The Potent Hand - The Meteorite Shower

A Mural of the Hand and the Meteorite Shower
at the INAH Museum in Mexico City.

     A mural I photographed at the INAH Museum in Mexico City a long time ago. I saw the Hand as something extremely important, but could never figure out why. Linda Schele told me that the hand has may uses, so it is an improbable research project. There is no way to determine what its actual use is in any glyph. Yet on the stelae and monuments, glyph texts portray the hand in many different functions. They specifically are not in the process of cooking or using the metatls for grinding. There was some other purpose intended.

     The "Hand" is represented on many stelae and many other monuments and wall murals. When they are collected into what is called a "corpus" or dictionary of glyphs, many of the hands seem to be portraying the same thing.  So the "hand" is given a name in one dialect and many times is used as a segment of a spelled out word. It can be compared with the word "cover" which with prefixes and suffices create such words as: un-cover, dis-cover, re-cover, cover-able, cover-up, etc.

     Here, the hand is thought to be sowing seeds, but does the interwoven border tell us that it is a sky event?  It is as if to say that it referred to the whole sky, not just the sky seen over the Americas,  I wondered why a sky event would be considered as "sowing seeds." The larger items below do not refer to the milpas so important to the Aztecs, the Maya, the Mixtec, or any of the other smaller tribes found in North, Central or South America.

    Do the four tlan glyphs [appearing as teeth might] indicate a "place" in the sky?  Its  iconography over the two hands, the four items below them and toward the right appear to be small blue stars.  However, the picture is small and the time it was taken was long ago. The feathers that are drooping over to the right of the two hands. Feathers indicate"fire" in Aztec symbolism and if, at times, used within the Mesoamerican glyph corpus. If the "two hands" are indicating humans on earth, when the fire rained down from the sky, so be it. The single "Hand" is stellar. The artist, by reason of his own humanity, wanted to portray the role of man in the great meteorite shower of fire from the sky.

     Since that time, I have written three books about the Popol Vuh; the Creation myth of the [Maya] World. The Aztec Ramirez Codex has a similar story, with the blue-cloaked Huitzilopochtli finally established as a main god. He was the patron of the emperors who were crowned with a blue diadem, and enthroned in a ceremony that included blue colored cloaks, emblazoned with rat bones that indicated their pure blood lineage.

     With the histories of the emperors written into the codex-manuscripts that were burned in Mexico City and in the Yucatan, there are only few memories of their conquests or failures, while the omens that gave them the power to rule were destroyed with those manuscript.

     During the third version of my attempts at explaining the Popol Vuh,  I felt that I should examine the constellations once more time. I was given a huge volume called The Glorious Constellations, by an Italian author, [not the same Italian who drew the map of Texcoco in 1538], but a more modern one named, G. Sesti, who authorized his tome in Rome, Italy. One of the items in his book was a peg-board of the gods, the constellations, the months, and the days.

     It was surprising to me that the Romans created this peg board with only 30 days for each month. The board appeared to be a calendar using such pegs to indicate, the god, the constellation, the month and the day of the year for the working people to know how long it would be before they could celebrate the end of the year, or a more simple explanation, when they could stop work when their work duties were over after so many days.

     When I returned to the book for recheck my impression of the black dots in the different categories of gods, constellations, months, or days, I noticed that the knife in the neck of a bull being killed by the Persian god Mithra, has drops of blood under it, even though it was in the process of being buried in the neck up to the hilt. That did not make any sense at all. Rivulets of blood flowing from the gash in the neck would be more appropriate.

An off-center knife by the ear of the bull
portrayed as a Hand with a thumb and two fingers and a hole under the wrist.

     Then I noticed, behind the nose of the bull,  under a tree there was a long tube of metal was similar to those used by an ancient gunner shown with this early "canon" tube in the book by de Sprague, called Ancient Engineers. Strange, why a primitive canon/gun? The god was using a knife to kill an animal that could have gored the man/god at his side. But then it is just a picture, or is it?

A primitive "gun" or ....?

