My next task will be to show that the different idioms and ideas represented in the sub-traditions of Ok ritual can be related as possible transformations of one another. But here lies the crux of my analysis: I am not proposing to demonstrate merely that one pattern can be transformed into another by arbitrary operations of inversion, transposition, etc. I am working towards an identification of the main empirical mechanism of change in the material under analysis; and so I must demonstrate that a model representing this mechanism, operating over time, does indeed generate a variety and distribution like that obtaining among the Ok. Stated abstractly, the methodology requires that my rules of transformation must mirror empirical process, as this is represented in the model. Stated substantively, I am trying to marshall support for the hypothesis that it has been through the operation of repeated oscillations of cosmological lore between its private keeping and its public manifestation by responsible cosmologists in sequestered temples, that such modifications over time of Ok cosmological traditions have in fact taken place.

Thus, the key question is: what would be the sequences and directions of change, if my model of subjectification and re-objectification correctly depicts the main dynamo of creativity and innovation? Briefly (and I shall develop this argument through the next three chapters), I see three forms of change as plausible results of such a process: incremental shifts in the fan of connotations of sacred symbols; incremental changes in the saliency of various meta-levels of significance of sacred symbols; and incremental elaboration or reduction of the scope of particular logical schemata in the cosmology.