A
H
P
Q
	'am'				'pm'

During 'am' there is growing and during 'pm' there is harvesting. The 'open mouths' (or rather powerful 'Herculean' toko te ragi pushing the sky up) during 'am' tells of growth (of all things following the direction of the sun) and the sickle-shapes during 'pm' tells of harvest (of all things following the direction of the moon - who is growing in force when sun is waning).

These are agricultural facts basic to ancient cultures:

"Gronw Pebyr, who figures as the lord of Penllyn - 'Lord of the Lake' - which was also the title of Tegid Voel, Cerridwen's husband, is really Llew's twin and tanist ...

Gronw reigns during the second half of the year, after Llew's sacrificial murder; and the weary stag whom he kills and flays outside Llew's castle stands for Llew himself (a 'stag of seven fights'). This constant shift in symbolic values makes the allegory difficult for the prose-minded reader to follow, but to the poet who remembers the fate of the pastoral Hercules the sense is clear: after despatching Llew with the dart hurled at him from Bryn Kyvergyr, Gronw flays him, cuts him to pieces and distributes the pieces among his merry-men. The clue is given in the phrase 'baiting his dogs'.

Math had similarly made a stag of his rival Gilvaethwy, earlier in the story. It seems likely that Llew's mediaeval successor, Red Robin Hood, was also once worshipped as a stag. His presence at the Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance would be difficult to account for otherwise, and 'stag's horn' moss is sometimes called 'Robin Hood's Hatband'. In May, the stag puts on his red summer coat.

Llew visits the Castle of Arianrhod in a coracle of weed and sedge. The coracle is the same old harvest basket in which nearly every antique Sun-god makes his New Year voyage; and the virgin princess, his mother, is always waiting to greet him on the bank.

As has already been mentioned, the Delphians worshipped Dionysus once a year as the new-born child, Liknites, 'the Child in the Harvest Basket', which was a shovel-shaped basket of rush and osier used as a harvest basket, a cradle, a manger, and a winnowing-fan for tossing the grain up into the air against the wind, to separate it from the chaff.

Which reminds me about: 'When a Central Australian Aranda youngster is between ten and twelve years old ... he and the other members of this age group are taken by the men of the village and tossed several times into the air, while the women, dancing around the company, wave their arms and shout ...' (Campbell)

The worship of the Divine Child was established in Mioan Crete, its most famous early home in Europe. In 1903, on the site of the temple of Dictaean Zeues - the Zeus who was yearly born in Rhea's cave at Dicte near Cnossos, where Pythagoras spent 'thrice nine hallowed days' of his initiation - was found a Greek hymn which seems to preserve the original Minoan formula in which the gypsum-powdered, sword-dancing Curetes, or tutors, saluted the Child at his birthday feast. In it he is hailed as 'the Cronian one' who comes yearly to Dicte mounted on a sow and escorted by a spirit-throng, and begged for peace and plenty as a reward for their joyful leaps.

The tradition preserved by Hyginus in his Poetic Astronomy that the constellation Capricorn ('He-goat') was Zeus's foster-brother Aegipan, the Kid of the Goat Amalthea whose horn Zeus also place among the stars, shows that Zeus was born at mid-winter when the Sun entered the house of Capricorn.

The date is confirmed by the alternative version of the myth, that he was suckled by a sow - evidently the one on whose back he yearly rode into Dicte - since in Egypt swine's flesh and milk were permitted food only at the mid-winter festival.

That the Sun-gods Dionysus, Apollo and Mithras were all also reputedly born at the Winter solstice is well known, and the Christian Church first fixed the Nativity feast of Jesus Christ at the same season, in the year A.D. 273. St. Chrysostom, a century later, said that the intention was that 'while the heathen were busied with their profane rites the Christians might perform their holy ones without disturbance', but justified the date as suitable for one who was 'the Sun of Righteousness'.

Another confirmation of the date is that Zeus was the son of Cronos, whom we have securely identified with Fearn, or Bran, the god of the F month in the Beth-Luis-Nion. If one reckons back 280 days from the Winter Solstice, that is to say ten months of the Beth-Luis-Nion calendar, the normal period of human gestation, one comes to the first day of Fearn.