     NASA had put out some beautiful nebulae on the web and I was fortunate that they were available. The first thing I found was in an astronomy school book. It had all the appearances of a knife with the hand-guard, but it was only a artist's rendition of what has been seen. It was called a "bi-polar jet." A knife in the sky, impossible, I thought and I laughed it off. Yeah, just like the astronomer guys to do something like that.

       A bit later, the cinnabar covered skull with an open mouth, identified as NGC 7000;  came out just about the time a rose-like view of the Ring Nebula also emerged on the web. Last but not least what NASA called the "Hand of God." the thumb and two fingers standing up and the ring and little fingers folded down. 

NASA'a Hand of God
Seen only by the Hubble Satellite Telescope
Chandra -ray Observatory via Greenwich Observatory of England.

     The blue gaseous "Hand" was pointing to a oval of red gaseous star forms, that I found later to also have been recorded as a perfect ring in two instances, one the Nuttall Codex and another time in a small painting of 1516. The two pictures below are two native native versions of that Hand.

  As for the "bull's head" in front of the metal tube?  Could it be an ancient telescope instead? How could this tube under a normal tree see something in the sky that only the Hubble can see now?

     The Maya and the Mixtec saw the above versions of the sky Hand. Eric Thompson first mentioned the hand of god his book Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, [that I found on page 132 of the 1971 fourth printing of the third edition of his book.]

 "An association which brings together death or sacrifice, stone knife, and hand is to be found in the Yucatec name for the knife which is:  u kab ca (ku0  or "the Hand of God. (Scholes and Adams, 1938, 1:42)"

     It was not discovered until the Hubble Space Telescope found the nebula that they actually named "The Hand of God."  It was a few months later that I found that this nebula could be found in the constellation Compass located near the South Pole over the Pacific Ocean. The strange part about the Maya and Mixtec information was that this nebula was seen by them in the center of the sky. It may be a further view of the Summer Triangle that was discovered in Peru, to be 90 degrees to the left (of a viewer), with Vega, its brightest star at the top.

     North of the Equator Vega is to the right of the Milky Way within the constellation Lyra. while Deneb is at the top of that triangle created by Vega, Altair [in Aquila] and Deneb as part of the Northern Cross.***

     Nor did it make any sense at first until the lowered trajectory of the comet [Hunahpú] and Stela 22 of Izapa are taken into consideration as actual records of the fact that the sky did change its position even though the earth's orbit stayed the same except fot the extra days added by the earth's new lopsided spin.

     The Persians saw the NASA version with an insignificant telescope that today would be a useless item if compared to our great observatories.  Charlemagne in his Chapel also created a ceiling with the Hand of God surrounded by angel wings, similar to that of Cacaxtla. The Maya "square" symbol with the feet around it, probably indicates the path where this nebula was seen around the square world that they were aware of in the Yucatan.

      The question then remains, are the above "Hands" also part of the stories that the Maya glyphs are portraying on the various stelae around Mesoamerica?  Is it part of the story of the Popol Vuh and the birth of the Twin comets (called Hunahpú and Xbalenqué) which passed through the mouth as spittle from the father's skull, as NGC-7000 located near Deneb and part of the Summer Triangle?

     It appears to be almost the complete story of the virgin mother [called Blood Moon] who conceived the Twins from the spittle of the dead father in the tree (where NGC-7000 is located in the Milky Way). The Maya apparently were able to track the comet from the source of the meteorites that fell from the wrist of the "Hand of God" and sped through the mouth of NGC-7000, arriving as the mythical "magic net" bag that held so much corn for Blood Moon, that the grandmother of the Twins had to accept her as a daughter-in-law, even though the father had died.

     Was Blood Moon, not the moon, but the great eye, decorated with metal, of Seven Macaw who also had turquoise teeth, both of which were eventually removed as debris from the dying star, now called the Ring Nebula located near Vega in the constellation Lyra. How was ir done? Most certainly NOT by aliens from Outer Space. Then, how many years, centuries or eons ago was our earth in a position to see such stars?  Only the glyphs will be able to tell us when and why. They may even give us the proper Maya date.  (See the Map of Tezacoalco, it appears to have the name of the astronomer attached to the trajectory of the comet???)

