The "History Dancers"

 

      In 1982, I made a trip on the bus through Mexico.  It was an interesting but long ride from Laredo to Tapachula in Chiapas.  In the first leg of that journey, I met three people from Tiajuana, who took me for a "financial" overnight  ride, but at that time, I did not mind it at all.  Since it was more like a "propina" than anything else, I went along with the adventure.

       During one day-stop-over in Oxaca, we went to visit the mother of the gentleman who was in the group.  We arrived early in the afternoon. The small village was in the middle of a historic "dance" program. After meeting the tiny mama-viejita who was a gracious lady in her adobe "cottage," we went to view the dance and narration about the arrival of the Conquistadores. Free sodas were offered and the dance lasted, for me, much too long. The Aztec costumes that I had seen on the post cards in the Oaxaca hotel, but here those exact costumes had gotten a bit tattered after so many years of use during that festive time each year.

      Eventually, after saying our goodbyes, we were on our way home in the VW bug in which we had arrived, but. with less light after dark, the ride over the almost invisible ruts in the road made a very uncomfortable journey back to the hotel. We bounced and jounced all over that dirt road and, as we did, 9(the dull, boring dance was put out of my mind until…

      It was the year 1992. when I was at a Christmas party and met an interesting lady named Jan Adams who was interested in the Mexican culture, mainly the Maya. We got to know each other very well. She was very interested in various aspects of Maya astronomy as it related to the rest of the world, i.e. India, and Persian. I listened with half-an-ear since I had not gotten into that phase of my research at all. My interest in astronomy was stifled when I found the calculations needed for tracing an orbit of a star or planet, was in Calculus, not a field that I was adept.

      Some months after I met her, she acquired a book called The Glorious Constellations, a thick, heavy volume, that some ten years later, I was to discover, contained information that was worth its weight in gold. However, at this point in time, she became all excited about a drawing made by Linda Schele for her book called the Maya Cosmos.  The drawing was from a vase photographed by Justin Kerr  (K- 5977) which portrayed  Holmul dancers with a great bamboo rack of various creatures on their backs.  As it turned out, there was only one dancer who was repeated in different poses around the vase that had also been explored for its symbols by  R. E. Merwin & G. C. Vaillant in 1932, The Ruins of Holmul, Guatemala  at Harvard University  Peabody Museum and later by Dorie Reents-Budet & Reents, D. J. in 1985, as her thesis called  The Late Classic Holmul Style Polychrome Pottery at the of Texas at Austin.      

     Jan insisted that it had a strong connection to the sky charts she found in the Constellation book.                 .

Sky Chart from G. Sesti's book on the Constellations and
Linda Schele's version of Justin Kerr's vase from Holmul.

      I did not even attempt the connection, Jan saw in those sky charts, until I decided to write about and presented (badly) a paper called The Creation of the Maya [World]. And suddenly, I was writing about such a connection with the above drawings. Until late in 2011, I was still swearing that I was not writing about astronomy, but every paper or book I wrote had very strong ties to the stars. However, it was not until I wrote about the Popol Vuh the third time, did I finally realize  the [hidden text as referred to in Part One] in the various translations were telling the world that there is important informaiton there as an astronomy event, as in the above picture inferred by the fire/feathers that emerge out of the bird's eye and out of the dragon/serpent's mouth.

     The dancers, whether they were in Oaxaca, or any other part of Mesoamerica, were actually teaching those who had little formal schooling so they too could know the histories, the rulers, the conquests and the astronomy of their land. The stories the actors narrate and dance during their performances were to remind people the importance of their past. No one dancing group did all the history, but each had their cultural area and the events that had occurred, so the dancers were able to teach the Traditions and the Lore of the Land.

      Do we know what the dancers are inferring during the narrations and the dances?  Not all the time. The Dance of the Conquistadores, outside of Oaxaca was abundantly clear, but the Astronomy of the Hulmul Dancer, or that of the four Voladores or other such actors portrayed on the vases, and on the stelae, are only partially understood. Usually the display is considered to be a "transformation" of the dancer into some religious aspect of the gods, when it has only been history and astronomy lessons for those who cannot read all the glyphs.

