Conflicting Essays in scholarship which have been the most engaging research job I have ever done. I have also added, over the years, queries about our "dated" geology with their "computerized" confirmations together with climate changes denied since 1963. The Ten-O'clock News have been telling us to change our clocks for DSL and back again BUT no one as noticed it has been changed, more than a few years ago, from March 31 and October 31, to a week or so earlier or even a week or so later.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

WHAT IF…?


       In a previous post, November 2, 2012, I had realized, after several years of usage, that my astronomy book for telescopes, had illustrated our galaxy. The thing that struck me first was that the Earth we live on, was not shown. Yet, it was located around our sun in a very small section of one open spiral [See below, where arrows located our Sun; in one galactic view photographed from above and the other as a side view]. [1]

Our Galactic Solar Location       


       The next view of our spiral showed a bevy of stars, some of which I was familiar with, and others,  I thought were very far away from my normal viewing field.  I was a bit surprised to see that Orion was below our summer stars instead of being separated by the Via Lacta (as two different commonly seen branches of the Milky Way.) Then I had a strange thought: How could it be two different branches when all stars are, more or less, together in the same spiral?

The Upper register is our Summer view of the Via Lacta
while the Lower register is our Winter view.
       In an early presentation this month, at the University of Houston for the Southern Conference of Central Mesoamerica,  I had also included two versions of the Earth: Winter view of the stars and the Summer view of the stars (north being straight up and the two versions of earth at 23.5° angles).

The Earth in Orbit, 180° during the Fall and Winter
And 180° during the Spring and Summer months..
   So that when we see our Summer Register [shown on the right side] Peru and southern countries below the Equator see the Winter register. The sky then appears to contain two different branches of the Milky Way. As it can be noted in the above view, the exact center actually shows that  both the Upper and Lower Registers are shown in the same area of our particular spiral view; i.e the Spring and Autumn times of the year.

   However, I remembere d that Seven Macaw and Tlaltecuhtli have similar stories. Both have the color blue, and also have lost parts of their bodies: Seven Macaw, lost both his teeth and metallic eye ornaments that were replaced by white maize kernels, whileTlaltecuhtli lost her arms and legs to two different comets. All were then carried down to earth.

      Remembering the information given my by my dentists; that all constellations are upside-down south of the equator, an stramge thought struck me suddenly.   What if . . . there is only ONE Milky Way branch that we see, that there is only one  leg: our own particular single spiral of the galaxy? 

      However, having previously discovered that some constellations have only a 90° turn, while others have a 180° turnabout, both under AND over the equator, can it remotely possible that the view of all the stars changed into different formations, creating different configuraions, therefore becoming newer southern constellations?

   I think that if astronomers created a huge cube as they have for the space shuttles to follow, and did a 3-D turn-around, one might just be able to distinguish the old as the cube is turning, just long enough to identify the new southern view. Are any astronomers able to do this project?  I would like to know and maybe other people would like to know if this is  possible or not?

    NASA has all the star locations or else they would never have been able to send a telescope or other exploration shuttles out into the sky across empty voids free of such  dangers as meteorites or asteroids. They also proved that they knew an asteroid had a specific orbit and were able to connect an exploratory shuttle [Tempe] to that asteroid. 

Can they create such a sky cube as a 3-D image and rotate it so that new star compositions can be evaluated?  I am quite sure they can.











______________
[1]   Dickinson, Terence (1999, 20) Nightwatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe. 3rd edition.

[2]   Ibid, (2001, 21)

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Two Stone Heads from Chavin de Huantar, Peru

Two Stone Heads from Chavin de Hunantar, Peru
       At first glance, the stone heads from Chavin de Huantar, Peru appear to be what the archaeologists thought they were: Two iconized heads of humans depicting serious drug use during a religious ceremony or of a soul-searching acolyte before he is accepted into the priesthood of the Inca. The multiple serpents around the head are supposed to indicate the painful reaction to the drugs being used.

         The head on the left, however, has huge eyes at the top under a hat or cap of some sort that seems to be completely out of proportion to the rest of the face. The nares of the nose fit where eyes should be placed, even over the whistling pursed mouth effect. The tears that seem to be falling from the upper eyes, may be melting hands, or serpents. Is this stone head only illustrating that it was a mask for a certain astro-religious ceremony, nothing more.

        The head on the right has eyes that might be correct, but the mouth area has a deep framed border with a sharp chin apparently jutting out from under a complex mask.with only the mouth area open around the pursed wind-blowing lips. The top of this head has the appearance of a great bird. covering a real person underneath that image..  

        Serpents, large and small, are on these two stone images. It is an indication for the archeaologista to look for the serpents depicted elsewhere. Since masks were usually used to portray gods there must be a serpent god somewhere it the Inca pantheon, and sure enough the golden god found in the book. Incas:  Lords of Gold and Glory. 
Another serpent encircled square headed version of this god 
is found in  Arqueológia Peruana (Doig, 1971, 346 & 356) 

       This god is supposedly from a very early period of Peruvian histtory, however, he appeass in many diffeent places, one of which is on one of the Izapa monuments in Mexico.  Only there he is an upside-down boat as the serpent belt, while the figure itself is holding what appears to be Egyptian Ankhs. But knowing the angles of the serpents, even when they are upside-down, it is the same figure in an Izapan stela (#67) In Izapa, the belt and serpents are now the boat. The man is the same snaggle-toothed god backed by the arc of a rainbow. Above his head in the broken section,there is the remains of a slanted roof.

