In the chapter on etymology, I am mistaken. In the first instalment of cromlechpyrene.com, given the good state of the central group at Okabe and its interpretive unity, I tried to present it as a stellar hieroglyphic. Providing some clues on this, I tried to attract attention to the Psc hoping that someone else would see what seemed so clear to me. My mission failed, but that’s not my point here; one of the clues given at that time had to do with etymology:, Mistakenly I thought that Oc-gabe meant something like sin Oc (‘without Swan’), based on when Canis Major reached the southern position marked by the central subgroup at Okabe; The Swan, a constant in the Atlantic Psc, was absent, hidden in the north. I don’t see it this way now; it’s just too far fetched. The toponyms that might still survive are more direct and not at all complicated. However, I still embrace the idea that the terms oc, ok, oca, oka, oza, ots, otsa, otx, otxa, otz and otza, could in some way be the offspring of the same father: Or, Sirius.

For months I have been thinking along the lines of something like Oka Bel, initially inspired by Jaiki Bel (Ascent of Bel). Based on Plácido Múgica’s Basque-Castilian Dictionary, at first I thought of oka, as ‘bellyful’, ‘gorged’; I then opted for meaning number 10 — ‘magnificence’, ‘splendour’, ‘ostentation’ — searching rather unscientifically in the neighbourhood of ‘culmination’ (‘fullness at the culmination of Bel’?) I don’t know, although after Jaiki Bel would come its culmination oca, or Otsa-Bel (?), ‘The shout, the pomp, the ostentation of Bel’, with oka-otsa going from a celestial position to an epithet for Bel (?), or even Otza Bel, ‘The cold of Bel’ (?) or something similar, in reference to the winter solstice. I don’t think so. Lately these are the terms that are in my mind: oc, ok, oca, oka, oza, ots, otsa, otx, otxa, otz, otza = Sirius, which point to ‘Sirius Bel’, after discovering something very obvious in the Pyrenees: Sirius = Bel. Although I am trying laxly to find equivalents between Oca and Sirius — both very Pyrenean and very much linked to the Road to Santiago — I have yet to do so. Nevertheless, as I follow these leads some things, which I shall leave for a later date, are revealing themselves. Therefore, following up on otx, Plácido Múgica’s dictionary gives me: OTXABARRI = scorpion. And in an attempt at confirming the translation, the same Basque-Castilian dictionary reads: scorpion = arrabio, lupu, OTXARRABI, arrubi and in the 4th sign of the zodiac = lupu-izar, karramarruaga. So, which is it, OTXABARRI or OTXARRABI? Could this be a typo? If so, personally I prefer otxarrabi, since it bears a greater resemblance to arrabio, arrubi, and particularly to the old name for Fuenterrabía, which could derive from an earlier form of Iturri-arrabio, Iturri-arrubi or something similar, and fits in with the nearby Lapurdi and Guadalupe, seen as Lupu-Or-di and Ku-Adad-Lupu, from another story. Otxabarri, if it was that, would be ‘Otxa-nuevo’, or Otxa-new, as opposed to the old Otxa (?); in other words, Canis Major = Otxa (?), in the same way that Scorpion = Otxa-barri. It’s pointless to say that I don’t know, but when one honestly pursues Sirius and Antares from Pico de Orhi, following the indications of the stone circles, the overall toponymy, the possible meaning of some of the local place-names, becomes an intimate pursuit. I will never know why, it is not my work. Some of the place-names I know from personal experience: in France the difference between Otxa and Oca is minimal. But on serious research this difference becomes significant, and for this reason, I repeat, I am confused.

– So?

– Nothing. But I never provide false clues or ones that haven’t been given serious thought. The Swan, with the Triangles, was going around in my head for the first part of the work; Sirius has now largely taken its place. Sirius and Oca, with Lupus, a good group with and loose end which I would like to follow beyond the Pyrenees towards the Road to Santiago.