21
Putting the Maori References in Context
In this volume we have seen how the Maori system of cosmology, rooted as it is in a relatively recent historical period, nevertheless contains cosmological words of many key prior eras. It is our conclusion that to find these words commingled within the Maori language implies that each era is likely to have had an ancestral influence on the Maori tradition.
In keeping with that outlook, there are a number of significant elements that Maori cosmology shares in common with the earliest era of the cosmology we have explored, that of Gobekli Tepe. These begin most obviously with the practice of placing standing stones to mark the locations of sanctuary spaces. In keeping with those practices, the multiple stone circles found at Gobekli Tepe give the appearance of the kind of remote instructional site for civilizing skills that is alluded to in the Dogon culture, that is hinted at and revered in the ancient Egyptian concept of a First Time, and that is expressly assigned to a mythical locale called Vulture Peak in the Buddhist tradition. They are also in keeping with the instructed tradition that characterizes Maori village life in a much later era.
Likewise, symbolism of the Gobekli Tepe site that, in our view, pertains on one level to the Hebrew god Yah serves as a conceptual link between two distant eras. We argued in Point of Origin that archaic word forms, including an Egyptian name for the region, which we read as Het Pet Ka Yah, tie the Gobekli Tepe site to Yah. It is recognized that Yah (Ao) also plays a pivotal role in Maori cosmology. It is also apparent that various passages from Maori lore, cited by commentators such as Best, are a close match for passages in the Book of Genesis. These bring overtness to correlations between the Maori god Ao and the Hebrew god Yah and, by association, the Gobekli Tepe site. Specific details of the Maori myth in which the Earth God Tane ascends to the “heavens” to retrieve three baskets of knowledge uphold the notion of an instructional mountaintop sanctuary comparable to Gobekli Tepe and may well refer to three carved basketlike figures that are prominently inscribed there. Two arms and hands, carved in relief, that embrace the end of a Gobekli Tepe pillar are consistent with a Maori cosmological outlook in which the processes of creation are described as an energetic embrace.
References from the epoch of the Sakti Cult, in a period following Gobekli Tepe, are also evident in Maori cosmology. However, in the historically late era of Maori cosmology, we see signs of many of the reversals in symbolism that we have cited in prior books of this series for other ancient cultures, and so pinpointing these references requires a certain flexibility of perspective. Perhaps the most obvious symbolic reversal is the transition from a predominantly matriarchal to a patriarchal orientation in the era following 3000 BCE. Consequently, symbolism we associated with goddesses in archaic times is often found linked to male gods of later cultures, including those of the Maori. For example, the Earth God Tane holds a place in Maori mythology (along with a phonetically similar name) that is quite comparable to that of the goddess Tana Penu of the Sakti Cult. Furthermore, certain references from the Maori myths imply that Tane was once treated as a goddess. In keeping with these same reversals in symbolism, Tane has come to represent what is described as the “masculine principle” of creation for the Maori, while Tana Penu symbolizes the opposing “feminine principle” in the Sakti Cult. Much like the Sakti goddess, Tane is associated with mountaintops and standing stones, as well as (somewhat counterintuitively for a male god, but in keeping with a Mother Goddess) concepts of fertility and the phases of the moon.
The significance of archaic elements of the cosmology in the Maori culture implies that an intimate historical connection existed between the Maori and the traditions of these prior eras. The evolution of language, in the form of cosmological words, provides us with one positive method for tracking those connections. Tregear notes the presence of foundational concepts of Hinduism among the Maori, but in the absence of any of the later outward trappings of Hinduism. He notes that Tamil artifacts have been found in New Zealand, but without any cultural references to later Hindu deities. The implication is that the Maori and the Hindu cultures each benefited from the influences of a common parent culture linked to the Tamil, during a historical era prior to Hinduism.
Tregear’s observations of Tamil and Hindu influences in the Maori culture are consistent with the same likely path of transmission that we proposed for the Dogon and Buddhist cosmologies in Point of Origin. This path began in the region of the Fertile Crescent (now southeastern Turkey and western Iran) in the era of Gobekli Tepe (circa 10,000 BCE) and was carried forward in the Tamil culture. In our view, it descended through the Sakti Cult, whose influences came to pervade India and are understood to have been ancestral to the later Vedic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. However, at this point, evidence strongly suggests that the Maori cosmological tradition may have taken a divergent path from the later traditions of India, one that likely took it westward from the Fertile Crescent and into Europe. Although our cosmological studies thus far do not track a specific evolution for the Maori tradition beyond the Tamil (a likely topic for a future book in this series), we pick up the apparent trail again centuries later in a somewhat distant region.
