Cenotes: Sacred water holes, or Swiss Cheese?

      When one thinks of "cenotes" one thinks of the Chichen Itza in the Yucatan.  There are various names for cenotes in Mexico:

  In 1936, F.G. Hall,  named various types of open wells found in the Yucatan; i.e. Cenotes-cántaro: Jug, or Pit cenotes have a surface connection much smaller than the diameter of the body of water below; Cenotes-cilíndricos: Cylinder cenotes  have vertical walls; Cenotes-aguadas: Basin cenotes only have shallow water while grutas: Cave cenotes usually have a horizontal entrance with liveable areas around pools of clear water filtered through the cave ceilings. [1]

      In Mexico, some "cenotes" were once used  as  living quarters. In 1985, Charles Gallenkamp, wrote such a descriptions of certain caves four miles east of Chichén Itzá at Balankanché (Translated as "throne of the Balam" [Yucatec].)  One such cave had a stalactite in center of a room from floor to ceiling. It is similar to one posted during the year 2008. The description of a cave with a stalactite carved to resemble Itzamná the Lizard. [2] It is the same as the central pole ceremony of the house that was being built, even though the house did not carve the pole into the icon of Itzamná.

      Thor Anderson once studied in Chiapas, in the Maya village of Kruston. Even though he did not hear of any cenotes in the mountainous region where he was working, he did learn caves in the nearby hills may be limestone. However, he also was reminded by his co-workers that those caves were taboo.

       So, instead of exploring the land,  he worked hard with the builders and learned quite a bit about house construction. Being so close to the natives and interacting with them, he also learned a bit about their idioms [modismos] and semi-mythic history. His description of how the central pole in Maya houses, dedicated to Itzam-ná, god of the earth and the sky, was a lesson in Astronomy and Geology, even so, I was clueless when I finally walked in those caves. [3]

      It was years later, when I was in San Cristobal with Socorro, we toured several of those caves. They were immense caverns, with pure water in deep pools, that because of their clarity seemed to be shallow. The cave guide informed us differently. The pool we admired, was very very deep. Water filtered through the limestone roofs from the land above created the depth of the pool because of the moisture that dripped from the ceiling above the pool.

Where Cenotes became Swiss Cheese holes in the Land

      The Maya knew there was some reason for the cenotes to exist. Never were they surprised when a sinkhole appeared, i.e.: as when the Sacred Pool at Chichen Itza lost its roof. Since it was never a constant threat to the land, the pools were treated as "donated" by the gods, to help the native population survive where water was scarce on the tableland itself.

     Technically, sinkholes appear in limestone country all over the world. Heavy rains, a burst drainage pipe, anything can cause such an unexpected hole in the ground. However, in spite of the verification of its limestone base, Florida is made up mostly of coral rock. Basically, the peninsula was built on old island-type atoll formed by coral  reefs of long, long ago. Southern Florida, south of Miami, there is a coral rock castle, built by a recluse who liked the ease of digging up the rocks and easily carving them into massive structures of his own design. 

      Several science magazines and newspapers, including the small map above, have commented on the loss of coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and off the coast of Hawaii. They found that the water was acquiring more acid and was eating away huge areas of coral. The skeletal remains of coral also began to disintegrate. New reefs for fish who had fed off the coral were created from old cars, and other types of debris. Such action seemed to solve the problem. It did not. The living coral that fed and protected the various species of fish is no longer alive, teeming with fish and living coral.

     As the acidity of the waters continued to grow, rain became scarce on the mainland, especially the Florida peninsula. Scientists found that certain chemicals could expand clouds so that they could produce rain. Vapor trails covered the skies when rain was scarce. And abundant rains fell, somewhere else!

However, since clouds are driven by the air currents, the rains seldom fell where the vapor trails were first seen. Has anyone noticed that Texas had 100 days with temperatures over 100° during one summer without rain? Or was it only 99 days? Does it matter? 

From:   os-florida-sinkholes-map-20130812

     Florida has acquired a new problem. Since 1954, more than 500 sinkholes have appeared in a single county. It is not attributed to the gods, and there is nothing sacred about them. They are destructive, and at times, take a victim. The only entities that reacted, were insurance companies who were deluged with sinkhole damage claims statewide. The State decided in 2010 to create statute of law that would require people to pay for insurance to cover future claims.[5] The people pay the fees and, in turn, recover part of their losses. However, no one has managed to recover those lives that had been lost.

". . . a sinkhole – a hazard [now] so common in Florida that state law [now] requires home insurers to provide coverage against the danger.. ."

"Acidic rain can, over time, eat away the limestone and natural caverns that lie under much of the state, causing sinkholes. Both extremely dry weather and very wet weather can trigger sinkholes, [an investigator] said ."

