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.

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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.

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.
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  [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?