The Creation of the World

The story of the Creation of the World, is not the Creation, as much as it is about the re-Creation of civilization, after along session in the caves, where food and other supplies gave out within a short time. in spite of rationing..

The disaster is mentioned by most cultures around the world and these versions indicate that many people were destroyed during that time.

In the Mesoamerican world, the Ramirez Codex, might have more information about this re-creation of the world, than realized. The short version is by Phillips, Jr. H.   (1883)  History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings Translated and edited by Henry Phillips Jr. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society XXI:616-651, 1883. (edited  for FAMSI by Alec Christensen)

Also one might want to read the beginning of Goetz -  Morley's and Goetz -  Recino's versions of the Popol Vuh before a decision is made about when it occurred..

The "making of the dawn" actually comes before the birth of the last sun; the one that Tedlock heard from his translator "that is not like the sun that you see."   The next element was the journey of the remaining tribes. The Aztec version of the migration was placed in the  

Tira de la Peregrinación (Migration Scroll); (from the original manuscript: Codex Boturini,ed.) 

 with Huitzilopochtli  giving directions from a bundle on the back of a priest who was leading the group.

The presence of Huitzilopochtli only means that the comet of the Twins of the PV or the Aztec version of Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl already occurred. Huitzilopochtlli is just a fragment of the Xolotl part of that double comet that had magnetic properties. Otherwise, Huitzilopochtli could never have "spoken"  to the priests who led (even the Zuya) pilgrims away from the seven caves and Curl Mountain as is shown in the Codex Boturini. 

The Mexicans were the first to use the magnet, not China. But that is another story that is so convoluted that it is possible only to identify Flower/Fruit Mountain and the stone egg (and of the rapid actions [fluttering of the hummingbird image] of Huitzilopochtli).

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.

Re-birth of the Maize God

Mother of Maize
and
The Old Fire God.
(Courtesy of L. Schele)

  How could the Maize God be reborn?  Maybe, when ground, maize becomes tortillas or tamales, but they were always there to begin with. Roasted, it becomes a great snack, but it is still maize on the cob.  Maize is common corn kernels, at times as different colors, but it is still maize. The problem that arises when one thinks of re-birth it has to be a GREAT change . . . in personality, or in form.

      The Maize God was on his way north with four other sky creatures, so that he could be reborn in the north or in the northwest. First, it should be useless kernels, maize that could never be used for anything other than to feed livestock. Only then is a re-birth possible.  Just as  the human condition demands a great sacrifice of self so that a new more useful life can emerge, the maize must become useful.

K-1892 The birth of the Maize God

      Justin Kerr's notations for this plate that shows the birth of the Maize God  and is called the  Resurrection Plate.His notations say: the Maize God (Hun Nal Ye) is resurrected by his sons Hun Ahaj and Yax Balam. But after the Kaye Almere Read wrote in 1998, it was clear that the dotted persona was the diseased sun god, with splotched skin lesions,¹ not Hunahpú, at all, but the real sun that we do know with its very familiar sun flares that are sent away from that orb periodically.


 To paraphrase the second half of the visual glyphs [not the phonetic version] together with the caiman and his companion within the carapace of the turtle:   Hun Ahaj  [First Lord] and Yax Balam  [New (Green) Sky Jaguar] were the progenitors on/in the  [turtle-place, i/e.: wet lands] when the Maize God was re-born; after the smoking star (comet) carried death from the sky.

The above picture was redrawn by Karle Taube for Dennis Tedlock's Popol Vuh and is much clearer than here. Tedlock wrote a caption for this plate and it reads very differently:

Their father is put back together by them: Hunahpu left and Xbalenque (right) resurrect their father. He takes the form of a maize god in lowland Maya art, here emerging (or sprouting from a cleft in the back of a turtle: the earth)²    

      It is true that the two figures at the front and back ends of the turtle shell were killed by Hunahpú and Xbalenque, the Twins are not resurrecting the father (who was a skull hung in the Milky Way  tree [in that story, a magic corn stalk]. The father could not be resurrected because his bones had not been found. It was for this reason that the Father had to remain in the sky without his body [as the nebula NGC7000?]. The Twins informed their father that he would be honored above all as the Heart of the Sky.