More than 500 sinkholes have been reported in Hillsborough County alone since the government started keeping track in 1954, according to the state's environmental agency..," 

and

"There have been only three deaths ever in the state related to sinkholes in Florida, but there were others in other states, countries,i.e. Canada, and  even our own Hawaii."

"There are more than 15,000 verified sinkholes in Florida, including 23 sinkholes within a mile of the one that took Bush. There are more sinkholes in Florida than any other state, according to the firm."

      Mother Earth is crying and no one is listening.  Does not anyone ask why?  Does anyone really care?  If the Sky, the Ocean and the Land are all in trouble, what are we doing wrong?  Why is Florida turning into a slab of Swiss Cheese?

_________________________________

[1]  Hall, F.G. (1936) Physical and chemical survey of cenotes of Yucatán, Carnegie Institution of Washington; Publication 457, 5-16.

]2]  Gallenkamp, Charles (1985, 203) The Riddle and Rediscovery of a Lost Civilization: Maya, (Third Revised Edition) Published in conjunction with the Exhibition Maya: Treasures of an Ancient Civilization.  Within a description of caves east of Chichén Itzá. (4 miles East) at Balankanché (meaning "throne of the Balam" [Yuctaec])  one cave had a stalactite in center of room from floor to ceiling. It was similar to the current (year 2008) description of a cave with a stalactite carved to resemble Itzamná the Lizard.

[3]  Anderson, Thor (1975, 162) Kruston: A Study of House and Home in a Maya Village. Thesis,  Harvard University. "The sixth question [claims]...This is what the trunk of the pochote tree is: it is a lizard. [i.e. iguana]. . . This is the trunk of the pochote tree, the base of the tail of a lizard. The language of Zuyua."

[4] O'Meara, Chris and Lush, Tamaraush (03/01/13)  Florida Sinkhole: Rescue Crews Try To Reach Man Swallowed By Massive Chasm, Web News.

[5] FL STATE  69J-9.001 Section 627.7065(2), F.S., requires the Department of Financial Services ("DFS") to consult with the Florida Geological Survey ("FGS") and the Department of Environmental Protection ("DEP") to implement a statewide electronic .... 7783297 10/16/2009 Vol. 35/41. 

The next year LAW:   69J-9.001 was proposed and confirmed. "The proposed rule amendment revises the rule to change the time period and restrict database submissions to only those claims that involve sinkholes and catastrophic ground cover collapse that were 'closed' and 'confirmed' ....' 9227239  10/8/2010"

One Subtle Impact of the Inquisition in the Nahuatl Language

     The Nahuatl language components, thanks to intensive scholarship, are being salvaged and taught again. However, one impotant aspect of all the languages in the Americas, is the deliberate plans of the Inquisition to demonize the good things in the lands here, in any way or form they could manage.,

         This is not an uncalled for problem, since ANY government, civil or otherwise, has always created derogatory components of the conquered mother tongue to create the impetus for a complete conquest. Posters from the World Wars I and II were more explicit "glyphs" but now we have better weapons and do not need words when the weapons alone do a better job.  

         One such victim of such deliberations during the Conquest of the Americas was the renown Pacal of Palenque, a "magian" with a speaking tube from below the temple floor, who according to the languaage components healed many diseases in his Maya medical center. Some words found in Nahuatl, those of which begin with the letters "PA" infer "good medicine."

      My library, as small as it is, contains several books. One, by Frances Karttunen: An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl; the second by  Bernardo de Sahagún, (1956). Historia General de Las Cosas de Nueva España. Another excellent book was a post-conquest Nahuatl dictionary by F. A. de Molina.  Translated in 1970 by Miguel Leon-Portilla: El Vocabulario en Lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana; it remains as an important reference book to long ago. 

      What is found in Sahagun's Historia, or in Molina's Vocabulario  appeared to be of no account, even though they are still used in the modern language. They refer to post-conquest events in both the ancient and modern versions of Nahuatl. The words may be spelled slightly different, but the original translations remain exactly the same and intact.      

      A very basic insult contains the name Pacal. But why Pacal, since he was in Palenque and not associated with the Aztecs in their known history. The word PACALTIA is related to the word PAC(A) that is translated as the causative verb "to wash, to launder something."  TIA{chcauh) refers to a person "more excellent than others", or "brave, and valiant." Even though TIA is not a whole word, it is attached to the word PACAL  which in turn, became a word for cleanliness, very necessary if a disease is to be cured.  

       Coincidence, it may be, since there does not seem to be any real linguistic connection between the verb and the suffix.

    However, that does not explain the word TePACtecALliztica that translates as the word "afrentosamente." (De Molina,  p. 101}.  At first glance, this word with PACtecAL in the middle of it, should be considered to be sheer nonsense if one is to make such a connection with the verb PACALTIA. 

         It seems like a foolish effort to pull out part of a word just to make a "provable" connection. That is all well and good, except for the Spanish words in the front of Molina's dictionary.  On page L-6   "Afrenta,"  and "afrendamente," is translated as TepaPACALiztii. While on page 118, "vituperio" is also translated as TepaPACALiztli. 

