Another Mysterious Codex

In most of the old religions of the world, there are two items that stand out. One is a blue star. The other is a golden sun:  more  brilliant than  the sun we see every day. This sun is noticable as the sun around the head. That of a god, is usually shown as a blazing halo.

In  the XV through the XVI centuries there were known to be 72 different  names for those gods. [We were a very small world at that time]. By the time the 1700's arrived, the color blue had been partially replaced by the color associated with witchcraft, i.e. black!

However, the color blue had a very strong hold on people around the known word. The Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque , was named after it. The Hawaiian goddess, Uri, was  called the  "Mother of all Creation." The sparkling blue robe of Guai Yin and the blue cloak of Maria were also semi-associated with it.

Yet, the missionaries did their work well in Hawaii so URI, the  "Mother of all Creation " became ULI, the evil sorceress of the Black Night.

During the years that followed the Conquest of Mexico, Sahagùn began a translation of the Florentine Codex. It told the world about the "gods" of México and many of its customs. It also told the details about the Great Star which happened to be the Blue Star, but few were aware of the cross- referencing between Aztec lore and the Popol Vuh.

Since the Maya were the great hold-out and did not get "conquered until approximately the seventeenth century,"  no one really cared. With Linda Schele and Michael Coe, together with the photographs taken by Justin Kerr of the Maya Vases, the Maya Meetings and the Mixtec cultures became much more active.  

In the meantime  Professors Leon Portillo,  J. Soustelle, Mary Miller, Karl Taube, and Susan Milbrath worked a bit harder on Aztec astronomy. It seemed that all cultural and astronomical problems had been covered. Then Mèxico decided to have new Metro tunnels dug for the underground rail system. Two items turned up: the Moon disk, not quite as large as the Sun disk, and later, a panel of a goddess called Tlaltecuhtl, with fragments of blue paint on her body.

1. Miller, and Karl Taube had a description of this goddess that matched the moon disk goddess of the torn-apart body, Coyotlxauhquiu. The moon disk was not a painted piece so she was identired differently from Tlaltecutli. She became the star daughter of Coatlicue.

Coalicue became pregnant by a magical ball of feathers that she had found.  Her star-daughter accused Coatlicue of being indescrete and she declared that her mother should be killed. Tlaltecuhtl seems to have covered a lot of the Maya Popol Vuh. Even to the ball games in the sky by  Hunahpù and Xbalenquè, and in the Madrid Codex.

The Popol Vuh maybe, but never in the Madrid, you say?  Really?

On pages 112 to 103 of the Madrid Codex several things are visible:

One:    The Great Star ìs blaźing in the sky;

Two:    The Rain of Resin [or the Rain of Turpentine] is falling;

Three:  The Wooden Manikins are being carved  [pp. 102-100] and

Fòur:    A series of mummies are being prepared for burial. [pp. 99-96]  
             Tribes, maybe?] Here also, on page 96 is the splitting of the tree, the
             Milky Way. The Twins  rise into the sky as the  new section of the
             Via Lacta.

Five:     More death panels, more people dying without proper burials.[p. 95]
              Tlaltecuhtl loses her head, etc. On the following page, other sky
              ladies come down with their sky baggage to comfort her. A sky lord
              of the night or a storm god gets a great thunder rattle to announce
              her arrival on the earth.

The Popol Vuh is well covered even though the rest of the Madrid pages may be altered even more to accommodate the  church mandates. Both secular law and ecclesiastical dogmas were tampered with at that time.

Are there any bees in the heavens; no, of course not. Then think bees and what they do, or what they feel like when they sting a person. It is more logical.

Another Post-Gregorian Codex: The Dresden!

The Dresden Codex has been worn to shreds; solely because of everyone's insistence that the planets Venus and Mars (according to Immanuel Velokovsky's 1950 book,Worlds in Collisions. The impossible, but very romantic explantion of two planets crossing over into Earth's orbit, captured even the careful, reasoning of many professionals.

Fig. 01a: Gates D-47

Fig. 01b: Forstemann D-47

    Even so, there seems to be an never-ending attempt to explain the mathematical discrepancies found in the Dresden, especially those associ-ated with the planet Venus table.

      Each version, supposedly better than the first, second or later, multiple versions have tried to solve these irritating problems. However, no one has suceeded, except in very general terms. None of the discrepancies found in the Codex have been properly solved, except fhrough very complex tables and graphs that were probably never an option to the original authors of the Codex
        The Dresden is a ancient codex 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 seem to correct several areas of importance, such as [Fig. 01-a-b] and for the Planet Tables of Venus and Mars.

De Landa, Friar Diego de Landa whose original manuscript was writen in 1566, was the first person in the Yucatàn to use the Gregorian Calendar and teach the natives the newly determined months of the Maya Calendar System. They were there shortly after de Landa's manuscript was written in 1573. The year bearers, at tht time, were
to be Kan, Muluc, Ix, Cauac. (de Landa, p. 60.)

Also de Landa wrote that the first day of the year was [now] One Imix which normally fell on July 16th. This day sign was also the first day of the [new] month Popp. (p. 68).

William Gates, on the other hand, only mentioned One  Imix, as being foound in the Madrid Codex. His main comment was about which was a date, which required 6 tuns and 2 uinals to complete or tie up the count of 9.9.16.0 as the desired 9.9.16.0.0 or 4 Ahaw 8 Cumhu.