And since the Maize God traveled behind Seven Macaw and in front of the Howler Monkey are both Itzamna as the Iguana, and  Xolotl, as the dog. All had different functions when they would reach Tamoanchan, the Paradise of the Gods. Yet with all the clues as to the function of the Maize God scattered in various cultural myths and traditions, it is difficult to find any solid reference as to why the Maize God even had to be re-born.

     According to the Popol Vuh,  Seven Macaw became bright as the moon, then, as the sun, while the Howler Monkey was going to live in the Northwest, at the very top of the "Tree of the Beautiful Rose," [according to the Aztec version of two gods who finally helped the sky to be raised by becoming trees, one was that of the Rose, and the other, that of the Warrior].²

    "The Tree of the Rose" was part of the Seven Macaw dwelling place-to-be in the Tree of the Milky Way, above Scorpio as seen  in Justin Kerr's K-1226 (above) and verified by Sahagún in Libro Siete, Capitulo 4, #4 of the Florentine Codex, as the location of the Great Star, which also can be found in the bowl tied on top of the Old Fire God's forehead. (See  Posting  for 3/22/12, Tuesday: The Track Gets More Complex.)   On page 264 of the Florentine text:  Bk VII, Chap. IV, Nbr. IV: Sahagún summarized all astronony statements found in Chapters III and IV by stating:  

     " IV: About these stars, that in some parts are called the Wagon, the people call them Escorpión (Scorpio) or Alacrán and they are called such in many parts of the world."²

      Even though the above quote tells nothing about the Maize God's journey with Seven Macaw to the northern skies,  it does menttion that Scorpio (a constellation inferred) is important to the "Tree" that is the 'home-to-be" of Seven Macaw. The only confirmation that Seven Macaw and the Maize God had any connection at all is when the Paddler Gods took them in the canoe up the Sky River, now called the "Milky Way." It is the spiral of our galaxy that is thought to hold up the sky.

       Hunahpú, brother of Xbalenque, is believed to be the Venus planet in the morning sky, and as the "Sun" that was born on the first day of the present era. It was the "sun" (comet) from the northwest that met the true sun midway across the sky as if it was a mirror image returning to his home in the east. That strange passage of the Sun after its birth. Those who research this trajectory, alter the text to read from the "east" where the sun actually rises every morning. The Mopán Maya tale in which 

Lord K'in, [the sun]goes from his home in the east to the center of the sky and then back to the east again. It appears that he goes clear across the sky because he has placed a mirror at the 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, 1996: 304, n. 160)

 So the Maize God was re-born after his arrival from the northwest, and after his association with Seven Macaw of the blue Turquoise Teeth.  Reading the Popol Vuh, it tells us that the "turtle was hung above the ball court" and when Xbalenqué hit the turtle shell with a stone, it broke into a thousand pieces," as if [they] were seeds" 

When the Lords of Xibalba returned, they exclaimed, “What is this we see?” Then they began to play again. Both of them tied. PresentlyXbalanqué threw a stone at the turtle, which came to the ground and fellin the ballcourt, breaking into a thousand pieces like seeds, before the lords.⁵  

     When the debris [pieces of the broken shell], the trajectory of the third run of the double comet was now closer to the horizon. And as such, it became "the Birth of the Sun" in the Popol Vuh. The translators were told  "What you see is not the real sun."  Because of this, the original text is always justified to make sense without checking facts about the northwestern entry point of comets that enter our atmosphere. The translators just did not understand.

     So they allowed that since the sun as we know it never rises in the northwest, the terminology of the northwest within the original language of the Popol Vuh, was misinformation. and permission was granted that all further translations would be able to use the word 'East' because it is obviously an error. Yet the "mirror" was there only because the brilliance of the comet, outshone that of the normal sun as the two met in the middle of the sky. 