      If the "transformation" is a valid description then all professors and teachers in the schools around the world become "gods."  I think the description should read teachers, actors, or professors became "professionals," and are not "transformed into gods."

The "BIG MOON"

Note; Tonight [May 5,  2012] being the event of the huge moon, I went out at 9:15 PM and could see no moon.  Went out again at 9:50 PM and the regular moon was about 45 degrees over the horizon already.  So the time clocks are wrong for CDT since it was stated that the Moon would rise at 10:35 PM.  The astro-folks must have calculated it for SDT; based upon GMT in England.
If our astronomers are putting out canned programs on the web that are not connected to reality, what can be expected about even the 2012 event, about which the whole world is agog. 

The Turtle of the Popol Vuh

  So back to our original symbols of yore, were they more accurate in spite of being forbidden to use the symbols they understood at the time of a special sky event?

      Once upon a time, the Popol Vuh contained a turtle which hung over the ball court. Xabalenque tossed a stone at the carapace and shattered it into many pieces. There were so many pieces that it was more likely meant to be the word for squash [q'oq] a scattering of seeds.¹

         Note for p. 127 on p. 276: "the word used for the coati was [coc] which must be q’oq’, squash, rather than "Ko’k," turtle. Obviously turtles do not have seeds," [So the text was adjusted]                                                 Dennis Tedlock (1996, 127) 

      Regardless of whether the turtle as "k'ok" with a shattered carapace or the subsequent "squash," "q'oq" [or c'oc] that actually contains many seeds. one must ask why the event used a turtle as its original explanation. What was the event that would justify the use of a turtle shell as its symbol in its description?

      What was perfectly obvious, who from eating or reading about both, the differences between turtles and squash is not feasible to use the same points of book references or eating as a person who has lived with the symbolic language of his community all of his life. To assume that one word is better than another, one must consider the reason behind the symbolism and what it infers. Infer, is a  must, because no proper explanation was requested.

  At times, the symbol of a god was different, with a different name, or even in a different social situation.  In Maya, the Maize god's main attribute was his association with the Sun God at the time of Creation.  Later,  the Maize God took precedence over the Sun God for a time; However, in the beginning music was one of the basic attributes of the blazing, burning "Sun" god, just as it was in Rome or in Athens. again with different names and different attributes; i.e. Apollo, the sun or Hermes, he who defeated the musical ability of the sun. (But do not forget that Apollo's son was a catalyst in the Greek story later.)

     

       Still another attribute was the re-birth of the Maize God or his resurrection from the dead via the turtle carapace thought to be the Earth, together with his ability to save people from starvation, (See previous post) hence the turtle's reference to being a food carrier in the sky ball game scenario.

      So, with the various references to the turtle below, one can see that music was the first (maybe) reference to the turtle.  In the Popol Vuh,  it was only a replacement for a head and later a shell hung over the ball court to be smashed by a stone thrown by Xbalenque.

  

       The Turtle was once an important constellation that was finally called Lyra. Greek and Roman texts took precedence over ancient astronomy and that is perfectly correct, at times. Before the second game, the head of Hunahpú was lost to the bats, and a replacement had to be devised. So it was a star within the Turtle constellation (Lyra) exploded, making the Twins  the most colorful comets in the sky. [It is similar to Christmas Pine Cones when they are soaked in metallic chemicals and flit in the fireplaces for a colorful Treat for the Holidays.]

It is interesting that the turtle was removed from any reference to astronomy, long before it was removed from the Popol Vuh. So there can be no fault in translations, since other governments had already done the dastardly deed.

