114. In Mayan thought the Milky Way shifted shape as it turned around, beginning like a Crocodile standing tall as a Tree and ending like a Canoe which was going down. At the top of this Milky Way Tree we can find the form of Cassiopeia (Σ) with Ursa Minor and Ursa Major (Itzam-Yeh) to the right and with Draco in between. Below Cassiopeia were Cygnus and Aquila, and at bottom was the Scorpion: Interestingly the presentation above has exactly the same picture at 2:38 A.M. as at 4:38 A.M. Was it on purpose or was it a trick played by the subconscious? Furthermore, there were 3 great stars far below. The central one of these was probably Achernar (*23, End of the River, α Eridani) because we will immediately recognize the curve of this River of Light.Once upon a time Achernar would have risen heliacally in FEBRUARY 8 (*324) with Canopus (α in Argo Navis) coming 72 (= 360 / 5) days later, viz. in APRIL 21 (111). Fomalhaut (The Mouth of the Fish, α Piscis Austrini) would at that ancient time have been in DECEMBER 29 (*363). Number 111 is also the result of counting *363 - *324 + 72, i.e. the distance in right ascension days from Fomalhaut to Canopus.
"Among the Arabs it [the Milky Way] was Al Nahr, the River, a title that they afterwards transferred to the Greek constellation Eridanus; and those other Semites, the Hebrews, knew it as N·har di Nur, the River of Light; but the Rabbi Levi recurred to the Akkadian simile in saying that it was the Crooked Serpent of the book of Job, xxvi, 13. Usually, however, in Judaea it was Aroch, - in Armenia and Syria, Arocea, - not a lexicon word, but evidently from Aruhāh, a Long Bandage, and well applied to this long band of light." (Allen)
Wakah-Chan (Raised-up-Sky) was at the opposite side of the sky compared to the place of Creation, and the latter place was referring to a region not far from Canopus:
The Raised-up-Sky was a region close to Aquila, which seems reasonable because according to the Babylonians the Milky Way was upraised from the place of the Cargo Boat (the Tea Pot, the South Dipper) beyond which the Eagle & Dead Man were following the Milky Way across the sky:
... 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 souls of the dead ascendeded at Sagittarius and descended again at Gemini. And the Head of the Red Bird was on the other side of the Milky Way compared to the head of the White Tiger:
Gemini came after the Heavenly Gate in Taurus and Orion was before Canopus in Argo Navis - Gemini was raised up compared to Orion. In another overview we can see that in between was the Club of Orion:
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