     When the Old Fire God [the ball or the player Hunahpu himself] came too close to earth, it burned every land it passed over.  Corn cobs left for the animals blossomed into popcorn kernels.  The miracle of re-birth was POPCORN that enabled the starving people in the caves to survived until the "comet ball player" in the sky finally went on its way never to return. 

     Thus the Old Fire God and Mother of Maize became one in a marriage of fire that allowed the Maize God to be re-born.  It became the main festival of the Aztec world and many other tribes.

Sahagún, Vol. I, Book I, Capitulo X, 4,p. 50 , 5: Y por esto las hacían fiesta y en esta fiesta ofrecían en su templo, o en las encrucijadas de los caminos, pan hecho de diversa figuras, Unos, como mariposas, otros de figura del ray que cae del cielo, que llaman xonecuilli, y  también unos tamalejos que se llaman xucuichtlamatzoalli, y maíz tostado que llaman ellos izquitl.   [izquitl - popcorn flowers.]

The Conclusion

     Since the festival of the Fire God included Izquitl [after he married the Mother of Maize] there had to be a special gift given by the groom to the bride. In a marriage on earth, usually a child is born after nine months. So one can take the nine months as a real time span and say that the Sun from the west came upon the western horizon so close to the earth that it created deserts where there was none and dried up a huge portion of the earth, especially those parts that had been inundated by a flood that surged over the mountain tops.

     Maize that had been useless for human consumption had been stored for the animals and with the flood, was spread out in the mud and debris left by the waters of the sea.  when the Sun from the west passed over and dried the mud flats, the maize burst into bloom as beautiful flowers in the dead earth. The new children of the Mother of Maize; the rebirth of a new Maize God created by their sky marriage.

      Men who had survived in the caves, came out on to the seared earth, saw that their hard work during the year in the milpas had been utterly destroyed.  As they walked dejectedly back to the caves their eyes downcast, they came upon the "flowers" peeking out of the dried earth. Someone tasted one and found it to be just like food. Did they race back to the caves with the newly flowering cobs in their hands, where their starving wives and children were waiting for news that the milpas were safe and ready for a good harvest? 

      The women and children were as joyful as their men when they saw the new food. They all gave thanks to the Maize God for his rebirth, the Maize mother who gave a new kind of birth and the new husband, the Old Fire God, who helped to create these new maize children.  When their world returned to normal, they did not forget, the Old Fire God, nor his new wife, nor his new maize children. They created festivals for all using the very flowery maize that saved their lives after the disaster.

 ___________________

¹   Kaye Almere Read (1998). Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos. Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press, pp 49 58.

²   Tedlock, Dennis (1996) Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 140.

³    Sahagún, Bernardo de (1956). Historia General de Las Cosas de Nueva España. México, DF, México: Editorial Porrua, SA Book VII, Capitulo III, IV.

⁴   Phillips Jr., Henry (1883) History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings Translated and edited by Henry Phillips Jr. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society XXI:616-651, 1883. (edited  for FAMSI by Alec Christensen) p. 35:  Appendix:  Note 21.

⁵  (1954) 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] p. 148, Web version.

The Marriage of Nature and Humans

       Have decided one should get a view of what the native populations think about their land, their volcanoes and such, especially those in Mesoamerica.

       The New York Times News Service reporter, commented about the dangers of the volcano, Popocatepetl,  and also poked around talking to ordinary people on the street. He found that even the food vendors had information about the volcano and how they all felt about it.

      "Rosario Jesus, 55, during his stop for tortillas in San Cayetano, was one of many who joked that, Don Goyo, the more familiar name for the volcano,  “is a friend when he’s quiet but not much of a friend when he’s mad.”


        Like many others around here, she noted that 2012 has been a particularly bad year "in the marriage of nature and humankind," noting that strange weather patterns have been occurring all over the world. It seems that maybe we have been too busy looking at the 10 o'clock News and not sensing what Mother Earth has been doing around us.

The "marriage" and "anthromorphic" concepts between the land and the human condition is a fitting comparison.