During the Neolithic era of 3200 BCE, parallels between the Maori god Ao and the Hebrew god Yah again link us in important ways to the cosmology of Northern Scotland. On Orkney Island, emphasis was given to a god named El, who is widely seen as a surrogate, and whose name is perhaps a phonetic variant, of Yah. For instance, in ancient times the name Beth El (“House of El” or “House of God”) was assigned to an important shrine in the North Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Neolithic village of Skara Brae was located on the Bay of Skaiil. In keeping with a perceived naming convention of the cosmology, we interpret the name of the bay to have been Skhai El, or “celebrates El.” In a previous book called The Mystery of Skara Brae, we argued that like Gobekli Tepe, Orkney Island also constituted an instructional sanctuary for concepts of cosmology and agriculture during later Neolithic times and was associated with the terms ar and arou. Similar instructional academies are a known fixture of the Maori culture and are also arguably associated with the phonetic value arou. These Maori academies are said to have been named in honor of (and explicitly identified with) a revered ancient school of instruction located far to the east of the Maori homeland of New Zealand.
The Maori myth of the Overturning of the Earth Mother upholds symbolic elements we cited for Orkney Island in The Mystery of Skara Brae. In the mind-set of the cosmology, the concept of “overturning” may be a reference to a periodic tipping of the Earth’s axis, of the sort that might possibly have brought the last ice age to an abrupt close. In support of this view, there is an explicit Egyptian tradition in which there were said to have been three occasions within the cultural memory of ancient Egypt when the sun “rose where it formerly set,” terminology that might imply the tipping of the Earth’s axis. Likewise, a star chart is preserved on the ceiling of a portico of the Egyptian temple of Dendera that somewhat counterintuitively depicts stars as they appear in the southern hemisphere (rather than those of the northern hemisphere). Likewise, certain Dogon cosmological references are given in relation to the four cardinal points, but with the directionality of north and south reversed, and so could reflect a reversal in the axis. In the ancient cosmology, the concept of “overturning” is conveyed symbolically with the image of a capsized boat. We argued that the name Skara Brae combines two Egyptian hieroglyphic words, skher bari, which also meant “overthrown boat.”
Symbolic associations that the Maori make between reeds and the concept of existence are likely correlates to reed references that, for us, define the Orkney Island site. This symbolism is linked to Northern Scotland through commonalities with Dogon cosmology and is overtly expressed in the Egyptian term Field of Reeds. The series of ancient megalithic sites on Orkney Island that we see as symbolic of stages of creation were joined by an ancient road whose apparent destination was the agricultural field at Skara Brae. A similar field, associated with these same stages of creation in Dogon cosmology, was known as the Field of the Arou Priest. References such as these ultimately led us to the Egyptian concept of the Sekhet Aaru, or Field of Reeds, also known by the Greeks as the Elysian Fields, or perhaps the “Fields on the Island of El.” Like the Dogon Field of the Arou Priest, the Egyptian and Greek terms were interpreted on two concurrent levels, first in relation to a concept of cosmology but also as a real-world locale. Ancient Greek descriptions of the geography and setting of the Elysian Fields are a consistent match for Orkney Island. Reed references similar to those of the Maori and Orkney Island can also be seen or inferred in other related cultures. For example, a symbolic construction that is often substituted for the name of Yah in written Hebrew texts consists of two Hebrew letters called yuds, which we see as correlates to two Egyptian reedleaf glyphs, or reeds. From the first myth of the arrival of the Maori in New Zealand, reeds arguably play a similar pivotal cosmological role.
Again, in keeping with the stated belief of many ancient cultures that civilizing skills, as a prerequisite to the establishment of agriculture, were imparted to humanity in ancient times, Orkney Island gives the outward appearance of an instructional sanctuary. Numerous excavations on the island testify that an advanced form of agriculture was practiced there, which implies that the first known agricultural kingships may also have been an outgrowth of deliberate instruction there. These kingships arose synchronously at around 3100 BCE in various regions of the world. Village schools of the Maori provide instruction in many of the same core civilizing skills that we associate with Orkney Island. For the Maori, instruction in the arts of cosmology, agriculture, and astronomy are understood to have been patterned after skills taught at a sacred mythical locale set far to the east of New Zealand.