        So why is there even a difference in the spelling between Nahuatl and Spanish if the translations are the same? The conclusion I have come to, after reading Libro VII, Capitulas III and IV in Sahagún's translation of the Florentine Codex. The inference was angry prisoners who carefully crafted clues so that later generations would know how they really felt about the changes made to their native language and to the contents of the Codex. 

       First: Although the name Pacal does not appear in Sahagun's translation of the Florentine, his separate list of words contains a series of words that do, with the correct spelling of the Nahuatl words just below it, alphabetically.

chipacaltic very clear.
chipaccaltic very clear.
chipacpatic exceedingly clear, very clean.
chipacpahtic very clean.
chipactic clean, clear.
chipahuacaneci it appears clear

       It almost appears as if Sahagún was practicing a new word containing the name Pacal. But why the double "C"? It seems that Nahuatl is similar to German, insomuch as the prefix and the suffix are also important to a translation of a concept that uses the central noun.  So there is "ChiChi" with a double "C" that means "dog." and "tic" that with a single word may have the meaning "like" or "as."

          chichi          dog

citlalcuicuiltic painted like a star.

        Is it then possible to say that Pacal, the famous person in Palenque was to be considered "like [or as] a dog,"  hence vilified and reviled in all of Mexico, not just in the Maya areas?

       Secondly: Sahagún did make a special effort to tell later generations that he had other ideas about what he had to do and that he actually succeeded in the task he set for himself. In Chapter III of Book VII, he did not use the word Taurus for the constellation.  Instead he claimed that the Mastilejos Ithe title of Chaper III) were in the "signo del toro."

       Now, the word "toro" in a large Spanish dictionary has four different idiomatic phrases that contain the word "toro." And although I have no records in my files that the idioms are from the time of the Conquest, they are very indicative of what a monastic prisoner of the Conquest might want to say to his captors. The pequeño Larousse Español-Inglés/ English-Spanish Dictionary has these phrases: 

toro - figurative: 

          Echarle o soltarle al uno el toro: to give someone a piece of one's mind                             

                               or: decir los cuatro verdades: to tell the four truths,              

 al toro:                        to get to the point, 

           ser un toro corrido:   to be nobody's fool, to be an old hand, to be no easy mark. 

       Were these Sahagún's thoughts, or is this evidence of hiding information where no one could find it?  When I was leaving China by taking the Trans-Siberian Rail to Germany, I was informed by my stateroom companions, that as long as you are not hiding contraband, there was no need to worry, but if you are concealing anything, it would be the cubby holes in the stateroom that would be thoroughly searched.

        Concluson

      Then I remembered two maps of Texcoco, that are always printed upside-down. They have good information on them, but the orientation changes what one sees so that the valid information is ignored. 

In Nahuatl, by changing a word, including another and then make the politically correct translation so that it will be approved. 

      The rule of thumb, then is: "Hide something in plain sight of the enemy and they will never find it. Pacal was good, but he was made to be evil outside of his realm. It means that Sahagún may have done other things to the translations of the Florentine of which we are not yet aware.

K-3033: A Raft IS Not A Canoe. Why?

Linda Schele' version of the Paddler Gods who were transporting the Maize God 

on a raft, What happened to their canoe? IMS p. 5

     The Paddling Gods, with their legs hanging over the side, are rowing a raft, no longer do they have a canoe,  Their paddles seem to have more pertinent information on them, that was not done in the above drawing since the front oar has less clarity.  The raft is riding on top of a trefoil with a face with a black eye in the middle of a glyph.  Differences in various details are due to deterioration of the painted surface which makes some original items difficult to identify.

      In the above, the Maize god who is tossing out maize kernels to those in the water appears to have a macaw beaked-head in his headdress.  However, in the vase itself,  the form in the Maize god's headdress does not appear to be a bird form, but a human head with a sharp nose [See the original below]. The hand above the head of the Maize god seems to be attached to the headdress figure, not to the god himself. Both hands are left hands

Vase K-3033  ©Justin Kerr

     The man under the raft is flat on his back with a fish nibbling at his face.  His legs are raised in the same position that Pacal's legs are raised on his tombstone.  The paddles on either side of the drowned figure are again decorated differently than the sketch above.  Linda Schele saw the shadow of several intended lines other than what is defined on the vase itself but decided they were not clar enough to include in her sketch.

      The scene above is one of the underworld and in the waters where the Xibalbans threw the ground-up Twins, Hunahpú and Xabalenqu. Whereas the Tulum fresco is specifically a sky of constellations, roped in a sky net, similar to one of two vases, that of the Seven gods.  The rope at Tulum, although they are very straight lines still show the twisted rope, indicated by the twist on each section of the sky "rope."