      I did not immediately find that piece of the roof icon, but I found it is the same angle at 23.5 degrees, just as the man, himself is the same, carved on Stela # 22, that shows a great sky turmoil with several dragon-serpent heads with square eyes.  The water under both boats (22 and 67) have a sky god at each end. IF such are sky gods, then the "water" [as rain] is only the Milky Way. The only reason the fish are there is to show you that there is "water" even in the sky.

       In Peru, though, the two heads the illustration shows different elements of the two serpents; one of the whistling noise [pursed lips] done by the erratic actions of an animal aviator on the left . On the right side of the picture is the great wind maker [with flapping lips] that blew down fragile stick and palm frond houses as from the wings of a great bird with powerful wings.

       The two stone heads are truncated glyphic images of the actions of the gods used as masks in religious ceremonies, true, but there was no need of drug inducements. Masks such as those illustrated told the whole story  One can refer to a capstone image of a such a wind, in the glyph iconography of a bird with two heads, found at Ek Balam, Mexico. The head facing forward, is a raptor, while the one facing the rear, is the great wind that pushes the bird forward.  Not quite exact imagery. but it does retain the wind-bird image of the Peruvian stone masks.

       Such similarities, do not necessarily have to indicate migration patterns, Mostly, they refer to astronomy and a Twin comet which orbited the earth several times. Such myths, even of Peru, indicate that a longer day (or night) was caused by such a strong comet wind that blew down Cuzco's homes several times, So a pact was made with the wind god and Cuzco was built in a long day

       Our present culture is so full of misused drugs that our first thoughts are that the primitive people used the same methods for their religions.  It is very doubtful that an intelligent government could be so detailed and workable for so long, if mind-altering drugs would have fueled their activities. Nevertheless, the masks, hidden for so many years, would be a good indication that it was a religion  based on the stars above, that the Conquistadores had to destroy.
______________________________________
Sheppard, Barbara M. (Art Director) (1992. 158). Incas: Lords of Gold and Glory. New York, The Time, Inc. Book Company / Time-Life Books / Robert H. Smith, Publisher. Chavin de Huantar
GarStaff god with a serpent in each hand and two hanging from his belt.

Doig, F. K. (1971, 245)  Arqueológia Peruana: Visión Integral Lima, Peru: Promoción Editorial Inca, SA.  An excellent version of a very small Peruvian flying god (Fig. 312) found in this book. Most flying gods in this book have serpent feathers on their backs instead of wings [as Fig. 389].

Norman, Garth V. (1976).  Izapa Sculpture:  Album Papers No. #30 Izapa Sculpture: Text Papers No. #30. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University.Stela 22 and Stela 67.

(1982. . . . .) Square eyes is a modismo of Texcoco.  It means "surprise", or "amazement" for some reason. Personal observation with conversation.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Florida Sinkhole Maps as an Aside

Sinkholes in Florida
      Earlier I wrote about Florida's sinkholes when a sleeping gentleman lost his bedroom and his life. No maps were available at that time, but the one above turned up on a Google search after a Disney World hotel at Clermont crumbled in a 300 foot hole that was 15 feet deep.

     The above map is scary to say the least, even if each dot is miles apart and only clustered because the map is tiny. One other map is just as frightening. How can anyone stay in the state or even visit it with such a barrage of holes showing up so unexpectedly all the time.
An almost black and white version of the above map
     A third map shows the counties involved.
But not all these are sinkholes
Why worry?  The damage has already been done. Good insurance will take care of the rest. H.m.m.m.m.  So we have all quiet on the eastern front.

ADDENDUM:

With all quiet on the Eastern front,  Am I kidding. I have ignored the Disney Hotel in Cleburne, Florida. that sank into a sinkhole, up to its top floor windows, serveral years ago. People were saved when the rescuers used ladders to those windows and the clients were able to leave the building. What happened to that Hotel was never in the paper after the rescue that I know of.

Disney's tickets to Disneyland in Florida rose steadily. A couple of years later an alligator (or crocodile) attacked a child in one of the lakes inside one of the beach displays. From that time on, very little has been written in the news about Disney properties in Orlando.

However, in Miami and along the coastlines (the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico) have put up jetties for private boat mooring with landing excursions. and private beaches for hotels and thourist stopovers on islands or mainland areas. Once they are installed, beach erosion occurs; not because of the glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic zones, but from the natural wave movement that now is compressed into smaller areas along the shorelines.

Once beach erosion terminates, the wave action moves on into the jetty areas and begins to tear up streets, buildings, and fills the coves with the sand it could not place along shorelines any more. Engineers who put down the jetties, suddenly found that the jetties were much too expensive to remove. sand and water began to encroach upon the land in a vain natural effort to even out the shorelines again. 

Miami, and Miami Beach, Florida ares now getting flooded during major storms in many places where I once worked. The few aquafers trapped in the coral rock base of the peninsula are beginning to find salt water seepage; very destructive to necessary water for the towns and villages nearby.  Building that once sat high above the water line, now must have water barriers so sidewalk bistros and cafes are below the salt water incursions under the land. 

Florida is now sinking under water, with the aid of acidified oceans which melt its coral rock base. The swamp land that it once was before Flagler put in his rail lines. is soon to return.  Builders who overbuilt hotels, apartments and condos into improbable heights are rushing to make those building even more expensive to live in. The owners of such properties, have to get their money back before the water gets much higher. Even Cape Canaveral is hurting.

