In one of his mischievous moods Maui one day felt like putting out all the fires in the world. He knew that fire could be obtained only from his ancestress Mahuika, goddess of fire, and he wanted to see what would happen if he extinguished everybody's fire. During the night, he got up and went through the village putting out all the fires that were smouldering in the cooking houses of each family.

Early next morning he called out to his pononga, or servants: 'I'm hungry! I'm hungry! Cook some food for me, quickly.' One of the servants hurried to obey him, and found the fire out. He ran to the next house for a light, and went from house to house through the village. All the fires were out. Soon the whole village was up and talking about it and discussing what to do. When Maui's mother heard what had happened she called some of the servants to her and ordered them to go to her great ancestress Mahuika. 'Tell her that fire has been lost on earth,' she said, 'and ask her to give some to the world again.' But the servants stood there trembling. Although they had not set eyes on Mahuika, they had heard about her and the place where she lived, and had no wish to visit it. No punishment that might await them in the village would persuade them. The old people, the sacred chiefs, repeatedly commanded them to go, and they refused. 'Very well,' said Maui, who had been waiting this, 'I will go. I will fetch down fire for the world, if you show me the way.'

'If you will go then,' said his mother, 'you have only to follow that wide path in front of you there. Keep on, and you will reach the home of an ancestress of yours. You will not be able to mistake the place. All fire come from there. If she asks you who you are, you had better call out your name at once, so that she may know you are a descendant of hers. But be careful, Maui, and don't try playing any of your tricks on her. Your father and I have heard about your deeds, and we know you are fond of deceiving and injuring people. If you happen to be thinking of playing some tricks on your ancestress Mahuika, take my advice and do nothing of the sort.' 'No, no,' said Maui. 'I only want to bring back fire for the village. I shall come back as soon as I can get it.' And so he left the village by the path that his mother had shown him, and after journeying, he reached the abode of the goddess of fire. What he saw there filled him with wonder, and for a long time he stood unable to speak. At length he spoke to Mahuika: 'Old ancestress, would you rise up and tell me where your fire is kept? All the fires in our village have gone out, and I have come to beg some from you.'

The old lady rose up to her full height. 'Aue!' she cried. 'Who can this mortal be?' And Maui answered: 'It is I'. 'Where are you from?' Mahuika asked him. 'I have come,' Maui said. 'You do not belong to this country,' said the old woman. 'Your appearance is not like that of the people of this place. Do you come from the north-east?' He answered, 'No.' 'Do you come from the south-east?' 'No.''Are you from the south?' 'No.' 'Are you from the west, then?' 'No.' 'Do you come from whence the wind comes that blows upon me?' And Maui said, 'I do.' 'Oh then,' she cried, 'you are my grandchild!' She stepped forward and put her face close up to his and asked him: 'What do you want here?' 'I am come to beg some fire of you. All the fires in our village have gone out.' 'Welcome! Welcome, then!' cried the old woman, 'Here is fire for you.' And she pulled out the nail of koiti, her little finger, and gave it to him. As she drew it out, fire flowed from it.

Maui marvelled at this, and took the nail, and left her. But he had only gone a short distance when he mischievously put it out. He went back to her and said: 'The light you gave me has gone out. Would you give me another?' So she pulled out the nail of manawa, her third finger, and it became a flame, and she gave it to him. Maui left her, and this nail also he put out when he had gone a little distance. He wetted his hand, to show Mahuika he had fallen into a stream. Then she gave him the nail of mapere, her middle finger, and he did the same again, and Mahuika believed him each time. In this way she gave him the nail of koroa, her forefinger, and then of koro matua, her thumb. And each one of them Maui put out, and returned for more. He wanted to see what would happen if he took from Mahuika the last of her fire, and he now had not a thought for the fire they needed in the village. This went on until Mahuika had pulled out all the nails of her other hand, and then she began on her toes, until Maui had been given all the nails of her hands and all those of her feet except for one big toe. Then at last the old woman decided that Maui must be playing some trick on her. She drew out the one nail that remained, the nail of her big toe, and fire flowed from it. But instead of handing it to Maui, she dashed it to the ground, and the whole place caught fire. 'There, you have it all now!' she cried. And Maui was already running for his life, with the fire at his heels pursuing him.