One that the ancient Maya have been well aware of for many centuries, but  every once in a while a volcano would get angry, or a great storm at sea would reach land.  Or, as in the Popol Vuh a great star in the sky would explode.  The land, the sea, and the sky have not always been in synch. It appears to be even less so now.

The 360-Day Year: How it Was Butchered

From; Wauchope, R. (1975) Handbook of Middle American Indians  vol 14:  Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, part 3, Austin, T exas: Inioversity of Texas Press. Fig. 73 #2: after Valadés,  Rhetorica cristiana, 1579.  

        Since the meteorite that hit the world was calculated to have arrived about 65 million years ago, no one yet has explained the collective memories of the world who have described the greatest disaster ever to befall it. Humans, even if they existed 40 mya could never have recalled an event that occurred at least 25 million years earlier in earth time.

     And again, why were the calendars of the Maya re-created to read differently then the original researchers were able to determine, just by reading both the myths and texts that were available to them? Why would there have been such a "cover-up" of the data that, by the way, is still available to all? (See the above calender from 1579 or so.)  The Veytia Chart is an excellent example of the native calendar even in 1579 and later scholars such as: Manuel Leon-Portilla, Jacques Soustelle, the Madrid Codex, have since confirmed such a calendar.

     Since a 13-month year would only make a 260-day calendar, the actual number of months has to match Sahagún's number of months, i.e. 18 months,  Yet, somewhere along the line, someone decided that the only calendar of worth was the 260-day calendar of the horoscopes.

      Such calendar features were never useful to history nor have they been useful in any modern calendars, no matter how many rulers believed [or still believe] in the "luck of the [good] stars and the "evil portends" of the bad ones.

      

     These concepts would only agree with the gestation period of a pregnant women, AND with the church doctrine, that Mary's Immaculate Conception was in March and Christ's birth was in December. However, this is NOT a religious or a medical definition blog.

      The 260-day horoscope calendar is the only other "numeration" that gives us any verification that the 13-week is also the four agricultural seasons, from burning the milpas, planting the maize, and the final harvest, with a whole extra season to celebrate a good harvest to be eaten, sold, or traded for necessities, and to thank their God for it.

      The five extra days were added outside of the four quarters,  even though they had to be taken into account after the years that produced no food. Yes, the skies had changed and the growing season also had to be accommodated to fit these odd days that had been added to the years.  

      The current concept of the calendar in Mexico proper is touted by those who learned the calendar from their parents and ancestors.  Near El Tajin, the Voladores spin from their poles and the waiters and concessions nearby are equiped with some excellent information based on the ancient glyphic calendar system:

       The four flyers, who are hand-picked to start their training at age 10, circle the pole 13 times each, he says, giving a total of 52 revolutions. The number 52, aside from being the number of weeks in a year, was important in Mesoamerican culture, which had two calendars -- the 365-day solar year and a 260-day ritual year. The calendars coincided every 52 solar years.……………" (See Flights of Fancy, JOURNEYS - THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY: BRENDAN SAINSBURY at  Side Panel)

       Nevertheless, it was still necessary to retain the old calendar of the Maya (and the Aztecs, Mixtec, etc); otherwise, the glyphs and ancient histories in the Codices and on monuments can never be read properly. The horoscope has its place in the world, of course; but if the 13 are the number of weeks in a season, not the numbering of days, and the 52 revolutions are the current 365.25 number of weeks in a year, does one follow the 20 days per each of the 18 months that is found in the Codices, or are scholars to follow the information given out for the later centuries in Mesoamerica?

     The ancient solar calendar, world wide, was originally 360 days, even in those  codices. And, as above, in the VII century AD, the Copan Academy of Science changed the calendars to fit a 365-day year.  Is that information to be destroyed by an overabundance of computer calculations that does not know to differentiate between the centuries of change? Even the Julian count does not accommodate the archaic calendar since it does not know when or how the calendar had to be altered to begin with.

       So when was it decided that the original calendar had to be ousted? As far as I have been able to research the calendar, there is a new note in Jose Castillo-Torre (1955. 193) Por la Seňa de Hunab Ku in which he gives some very interesting data about the first day of the first month of the year 1583/4.