Russia's Siberian lands of Permafrost have been having problems in the West.  On April 16, 2017, there was a report about the year 2008, a giant sinkhole called the Batagaika Crater formed 400 feet below the permafrost near the village of Betagai. This sinkhole has become a canyon over the land and is getting 600 feet longer every year. The canyon walls, swept clean, are now uncovering ancient mastadons and othereria animal carcasses.
[See http://scribal.com/a/anthropology-and-history-giant-crator-mysterious-siberian-gateway-hell]

Apparently the earth is complaining bitterly about what we do not know. Yes, it is Climate Change, but, what part of it?

Friday, July 26, 2013

YAL, a Glyph from Palenque

      The above rough sketch I discovered in my ancient notes about Palenque. The definition given in the Maya Seminar for this glyph was YAL,  which. could mean "Mother of child"  or it could refer to "throwing something away, [or out]".

      When I was studying under Linda Schele, I asked if I could do a paper on Manik, the Hand, not as a calendar sign, but as a glyph. Linda said, "No, because there are so many things that can be done with a hand, it is unlikely that one could isolate any one specific aspect."

     Well, that was way back in 1978.  Since then there have been some very surprising things that happened in my research.

Somewhere along the years that followed, I also was able to read Dennis Tedlock's The Popol Vuh. I had bought both versions (1985 and 1996) and as I read it I made copious notes. One aspect that intrigued me was Tedlock's insistence that a turtle does not produce enough eggs [or seeds] so he decided to replace the reference to the turtle carapace with a more prolific seed producer, the calabash, or squash. 

      His changes were accepted by all because of his logic, but for me, I became even more curious: What was wrong with a turtle producing multiple eggs that at their birth filled the sea with baby turtles. Could not figure out why until I read Goetz and Morley and discovered there was a good reason for the turtle. 

      The clue was in the Popol Vuh—at the end of the story of the Twins, Hunahpú and Xbalenqué—the young heroes of the story became the Sun and the Moon.  They carried with them, an entourage of 400 boys whom they had destroyed in an earlier encounter.  Since 400 in Aztec lore referred to, not 400 items, but many, many more, it was easy to see that the Twins carried with them a new branch of the Milky Way. ¡Astronomy………!  

       The whole Popol Vuh was about……Astronomy! Are there Squash or calabashes in the sky anywhere as a small or large constellation? No, there was never any reference in ancient texts about vegetables, only about human entities, altars, and animals forms. Was there ever a turtle in the sky with the human entities? Yes. Music had come from the sky because of a turtle carapace.


       The Australian Aborigines tried to duplicate that music with the Digerdoo and ordinary clapsticks.  They have been trying to do this for many years.  But in the Ancient Greek world,  Hermes defeated Apollo as a musician when he created a lyre from a turtle carapace. 
       
      Oh? But the Maya did not know anything about the Australian Aborigines or even the Greeks, both  qho lived on the other side of the world. Yet, the Maya glyphs and ceramics are filled with turtle carapaces, used as body armor,  or birth places for certain gods. It was also mentioned in the Popol Vuh during the second ballgame.  No music involved here.

      Just before that ball game [the second that the Twins had tried to play]; Hunahpú lost his head to the bats in Xibalba in the House of Darkness, Xbalenqué acquired a turtle shell and carved a head for Hunahpú.  Xbalenqué then enlisted a rabbit to pretend to be the ball, It was to run as far as possible instead of roll. The Xibalban players, completely confounded by a ball that ran away, sped after the rabbit. 

      What did Xbalenqué do when that occurred?  Did he clap his hands with glee and shout after the rabbit to run faster?  No, what he did was he grabbed the turtle-shell head of Hunahpú. He then ran into the ball court  recovered Hunahpu's head from the ball of the Xibalbans and hung the turtle carapace over the court.  When the players returned, he threw a stone at the turtle carapace and it "broke into a thousand pieces LIKE seeds." 

      So there was a turtle in the sky and it is now called Lyra or "the Lyre" in memory of Hermes contest with Apollo. So he question that still remains is where does the Hand of God fit into the sky theme?  Was it the hands of Apollow or of Hermes that play the lyre in the constellation Lyra . Did the Maya actually see the Hand in the sky? 

       Was the Hand, a feminine aspect of the gods, or was it a male entity that produced the spittle [sperm] for the Twins, as it passed though the skull-mouth of their father. The skull of their father still hangs in the tree called the Milky Way a bit northwest of Deneb of the Summer Triangle, [or Northern Cross or Cygnus the bird] All three names apply to the one constellation that is part of three different constellations, one of which is Lyra.

       The nebula, called the "Hand," threw out the spittle through the open mouth of the father. The father, who died in the first encounter with the Xibalbans, is just another nebula called NGC 7000. It has the shape of a skull covered with cinnibar . The spittle from the Hand of God sped directly into the hand of the maiden Ix {the term to identify a "lady"], the Moon goddess, [Ix Chel?]; also called Blood Moon.  Comets are usually fire balls and would have produced a very red moon when the Twins, as a double comet passed nearby.

      This was the Hand as the "Hand" [of God] that I was searching for in 1978.  However, it was not available at that time, so Linda's advice, then was correct. A Hand had too many things that it could do, but only the Hand of God could eject the spittle as fireballs in the sky. 

       So the first part of the glyph translation was correct. To "throw something out,"  as in the west panel of the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, or better said "to eject the sperm" in the story of the Popol Vuh.  The second part of the translation also could fit the birth process since a child is expelled,  or "thrown out" from the woman when it [or they were] born.  The Maya were then able to use both nebulae to created not only the glyph but also the story of the Popol Vuh since they saw the whole process in the sky.  HOW? We cannot see it except through the NASA Hubble Space Telescope!

      The partial answer is in a previous blog [dated June 20, 2013] entitled Ek Balaam,  Two Capstones that has as part of its contents, the "Hand of God" and gives in detail, where it had been seen with telescopes during the VII century AD. 