_______________
^{1   (1954, 107)     Popul Vuh “The Book of the People”  Translated into English by Delia Goetz and Sylvanus Griswold   
      Morley, from Adrián Recino's translation from Quiché into Spanish  Plantin Press, Los Angeles [1954, copyright not 
      registered or renewed] 
      "…Presently Xbalanqué threw a stone at the turtle, which came to the ground and fell in the ballcourt, breaking into   
      a thousand pieces like seeds, before the lords.…"  
________________________________}
Here are only a few of Justin Kerr's Vase examples of the Maize God's connection with the turtle as his earth (in the sky) and with our physical Earth when he was reborn.  They include, music, the turtle source of music,  the turtle source of birth in or on the earth; One Hunahpú, the father of the Twins who gave him his "bone throne"; the presence of Seven Macaw; pieces of the turtle shell floating through the primordial sea in the sky;  and a hazy ideaograph  of  his  monkey association with the northwestern skies.

Kerr Number:  K-118  Music,   and  K-645  Musicians sleep and watch with infant in sacrificial cache vessel and  K-4998 Resurrection of Hun Hun Ahpu from quatrefoil turtle carapace, with deer impersonator for a dance ceremony  

Kerr Number:  K-4681  The maize god being reborn (resurrected) from the turtle shell with the aid of his sons, the hero twins. Also  K-8757  Maize God in watery realm (turtles on each side maybe)  and  K-9174   The resurrection scene with the Maize God holding a bird. God N emerges from the turtle shell as in

K-2980   God N in Turtle Carapace

Kerr Number:  K-728  Wtater lily monster as skeletal god with turtle carapace for body holding bone throne over his head   and  K-4539  supernatural turtles? swimming through the primordial sea   

Kerr Number:  K-5457  Turtle on cover of vessel. Its  abstract designs seem to be monkeys.  

The Great Star

From:   IMS_2012_05.jpg

      The Great Star, mentioned by Sahagún, has been illustrated various times on different codices, monuments and stelae as a central star with four smaller stars attached around it.  In this particular illustration just recently discovered with the oldest jaguar representation, has that star image located at the neck of the jaguar. The Jaguar here, then, is the Jaguar of the night sky, as is the deer. Are they battling?

[See below for D-58: the Dresden version of the four pointed star.]

      At first, I thought that the animal underneath probably was the constellation Scorpio, but when I cleared out the red and put a little more contrast to the lines, it is a deer,  similar to Praja Pata, as the seated God of the deer-like animals in India .

Codex Ríos

     It is in the Codex Ríos, where the mother/father entities are seated in a cave, that dead dear heads are flying in a great wind all around the sky with live monkeys, as Quetzalcoatl with half of a "venus" glyph surrounding his head, soars over all with a scythe in one hand and a feather (Fire) fan in the other, a sky disaster in process.  The two entities in the cave (one of many caves in the mesoamerican areaa and around the world) are the survivors who had listened to the astronomers when the first "knife-like" flame shot out from the Great Star.

A Bi-Polar jet, having the appearance of a sky knife.

     Modern astronomers call the "knife-like" flame a bi-polar jet; in indicator of an imminent explosion within the star itself. The astronomers have seen this action in a star or two and are aware of what occurred, but not always how it began, nor how it will end. Much astronomic information is inferred by compiling various stars in other galaxies, hoping that they have recorded the proper sequence, but not absolutely sure of the age distance between the stars to which they are referring.

     The four sided star is used as the head of a man falling from a tree (probably (in the Milky Way, indicated as seen over the ocean-waters berneath the tree) with a double "venus" glyph as his background; the four corners very similar to the Great Star with four smaller stars around it.

D-58: Dresden Codex


descended the star,
13 years;  
[MN: 13 weeks of each season ?]
damage to the seats; 
[MN: of the stars, inferring a zodiac change in the sky.]
damage to the throne lords; 
[MN: constellations; new ones appeared]
eclipse of the sun;
eclipse of the moon;
One Sky Bearded Lord
One k’atun ???   
(Linda Schele, Maya Workbook,1994)
[MN: = My Note on the phrases.
Linda was correct in most translations!)

N-09, Nuttall Codex

      All of these pictures relate to the sky, not to the gods, but to the stars.  There are many more, both in the Codices and on the monuments, The stories about them are multiple, but they are mis-understood every day with every new research documentation.