      It has been believed that Hunab Ku was a New Age movement in Mexico that is way off base from the original beliefs of the native population. Yet, this particular book is a very short but concise history of various monks, and locations in Mexico up until the calendar was completely altered by the church in 1583/4 AD.

        The method used by the church at that time, was ;first to create month names so that it would make it easier to match the Eurasian years.  Then it was necessary to choose the first day of the first momth.  The name of the first month of the year was 0 POP from the date July 26 the Eurasian year.  The first day had to be a match so it became One IMIX from the Eurasian date February 8.

        Now how that was supposed to "match" the Eurasian year, I do not know and Jose Castillo-Torre could not explain it either.  He was just a historian who wrote out the data he had researched and when he could not explain it, he only added all his references in the back of the book so that anyone could do the research on their own. The new search might pick up information that his had missed.

   

    

There were Five More Days in The Year? Really?

FIg. 01:  When the sky was raised, Two trees it held up:
that of the Beautiful Rose Tree and that called the Tree of the Warrior (Orion)
[The square eyes on the faces indicate surprise about the event.]

   No one really reads the Madrid Codex any more.  Figures used for the calendar entries are  almost useless in identifying even the well-known Blue Star [with its turquoise colored teeth] found in the other codices, AND in the Popol Vuh.  Even so, it goes into great detail about the journey of the heavenly "bees" that caused great blisters, similar to hot resin or splashing, burning turpentine on both man a beast. M-109 appears to be when the main "bee god" leaves his home and leads his heavenly citizens to the Planet Earth, Yet, it was not until after the heavenly "bee" homes were cut with axes.

    Even so, a common "pendulum" problem is found only illustrated as the six Tikal Bones with the Paddler Gods and their broken canoe as it "waffles like a pendulum" in the waters of the mythical star river called the Milky Way.

    A grandfather clock is different, it is moving in relation to the wound-up spring inside the clock that is turned with a key every night. It is completely dependent up the holder of that key. If the key is not used by the person to tighten the spring, the clock will stop of its own accord.

    But where the planet Earth is concerned, there is are two-whammies to consider. One, that it orbits around the sun during a year; and, two, that it also spins in a lop-sided circle every 24 hours.  So in effect, we have a circle within a great oval. It is similar to the cog-like composites of the Maya calendar and how it handles the uneven day count (of 13 days) with the wildly different month count (of 20 months), that includes a larger cog of Katuns.

    WOULD IT NOT BE INTERESTING IF it were in fact 13 MONTHS OF 20 DAYS EACH? One could probably then connect the information better to our own calendar years. But that is too simple an explanation. NEVERTHELESS, it is well documented that the calendar of Meso-America had been redesigned so many times that even Bishop Noriega of the Spanish church in Mexico in the XVIII century could not keep up with the changes made.

    He, in frustration, wrote of those multiple changes his Despedida to the parishes within his See.  For that matter, the Madrid Codex, shows that there were 20 days in each calendar month that began with Imix. But Imix was not a month, instead it seemed to start a 20-day cycle, having 18 "months" in one year of 360 days.  That would have made it 180 days for one half of a year with a quarter of the year (as three of our months) or 90 days.

     That, in turn, would have agreed with the cycles of the year  (1) burning [90 days], (2) planting [90 days], (3) harvesting [90 days] and (4) 70 days for preparation for a grandiose "Thank you" festival for the Maize God [to be held during the last 20 days of the year]. A much more sensible calendar with a serious purpose. The above change to the calendar, even adding the five extra days would not be a disaster. And it would probably help in re-establishing proper year counts.

     Respected researchers in the scholarly world actually did discover the 18 months of 20 days in each month. They are: Sahagún, J. Soustelle, M. Leon-Portilla,  José Castillo-Torre, the hidden narrators of the Popol Vuh, [as an astronomy book] together with the Madrid Codex, is to mention just a few.

     Who was it that chose to ignore these venerable scholars in favor of a more modern translations? By returning to  their investigations, would that not create better calculations of the Maya calendar system?