     One should note that the telescope that was used to see the Hand of God was just an ordinary telescope with a few small lenses.  They were nowhere near the size of the lens found in modern observatories such as the Palomar and the McDonald, or at other observatories now found around the world.
______________________
Goetz and Morley, (1954, 148) [the web version[ The manuscript copy tells us that the following phrases were on page. 108 of 196 total pages in the original manuscript,
At once Xbalanqué took possession of the head of Hunahpú; and taking the turtle he went to suspend it over the ball-court.. . . PresentlyX balanqué 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.





Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The Mysterious Dresden Tables

 
Fig. 01a: Gates D-47
Fig. 01b: Forstemann D-47


   The Dresden Codex is a ancient codice that  has glyphs that are difficult to make out due to deterioration and coloration of the original. There are some copies that were made earlier that appear to correct several areas of importance [Fig. 01]  and for the Planet Tables: Venus [Fig. 02] and Mars,

    There seems to be an never-ending attempt to explain the mathematical discrepancies found there,. Each version supposedly better than the first, second, and later version. However, there is a story line that is obvious in the Dresden Codex.  As a result of not being able to read the glyphs, except in very general terminology, none of the discrepancies found in the Codex have been properly solved, but only fhrough very complex tables and graphs that was probably never an option to the original authors of the Codex.

     Here are two versions of the Dresden Codex, specifically page 47, (Fig. 1a-1b). It does not seem to have any earthly ruler, or realm in its content. Earlier pages only give long pages about good things and bad things in relation to dates and/or numbers, so part of the Dresden is probably a text used by ancient sorcerers or by who still claim to know the future.
 
      It seems that although many people have attempted to approach the problem with mathematics first. The second option—the glyphs—have been translated, but in single units without any real context or connection to any other glyphs. The gods, naturally, are the most prevalent translation. When there is a question as to what is being done and by whom, it can be nothing more than a primitive expression of a native "god." And as to the square faced "god" falling from a sky that contains both a sun and a lunar eclipse: We'll, that is a "god" indeed.

      Except one author along the way decided it was the Planet Venus who was at war in the sky. His name was Immanuel Velikovsky. He decided that the planet Mars and the Planet Venus had such a battle that the world was involved somehow.  In his excitement in finding the story of Aphrodite and Mars in a net of gold [or bronze, as another myth states] he forgot his basic astronomical facts. The most important being that Mars and Venus, as planets have specific orbits that are completely separated by another "minor" planet call Earth. So a sky battle could have occurred but not with these two planets as adversaries.

     The "golden net" is part of the story line known around the worl*d,  even in the Meso-american world. But those bits of mythic information is ignored. The  "true but modern" Meso-american skies are used as the only source of the Cental American tales of wonder.

      Hence, all calculations about the supposed sky battle are using information that has never been valid sfor the simple reason no one, except Mary Miller and Karl Taube, have ever used any ancient information about such turmoil, even though it was the same event. But that is an item not valid for this problem since these authors study Aztec astronomy in the volcanic range surrounding Lake Texoco and not in the Maya lowlands.

      One of the Dresden pages that are essential to the Venus Tables is found below as page D-58.
Fig. 02a Gates D-58
Fig. 02b: Forstemann D-58
   
     The pages where the discrepancy occur are not listed here. They occur in Gates D-51a-b; and Gates D-52a-b. and ass the same page numbers in the Forstermann version.
     Linda Schele determined the 12 Lamat was the origin of the mathematical problem. She noted that problem had been corrected for the Dresden version she produced with Floyd Lounsbury's help during the 1997 workshop. [1] The actual "dn at the 6th interval has 6.0 too much and the 31st interval has 13.0 too much." [2]

     Such detail is not the purpose of this Blog since I am not a mathematician nor do I make any attempt to explain the cycles of either planet, Mars and Venus. All I know at the present time is that the planet Venus has or had a specific cycle of 8-years each year being precisely detailed until the ninth year when the 8-cycles begin again. What does it mean? I have no idea.

      What I do know, is that with all the corrections done over the past 25 or so years, no one yet has come up with the solution that is irrefutably correct.  There is always someone else who tries again to re-calculate the information to make it better.

       With the pictures that I presented in this section of the blog, there are two elements that show up clearly. the first being the birth of the Twins, Hunahpú and Xbalenqué in the zone of the Death God, [Figs. 01a - 01b] which would be the west where the dead are.[and the dead father of the Twins hang in a tree]. In the other page, a single man/god falls from the sky [Figs. 03-04], who seems to be the Xolotl figure that relates to the Quetzalcoatl comet. in the Aztec tales, Xolotl was he who sacrificed himself and fell from the sky to his death, so that the Sun God would live.

This Aztec version does not negate the journey of Hunahpú and Xbalenqué from the zone of the Death God, It was just another viewpoint of the same event. The Maya and the Mixtec chose to emphasize the arrival of the "extra" 400 stars in the sky as the "broken tree." The Maya specifically say that the Twins were born, from the spittle-sperm of the dead father's skull hanging from the tree in the land of the dead [i.e.: in the West].

       The number "four hundred: in all of the Meso-american area means, not "exactly 400," but instead "a great multitude [of stars] without a count." The Maya also determined that the Sun was born in the West, not the East.  It [the Sun] had appeared "as if [the Sun] had placed a mirror in the middle of the sky" [at High Noon] and actually had turned around at that point and returned to the East  from which it came.