      The two nude ladies remind me of the two destroyed warrior figures on the presentation of a sky net of  constellations in the Temple of the Frescos at Tulum that Ed. Barnhart is working with.  The "rope" indicates that it is the manner which, during their planting season, the Maya viewed the constellations.

      These connections are supposed to lead one to a different line of thought. There are whole stories behind every codex-style vase, those which are created as memory joggers. And in this respect, exactly what significance is it to have two left hands in a picture? there are many of these doubled hands in the Mixtec Codices. But no explanation is ever given.

Why Does The Maya Calendar Always Have To Be Adjusted?

The Pik-tun has always a mystery to me, especially when the Maya Calendar had to be 
adjusted around it. [1]

       As I see it, the many times, that I have read about the Pik-tun and its extreme numbers, I sincerely believe that the Maya Calendar is grossly misrepresented. I am in full agreement with Bishop Noriega of the XIX century, [2] who, in his farewell address to the Cathedral of Mexico City,  claimed:

" . . . enough good was brought [here] about Saint Tomé, although it is a shame Gama says that the explanation of the Mexican Calendar was erased, and it is full of crude mistakes . . ."            (Noriega, p. 16)

     He did not say that "St. Tomé brought the good," but what was brought to Mexico was good "about St. Tomé."  I think this was a wise way of saying that it was all created for the good of the people, so that they would believe what they were told.  His note about the Maya Calendar was due to the prisons he visited [or was incarcerated in for a time, since "all his honors and goods had been reinstalled and the possessions he lost were reimbursed due to the dispute about his writings. (p.15)]

       Noriega's main thrust in that statement was not so much St. Tomé's existence or non-existence, but instead, what Gama felt was done to the Mexican Calendar system. Since all calendars come about with the help of the stars and their locations in the sky, it is necessary to know the time period of those years  of study. One must also consider the study of the stars by the astronomers in Meso-America and what and how they learned about the stars that passed over their heads: what was different about them and what was the same.

       In the beginning., Maya houses were designed with square spaces in the roof framing, that made it possible to tie down the palm bunches in such a way that the rains never became a problem in the houses.

     Deliberately, or by accident, the men discoverdd that with a slight push against the palm fronds covering the fram here and there, one could actually see the stars as they passed from one end of the house to the other.  It was a practical way for the farmers, once they learned the star elements, and when they occurred. In this way no matter where they lived, they could see the correct stars for their systematic method of farming. The process was and still is similar to our modern quarterly tax collection methods.

      Every thirteen weeks (one quarter of the 360-day year that they were familiar with) the Maya farmers would perform the following procedures;   

First Quarter:

     Locate new plots on the mountain cliffs. Thus to begin the Tzolkin by  mid-March:

[El primer acto scenográfico de esas ceremionias consistía en la tala {cutting the trees} del monte alto y la roza de las hierbas; {cleared fields} El derrumbe {cliffs} de y la rl monte  y la roza eran el iniciarse el Ttzolkin y duraban hasta mediados de marzo; ]

Second Quarter:
      The burning of the land in order to create the bed of enriching ashes that wil make the milpa productive. the enrichment your fires en the second of April that precedes that which preceded by the the bounty of the rains

[El segundo, en la quenma de la tierra había de ser lecho de ceniza fecunda para las milpas, la quema arremolinaba sus llamas en la segunda quincena de abril que precede a las lluvias;]

Third Quarter:
       The planting of the seeds coincided with the time of the blessings by the sun during his reign at the zenith in the highest part of the sky, and

  [. . .las siembras coincidía con el tiempo en que el sol reinaba cenitalmente en lo más alto del cielo.]

Fourth Quarter:
      That all prayed that the benediction of the sun and by the blessings of the rains… [would bring a bountiful harvest.]

[…que todos quierían que fueran bendecidas por el sol y por la gracia de la lluvias.] [5]

  Conclusion

    The above matches the 360-day year as 4 seasons of 13 weeks of the 365-day year.  And it also matched the 360-day year of 52 weeks of only 20 days each.[6] There would have been no reason to add the Pik-Tun as a different measure to the Maya counting system, since there is no glyph to illustrate that terminology. Adjusting the Maya calendar with "better" (more modern) mathematics, by adding the name PIktun, did not NOT accomplish an understanding of the ancient calendar system,  The crudely compiled Veytia calendar attempted to correlate the 365-day year to the 360-day year. But it has been ignored completely. Why? Because the extra five days were not included in the calendar round.

     Maybe that was the reason why when the disintegrating comet returned to our northwestern shores from the Ring Nebula, no one even considered that the year 2008 was possibly the correct count for our anticipated 2012 event, four years earlier than expected!

 With all the adjustments made over the centuries to try to bring the seasons back into synch with the calendar, one only has to figure the first day name of the four seasons, which probably was found in the Perez Codex. The author, Eugrene Craine and his co-author, Reginald C. Reindorp, translated the burner times, but had no idea what they represented. The burner dates were not understood because they did not match any actual activity since the Conquest.