Looking round, he saw that the whole land would soon be aflame. So he changed himself into a karearea, a hawk, and tried to soar above the flames. But the fire pursued him there and scorched his feathers, which accounts for the colour of that bird. Seeing a lake, he plunged down into it, but found that it was almost boiling. All the forests then caught fire, the land everywhere was alight, and Maui came very near to death. Then he called on his ancestor Tawhiri matea and all his offspring, to send down rain. 'Let water be given to quench this fire!' he cried, and spoke the appropriate chants. Great clouds appeared, and Tawhiri sent down first the small rain, and then the lasting rain, and everything was drenched, and the flames went out.

Even Mahuika herself almost perished before she could reach her place of shelter, and her shrieks were as loud as those of Maui when he was scorched. The waters rose all around her, and in this way Mahuika was deprived of her former power. But fire was saved for the world. When the waters reached her tikitiki, or the topknot of her head, the last seeds of fire fled from it to the rata, the hinau, the kahikatea, the rimu, and certain other trees. These trees would not admit them, and so they went to the mahoe, the totara, the patete, the pukatea, and the kaikomako, where they were cherished. These are the trees from whose dry wood fire can be obtained by friction. The others are of no use for this purpose.

When Maui returned to the village his parents saw his burns and knew what had happened. They said to him: 'We warned you before you went there not to play any of your tricks on Mahuika, and yet you paid no attention. It serves you right that you were nearly burned to death.' But Maui stood with his hands on his hips and took it lightly. 'Oh! what do I care?' he said. 'Do you think I'm going to be different because of this? Certainly not! I'm going to go on being the same. For ever!' His father answered in a quiet voice: 'Yes, you may please yourself, whether you die or live. If you would only listen to me you would save your life, but if you will not, it will be the worse for you, and that is all I can say.' After this, Maui went off looking for companions to join him in new adventures. He did not bring any fire back for the village. From that day forward it was obtained by rubbing a stick of kaikomako, or one of the other trees, in a grove made in another piece of wood. (Maori Myths)

We can follow the story in the C text:


Ca4-1	*(78) RIGEL (Foot)**	Ca4-3 (79)
kua tupu te rakau	kua tupu - te kihikihi	te hau tea


Ca4-4 (80)	Ca4-5	Ca4-6	TAU-TORU (83)	Ca4-8	Ca4-9
tagata - te rau hei	te hokohuki i te moko	te rau hei	e gagata hakaariki	manu	te rau hei


Ca4-10	Ca4-11	*(88) BET-EL-GEUZE**	*Ca4-13 → 14 29½**
te hokohuki	te moko	te hokohuki	kua tuu tona mea

The rakau (tree) glyph after Betelgeuze was probably referring to the Milky Way, which can be perceived as the trunk of an enormous tree of light at the right time of the night.

... I already knew that the ceiba tree was the model for the sacred World Tree of the Maya, but I had never seen one in flower when I knew what I was looking at. I was really excited because normally you can't see the blossoms even if you're there when the tree is in blossom. The fully mature trees are hundreds of feet high and the blossoms are very small. It's a ceiba, I chirped and began looking for a branch low enough to see one of the blossoms up close. Joyce Livingstone, a retired teacher, did the logical thing. She bent over, picked up a fallen branch, and held it out for me to see. I was too excited and full of myself to listen. She tapped my arm more insistently and still I didn't hear her. Finally, in frustration, she grabbed my wrist and raised her voice, Will you look at these? she said, waving the branch, and finally I did. What I saw stunned me, for in her hand lay a perfect replica of the earflares worn by the Classic Maya kings. Suddenly I understood the full symbolism of so many of the things I had been studying for years. The kings dressed themselves as the Wakah-Chan tree, although at the time I didn't know it was also the Milky Way ... The branches with their white flowers bent down along their thighs, the double-headed ecliptic snake rested in their arms, and the great bird Itzam-Yeh stood on their head. I already knew as I stood under the young tree in Tikal that the kings were the human embodiment of the ceiba as the central axis of the world. As I stood there gazing at the flowers in Joyce's hand, I also learned that the kings embodied the ceiba at the moment it flowers to yield the sak-nik-nal, the 'white flowers', that are the souls of human beings. As the trees flowers to reproduce itself, so the kings flowered to reproduce the world ...