     Of course, it is impossible that the sun would suddenly stop in the middle of the day to turn around and return to the Ea. To call this event the Planet Venus, for want of a better explanation, is just as impossible, since the planet Venus is never seen in broad daylight making it very improbable that it was seen at "High Noon as a mirror in the middle of the sky." Nor is it possible for the Planet Venus to drop out of its own orbit to enter the orbit of our Earth.

My question is: What if it was a completely different kind of battle in the sky? What ith its own trajectory across the heavens that can be traced from its original source to its final conflict with an actual star recorded by the Maya from its birth to its final destruction that us a tual,y recorded on a Mixtec map of Apuala and Tilantango?

That just happened to occur at a time when the Twins, Hunahpú and Xbalenqué, were passing by as the double comet that passed through the mouth of the dead father.. The Maya not only recorded the death of the star the Twins encountered on their way to Earth, but also the deaths of the various tribes who were affected by the arrival of the Twins and/or were wiped out in the disaster described by MIller and Taube as Tlaltecuhtli, a goddess [3] very different from the Twins. It was seen differently by the Aztec star gazers and recorded as a completely different story from their point of view in the bowl of the volcanoes.

    We have to stop guessing at the numbers and do the calculations that the Maya used, as was shown in the Serpent Pages of the Madrid Codex. True, the calendar, that was adjusted to fit the Gregorian Calendar of 52 weeks failed, but at least it demonstrated the Maya method of counting their days without the new months designed by the Gregorian.

They are much more accurate than the computer. Mostly since no computer has yet been able to trace a star from its birth to its death as a nova, as the Mitex did on their map nor how the Maya did in their Popol Vuh.
_____________________
  [1]  Schele, Linda, (1997, 140) Notebook for the XXIst Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop, March 8-9, 1997, [with the University of Texas at Austin Departments of:] Art and Art History, The College of FIne Arts, and the Institute of the Latin American Studies. regarding D-24.

 [2]   Ibid, pp 169 & p. 173.

 [3]   Miller, Mary and Taube, Karl (1993, 167) New York, New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc.,  Tlaltecuhtli, a blue goddess who was torn apart and dropped on earth, It is  good description of the Moon Disk found earlier when the Metro was being built in 1978. (Beam, A, et al, In Newsweek, page 97? 

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Ek Balam: Two Capstones

     Two  Capstones, Capstone 7 and Capstome 19 are of special interest to me since they speak about the double comet and its origin in the sky.  The first, Capstone 7, has clear iconography, as can be seen by Figure 1. the rest are pretty mangled. but Capstone 19 has two glyphs that seem to indicate that the capstone glyphs around the pyramid are specifically about the event in the sky.
    
Fig. 01: Capstone  07           

     Figure 01 give a fairly clear iconography and accompanying glyphs that tell a story about a double headed bird of the wind, a comet with a single head but two components, as in most Native American cultures. Some forms are repeated in the Codex Magliabecchio. There, it was considered to be an insect like "bird" [Borgia, page 7) with a star form as its heart. One of the blanket "insect-like" birds was done in a very blue color.

     This image incorporates the blue butterfly found in the Borgia Codex on page 60. The story ends on page 38. The story itself, progresses from the origins of the turmoils in the sky showing the tree being broken in half (into two views of the Milky Way). This turmoil was continued until the first view of the sky ball court on page 47,  [reading from the Calendar section to the end in the front of the Dover illustrations of the Codex].

     It continues to second sky ball court game on page 43 together with the strange pale "bird" with a star as its heart found in its border [and on page 7].  This strange creature of the sky is also confirmed with two blankets woven for "sale" [?] in the Codex Magliabecchiano figures 10 and 8.  One being the inception of the image in ghostly white and the second the full-blown explosion of the star form in Maya blue.] It finally reaches the burning birth of the sun  on page 37.

     Page 37 of the Borgia is the third passage of the comet across the skies as it came too close the Earth and created the deserts of the world with its great burning fires.

     It is not silly to glean information from each of the codices, However, it is a useless endeavor if one does not try to read the glyph before spelling it out. A lot of valid information is lost when the spelling does not coincide with the visual impact of the glyph itself.

Fig.02: Capstone 19
     I found the skull of the father, [NASA named it NGC7000].  It is on the badly deteriorated capstone of Ek Balam numbered and named Capstone 19. [FIgure 03] It even had the star viewer and the direction where it could be found. [Fig. 04: Far NW on the other side of Deneb.] 

     This capstone, along with the others around the building appears to be all about the birth of the Twins, Hunahpú and Xbalenqué of the Popol Vuh and their sky journey, not the name of the ruler at al.  This makes sense, since the Ahaw glyph at the end of Fig. 04 is not repeated at the end of the glyphic text in Figure 01. 

     I think that the Rule of Thumb while reading glyphs should be "Be Careful of What You Spell " using Landa's alphabet of the Yucatan. It may not mean the same thing in another dialect across the Maya area.

    God C, the helmeted, fat-lipped monkey god, was once thought to be the northwestern skies. Here he has a club under his glyph. The club may be part of the sky message.
 
Fig. 03:  God C,  Once the Northwest skies.
But not a ruler, since rulers are humans on earth.
Fir. 04: A flaming fireaball from
the mouth?

     The other glyph of interest is the head with a fire star square in front of his mouth, as if it was just leaving. as spittle, or as a tobacco cud. This glyph is not very clear, and neither is of a known item. Except for the fire ball leaving the mouth. It is part of the Popol Vuh as the tale of the dead father, who spat into Blood Moon's hand, his spittle (In this instance, his sperm). 

  The star component, as NASA's NGC-7000 is a skull-shaped nebula, colored by computer enhancement a reddish glow, as if it were a real skull covered in red cinnabar. The sparkling fireball emerging from the mouth,  may well have once been the double comet once seen in the sky. 

