The Popol Vuh, A Misunderstood Astronomy Book

If you can find the book by  José Castillo-Torre (1955) called Por la Señal de Hunab Ku:  Reflejos de la Vida de los Antiguos Mayas. Mexico, DF,  Mexico: Libreria de Manuel Porrúa, SA, you might compare what is written (beginning with the prologue  Prayer to Father Sun and Mother Moon,) and see how scholarship has changed things drastically in the last sixty years.

I am prone to believe Jose, than others because it seems to match the actual events found in the Popol Vuh  after combining the causes and the effects, that are stated first as factual (i.e burning rains), then as symbolically (ie. as bees, wasps whose stings that "burn" painfully after having been stung.) But it does not mention the Popol Vuh directly,  only inferring that problems were  solved after the major event in the sky that affected their agriculture planting schedule.

We can then, jump ahead into the 20th century,  to discover just what our astronomers actually know about, not a nova that has exploded, [they do have that information] but how it began to shine in the sky until it was so bright that it seemed to be another moon, then another sun, until it finally disintegrated in the sky.  An e-zine called SPACE.com recently during the first week of April, 2012, had their Staff write up  Top 10 Star Mysteries: about  Super Novas in  general.  Number 3 reads:

         "…gravity’s inward push tears apart the star’s innards. The explosion propels jets 
          of high-energy light and matter out into space."  

The first part is correct, the nova is torn apart from its innards. But we find that: "Since Johannes Kepler’s supernova was spotted in 1604, astronomers haven’t witnessed one in our own galaxy." from its beginning to its demise. There are no records in modern astronomy of the whole sequence of events from the birth of a nova to its demise.

No wonder, no one wants to believe that a myth such as the Maya Popol Vuh,  the Hopi Prophecies, or even the Rg Veda from India could contain specific grains (actually huge boulders) of information that have been ignored for centuries. Sure there had been children's stories about Chicken Little to ridicule the older folk who kept telling their families, and anyone else that would listen, that some day "the sky might fall in on their heads again."

The picture above, on the Web March 28, 2012 [news.com.au,  http://www.news.com.au/world/man-literally-stuck-in-the-mud/story] is about a man who slipped and fell into the mud but thanks to  Emergency Personnel, and one quick-thinking man who helped to clear his airways so the  man could breath, and survived after being 40 minutes in the mire, encased in mud.

The Popol Vuh has such a story, about "a [single] man of mud" who survived long enough to rise up, even with his twisted neck, to ask for help in a garbled voice.  However, he slid under the muck too soon for the awe-struck Maya search party. It all happened so suddenly, that the Maya probably had thought the apparition was an old creation of their gods sent as a warning that one must never forget the gods of the Earth, Sea and Sky again.  After all, there had been a great flood that came from the sea after the rains of burning resin or turpentine fell from the sky.

The other event that happened shortly afterward, was after the Birth of the Fifth Sun had been around long enough to dry out the land.  The searchers then could climb the mountains. What they found were both men and animals so "dried out" from the sun that they called these broken bodies "wooden manikins."

We believe photographs of men or animals (a horse had also fallen into a mud hole and struggled for its life, but in a different news blurb on the same day.) However, we no longer believe such tall tales of people who could rise out of the mud, or that what appeared to be carved wooden figures might have been real people who were thrown up on the mountain sides, yet washed completely free of the mud as the water flowed down the mountain and back to the sea.

March 28, 2012:  Man trapped in mud survives. Web March 28, at  ws.com.aus, http://www.news.com/au/world/man-literally-studk-inthe--much/story 2012,

Today, one can call 911 and get professional emergency help. Centuries ago, there was only the acceptance that God had sent punishment to mankind because they were forgetting to honor Him.

We believe in our 911 numbers, just as the ancients believed in their God.

And if the Popol Vuh is a true story of astronomy, it is the only full history of the birth of a nova to its final destruction.  They had the time to search the skies for years, even centuries before their records were completed. However, to teach the general public what they knew so well, they had to create a story of truth and symbolic language components, just as they did with their hieroglyphics.

It is a wonderful story, an amazing story that is so accurate it has no comparison, except within the myths of the world, for the simple reason that many countries and many different cultures viewed the same awe-inspiring sights during those years ages ago.

One must remember that Astronomy is actually a world-wide system. The sky covers the whole world, not just one aspect of it.  Each story may be different, but it is what happened during the catastrophic event that changed the world from a 360 degree year to a 365 degree year.