... Men's spirits were thought to dwell in the Milky Way between incarnations. This conception has been handed down as an Orphic and Pythagorean tradition fitting into the frame of the migration of the soul. Macrobius, who has provided the broadest report on the matter, has it that souls ascend by way of Capricorn, and then, in order to be reborn, descend again through the 'Gate of Cancer'. Macrobius talks of signs; the constellations rising at the solstices in his time (and still in ours) were Gemini and Sagittarius: the 'Gate of Cancer' means Gemini. In fact, he states explicitly (I,12.5) that this 'Gate' is 'where the Zodiac and the Milky Way intersect'. Far away, the Mangaians of old (Austral Islands, Polynesia), who kept the precessional clock running instead of switching over to 'signs', claim that only at the evening of the solstitial days can spirits enter heaven, the inhabitants of the northern parts of the island at one solstice, the dwellers in the south at the other ... Considering the fact that the crossroads of ecliptic and Galaxy are crisis-resistant, that is, not concerned with the Precession, the reader may want to know why the Mangaians thought they could go to heaven only on the two solstitial days. Because, in order to 'change trains' comfortably, the constellations that serve as 'gates' to the Milky Way must 'stand' upon the 'earth', meaning that they must rise heliacally either at the equinoxes or at the solstices. The Galaxy is a very broad highway, but even so there must have been some bitter millenia when neither gate was directly available any longer, the one hanging in midair, the other having turned into a submarine entrance ...

The idea of Betelgeuze in contact with the Milky Way after 88 dark nights was probably inherited from at least such early times as when man was hunting mammoths:

Cb3-13 (454 = 88 + 366)

Cb3-14 (63)

Cb3-15

manu rere

tagata - hanau hia

kiore - henua

Hia. How many? Ka hia? Which one? Te hia? (Teach Yourself Maori)

CLOSE TO THE FULL MOON:

Ardra-6 (The Moist One) / ANA-VARU-8 (Pillar to sit by)

χ¹ Orionis, ξ Aurigae (88.1), BETELGEUZE = α Orionis (88.3), ξ Columbae (88.5), σ Columbae (88.7)

~~ZUBEN ELGENUBI (α Librae)~~

η Leporis (89.0), PRAJA-PĀTI (Lord of Created Beings) = δ Aurigae, MENKALINAN (Shoulder of the Rein-holder) = β Aurigae, MAHASHIM (Wrist) = θ Aurigae, and γ Columbae (89.3), π Aurigae (89.4), η Columbae (89.7)

*48.0 = *89.4 - *41.4

μ Orionis (90.3), χ² Orionis (90.5)

APRIL 14 (104 = 78 + 26 = 88 + 16)

15 (*25 = *89 - *64 = *41 - *16)

... The earliest depiction that has been linked to the constellation of Orion is a prehistoric (Aurignacian) mammoth ivory carving found in a cave in the Ach valley in Germany in 1979. Archaeologists have estimated it to have been fashioned approximately 32,000 to 38,000 years ago ... The artist cut, smoothed and carved one side (A) and finely notched the other side (B) and the edges. Side A contains the half-relief of an anthropoidal figure, either human or a human-feline hybrid, known as the 'adorant' because its arms are raised as if in an act of worship.

Egyptian jubilation

Phoenician he

Greek epsilon

Ε (ε)

Wikipedia points at the Egyptian gesture with arms held high as a Sign of jubilation, which may have been the origin (via Phoenician he) of epsilon.

On side B together with the four edges is a series of notches that are clearly set in an intentional pattern. The edges contain a total of 39 notches in groups of 6, 13, 7 and 13. A further 49 notches on side B are arranged in four vertical lines of 13, 10, 12 and 13 respectively plus a further notch that could be in either of the middle two lines ... The grouping of the notches on the plate suggests a time-related sequence. The total number of notches (88) not only coincides with the number of days in 3 lunations (88.5) but also approximately with the number of days when the star Betelgeuse (α Ori) disappeared from view each year between its heliacal set (about 14 days before the spring equinox around 33,000 BP) and its heliacal rise (approximately 19 days before the summer solstice).

Conversely, the nine-month period when Orion was visible in the sky approximately matched the duration of human pregnancy, and the timing of the heliacal rise in early summer would have facilitated a ‘rule of thumb’ whereby, by timing conception close to the reappearance of the constellation, it could be ensured that a birth would take place after the severe winter half-year, but leaving enough time for sufficient nutrition of the baby before the beginning of the next winter. There is a resemblance between the anthropoid on side A and the constellation Orion. None of these factors is convincing when taken in isolation, because of the high probability that apparently significant structural and numerical coincidences might have arisen fortuitously. However, taken together they suggest that the anthropoid represented an asterism equivalent to today’s constellation of Orion, and that the ivory plate as a whole related to a system of time reckoning linked to the moon and to human pregnancy. If so, then ethnographic comparisons would suggest that the Geißenklösterle culture related their ‘anthropoid’ asterism to perceived cycles of cosmic power and fertility ...