Symbolic references from one of these early agricultural kingships, ancient Egypt, are also evident in the Maori culture. Perhaps the most obvious of these is found in the celebration of Ra as the deified concept of the sun. However, relationships between Maori and Egyptian cultures can also be seen in the shared notion of ka as a concept of transformation, nu as a term for water, and the phoneme akh as a designation for light. Likewise, the cultures shared a common outlook on the concept of death and its relationship to a mythical Underworld. Another of these kingships from the 3100 BCE era was found in Ireland, which is located only a short distance to the south of Orkney Island. A third was found in ancient China, whose creation traditions we explored in a prior volume titled China’s Cosmological Prehistory. In each of these widespread regions, the established kingships were associated symbolically with lions (or a close leonid species) and with Neolithic names formulated on the phoneme ru, which was an ancient Egyptian term for “lion.”
Two groups of people, clerics called the Papae and pygmies called the Peti, were reported in early Scandinavian texts to have been living on Orkney Island. Although it is known that the Skara Brae site was ultimately abandoned by around 2600 BCE, it is not clear what ultimately became of the island’s residents. Historical records from that era are virtually nonexistent, and the surviving textual references we do have originated in periods that are historically too late to have much real pertinence. However, the unusually small stature of the Peti allows us to follow a presumptive trail for them that seemingly leads southward into Scotland and Ireland. Interestingly, the Maori term Peti was the name of a mythical marine deity who was considered to be an ancestor of a Firstborn ariki priest named Paikea. According to Maori mythology, Paikea managed to make his way to New Zealand after a deluge-related disaster.1
Just across the waters to the north and west of Orkney Island are a group of islands known as the Faroe Islands, whose language is Faroese. Given the apparent importance of the term Faroe in the Orkney Island region, it seems likely that these Little People known as the Peti might have been at the root of the later fairy tradition in Scotland and Ireland. Comparable fairy references are also found in New Zealand, and that suggests a possible link between the dwarfs or pygmies in Ireland and the pre-Maori pygmies who reportedly inhabited New Zealand. Each group constructed dome-like hillocks from stones, covered them over with earth and grass, and outfitted them with entryways too low and narrow for comfortable access by an average-sized person. These structures, which are found throughout Ireland and are referred to as fairy mounds, are a match for similar ancient stone mounds found in New Zealand, which date to an era prior to the Maori immigration.
In Ireland, myths hold that groups whom we interpret to have been likely descendants of the Peti were attacked militarily and ultimately forced to leave. Depending on which myth we choose to believe, they were said either to have departed to the Underworld or else to have left by boat to sail across the Western Sea. Maori myths that present mirror-image perspectives to those in Ireland cite the arrival of an ancient group of pygmies in New Zealand from an unspecified distant locale, situated somewhere across the sea far to the east. One such group was known as the Patu-Pai-Arehe, or perhaps the “Good Peti of Arou.” Another suggestive link to the fairy traditions of Ireland can be seen in the fact that the same Maori term Patu-Pai-Arehe also means “fairy.”2 Likewise, an ancient name for New Zealand, Aotearoa, defines it linguistically as “the first circle of the Lower World” and has a correlate term in the Faroese language. Further support for the notion of a hereditary link between Ireland and New Zealand is found in the architectural form of horseshoe-shaped stone structures that serve as village schools for the Maori. A large number of similar structures have been excavated throughout Ireland, where their functional purpose in ancient times has still yet to be determined.
Perhaps our clearest reference for comparison of Maori cosmological symbolism to practices on Orkney Island rests with the Dogon, many of whose cultural traditions also agree with known practices of early dynastic Egypt. These seem to be representative of ancient Egyptian traditions at around 3000 BCE, only a few hundred years after the establishment of Skara Brae. Similarities between Maori and Dogon practices support a view that the Maori came out of the same instructed tradition as the Dogon. Illustrative of this is the village-based institution of the Maori priesthood, which is structured like the Dogon priesthood and has as its focus an esoteric cosmology that is formulated and conveyed in the same ways as Dogon esoteric practices. Likewise, Maori cosmology includes key symbolic elements that are a match for those of the Dogon, such as the concept of the po. Similarly, many of the well-defined tapu practices of the Maori are also reflected in matching Dogon observances.