Addendum

     The sequence of the Calendar serpents in the Madrid Codex was regular for part of the year  they illustrate, but one or two of these serpents did not like facing the same direction, so they turned around and looked the other way. This matches the Hopi Prophecy, thought to be the ninth.  It tells us that "there would be a blue star in the sky, when the earth would rock to and fro."  In that way the earth would be destroyed, [again].  I say "again" because the ninth prophecy of the Hopi was actually the very first historic event that the world recorded after the great disaster. The other eight prophecies are the rest of Hopi history giving an accurate time line [without dates] about the white men and what they accomplished as they destroyed the grassy plains.
____________________________

[1]  Jones, Tom and Carolyn, (1997, app. X, 06) Maya Hieroglyphic Workbook. Glossary. Page. 6 gives us more precise information: "The Piktun occupies [better stated as "has been added as"] the sixth position of the Long Count (LC) and related Distance Number (DN). Hence it is Equivalent to  20 Baktunob or 2,880,000 days but it is rarely used."

[2] de Mier Noriega y Guerra, El D. D. Servando Teresa, (XIX cent,. 13) Carta de Despedida a los Mexicanos, Appendex X, p. 13:  A manuscript was mentioned by Noriega, as being published in 1814.

By the same token on p. 15, Noriega also seems to have insulted those who had to reinstate his honors and goods by calling them of the "cauda clan" of flatterers ex omni et populo..." Caudal in Spanish means "wealth," or "caudal feathers" of a bird, but if one reads "cauda[l]" in English, it means the butt or tail end of a person. i.e. " Butt Heads . , .  However, today, it would be"A--H---s."

[3] Wauchope, Robert (Gen Ed.) (1975, 73-74-75) Handbook of Middle American Indians: Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, V. 14 part 3, (Vol. Ed. Howard F. Cline) Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. Veytia Calendar, p. 73.

[4] _________(1979, 20-21) The Codex Pérez and the Book of the Chilam Balam of Maní, Translated and edited by Eugene R. Craine and Reginald C. Reindorp. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. (Notes 2-4, p. 20-21)  i.e. 10 Oc, 10 Men, 10 Ahaw, 10 Chicchan and by using the same sequence for 4 Oc; 11 Oc, and 3 Oc. It appears that Oc should have been the first day of each season of the 360-day count.

[5] Castillo-Torre, José, (1955) Por la Señal de Hunab Ku:  Reflejos de la Vida de los Antiguos Mayas. Mexico DF, Mexico: Libreria de Manuel Porrúa, SA. Not information for the New Agers, but instead a reference book for the past.

[6] Madrid Codex.  On the pages of the serpent calendars, the sequence was regular for a time, but one or two of these serpents did not like facing the same direction, so they turned around and looked the other way. This matches the Hopi Prophecy thought to be the ninth.  It tells us that there would be a blue star in the sky, when \ the earth would travel to and fro.  In that way the earth would be destroyed, again.  I say again because the ninth prophecy of the Hopi was actually the very first historic event that the world recorded after the great disaster.

Death Penalty for Strong Swimmers?

     A long time ago, when I was at the University of Texas at Austin, I visited the Harry Ransom Center museum. Among the items that were displayed was a Greek vase with a warrior presenting a long cloth to his "intended [?]" before his journey to a distant battle; In the lower part of that vase was a goose, a guardian for Aphrodite's home, which in a text or two gave townspeople warnings of an invasion of strange warriors. Immediately, my intuition said that the cloth was nothing more than a chastity belt, an old fashioned method of keeping his espoused virgin wife-to-be safe from predators. This may not have been the purpose of that vase, but it was a very strong impression that I felt.

      As I was walking through the exhibits, I came upon another surprising item: A stone "yoke" reportedly having been used around the hips to bounce the ball hard enough that it would be shot through one of the two rings at the top of the Maya ball courts.

        The first clue I had about the yoke was an article about 10 years ago,. It was reported that a test game with a stone yoke place about the hips of a player was successfully played and the player with the weighty stone said it was an easy adjustment to make. It was said, that once the momentum of the player was started, the weight of the stone yoke made it possible to hit the ball harder. Such a yoke  on the hips of a player' maybe, would allow the ball to enter one of the rings above their heads.

       It was many, many years later, that I saw a good photo of tourists below the ball court rings. How far above, I did not know until a month or so ago. The tourists were standing directly under the rings. But those rings were basically at least a length of two persons standing one above the other over a third person on the ball court floor. In  an American baseball game, with a bat swung directly at a ball, it is possible that this sort of height and distance drive is possible, but such a target as two rings above the ball court is not a practical shot.

     Even in American football, the goal posts for a good strong kick is placed wide enough apart that any player with good leg power can kick a ball between the goal posts. But to get the ball through a ring on either side of the goal post, or even in the center, it is highly unlikely.