     To say we cannot see it today, so that "theory" is pure nonsense is strange, because at one point the double comet was part of the meteorite shower that came from the Hand of God, another nebula that NASA gave this "tongue-in-cheek" title, not knowing that once upon a time, it had been seen in the sky with an ordinary telescope and recorded as such.  (See Figure 05)

Fig. 05: Mithra, a new sky god
     The "Hand" together with that telescope was carved into a histtoric stone in such a way as to make sure that that record was to be understood as a stellar event. The god referred to in that monument was "one who was born from a stone."  Along the side of the main scenarioare two torch-bearers; one  holding the torch upward and the other holding one point downward. The intent was to tell later generations, that one half of the comet continued onits sky-journey, but the other fell to earth.

     For other views of the "Hand of God"[Besides in the rectangle above] See Figure  06 below:
Fig. 06: Ther are three views from various centuries: NASA,
Maya in Cacaxtla and as found in the Nuttall Codex.
     And that returns us to Figure 01.  The bird in question is a double-headed bird, The raptor forging on ahead, while the rear-facing head is pushing the other forward with a very strong wind [or breath.] There seems to be a bowl on its back, keeping a fireball from burning the birds' feathers.

     The butterfly cave of Figure  01, is just another idiomatic phrase [similar to the picture in the Borgia Codex, Lamina 07] that is only to illustrate the darkness of the night sky and the beautiful iridescent quality of the comet after it picked up metallic debris from the bursting nova.  Each metal burns as a different color.

     To isolate a sky event to any country or continent is sheer nonsense. Astronomy is one of the few disciplines that can stretch around the world within a 24 hour period of time and it should be considered as universal as a sun or moon eclipse along a very specific trajectory.  Eclipse chasers go from one continent to another to find the perfect location for viewing the eclipse. Very seldom do they go to the same location again because our world is skewed  by a 47 degree path that the sun chooses to take during our winters and summers. It travels north of the equator 23.5 degrees and then returns to the equator to pass southward for another 23.5 degrees. That gives both the sun and the moon eclipses plenty of leeway so they do not have to appear at the same location a second time.

    The Maya glyphs do tell the same story and that story is explained more completely in the Popol Vuh;  and in the myths of other cultures around the world. Thus, the trajectory world-wide can also be tracked by a computer, but only with the correct information gleaned from the multiple versions found world-wide.  It is a fabulous story if anyone would care to try to find it.








Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Maya - Aztec Vocabularies



     The Popol Vuh has some very interesting names for the gods who are roaming the earth as people.

     A while back I made two notes on my computer and did not look at them again until tonight. One was for Maya and the other was a manuscript from an Aztec Codex. The spelling of the two names were not the same. One could not do a comparison of them using a dictionary in any of the Maya dictionaries, and look them up in a Nahuatl dictionary.

     Yet, when the two are put together, as Zipacna and Çipaqli, or Cipacuatli, it does not take a genius to see that the two languages are speaking about the same entity. 

     CHAPTER  2. Of how the World was created and by whom. begins on page 617 and Chapter 3 does not begin until page 619  So the entity  Çipaqli, or Cipacuatli =  alligator, fish or earth" is mentioned after the quote below but more information about the creation is also mentioned in the first part, especially the presence of the comet that shone brighter than the noonday sun and overshadowied its journey to the west: 
"When this was done all the four deities took notice that the half sun which they had created gave but very little light, so they resolved to make another half sun, so that it should illumine the whole earth. When Tezcatlipuca saw this he became himself a sun in order to give light, as we represent him in painting, and they say that what we see is only the brightness of the sun and not the sun himself, because the sun rises in the morning, traverses till midday, and then returns to the east in order to start again next day, and that which is visible from noon till sunset is its brightness, and not the sun itself, and that at night it neither shows itself nor has motion. So from being a god Tezcatlipuca made himself a sun, and then all the other deities created giants, who were very large men, and of such extreme strength that they could tear up trees with their hands, and they lived on the acorns of evergreen oak trees, and nothing else…"
      The above quotes are straight out of the Dennis Tedlock's story line in the Popol Vuh, [except for the minor detail that anyone who knows about oak trees, know that they are never EVERGREEN]. The bolded version is the part that can be found on page 73, but the rest of the two italicized sections are then moved over to page 161 with Tedlock's explanation on the top of page 304.
It is only his reflection that remains. What might be behind this statement is revealed by the contemporary Mopán Maya tale in which Lord K'in, the sun, goes from his home in the east to the center of the sky nd then back to the east again. It only seems that he goes clear across the sky because he has placed a mirror at its center. (Thompson, 1930, 132) To interpret the movements of the sun in this manner is to model it on Venus as morning star, which  both rises and sets in the east.
     Tedlock's inference to the Planet Venus is a mistaken view of the words spoken by the translator, Andrés Xiloj. Taken literally, it would be the presence of a comet that had passed overhead and put the Lord K'in, the true sun to shame.

     The comet had the name of Quetzalcoatl with Xolotl in Aztec, but in Maya it was Hunahpú and Xbalenqué. Zipacna's story actually begins on page 81 about Seven Macaw and later his encounter with the four hundred boys; until he met the Twins and died at their hands on pages 84-88. The Twins had been upset by the deaths of the 400 boys and vowed to end Zipacna's life.