Linda Schele did several translations of the text above in Fig. 01.beginning with the words "tied to the East."  The word "East" appears to be in error.since all cometc are born in the "land of the dead" in the west, not the east. whIch is graphically illustrated by skeletal figures in two instances . One was the skull of the father of the twins,and the second was the Dresden pages above with the skeletal god of the underworld sending the twins to Good Moon, the proposed mother-to-be of the twins.

It is obvious that  the Land of the Dead in the west is implied by the skeletal figures.
It does imfer that the "Dresden Codex" another "doctored" Codex  to be deciphered even more carefully than those that are obviously falsified.
_________________________________________________
Castillo-Torre, Josè, (1955) Port la Señal de Hunab Ku, Reflejos de la Vida de los Anitguos Mayas, Mèxico D.F: Liberia de Manuel Porrùa. and, (Translated with Notes, by William Gates)  New York: Dover Publishing Inc.

Edmonson, Munro S. (1988) The Book of the Year: Middle American Calendrical 9Salt Lake City, Utah, University of Utah Press.

Gates, William, (1932) An Outline Dictionary of Maya Glyphs, With Author, Studies Studies" reprinted from The Maya Society Quarterly, New York: Dover Publishing, Inc.

Förstmann  (1972 ) Codice de Dresde, Mėxico, D. F.: Fondo de Cultural Economica, S.A.

Schele, Linda and Grube, Nikolai, (1997) Notebook for the XXIst Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop, The University of Texas at Austin.

Thompson, J. Eric, (1972) Comomentario al Codice de Dresde, Libro de jeroglfos mayas,  (Traducción de Jorge Ferreiro Santana; Revisiòn de Lauro Josè Źavala) Mèxico, D.F.: Fondo de Cultural Economica/Mèxico.

Villacorta, Carlos A. y Villacorta, C., J. Antonio, (1930) Maya Studies #3, Drawings of the Pages and  Commentary in Spanish, Laguna Hills, California: Aegean Park Press.

The 364-Day Calendar in the BORGIA CODEX

The Borgia Codex begins with eight pages of the Gregorian "trecena" count, without the proper format of the Maya version.

First page of the Borgia Trecena attempts

The partially destroyed  copy from Dover Pubications has an interesting story behind it.  And very serious doubts as to its origins. The story put out by the Vatican was that the children of the servants, were playing games and the Borgia manuscript accidentally fell into the fire.

However, if only one would change the symbols of the politically correct church language into church hierarchy, one might find that the servants are the "children" of the "Papa" [the Pope] who had told his children, [the servants], to burn the manuscripts [the codices] of the "heathens."  And, in their simple faith, picked up the recently delivered Borgia Codex.

The Holy "Father," realizing, his mistake immediately, recovered the new, slightly singed manuscript from the fire.

The last page [8] of the Borgia calendar

The monks who created this calendar form, knew about the trecena  calendar of its creator, D. Veladèz, who may have engraved it in 1551, or Fray Francisco de las Navas [Cogs or Wheels] himself, who became the new owner of that calendar in 1551.

Although the Handbook of the Middle American Indians,  Vol. 14, Part Three, (1975), claimed the VEYTIA  calendar was a true "Native" manuscript, a recent informant told me that any Spanish surname that ends with the letter "Z" is that of a Jewish person; an engraver of this type of calendar.  On that basis, and the fact that a monk obtained the calendar, possibly in 1551, he may have been considered a heretical prisoner of the Inquisition. His calendars were published later by the monk, Fra Francisco de la Nava, in 1584. Whether Veladez was alive at that time or not was not known by the editors of the Handbook!

Even so, the Borgia  Codex did create a 364 day calendar, that emphasized the 260-day ritual  calendar of the Mesoamericans, with tiny feet to indicate the missing day[s] for the 365-day year. The missing elements here, are the 104 days that are also to be counted in the top and  bottom  borders.

On a whim, I decided to check the Chinese 60-year calendar. I had  never been able to unravel the method they had used for their calculations. When I discovered that the Borgia did not have any definitive sequence that included the accepted year bearers, I thought it odd.

The Chinese calendar jogged my memory a bit. I recalled that they had used five names for one phase of their calendar calculations: the five words were  metal, wood, fire, water and earth,  Because the twelve animal month names were nearby, both the Aztec and the Chinese calendars made sense.  Five times twelve equaled the sixty year cycle.

Returning to the Borgia, I resumed my search for sequential names in the five glyph column of the ritual calendar. None appeared, so I returned to Sylvanus Morley's 1956 book. I only found a four-glyph set, similar to the Maya group. The Aztec version reads: Knife, House, Rabbit and Water.

However, no proper year bearer sequence, neither four glyphs nor five appeared within the eight calendar pages. There were only the tiny feet to say that the calendar could  not accommodate the full 365 days in the 260/364 layout.  Even so it was an impressive attempt to ignore the Gregorian months while still following the new 365-day year.

As for the subsequent pages of "god" groups, except for the pages defining the sun, moon, the Great Star of Sahagùn and the butterfly event, that includes the "venus" attributes, the majority of the pages were overdone with what Linda Schele would call a "spaghetti-syndrome." Apparently they were created to impress but had no useful information. I will leave this to those enjoy peering into a morass of repetitive data that contains multiple names for similar god-entities throughout the codices.