         The trajectory would be at an angle, whereas the rings are not set in at an angle, they both are  squared off as horizontal and veritcal to the wall. There is no other angle for entry of the ball itself. Maybe in a pool game with sticks called cues are used but there are at least three pockets on one side that the ball can rebound into, but only when that ball hits the bumpers around the table.

       What was bothering me and not letting me accept the conclusion of a proper ball game with a very heavy stone yoke, was reinforced the the skulls that were cut between the first and second vertebra and buried with honors near Lake Xaltocan, near Teotihucan.  about 30 miles from Mexico City.  This particular yoke in the HRC had a glyph of an owl in the exact center of the front edge. The Owl was, and probably still is, the harbinger of Death. The implication has always been that the loser would forfeit his life if he lost the game.

         Then I remembered a lesson in my Greek classes about Tacitus and his History of Germany. When I first read Tacitus, I found many small insignificant items about the Mexican land masses.  At that time, I ignored the impressions that were coming at me.

        They were not very believable about Germany, even though they have marshes and lakes;  but on the oth er hand, I knew only a little about Mexico geography. The Maya have more coastal waters than Germany which also has similar water configurations that includes many lakes but no estuaries along the coastal areas as Mexico has.

". . . . .poor fighters and evil livers are plunged into mud of marshes with hurdle on their heads. . . ."                   [Tacitus, p. 281]

       Hopefully, "livers" is a typo on my part and it really says "divers." Nevertheless, the image of death with a stone near or on top of their head, a yoke would be more feasible, since a common round stone on the head could shift away at any time. Even a flat one would tumble to the side at times.  However, a heavy stone yoke would have two heavy legs that would dig into a muddy bottom and pull the face of the warrior into the mud.

        It would be impossible for the victim to dig himself out of the mud before he suffocated in the morass. A concerned relative, would want the body salvaged from the mud for a decent burial. A different diver would go into the water and cut the head from the body haphazardly, with one or more vertebra; it did not matter. The stone around the neck might shift at any moment. To take out the body might take longer to cut and there would be no identification for the family. The two "legs" of the yoke made it possible to obtain either the head or the body while the instability of the stone in the mud would make it very difficult to acquire both head and body at the same time.

      A German method, or a Mexican method, it make little difference, who was first. A mass grave would not be a sacrificial site, it would have been a mass execution of brave warriors who lost a major battle with the help of efficient divers who knew the waters well enough to sabotage  the boats of the enemy. Basically, since all the skulls were in a proper burial grid, not haphazardly or buried within the homes, but were recovered later when the conquerors was had left the area for a time, or were temporarily on another quest.

        Why is it so hard for people to understand that all countries around the world honor their dead warriors who fell in major battles, I do not understand.  Maybe because our children no longer visit the graves of their soldiers on November 11 any more. They mau just go to the Vet parade and watch it for hours as the tools of the trade move past them.  The personal aspect of visiting the dead is missing from our lives. It has been so for many years now.

If the original story is not known. . .? ? ? ?

Vega within Asteroid Belt

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Calte\

 01/19/13  I just ran into a web news article entitled: Vega- Two Belts and the Possibility of Planets 

[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/pia16611.html]  

from the NASA  Spitzer Space Telescope, associated with many Hubble sky photos that have been amazing, to say the least, [even though all seem to be lab enhanced].

     The article, only as a tiny blurb, attached to a picture from NASA [See above] but the text refused to come in as a believable reference. The comment refers to a newly discovered asteroid belt around Vega while the one furtherest from that star is a cooler, well-known belt that only contains comets. The inference is that when and if, the warm and the cooler elements will migrate together, they would create an active "nursery" for baby stars.. However, 

"Astronomers think that the gap in the Vega system may be filled with planets, as is the case in our solar system. 

     The propotions for such a possible scenario is a 1:10 ratio that is also a ratio for our own galaxy, even though Vega was never considered as a galaxy center before. Well, that may be fine for speculation, but it is not an option to speculate until one knows the complete story about Vega. There is a possibility that the story could explain both the asteroid and the comet belts around that star. The story is contained in a mythic journey of the Twins to a place known as Xibalba. the Underworld. 

     However, that story is said only to be one of many Creation myths around the world, most of which are used as religious bases for the cultures in which they are found. Such myths are supposed to be "primitive" and cannot be accepted as stellar confirmation through the proper discipline of modern astronomy.

     Nevertheless, one aspect of the belt of comets and the newly proposed asteroid belt, point not  only to the nearby Ring Nebula with its strange shape: that of a beautiful rose, but  that Nebula is also located in the constellation Lyra, very close to Vega. 

