Decoding Maori Cosmology by Laird Scranton

Author:Laird Scranton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ancient Mysteries
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2018-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

Io dwelt in universal space; the universe was in darkness; all was water.

Day was not, nor moon, nor light; darkness alone was; all was water.17

Best goes on to explain (again like the passage in Genesis) that Io next “called upon light to appear, and light dawned across space.” Just as light is then separated from darkness in the biblical text, Io causes day to be separated from night in the Maori rendition. Maori dictionary definitions for the word ao also preserve this significant creative act, as Tregear tells us that the word ao can also refer to “daytime; day as opposed to night” or can mean “to become light.”18

Depending on the particular phonetics of a given language, we see reflections of this same symbolism of Yah, Ao, or Io in various ancient cultures. In Egypt, we find the meanings expressed by words that are formed from the phonetic root aa. On Orkney Island in Northern Scotland, the symbolism plays out in relation to the word el, which we explained in The Mystery of Skara Brae is also the name of a light god comparable to (and often equated with) Yah. In the Hebrew language, references to Yah can be rendered as two yud charactersײ (perhaps originally pronounced yah’d). In light of the many ongoing comparisons that can be made among Dogon, Egyptian, and Hebrew cosmological words, we interpret these yuds as correlates to two reedleaf glyphs in the Egyptian hieroglyphic language.

There are several different perspectives from which the notion of reeds relates symbolically to the light god El or, by association, Yah. By our method of interpreting Egyptian glyphs, a single reedleaf glyph implies the notion of “that which is,” while two reedleaf glyphs placed side by side imply the concept of existence (or “that which is, is”). Interestingly, Best cites Maori references relating to Io or Yah that are given with the word ha, which he says is sometimes coupled with the name Io. Almost as if to echo our interpretation of the Egyptian reedleaf glyphs and Yah, Best asserts that the word ha means “to be” or “to exist.”19

The ocean inlet in Northern Scotland on which the clustered houses of Skara Brae are set is called the Bay of Skaill. We interpret the name Skaill, in the context of an ancient naming convention (discussed in prior books of this series) to combine the Egyptian word skhai (meaning “to celebrate”) and El, the name of a light god. Based on arguments presented in The Mystery of Skara Brae, we also interpret Orkney Island, where the village of Skara Brae is located, to have been the real-world locale of the Egyptian Field of Reeds. The Greek term for the Field of Reeds was the Elysian Fields. In the Scottish Gaelic language, the term for “island” was eilean (a word that also meant “training”), while in the Icelandic language the term was eyland. The suggestion is that the name Elysian may have combined the name of the god El with a term for “island.

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