The broader system of cosmology that we trace to each of these ancient eras in Turkey, India, Scotland, Africa, and Egypt is couched in a specific set of themes, many of which are also clearly evident in the Maori culture. These begin with the notion of quasi-mythic ancestor-deities who are revered for having brought civilizing skills to the Maori. Such themes include the idea that creation is catalyzed by an embrace between feminine and masculine principles, conceptualized in relation to nonmaterial and material energies. Water is defined as the primordial source of material creation, which is understood to emerge in ascending stages that culminate with the separation of earth and sky. Maori cosmology reflects the same principles of duality and the pairing of opposites that typify other ancient creation traditions we have explored. Maori concepts such as that of the po extend to the same realms of scientific creation that we see reflected in the Dogon and Buddhist cosmologies. The way in which the notion of an Underworld is treated in Maori mythology is consistent with its familiar expression in ancient Egyptian lore. Themes of the cyclical growth and destruction of humanity, linked in various cultures to descriptive images of a capsized boat, are outwardly reflected in the Maori myth of the Overturning of the Earth Mother.
The Maori tradition also reflects specific symbolism that is central to our ancient cosmological tradition. For example, the Maori preserve many of the nonrepresentational elements that characterized the archaic era of the tradition, such as the placement of unadorned standing stones to mark instructional sites and the assignment of spiritual symbolism to animals, along with the belief that shamanic meaning can be interpreted through the actions of animals. Cosmological concepts, such as the complex notions of earth and sky, have been anthropomorphized and deified for the Maori in the same essential ways as in the ancient traditions of India and Egypt.
Much as the architectural form of a house provided us with conceptual linkage between the village of Skara Brae on Orkney Island and the structures of the Dogon, so the architectural forms of village schools and fairy mounds serve to link Scotland and Ireland to the Maori in New Zealand. Meanwhile, we see a kind of transitive property at work: what we can only surmise about the possibility of instructed agriculture and astronomy in Ireland, due to lack of surviving records, we can say with certainty about both the well-preserved Dogon culture and the well-explored culture of the Maori.
Meanwhile, we have seen hints that New Zealand may not have represented the only destination of relocation for the Peti after their centuries in Scotland and Ireland. For example, my friend and fellow researcher Gary David traces aspects of the Hopi culture in North America to New Zealand. Over the years I have also become aware of Hopi practices that would seem to link their culture to the creation tradition of the Dogon. There are suggestions that short-statured Inuit people may have been descendants of the Peti. Given the close connection between the Peti and the Dogon, it seems not unlikely that pygmy groups in Africa could also be related. Likewise, a somewhat confused set of references, complicated by Celtic influences, suggest possible associations between the Peti and the later Picts in eastern and northern Scotland and southward into England.
Symbolism as it is practiced in the Maori culture constitutes yet another signature of the cosmological tradition that we have been comparing. The resemblances of Maori symbolism to that of our cosmology present themselves on many different levels. Perhaps the most rudimentary symbolic associations to compare are those made between cosmological concepts and animals. So, knowing that a duck often represents the cosmological concept of space, it seems sensible that the Maori word for “space” is are and a word for “duck” is parera. Just as names for the dung beetle are expressed by the Dogon and Egyptian phonemes ke and khe, we aren’t surprised that a Maori term for “beetle” is kekreru.
On one level, the cosmological symbolism of animals rests on a set of root phonemes that express specific well-defined cosmological concepts for which we have cited ongoing comparative examples throughout this text. Much like the Dogon and other cultures we have studied, these phonemes and concepts are combined to form compound words of more complex meaning. Knowing this allows us to parse the meanings of more complex Maori words by examining the root phonemes. As is characteristic of ancient cosmological terms as we understand them, Maori cosmological words reflect a predictive set of diverse meanings that can often be cited as a basis for correlation to other languages.
Maori cosmology centers on the same symbolic principles and themes as are reflected in other traditions we have studied. It is characterized by familiar principles of duality and the pairing of opposites. Creation is understood to be from water and is catalyzed by the coming together of feminine and masculine energies. The structures of matter emerge in a process that is defined as an ascent and is intimately associated with distinct conceptual worlds.
