Book One of their creation myth, called simply The Tree , is not sacred text as delivered to the Syai founder Fahraa by a personalized creator-god of the universe. The Syai have no such belief system. Nevertheless, that does not diminish its importance as guide to the general Syai world-view. The Syai calendar of celebrations largely reflect events as chronicled in Book One of ‘The Tree’. The step-like progression shown in the quaternaries (above) represents the pantheon of seven (or eight) deities, and can be compared to the octave of the diatonic scale:
1. The Divine First, the Source-unknowable of all we can perceive and know. It is the fiery core of the Sacred Mountain that can never be penetrated.
2. The Supernatural Second, the Titanic Twins of Light and Dark, tragic originators of our painful duality.
3. The Divine Third, our comforter and reconciler to the unapproachable mystery of The First. She is Sunchild, daughter of the Titans, held within her initial phase of birth and growth, struggling with the forces of Light and Dark on the slopes of the Sacred Mountain.
4. The Divine Fouth, Sunchild after banishment to the worldly wastes where she becomes the Creator Goddess, blanketing the barren seas and lands with life.
5. The Divine Fifth, the Beloved Servant, called Moonbeast. He began as a robot-like kind of sub-god, “manufactured” by the Titans, whom Sunchild (as the Divine Fourth) elevates to full divinity. He then becomes her essential help-mate in the task of life- creation.
6. The Divine Sixth, called Redbelly, first child of the goddess Sunchild. She represents the passionate urgency of life-forms to flourish whatever the obstacles in their path.
7. The Divine Seventh, born out of the “second belly” of the Sixth. His name is Bluehead the Apperceptor, the one who reasons, restrains and guides the life-force, and forms by means of language an intelligible order of things. In his more childlike beginnings he wanders the early legendary world with Moonbeast and records it in fables.
It is the gods from 4 to 7 who in-form the structure of Syai post-verbs. Each adroot on becoming a post-verb can fall into one or other of the four domains of the gods - inner, outer, lower, upper - but the gods are a family so the boundaries are not sharp. It may be a little difficult in some cases to place an adroot in one domain rather than in another. The “default” position is the inner or heart domain of Sunchild. The names of two of the gods indicate that each can be given a color appropriate to their nature: Sunchild takes gold or yellow, Moonbeast green, Redbelly red and Bluehead blue. For convenience the post-verbs are categorized by these colors. Colors are largely used descriptively (adjectivally), Post-verbs – following chronoverbs as they do – have a similarity in that they are more descriptions of time and activity states than directly referring to those states as European declined verbs do – "swim", "will swim", "swam", "swum".
Link between language and culture
T.: In the Syai language there is an important association of the verbal form following what I have referred to at the chronoverb (attached to the noun), with the Syai culture. That form is the post-verb – a verb such as lck [lӕk] ‘speak’. The association creates patterns of verb-formation that – for example – distinguish a post-verb like lck ‘speak’ from lcn ‘say/ tell’, and from lcr` ‘exercise power-of-speech (- ”not be dumb”)’. The key 'c' = the Syai letter for ae if the Syai font is available.
The particular association here is with the minor quaternary but to make more clear what this is, I sketch out both quaternaries of what might best be called the myth-religion of the Syai, the first book of which (in as much as my memory could summarize it) will appear in translation at the end of this whole work:
MAJOR
0→1
2 T 2
3
MINOR
(3→)4
5 G 6
7
L.: The descent of the gods from the mystery origin of the Sacred First is not just a list of numbers, each given a kind of "supernatural" interpretation. The Titans and Gods have personalities; they enter into relationships; have adventures: achieve goals; suffer setbacks. This aspect of the fundamental mythology of the Syai culture is summed up by T., from what she/ he has gathered of the contents of Book 1 of 'The Tree'. Although the distinction between the four categories of the Syai verb (or "post-verb") can be given definition in other ways, their association with the four divinities with their distinctive characteristics is a considerable help to the imagination in making use of this language feature. Furthermore, the speech and written language of Syai culture is greatly enriched by sayings and metaphoric references, these touching on thought-provoking incidents in the great story of the seven-step descent of the deities in the process of bringing about the world's creation. The calendar events of the festive (or commemorative) highlights of the year are directly linked to the primal mythic narrative.
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