     A bit below the aboves is here continued on page 618 as:
"…Presently they created a man and a woman; the man they called Vxumuco, and the woman Çipastonal,  and to them they gave command that they should till the ground, and that the woman [618] should spin and weave, and that of them should be born the Maçeguales, and that they should find no pleasure, but should always be obliged to work; to the woman the gods gave certain grains of maiz, so that with them she should work cures, and should use divination and witchcraft, and so it is the custom of women to do to this very day. Then they created the days which they divided into months, giving to each month twenty days, of which they had eighteen, and three hundred and sixty days in the year, of which will be spoken subsequently. Then they created Mitlitlatteclet and Michitecaçiglat, husband and wife, and these were the gods of the lower regions (infierno), in which they were placed; then the gods created the heavens below the thirteenth, and then they made the water and created in it a great fish similar to an alligator which they named Çipaqli, and from this fish they made the earth as shall be told; and to create the god and goddess of water…"
     In this part of the creation the year, months, and days has been identified as 360 days in the year in spite of the current version of 365.22 days that we now accept as factual.

    At the end of this very long paragraph the identification of Çipaqli, or Cipacuatli is made, but the 400 boys are left out of the story in Aztec as well as the Maya Twins.

     The epigraphers would understand then, that the "ç" became "Z" and the "L" became "N" according to the Chinese inability to pronounce the "L" even though they have many words that begin with "L,"  but never any at the end. And the "Q" would never be a problem. It can be equated with a hard "Ch" as the the Aztec variation of Çipaqli's name. However, it is usually the fault of the translator who use the variant spellings, not native spellings.

     Yet, it is strange. When would the Aztec/Maya languages ever pick up an Oriental language problem in pronunciation? Could the stelae with Oriental eyes that are found in Copan have anything to do with it?
__________________________________
Tedlock, Dennis [1996, 77] Popol Vuh   Zipacna and his brother Earthquake

Phillips, Jr, Henry [1883, 618]  History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings, (Edited by Alec Christensen   and also known as the Codex Ramirez,) Çipaqli, or Cipacuatli =  alligator, fish or earth"

Thursday, April 25, 2013

The Three-Times-Around "Sun"

 "The visible Sun is not the real one."
Dennis Tedlock (1996, 161)
       "The visible Sun is not the real one." The argument is  "But we only see one sun!"  On April 24, 2013,  INAH put in a Bulletin, several new pictures from  La Huasteca Veracruzana. their explanation was perfect. It is an astronomical figure with a blazing sun in the headdress. The problem seldom addressed with such new items, is the story that is so prevalents around the world,  It is the Aztec double comet Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl or the double comet from the Popol Vuh, Hunahpú and Xbalenqué. without the story, the glyphs make no sense at all.
       
         However, the crude Quetzalcoatl image, is not the Sun. In the hand, there is a group of three sticks, that indicates three round trips in the sky, aided by the back pointing scroll and the huge wings on the entity's back. The skull-like face indicates that this entity was either from the West, the land of the dead;; or it was a destroying element in the sky.  Actually, once the story is understood as an astro-physical event, it refers to both the Northwest origin and the destructive quality of the blazing birth of the Fifth Sun.

        The next offering is that of a very thin stick with a dark tip on top of the whirling element. Next to it are the long legs of a bird, the arms above have what might be considered tiny wings. And both are next to another ball of fire (a sun-like element).
       
        The whirling element is found both in Nasca, Peru as a monkey [again the Maya Northwest]. It is also found in the Nuttall Codex on page 34 at the bottom right  No connection?? Definitely a sky connection. According to the Popol Vuh, the spinning star—called a Toddler Star by NASA [1]—is not a Toddler  [a young star of about two years +/-],  instead it is part of the destruction of a blazing star. [Next to the bird image above].  The Nuttall shows this set of images very well, but in its own distinct style:

7 Macaw as the Hand of God nebula
with the red blazing area above itBut there is only a hand with fingernails 
under the blue and red ball!

     One must turn the hand glyph sideways and see the bird with its crest as a hand. [The Hand indicates another star form to be discussed later.] Once the icons are identified separately, one can see the story better. And it seems to be what the crude glyphs on the stones are telling us.

       [1] The “Toddler Star” can be found as the Orionis V-1647 star in the mddle of the McNeil Nebula. An excellent simulation was made by NASAgoddardspace.com as 100_0567 10-1.mov.

    The idea that it was a star beginning its life, just indicates that they did not understand the Asstronomy descriptions in the Popol Vuh. However, since the story is never read as astro-physics. It is only considered to be about a mythic creation, who can blame them.

         The Popol Vuh tells the whole story of a nova that began as a Toddler star, [illustrated on one of Justin Kerr's vases {1}], being approved of by the Maya Twins, to its utter desctruction in the second ballgame.  It also tells of the events on earth after the sky explosion. A closer examination of the "hidden" aspects of the text as stated in the very first chapter, should be re-evaluated. 

See also: The Date of 4 Ahau 8 Kumk’u as April 18, 411 AD
_____________________________________________
{1}  www.famsi.org/http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya.html,  K-7912. A small female child, in the lap of the Star Setter entity, is being viewed by the  twins, Hunahpú and Xbalenqué.  The Sun God is on his throne watching and listening.  There are icons above, that shows G-I as an old entity, a bird [a macaw], a head that indicates a female; a head with moving winds behind as if the head is being propelled forward.  There is no reference here to a Toddler Star, but the child is about two years old. hence, she is a "Toddler."









