TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

A fundametal law of physics says that everything 'runs down', the enthropy is always increasing.

A vase (or water-pithcher) which falls from the table down onto the floor going into zillions of pieces can never be restored again by the same forces which destroyed it.

Ancient man knew the answer to this puzzle. In a whirlpool all small pieces of flotsam will as if by magic assemble in the center, then they will go down under the surface.

In the dark waters below there is an unseen mysterious process which will restore the broken pieces into a new entity which later will be reborn.

The process is not possible to describe by physics, it is a process of life. Down it goes, everything, sooner or later. But it will come back, fresh as morning dew. The metabolism disintegrates but the pieces are reused like old bricks when a new wall is built.

This process of Mother Nature was harnessed by man entering the agricultural age. Raw manpower forced itself in between. It is no coincidence that Herakles met Polyphemus while frantically searching of Hylas.

"... 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 ..." (Campbell 3)

Odin gave away one of his eyes in order to gain wisdom. It was cunning which saved Mr. Noman.

6 months into the year one eye will be gone. The 2nd eye, filled with wisdom (or rather cunning), remains.

In the light from 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. Quick opportunity is the king.

Still the mystery of the origin of life (order increasing instead of entropy) remains hidden (in the dark). The earliest measure of Te Pei is 8 * 28½ = 228, the perfect number (8) is unseen because it is deep down in the water:


Ga8-24 (228)	Ga8-25	Ga8-26	Gb1-1

Gb1-2 (232)	Gb1-3	Gb1-4	Gb1-5

Gb1-6 (236)	Gb1-7	Gb1-8	Gb1-9

The form of our figure for number eight says it in picture language: Order is increasing, there will be a new perfect figure soon. But the 8th 'island' cannot be seen, there are only 7 days in the week. Te Pei is like Easter Island - far down in the south, in the region of 'water' (south of the equator):

"1. Easter Island (te pito o te kainga) is the last of all known islands. Seven lands lie before it, but these do not recommend themselves for settlement.

Easter Island is the 'eighth land' (te varu kainga). Actually, we are dealing here with a figure of speech because 'seven' and 'eight' used as qualifying quantities play a traditional role in Oceania (Barthel 1962a). While the number seven is known as a topos in MQS., HAW., and MAO., the topos of the number eight goes far beyond eastern Polynesia (MQS., HAW., TAH.).

In TON., the number eight is 'a conventional term signifying many or a well-balanced number' (McKern 1929:17), and on Malaita in the southern Solomon Islands, the physical world in its entirety is referred to as 'eight islands (wālu malau) (Ivens 1927:400).

The number eight not only means 'many' but also denotes perfection. Thus, when Easter Island was called 'an eighth land', the expression contained first of all the idea of a 'last' island - an island farthest away from the rest of the islands that make up the oceanic world. At the same time, the expression indicated a special position among the other islands. The idea of groups of seven, which are surpassed by an eight element, seems to belong to the cosmology of Asian high cultures. For example, there are seven planets circling the world axis, which represents the eighth, and therefore central, position." (Barthel 2)

Notice that te varu kainga is not te kainga varu. You must distinguish between tagata kai (a man eating) and kai tagata (eating a man) - the main word comes first, the secondary distinction comes second. Te varu kainga is literally the land of number 8 (not the 8th land).

Agri-culture is in opposition to the wild untamed forest. Therefore we have deforested most of our world. Easter Island is a prime example.

We cannot imagine the world before agriculture. What we can do is to pick out just one example from the preagricultural world, an example which hopefully will work like a slap in the face:

"How serious that worship [tree worship] was in former times may be gathered from the ferocious penalty appointed by the old German laws for such as dared to peel the bark of a standing tree. The culprit's navel was to be cut out and nailed to the part of the tree which he had peeled, and he was to be driven round and round the tree till all his guts were wound about its trunk." (The Golden Bough)

The navel is a good symbol for 8. The tree is your mother and to hurt her must be punished in kind.

The guts are the primal rivers below, those which Mercury has occupied:

The punishment says exactly what has gone wrong, what the culprit has done. To peel the bark of the living tree is to sell your mother for a quick profit. The culprit has gone crazy - he has become a merchant, he does no longer live in the forest, he dwells in a city, in a perverse culture designed by cunning man.

I will add this to the last of the hyperlink pages above:

... The navel is a good symbol for 8. The tree is your mother and to hurt her must be punished in kind.

The guts are the primal rivers below, those which Mercury has occupied:

"This terra-cotta mask shows the unlovely face of Humbaba/Huwawa, the guardian of the cedar felled by Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The title of 'God of the fortress of intestines' is also given to him, and some scholars conclude from this title, as well as from the pictorial evidence, that Humbaba was the inhabitant and lord of the labyrinth, a predessor of Minotaurus." (Hamlet's Mill)