Cb3-16 (457 = 91 + 366)	Cb3-17	Cb3-18	Cb3-19 (68 = 460 - 392)
henua kua hoi	kua ka te ahi o te henua	o te henua kua hoi	ko te henua kua vero te ahi
Ahi. Fire; he-tutu i te ahi to light a fire. Ahiahi = evening; ahiahi-ata, the last moments of light before nightfall. Vanaga. 1. Candle, stove, fire (vahi); ahi hakapura, match; ahi hakagaiei, firebrand waved as a night signal. P Mgv.: ahi, fire, flame. Mq.: ahi, fire, match, percussion cap. Ta.: ahi, fire, percussion cap, wick, stove. 2. To be night; agatahi ahi atu, day before yesterday. 3. Pau.: ahi, sandalwood. Ta.: ahi, id. Mq.: auahi, a variety of breadfruit. Sa.: asi, sandalwood. Ha.: ili-ahi, id. Ahiahi, afternoon, night; kai ahiahi, supper. P Pau., Mgv., Mq., Ta.: ahiahi, afternoon, evening. Ahipipi (ahi 1 - pipi 2) a spark, to flash. Churchill. Hoki. To return, to go back, to come back; ka hoki ki rá, go back there! ana oho koe ki Hiva, e hoki mai ki nei, if you go to the mainland, do come back here again. Vanaga. 1. Also, what; ki ra hoki, precisely there; pei ra hoki, similitude, likeness; pei ra hoki ta matou, usage. P Pau.: hokihoki, often. Mgv.: hoki, also, and, likewise. Mq.: hoi, surely. Ta.: hoi, also, likewise. 2. To return, to turn back, to draw back, to give back, to tack; mau e hoki mai, to lend; hoki hakahou, to carry back; hoki amuri, to retrograde; hakahoki, to bring back, to send back, to carry back, to restore, to renew, to revoke, to remove, to dismiss, to pay, to pardon, to compress; hakahokia, given up; hakahokihaga, obligation. P Pau.: hokihoki, to persist, to insist; fakahoki, to give back. Mgv.: hoki, to return, to retrace one's steps; oki, to return, to come back. Ta.: hoi, to return, to come back. Ta.: mahoi, the essence or soul of a god. Churchill.
CLOSE TO THE FULL MOON:
6h (91.3) ν Orionis (91.4), θ Columbae (91.5), π Columbae (91.6) 50 = 91.4 - *41.4	ξ Orionis (92.5)	*Al Han'ah-4 (Brand) / Maru-sha-pu-u-mash-mashu-7 (Front of the Mouth of the Twins)* TEJAT PRIOR = η Gemini (93.4), γ Monocerotis (93.5), κ Aurigae (93.6), κ Columbae (93.8) 52 = 93.4 - *41.4	FURUD = ζ Canis Majoris (94.9)
APRIL 17 (107)	18	19	20

The good (maitaki) days would return with Gemini (Punarvasu, the double-good pair) when the Earth would be restored to order, and this was 5 days after Betelgeuze:.

... What happens after (or happened, or will happen sometime, for this myth is written in the future tense), is told in the Völuspa, but it is also amplified in Snorri's Gylfaginning (53), a tale of a strange encounter of King Gylfi with the Aesir themselves, disguised as men, who do not reveal their identity but are willing to answer questions: 'What happens when the whole world has burned up, the gods are dead, and all of mankind is gone? You have said earlier, that each human being would go on living in this or that world.' So it is, goes the answer, there are several worlds for the good and the bad. Then Gylfi asks: 'Shall any gods be alive, and shall there be something of earth and heaven?' And the answer is:

'The earth rises up from the sea again, and is green and beautiful and things grow without sowing. Vidar and Vali are alive, for neither the sea nor the flames of Surt have hurt them and they dwell on the Eddyfield, where once stood Asgard. There come also the sons of Thor, Modi and Magni, and bring along his hammer. There come also Balder and Hoder from the other world. All sit down and converse together. They rehearse their runes and talk of events of old days. Then they find in the grass the golden tablets that the Aesir once played with. Two children of men will also be found safe from the great flames of Surt. Their names, Lif and Lifthrasir, and they feed on the morning dew and from this human pair will come a great population which will fill the earth. And strange to say, the sun, before being devoured by Fenrir, will have borne a daughter, no less beautiful and going the same ways as her mother.'

Then, all at once, concludes Snorri's tale wryly, a thunderous cracking was heard from all sides, and when the King looked again, he found himself on the open plain and the great hall had vanished ...