus) in the Living-waters of Tane ...

Tane presumably was the Milky Way, and the stem of this great tree possibly served as an explanation of what happened when the sky dome in spring was raised higher and higher. Spring sun and Tane therefore should be closely connected.

Saturn sat at the bottom, presumably like a big black fish at Te Pei, and from there his executive fetched the orders. Maybe it was Sirius, maybe it was Jupiter.

The black moon seems to have had Mercury as executive. On New Zeland Mercury was Whiro:

Hawaiian Islands

Society Islands

Tuamotus

New Zealand

Pukapuka

Ukali or Ukali-alii 'Following-the-chief' (i.e. the Sun)

Kawela 'Radiant'

Ta'ero or Ta'ero-arii 'Royal-inebriate' (referring to the eccentric and undignified behavior of the planet as it zigzags from one side of the Sun to the other)

Fatu-ngarue 'Weave-to-and-fro'

Fatu-nga-rue 'Lord of the Earthquake'

Whiro 'Steals-off-and-hides'; also the universal name for the 'dark of the Moon' or the first day of the lunar month; also the deity of sneak thieves and rascals.

Te Mata-pili-loa-ki-te-la 'Star-very-close-to-the-Sun'

The thief close to the sun is exactly right for the first appearance of new moon after she has dipped into the vaiora a Tane.

Mercury is the planet immediately before Jupiter, close to him. Jupiter serves as a planet ruler closer to the sun than Saturn. He is also king, but only a lesser one. Mercury is close both to the sun and to Jupiter, a sneaky spineless character who is using trickery instead of force.

Odin rules Wednesday, he is Mercury. Trickery is his trade, not force, however much he tries with his illusions to make us believe different.

In a way he represents the 2nd Word. By logic everything can be twisted and turned into its opposite.

He is indeed no man, Noman like Odysseus.

When the forest had to go, you needed great convincing power. The ruler in Iron Age must be clever indeed. The chief executive of the great enterprise is Mercury. He is also the planet (the ruler) of merchant man.

The clever no man is the creative genius emerging from the black hole. The man who tricks the others into action by his magic skills. He creates so much change at once that it feels like an earth-quake. But he does not rule, he takes his measures from the board.

The problem I perceive is that there were 8 drums of different sizes, according to Ogotemmêli:

"The most important of all drums, he said, was the armpit drum. The Nummo made it. It consists of two hemispherical wooden cups connected through their centres by a slender cylinder. It is like an hour-glass with a very long narrow neck. With this instrument tucked between his left arm and armpit, the drummer, by pressing on the hollow structure of thin wood, can tighten or relax the tension on the skins and so modify the tone.

'The Nummo made it. He made a picture of it with is fingers, as children do today in games with string.' Holding his hands apart, he passed a thread ten times round each of the four fingers, but not the thumb. He thus had forty loops on each hand, making eighty threads in all, which, he pointed out, was also the number of teeth of his jaws. The palms of his hands represented the skins of the drum, and thus to play on the drum was, symbolically, to play on the hands of the Nummo. But what do they represent?

Cupping his two hands behind his ears, Ogotemmêli explained that the spirit had no external ears but only auditory holes. 'His hands serve for ears,' he said; 'to enable him to hear he always holds them on each side of his head. To tap the drum is to tap the Nummo's palms, to tap, that is, his ears.'

Holding before him the web of threads which represented a weft, the Spirit with his tongue interlaced them with a kind of endless chain made of a thin strip of copper. He coiled this in a spiral of eighty turns, and throughout the process he spoke as he had done when teaching the art of weaving. But what he said was new. It was the third Word, which he was revealing to men."

"Each drum had a sound of its own, and so each family had its own language, which is the reason why there are different languages today. The first two families, settled in the south, spoke two dialects of Toro, not very different from each other; the third family spoke Mendéli; the fourth spoke Sanga; the fifth another form of Toro; the sixth Bamba; and the seventh Iréli. Lastly the eighth family was given a language which is understood in all parts of the cliff. Just as the eighth drum dominates all the others, so the eighth language is understood everywhere.

It was thus that men were given the third Word, final, complete and multiform to suit the new age. It was closely associated, like the first and second Words, and even more than they, with material objects. At this point an odd reflection occured to the European. The first imperfect Word was associated with a technical process, simple in character and no doubt the most archaic of all processes, which had produced the most primitive form of clothing made of fibre. The fibre, which was neither knotted nor woven, flowed in a wavy line, and might be said therefore to be of one dimension.

The second Word, less restricted than the first, arose from weaving, done on a wide warp crossed by vertical threads forming a surface, that is to say, having two dimensions. The third Word, clear and perfect in character, took shape in a cylinder with a strip of copper winding through it, that is to say, in a three-dimensional figure. These three technical processes (as he further remarked) all proceeded by following a line, either undulating or zig-zag, and each was characterized by three distinct features: humidity of the fibres, ensuring the freshness necessary for procreation; light for the weaving, that being a daylight process, prohibited at night on pain of blindness; sonority of the drum. There was also a development, from the material point of view, from trimmed bark to cotton thread, and from thread to leather strips and to a copper band."

"The European had known for years the magical function of the sounds of a smithy. He had been present many times at rituals in the course of which at a certain point a smith would strike the rock with his hammer or with the iron part of his anvil. By producing sound from the iron, in which the mythical first smith had brought so many benefits to mankind, he was reminding his fellow-men of the supreme power of Amma and the Water Spirit. He was assisting their prayers and strengthening them by the sounds he made; he was appeasing the possible wrath of the celestial Beings by this acknowledgement of their pre-eminence. When men quarrelled with one another, he would intervene between the parties, hammer in hand, and strike the rocks, thus bringing a divine note into the human disorder and calming the passions aroused ..."

The hammer identified the ruler down on earth who kept order among all the different peoples. It is the Thursday sign. It is Jupiter, not Mercury.

But the biggest drum is the 8th. Who owns the 8th drum? The 6th drum, the round one, should be the drum of Mercury (never being still). The 7th drum must be the drum of Jupiter, then.

The armpit drum, like a hour-glass, must be the moon, the ruler of time. There are two such drums among the 8, presumably one for waxing and one for waning moon. The little drum at left could be the infant sun, which is taken care of by the moon.

Then comes a stage when sun is like Mars, who has two faces - two drums.

Next he is not old enough to become Jupiter, but he has to keep close to him, to listen carefully, and to run quickly. Only by doing so and being very clever can he survive to next stage in the hierarchy.