Friday, April 19, 2013

"Bullas" of the Merchants of Sumer

Clay bulla and the commoditiy tokens that were inside it. 
The owner’s seal is faintly visible on the exterior of the bulla.
The Sumerian Shakespeare

   A long time ago, while researching  the Great Migration across Asia to Spain, I ran across what was thought to be "The Origin of Writing," [actually this was an accomplishment brought by the gods in many different countries of the world]. It was an interesting book that claimed that there were hundreds of these items called "Bullas" or "balls" filled with iconographic clay tokens, strewn across the desert area to, within and from Turkey.
Sumerian "writing tokens".  Each token represents a different commodities
       These hollow balls were filled with small tokens that appeared to be tiny wine jars, sheep, cloth, anything that was moveable, and sellable.  Eventually, the "bullas" were improved when the token images were pressed into the clay casing on the outside of the orb. It was like an accurate check on what was inside of the balls.

       The theory, back then, was that these items were the origin of writing that eventually turned into cuneiforms scripts across the Middle East and Asia. The strange part of the story, was the multiple "bullas" were found strewn across the desert sands. It made no sense at all. Where they children's toys? [Small children should have been left at home base until they were old enough to be useful on caravan routes.] Or was there another purpose they were scattered in the desert.

       The only other explanation of such a trail across a desert would be a caravan of camels or donkeys that would be carrying such merchandise (ollas, jars of oil, cloth, jewels, and medicines. Sheep that could carry their own weight would have been herded along with the caravans to other markets where money could be earned.

        If this were the case, then the "Bullas" were not the origin of writing, but crude bills of lading that could be counted at the beginning and at the end of the journey to insure that what was loaded onto the camels's backs would indeed arrive safely at their destination, and the merchants there (with a different language) would be assured that the valuable items were intact. 

       A seal of approval from a ruler would have also been included so that the merchants at the caravans destination could be assured that the merchandise was of the best quality. Those without the seal of approval might not be of excellent quality.

        However, a thief is a thief, and usually one who is also in need of such commodities, [i.e. wine, cloth, silks, medicines, jewels, etc] A caravan without guards to protect the merchandise was a foolhardy expedition. Strong men, as guards [or loaders], would not necessarily be educated in. schools to learn to read and write.  By necessity, they should have been proven to be honest, and well-known to the camel drivers. Reading and writing skills were never a pre-requisite for intelligent, strong, able men who understood that money could be made without such schooling.

       Therefore, the "Bullas" would not have been for people to learn to read or write, instead it would have been an easy way to count the merchandise placed on the backs of various camels. A raid on an unguarded caravan would then entail, stripping the camels of their loads, dumping the bulla, with no regard to such "toys,'  unusable to the thieving populations of the deserts areas.

       All along caravan trails, all would have profited from such incursions.  But only if the thieves would leave most of a caravan intact so that the sender would still make a profit, the receiving merchants would be happy that most of the merchandise got through and the thieves would also profit, either by being bribed by an extra camel loaded especially for the random thief who would be smart enough to take only the token camel with its load, as a donation, and leave the rest. 

       The "Bullas" then were only a bill of lading; nothing more.  The bookkeepers at both ends of the caravan journey would be the experts who not only knew how to write in cuneiform, or other language scripts, but who also knew how to calculate prices, weigh loads, and other details that did not entail strength of body, only that of active minds.

      Across the seas, the Meso-Americans also had their own methods of avoiding and/or accommodating thieves, But that is another phase to be handled separately at a later date.

[Note: Don't forget to check out the University of the Aztecs, written earlier. How many of the disciplines were you able to find?]


Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The Aztec University

This mural is part of the Aztec University system at Teotihuacán

How many disciplines can you identify?
Can you identify more, if the "disciplines" were called "Employment?"
Part of the University advertisement on the wall of
Atetelco at Teotihuacán
        The first discipline that can be identified is the astronomy teacher and his student taking notes, They are in the upper left corner of the mural.
Another discipline that can be identified is the
The teacher is explaining the constellations 

to his student: he who is taking notes.

   

       Another discipline that can be identified is the one above to the right of the mountain. His speech scroll maybe colored blue, so he could be explaining the work done on the snowcap below him. Are they measuring the water flow from the snows on top?

         Is that water to be syphoned into the gardens and farmlands around the flanks of the mountain? The man in the lower right and the man behind him are looking after fruitful plants that include a flowering tree, corn stalks and another kind of plant closer to the mountain.

                                       
        The next is the man to the right and just above the teacher above the mountain. A more complete picture shows him carrying a person, with what appears to be a huge butterfly on its head. The job title here is Porter; a man who is trained to properly carry people on his back over rough terrain.

A Porter
        At his feet is a man discussing crabs [lobsters?] and eels. A man who takes care of fisheries.


       To the right of the gentleman who will take charge of the fisheries, there is an acrobatic troup practicing their singing and dancing abilities.

Acrobats practicing their act.
        Just below, the troupe is a surgeon who takes care of arms and legs.

The Surgeon for Arms and Legs.
      There are more. . . Historians, Mathematicians, both elementary and advanced; Dramatists; Sculptors of stone and wood; and Merchant street sales people. Those that measure the skies and compute the time;  It is also importantt not to forget the ball players. 

      This was apparently an all male school.  The mural has been partially destroyed, but the teachers, with their Tlaloc-type googles, are also included in a panel above all.  They taught the subjects that are illustrated in their speech scrolls. 
  
      Women, could learn, but usually they held down the fort as cooks, tortilla makers, sellers of commodities, i.e.:  fruits and vegetables in the zocalo. They also had small food concessions. They were weavers, and spinners of wool and cotton. Children carried water for cooking and in general ,helped around the house and gardens. Fathers would take their young sons to the milpas to learn the farming methods used for centuries. 

         The Conquest destroyed books and manuscripts. There could be no record that these people were  just as learned as those on the Continent.