56. The right ascension day of ν Aquarii (*320.3) is thus the same as that of the south pole star Dramasa (*320.0):
Viz. at the left hand of the Water Carrier:
In contrast ν Ophiuchi is at the right hand of the Serpent Carrier, the hand which is holding its tail:
The Tail of the Goatfish appears to support the left arm of Aquarius.
And below is the oppositely oriented Tail of the upside down Southern Fish.
When fishes die the air in their bellies will turn them upside down. But possibly such fishes which are on the point of dying can be invigorated again if receiving the proper care just in time: ... The life-force of the earth is water. God moulded the earth with water. Blood too he made out of water. Even in a stone there is this force, for there is moisture in everything. But if Nummo is water, it also produces copper. When the sky is overcast, the sun's rays may be seen materializing on the misty horizon. These rays, excreted by the spirits, are of copper and are light. They are water too, because they uphold the earth's moisture as it rises. The Pair excrete light, because they are also light ... 'The sun's rays,' he went on, 'are fire and the Nummo's excrement. It is the rays which give the sun its strength. It is the Nummo who gives life to this star, for the sun is in some sort a star.' It was difficult to get him to explain what he meant by this obscure statement. The Nazarene made more than one fruitless effort to understand this part of the cosmogony; he could not discover any chink or crack through which to apprehend its meaning. He was moreover confronted with identifications which no European, that is, no average rational European, could admit. He felt himself humiliated, though not disagreeably so, at finding that his informant regarded fire and water as complementary, and not as opposites. The rays of light and heat draw the water up, and also cause it to descend again in the form of rain. That is all to the good. The movement created by this coming and going is a good thing. By means of the rays the Nummo draws out, and gives back the life-force. This movement indeed makes life ... The mouth of the Southern Fish (Piscis Notius, Piscis Austrinus) is located close to 23h, i.e. about a month after 21h. But we can try to count 40 days from Nash (γ Sagittarii) in the midst of the Milky Way:
*273 (Nash) + *40 = *313, where we will find the Tail (Deneb) of the dying swan:
... 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 jaguar learned from the grasshopper that the toad and the rabbit had stolen its fire while it was out hunting, and that they had taken it across the river. While the jaguar was weeping at this, an anteater came along, and the jaguar suggested that they should have an excretory competition. The anteater, however, appropriated the excrement containing raw meat and made the jaguar believe that its own excretions consisted entirely of ants. In order to even things out, the jaguar invited the anteater to a juggling contest, using their eyes removed from the sockets: the anteater's eyes fell back into place, but the jaguar's remained hanging at the top of a tree, and so it became blind. At the request of the anteater, the macuco bird made the jaguar new eyes out of water, and these allowed it to see in the dark. Since that time the jaguar only goes out at night. Having lost fire, it eats meat raw. It never attacks the macuco - in the Apapocuva version, the inhambu bird, also one of the Tinamidae ...
|