Among the cultures we have studied, the Dogon seem to have succeeded in most carefully preserving many of the original meanings of cosmological words, symbols, and practices. However, the Dogon culture combines influences that seem to have come together through several distinct migrational paths. Starting from the Fertile Crescent, we see evidence of one set of influences, perhaps beginning in the era of 10,000 BCE, that most likely moved due southward and into Egypt from the north and are associated with the goddess Neith. The Dogon cultural memory is that their tribal group migrated from the banks of a large lake far away in the east to the Niger River region sometime prior to 1500 CE. A second set of influences, centered on the Sakti goddesses, seem to have moved in a southeasterly direction from the Fertile Crescent into India, extending eastward as far as Australia. These influences then made their way west to Africa and northward, perhaps through Ethiopia and Nubia, into Egypt at Elephantine by around 4000 BCE. A third set of influences appear to have migrated toward the northwest from the Fertile Crescent and across Europe to the British Isles and Scandinavia, arriving in the Orkney Island region sometime prior to 3200 BCE.
However, based on the earliest Scandinavian reports, it seems that Dogon clerics (descendants of the initial migrations southward from the Gobekli Tepe region) may have also actively participated in instruction on Orkney Island in the era of 3200 BCE, alongside a group of Nummo (or pygmy) teachers. These two groups would have constituted the mysterious Papae and Peti, who were found commingled on Orkney Island. At 3100 BCE, we see suggestive evidence of Black African influences in relation to four regional agricultural kingships in Egypt, China, Ireland, and Peru. It is traditionally understood that the Na-Khi from Tibet and China were originally Black Africans; in those regions, the word na came to be synonymous with the concept of “black.” Surviving images suggest that the first Egyptian pharaohs, such as Djedefre of the Fourth Dynasty, were Black Africans. There are reliable references to Black African influences in Scotland and Ireland at places like Caithness, as well as suggestions of them at South American sites such as Caral in Peru. A set of unexpectedly diverse DNA results in Northern Scotland argue for the presence there of people from North Africa and Egypt, as well as from other widespread regions of the world. This may be reflective of groups of local initiates were either trained alongside or instructed by knowledgeable Black Africans. These Africans may have also served as priests, administrators, and advisors to help establish the first self-sustaining agricultural kingships. Each element of this theoretic scenario is upheld in the Maori culture and supported linguistically in the Maori language. In earliest New Zealand we find reports of sorcerer-like pygmies, agriculturally talented Black Africans, and priestly schools where an esoteric cosmology comparable to that of the Dogon astronomy and skills of agriculture were taught to initiates, known as the Firstborn.
In summary, the comparative evidence we see suggests that there may have been intimate connections in ancient times between the Orkney Islands of the Northern Hemisphere and the islands of New Zealand of the Southern Hemisphere. From the perspective of the ancient Egyptians, the term Upper referred to a southerly direction and Lower to a northerly one. The Sekhet Aaru, or Field of Reeds, which we associate with Orkney Island, was cast as an Underworld in the view of the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks. Even in the linguistic legacy of the Maori, the concept of an Underworld, characterized as an abyss, is given by the term raro (or arou). But by the early centuries CE, it was New Zealand that was perceived of as an Underworld, both in relation to its ancient name, Aotearoa (arguably formed on the suffix arou), and in what we see as the coordinated mythic views of Ireland and New Zealand.
From our historical vantage point we see the link between the two island groups principally as one of historical migration. However, given the significance of the principle of duality in ancient thought, the apparent global reach of ancient cosmological instruction, and the anthropologically stated preference of the Nummo teachers of the Dogon to always be near water, it seems conceivable that these two realms may have been proactively postured as conceptual counterparts to one another. In archaic times, when Dogon directional references (preserved to the present day) seem to have been given with the positions of north and south reversed and when star maps as they appeared in the Southern Hemisphere were seemingly preserved in ancient Egypt, the Sekhet Aaru on Orkney Island would have constituted a symbolic representation of the Underworld of darkness, while Aotearoa (Aotea aroa/arou, or “daylight Arou”) may have originally represented the World Above. In later times, following the Maori-recalled Overturning of the Earth Mother, those roles may have come to be reversed. In support of this outlook, an Egyptian word aat-t means “field”3 and aaru means “reeds,” so like the Egyptian term Sekhet Aaru, the name Aotearoa (aat-t aaru) might well also imply a second “Field of Reeds.” Such an interpretation would offer an excellent rationale for the Maori having referred to their instructional institution as the School of Reeds.