(Similarly, reckoning 280 days forward from the Winter Solstice, one comes to the first day of the G month, Gore, sacred to Dionysus; Dionysus the vine and ivy-god, as opposed to the Sun-god, was son to Zeus.) Cuchulain was born as the result of his mother's swallowing a may-fly; but in Ireland may-flies often appear in late March, so his birthday was probably the same." (The White Goddess)

This long citation is inserted here first of all to give support for the proposition that there were 2 major seasons on Easter Island too - the time of growth and the time of harvest. However, the citation may furthermore be used to suggest that the pattern with 10 months (280 days) also was of importance.

On Tahiti there were 10 supporting pillars (ana) which I understand as 10 periods in the year. On Easter Island the 12 months probably earlier also were 10, because Vaitu Nui and Vaitu Potu respectively Hora Iti and Hora Nui are names indicating that there once were Vaitu and Hora which were split in two.

 

Consider now the possibility that the pattern of 7 being surpassed by 8 in Ab6-42--57 is an example of a general structure with number i being supassed by number i+j. The method used was this:

 

To the obvious pattern 3 + 4 = 7 was added a little bird with neck and head mimicking the latter part of the week. In the beginning of the Tahua text we also find a little bird with neck and head suggesting toko te ragi:

 

1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12

His open mouth tells about growing sun. The shape of the moon (the 2nd glyph, GD44, marama) may play a role similar to that played by the 2nd glyph in the week (the sunday bird). The sunday bird has a beak 'pointing' to the last 3 days of the week, the shape of the moon also suggests the last 3 periods.

Glyphs 1 and 5-8 easily are classified as 'growing sun', while glyphs 3-4 and 9 have been painted red by me to reach that magical number 8.

If the intention was to list 12 months, then there probably are 3 tertials (1-4, 5-8, 9-12), because the middle four unquestionably constitute a group.

Equally clear is that the last four glyphs belong to a group characterized by signs of moon. What, then, should be the sign in the first four-glyph group? Perhaps the first four glyphs do not belong to the calendar. With 5-12 we have 8 periods which may be enough. Consequently I should repaint 9 as blue.

The 'legs' in 9 and 10 (with 'knee' towards right) maybe tells us that midsummer is past. However, that may be wrong. Because the head in 10 is en face (probably a sign of 'middle'). Also the head in 9 reminds us about how the noon head (Aa-24) looks, i.e. egglike:

Instead of painting 9 blue we should perhaps paint 10 red? Clearly sun is 'dead' in 11-12. The sun will meet his death in the 10th period, perhaps illustrated by the moon elbow ornament.

Glyph 2 cannot be red. Not only is the moon opposite to the sun in meaning, but the shape we see is like a mirror of that in the (sun) glyph 1. The parallel moon sickle glyphs in H/P/Q are oriented the opposite way - which may indicate that the writer of Tahua changed its direction to be more explicit: That the moon sickle represents the last glyphs of the calendar. In the beginning we may be presented with an introduction - sun first, moon after that.

Of the 12 glyphs 3 are definitely not red (2, 11, 12). Are they the wives of the sun? Left for the sun are 9 glyphs, but one of them means 'death' (10). We shouldn't say 'death', we should rather say koti. Thinking like that we discover that there is a little space between the dangling moon sickle and the elbow.

In 3 and 4 we can see the 'manu tara' sign, the very long and pointed 'beak' of the sun bird head:

The birds announcing 'dawn' are located in the right place of the calendar if we have a calendar with 12 periods. Close to spring equinox time is moving fast. But why are there two glyphs?

A simple answer would be that there are two equinoxes, one in spring and one in autumn. In H/P/Q the parallel twin glyphs are not exactly alike:

 

H

P

Q

In H the ragi sign in the 1st glyph has two 'moon ears', but the 2nd glyph has only one. In Q the 1st glyph has a little sign attatched to the 'running foot', but no such sign in the 2nd glyph. In P there is a little gap in the 1st glyph between the 'running foot' and the ragi 'trunk', but no such gap in the 2nd glyph.

Without trying to understand what these small signs may mean the reasonable interpretation is that we have here twin glyphs corresponding to two halves of the year. Furthermore, the 1st glyph presumably represents the first of these halves and the 2nd glyph the next half. I would therefore like to summarize the picture like this, where the only difference compared to the earlier table is the black paint on 10:

 

1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12

If we think about the year as containing 12 months, then the 12 glyphs in the table may be said to represent this year cycle. If we think about the year as containing 10 months, the two last glyphs should be excluded - they are without sun. (In glyph 2 the sun is there, because without sun the moon would not shine.) The 3 wives of the sun may be located at 2, 9 and 10:

 

1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8
		The 'sun' year has 10 * 28 = 280 days.
9	10