    Now, I know I gave NASA, one of my books, and apparently, there is now quite a bit coming over the WEB from NASA that seems to refute what I have said, or seems to be a one-upmanship. I have no problem with their conclusions, but I do wish they would connect to facts instead of imagined and supposed  activities of stars that they are not old enough to follow from centuries back.

      The only people I know who have traced the stars for centuries, are the Babylonians, those from India and the Maya, together with the Aztecs, and a few other Meso-American and North American entities.  The one I know best is the Hopi prophecy [really,  a Prophecy?] The Popol Vuh, as an astro-creation story completely agrees with the data contained in the "prophecy." Yet, it is really not a prophecy of the future. Instead, since the other eight "prophecies are actual historic statements of our changes in our desert lands in the southwest,  It is and always has been the very first historic event, that the Popol Vuh recorded accurately.

      Even so, there seems to be absolute faith in a Hopi version of a disaster that happened centuries ago. It now also has a pseudo-historic notation made, as an after-thought, whenever that prophecy is described.  That odd statement is that Hopi children come from the Ring Nebula, the nova that exploded in the VII century. Only, the Hopi called it a planet, . . .  or the translator did. . . . to prove what? That there are many people in our world who want changes but do not know how to ask for them? 

     Since Greenwich has verified that nebula never was a planet, the only way anyone could have come from that star was, when the boy met the girl of his dreams out under the stars, where the blue star as bright and lovely, . . . .and, oops,. . . the girl got pregnant.  Later, when young children asked where they came from,  Well, gee whiz, there is not a father or mother in their right mind who would tell their children about sex at that early stage. Some parents tell their children, that momma swallowed an watermelon seed, or some other neat little reason that her girth is getting wider. 

     One would assume that the young couple loved their children. Their memory of  that night when the blue star in the sky was impressive; why would they not have remembered that night  and later when the children were born, the story the new parents decided to tell their offspring was that he/she came from a certain beautiful star in the sky. When the child asked which sttar? The Ring Nebula would be pointed out. . . . Why not make it a lovely story for the child? So much for aliens from outer space!

? Don't we say, in our modern languages, that the child was given to us by the Fairies, by God, or by one of his angels, but never as a virgin-birth. That birth event is reserved for the Gods.

.

The Green Boy on Wheels of Fire
The Asian Version of the Aztec Twin Comet Quetzalcoatl

     The Chinese version of Quetzalcoatl was "the Green Boy with flaming wheels of fire under his feet." This male version of the stepmother of Snow White can be found in The Journey to the West, the story of a Monkey King "who was born from a stone egg far across the ocean/sea to the east." A very popular story from the T'ang Dynasty in the VIII century AD.[1] The yoke around his neck and waist skirt both appear to be the Chinese version of the "venus" glyph, so popularly called the Venus Planet. Yet the planet never moved so fast that it could have been on wheels.

      It actually has an orbit around the Earth that returns in eight year cycles. So it would appear in the first orbit say, coming from the east and does not reappear in the east until the next year eight different times. My co-worker at the motel where I worked, gave me his chart of Venus, the planet, for those eight years. His chart ended in the year 2012 and it contained all the planet's azimuthal (degrees) sightings because he found that it was as regular as clockwork.

       It appears to me, that if the event was astronomy, then the whole world would have seen the same thing, so there would have been nothing strange about the Chinese, thinking that the Green Boy with fire at his feet, moved across the sky for the first time. . . . so they claimed that the comet was a boy, and not a man-size yet. At a time, when there were no Palomar or Greenwich observatories, nor radios, or even telephones, the description was appropriate.

     Yet, the story was said to have begun in Persia in the XI-th century AD, not Peru or Mesoamerica. The author of the original story was thought to be Ferdowsi. [2] Even though it came from the well-known story of many more sources than Disney ever imagined existed. It swept the continent as one of the many stories of the great knights of warrior status, who came to magically save their princesses. Children were eager to hear about knights and princesses who were threatened by the dragons.

      This reminds me of another memory of mine, about a calendar that was designed to convert from the Cesarean calendar to the Christian calendar, an event of the XIII-th century AD. The message, with that calendar, claimed that the process was so simple that even a child could do it easily. [3]

     Myths [Fairy Tales] are for children. Parables are for grown-ups and Truth is to be ignored as "Logic" laboriously pulled out of a complex system of analogies, syllogisms, and other complex methods of reasoning. It makes perfect sense for Logic to be presented as an adult think process, but the real truth is  meant to be found with children's simplicity; something that a person studying Logic would never dream of considering as valid knowledge.

     Looking down his nose sternly, a knowledgable professor could easily cower any bright student of philosophy in about two seconds. And they would never again mention any detail they had suddenly visualized after reading a myth or a Fairy Tale to their small children. Emphasizing "a more Intelligent level of study" instead of silly myths or fairy tales is a great way to guard closely information that was in the process of government censorship and apt to be wiped out completely from the history books.

