... Nevertheless, by virtue of a series of spectacular coincidences, Cook made a near-perfect ritual exit on the night of 3 February. The timing itself was nearly perfect, since the Makahiki rituals would end 1 February (±1 day), being the 14th day of the second Hawaiian month [Kau-lua]. This helps explain Mr. King's entry for 2 February in the published Voyage: 'Terreoboo [Kalaniopu'u] and his Chiefs, had, for some days past, been very inquisitive abouth the time of our departure' - to which his private journal adds, '& seem'd well pleas'd that it was soon'. Captain Cook, responding to Hawaiian importunities to leave behind his 'son', Mr. King [sic!], had even assured Kalaniopu'u and the high priest that he would come back again the following year. Long after they had killed him, the Hawaiians continued to believe this would happen. Hence the ultimate ritual coincidence, which was meteorological: one of the fertilizing storms of winter, associated with the advent of Lono, wreaked havoc with the foremast of the Resolution, and the British were forced to return to Kealakekua for repairs on 11 February 1779 ... Mr. King remarks that there were not as many hundreds of people at their return to Kealakekua as there had been thousands when they first came in. A tabu was in effect, which was ascribed to the king's absence. By the best evidence, the British had interrupted the annual bonito-fishing rite, the transition from the Makahiki season to normal temple ceremonies. Cook was now hors cadre. And things fell apart ...

... Early on Sunday morning, 14 February 1779, Captain Cook went ashore with a party of marines to take the Hawaiian king, Kalaniopu'u, hostage against the return of the Discovery's cutter, stolen the night before in a bold maneuver - of which, however, the amiable old ruler was innocent. At the decisive moment, Cook and Kalaniopu'u, the God and the King, will confront each other as cosmic adversaries. Permit me thus an anthropological reading of the historical texts. For in all the confused Tolstoian narratives of the affray - among which the judicious Beaglehole refuses to choose - the one recurrent certainty is a dramatic structure with the properties of a ritual transformation. During the passage inland to find the king, thence seaward with his royal hostage, Cook is metamorphosed from a being of veneration to an object of hostility. When he came ashore, the common people as usual dispersed before him and prostrated face to earth; but in the end he was himself precipitated face down in the water by a chief's weapon, an iron trade dagger, to be rushed upon by a mob exulting over him, and seeming to add to their own honors by the part they could claim in his death: 'snatching the daggers from each other', reads Mr. Burney's account, 'out of eagerness to have their share in killing him'. In the final ritual inversion, Cook's body would be offered in sacrifice by the Hawaiian King ...

Matagi. Wind, air, breeze, squall, tempest, rhumb. P Pau.: matagi, the air, wind. Mgv.: matagi, wind. Mq.: metani, metaki, wind, air. Ta.: matai, wind. Churchill.

... A une certaine saison, on amassait des vivres, on faissait fête. On emmaillottait un corail, pierre de defunt lézard, on l'enterrait, tanu. Cette cérémonie était un point de départ pour beaucoup d'affaires, notamment de vacances pour le chant des tablettes ou de la prière, tanu i te tau moko o tana pure, enterrer la pierre sépulcrale du lézard de sa prière ...

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

ZUBEN ELGENUBI (α Librae

NASH (Point) = γ Sagittarii (273.7), θ Arae (273.8)

... 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. The worship of the Divine Child was established in Minoan 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' [27] 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 ...