Page:Daany Beédxe.djvu/90

 Life in the House of measure represented a daily challenge for Night Eagle. Over time he had developed an effective work team with his three companions and Fire snake, who ably introduced them to the mysteries of the dark side of knowledge.

Mathematics was an indispensable tool for understanding these mysteries. Fire snake in one of his usual classes, began with the following address:

—Our omnipresent Lord gave us a common language for all men. Our old grandparents learned it from observing the firmament and nature. The art of counting was lost at the beginning of time. It was called "The counting of similar elements by someone".

Human beings required mathematics to know themselves and the universe around them. The first reference was their own body. Thus, they first obtained number one from the unit they represented; then four from their limbs, five from adding their hand fingers; seven from the sum of upper joints; subsequently ten and twenty from the sum of all the fingers. The number thirteen is the sum of the body major joints. Number nine is the number of holes in the body, including the navel.

From the observation of nature and cosmos deduced: from the Moon, observed it has thirteen periods or months in a year. That earth takes three hundred and sixty-five days to complete its orbit around the Sun. That weather has four ninety-one day periods in a year; that two ninety-one day periods equal the maize cycle, and three cycles of ninety-one days make up the human gestation. The passage of earth exactly below the seven stars that almost touch, forming the symbol of the word; takes exactly fifty-two years, what we know as a bundle of years.