-:- the house of the sky -:-
-:- how the bridge to the ancestors was lost -:-
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In many ways, it must have been a horrifying prospect to realise that our place in the world was beginning to slip. Actually, it had slipped many times before. Precession had caused many of the stars to fall backwards into the Ocean of the edge, but this time, in 400AD, it seemed as if the sky was going to slip permanently out of line and never flow into another perfect arrangement again. Somewhere, probably in Peru or Mexico, someone made the observation that the Sun no longer heliacally rose with the Milky Way on midsummer's dawn.
The Sun was going to stop shining through the Milky Way at the summer solstice. No longer would its rays pour into that celestial river and throw down a burning bridge of light. The consequences for this were potentially disastrous - no longer would the dead souls of the previous year be able to find their way home to the World of the Ancestors. If there was no route, there was no way. The dead would not be allowed their rest (*6).
And here is where the Flood Myths began - it wasn't that the rotation of the Earth had simply moved a little way along its precessing track, but that the waters of Ocean, that great sea which surrounded the flat earth and kept it in place, were rising. The Bridge to the Ancestors was slipping underneath the waves and drowning, and the Ocean which was drowning it was also causing the Fundament of the Earth to move and bob about on the high tides. It wouldn't be long before it would be submerged.
This was significant. It seemed as if the world was ending. If the Pleiades and the Giant who brought the rain no longer rose when they should, how would the people know when to plant their crops? If the waters of Ocean were drowning the Rainmaker himself, would there ever be any more rain? If the Bridge to the Ancestors was drowning, what would happen when people died? The very posts of the House of the Sky seemed to shudder and slip - the sky itself seemed to be about to fall in.
It was around this time that the Incas began to create some horrified myths about what was happening to their entire world: stories were told of houses in some villages collapsing, and when people looked through the rubble, they found frogs underneath the house posts, unearthing the foundations. In other locales, it was the tale of the Llama Buck who foretold the flood and ran up to the highest mountain. And some spoke more darkly of the demon who devoured our ancestors.
And when one looks at a map of the Incan sky, these tales become more clear still. The Incas did not always use constellations as we do, but instead they often used dark clouds in the Milky Way to guide them through the sky. Three of these were called the Llama, the Fox, and the Frog and these could be found in the eastern sky, heliacally rising at midsummer.
Now we can see how in the myth given at the beginning of this essay, the llama ran towards the north ('upwards') to escape the flood, but the fox got his tail wet. We can also see how the Bridge of the Ancestors no longer shone, since the Sun was no longer shining through the Milky Way at dawntime. And there, also, was the frog, pulling down the 'Foundations' of the world, lowering itself until it was almost at the level of the ground where it could shake the posts of the House of the Sky. There were some who actually called the Frog a demon, and actually blamed it for the drowning of the bridge.
Of course, after a few years of change, a couple of generations, perhaps, where things remained unsure, new traditions and new astronomical observations took the place of the old ones. The home of the Ancestors no longer was the Southern Sky, but the Underworld. The Pleiades no longer brought the rain, but the constellation of Andromeda. The Bridge to the Ancestors was no longer needed as caves were a good route to the Underworld now. People began to keep calendars.
But people constructed their worlds using the House of the Sky - the solstices and the equinoxes - and when these firm foundations began to slip, the world itself seemed to come to an end. In fact, in the technical language of myth, we could even describe a 'world' as a particular arrangement in the sky of these solstices and equinoxes. For example, the 'world' of 4000 years ago had its spring equinox in Taurus, the summer solstice in Leo, the autumnal equinox in Scorpio and the winter solstice in Aquarius. That world came to an end when the sky flooded in and the House Posts moved backwards by one constellation. Slowly, people began to theorise as to the cause of this phenomenon. Why did the world keep coming to an end? The answer, it seemed, was simple.
In the ancient world and the ancient mind, everything was alive. If the sky turned by day and by night, it was because it was being driven or wound around the pole. And there was someone there to do it. Similarly, the annual cycle of the sky was caused by another God winding the year around. But what about the precessive cycle? Well, the God who wound that cycle must be truly old - none other than Old Father Time himself, keeping watching on the longest cycle. Some people called him Saturn, or Ouranos ("Sky"). Other's called him Amlodhi ("Hamlet"), Vishnu or Lemminkainen. Some gave him the name Wiraqocha or Quetzalcoatl, but he was always the same. An old, pale-skinned, bearded man who was the keeper and teacher of wisdom.
(c) Bruce Rimell, June 2005
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