44. In the Babylonian zodiac we can perceive Eagle & Dead Man as a station which presumably was co-incident with the incident when the young companion of Old Hadrian, Antinous, disappeared by way of the Nile - i.e. they should correspond to each other and be synchronous:
The Archer (Pabilsag) stood in the way for all intending to move ahead along the ecliptic. The reason was presumably that Land did not continue forever: ... This [σ Sagittarii] has been identified with Nunki of the Euphratean Tablet of the Thirty Stars, the Star of the Proclamation of the Sea, this Sea being the quarter occupied by Aquarius, Capricornus, Delphinus, Pisces, and Pisces Australis. It is the same space in the sky that Aratos designated as Water ...
The only way ahead, i.e. for a fiery head like the Sun,
should be to get up higher, to abandon the path of the ecliptic leading down into the Water.
... needfire ceremonies usually take place near the summer solstice (the Feast of St. John) ... but they occur in several other seasons as well. The summer date of the rite and its accompanying festival have to do, among other things, with fertility, as can can clearly be seen in a variant from the valley of the Moselle preserved for us by Jakob Grimm. Each household in the village was constrained to contribute a shock of straw to the nearby high place, Stromberg, where the males went at evening while the females went to a spring lower down on the slope. A huge wheel was wrapped with this straw. An axle run through the wheel served as the handles for those who were to guide it on its downward plunge. The mayor of a nearby town kindled the straw, for which office he was rewarded with a basketful of cherries. All the men kindled torches and some followed the burning orb as it was released downhill to shouts of joy. The women at the spring echoed these shouts as the wheel rushed by them. Often the fire went out of its own accord before it reached the river, but should the waters of the river extinguish it, an abundant vintage was forecast for that year ... ... The hero then hid in a meat sack, jumped on the Trickster and killed him. The corpse was cut up and the pieces scattered. However, the Trickster came back to life. He went away and stopped to rest by a lake, and meditated on death: should death be final or not? On seeing that a stick, then a buffalo turd, and lastly a piece of pith remained afloat after he had thrown them into the lake, he opted for resurrection. However, when a pebble sank, he reversed his decision. It was better that people should die, he concluded, otherwise the earth would quickly become overpopulated. Since that time, people only live for a certain period and die for ever ... There seems to have been a boat (a cradle) waiting to be loaded (ships are always female): ... And then the bone spoke; it was there in the fork of the tree: Why do you want a mere bone, a round thing in the branches of a tree? said the head of One Hunaphu when it spoke to the maiden. You don't want it, she was told. I do want it, said the maiden. Very well. Stretch out your right hand here, so I can see it, said the bone. Yes, said the maiden. She stretched out her right hand, up there in front of the bone. And then the bone spit out its saliva, which landed squarely in the hand of the maiden. And then she looked in her hand, she inspected it right away, but the bone's saliva wasn't in her hand. It is just a sign I have given you, my saliva, my spittle. This, my head, has nothing on it - just bone, nothing of meat. It's just the same with the head of a great lord: it's just the flesh that makes his face look good. And when he dies, people get frightened by his bones. After that, his son is like his saliva, his spittle, in his being, whether it be the son of a lord or the son of a craftsman, an orator. The father does not disappear, but goes on being fulfilled. Neither dimmed nor destroyed is the face of a lord, a warrior, craftsman, an orator. Rather, he will leave his daughters and sons. So it is that I have done likewise through you. Now go up there on the face of the earth; you will not die. Keep the word. So be it, said the head of One and Seven Hunaphu - they were of one mind when they did it ...
The Milky Way will be perceived in different shapes depending on the time observation. It can for instance be like a great Tree or like a great Canoe (the trunk of a great tree split in half and hollowed out):
... Most of the people in our van took advantage of the interlude to shop at the nearby stalls set up by highland Maya who had come down to Tikal to take advantage of the steady supply of tourists. However, one of our group, Harriet Gillett, a retired physician and an inveterate bird-watcher, had other interests. She noticed a nearby tree heavy with white blossoms and surrounded by a raucous sphere of birds and bees. She climbed out of the van with her binoculars around her neck, and walked over to take advantage of the unexpected opportunity the morning had provided. Our local guide, Francisco Florián, who knew the forest and its creatures in an unusually intimate way, joined her, explaining that the birds came to the tree only early in the morning. The sounds and the odd sight finally drew my attention and I too disembarked from the van and edged closer to the buzzing center of the action. I stared at the screaming birds as they fought for positions among the flowers and the hovering drone of thousands of bees. How beautiful, I thought, and then my gaze happened to settle on the trunk of the tree. It had thorns and it bulged just above the ground. It was a young ceiba tree. 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 tzuk [partition] head on the trunk of the tree covered their loins. 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 ...
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