1  XiYou Ji, The Journey to the West, the story of a Monkey King who was born in a stone egg far across the 

    ocean/sea to the east. A very popular story from the Tang Dynasty in the VIII century AD.

2  Ferdowsi (1967)  The Epic of the Kings, Shah-Nama:  The National Epic of Persia (Levy, Reuben, 
   Trans.). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press

3  Keller, John Esten (1967). Alfonso X: El Sabio. (Twayne's World Authors Series (TWAS 12): A Survey  of the 
    World's Literature.(Gen.ed) Sylvia E. Bowman, Indiana University, (ed)  

Peruvian or Maya Story?

        A long time ago, in 1986, Linda Quist did a dictionary of sorts about the various Maya glyphs and where they were to be found.

        By the time 2012 came around, prophecies were the big deal:  the world was going to end on December 21st, even though the Maya themselves told everyone who would listen, that it was just the end of a calendar sequence, no more, no less.  

        What I had discovered in the meantime, was a comet passing the Ring Nebula in 2006, just as one fit the description of the double comet in the Popol Vuh. Two years later, in 2008, it again repeated the sequence from the Popol Vuh as it was very close to the earth arriving at our northwestern states with a light so bright that he seemed to be 1,000 transformers exploding at once., It also created a noise that was just as deafening. It  seemed to me that it was the PV comet that returned and died on it final journey since no debris fell from the sky. . . or was just never reported in the papers or on the television programs since the comet had damaged nothing on earth, even though it came very, very close.

         In September of 2012, Gary C. Daniels wrote about the upcoming prophecies, and wrote this lovely thoughtful gem:

>>> … before we can properly decode and understand this prophecy we must first dive deeper into Mayan religion and mythology to build a solid base of knowledge from which to interpret this ancient text …[which many believed contained such prophecies of total destruction for 2012.) [1]

     Myths are for children. Parables are for grown-ups and Truth is to be ignored as "Logic" laboriously pulled out of a complex system of analogies, syllogisms, and other complex methods of reasoning. This method of reasoning was introduced during the Middle Ages in Europe.

        It was sometime after 1994, when I joined the Austin Writers' League, that we were sent out to the various schools to promote writing skills to the students. For some unknown reason, I ended up in a kindergarten class. Since I cannot sing or even tell funny children's stories, to connect to that age group, I had no idea what to say to them about writing.  It seemed to me that all those young ones were Hispanic; their young fresh faces looking up at me in anticipation of another game or silly rhyme that  would bring laughter to their tiny serious souls.

     Pushing my calendar backwards again to 1982, one of my fourth grade students had copied out a poem by a Peruvian poet about the two lovers who had become two mountains called Popocateptl and Ixtacuihautl. I thought of it as a similar tale that Disney created for the Silver Screen: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.   It was perfect for this class. So I asked the question, Who knows about Mexico?

     Not one hand was raised. But when I asked if anyone knew about Snow White, every child raised their hand and waved them. It had just popped out, but apparently I had a inkling somehow that Snow White was the Mexican Princess of the Disney version. I told them all about what I knew about the Comet (as the stepmother); the Hunter (Orion) and the Seven mini-miners of wealth in the seven mountains.

Snow White as Ixtacuihatl the White Lady
with the Stepmother who was the female version of the Comet  Quetzalcoatl
Looking into the "Magic Mirror" Lake called Texcoco

    The mirror on the wall, was Lake Texcoco, that could see the passing comet, and the beautiful snow capped mountain that looked like a sleeping lady. The story from fourth grade told of the prince who was sent to battle by the father who did not want his daughter to marry a soldier. When he returned with many honors and awards, the lovely princess [Ixtacuihuatl] had died. He carried her to the mountain and sat nearby [as Popocatepetl] for days on end.

His horse waited patiently behind him.

       Finally, the dwarves had to tell him it was time for him to go. So he asked that they raise the cover of her crystal casket. He then kissed her and the poisoned apple fell out of her mouth and she lived again. The prince [Popocateptl] and the princess [Ixtacuihuatl] got married and lived happily ever after. Oh, we cannot forget the prince's horse that took them away on their honeymoon: La Nevada de Toluca, where the horse is still waiting patiently for his master.

   But the hour was over and I had to leave the class of youngsters who thoroughly enjoyed the story about their prince and princess of the land they heard about, but had never gone there.  As I was leaving the teacher stopped me at the door. "Did you know that the stepmother was punished by having to dance in fiery metal shoes until she died?"  I stared at her aghast. She had just supplied me with the one thing that was lacking for my "imagined" comet.

   The comet over Mexico, during the great disaster, had dropped magnetic metal meteorites on the land. Those pieces of metal, when found, were considered to be part of "the heart of the sky." Every temple had one as their sign that the Gods had not forsaken them. Their [star] god had sacrificed pieces of his own heart so that the people of Meso-america could live happily ever after.

      And so the tale is complete, Disney saw it as a European story; the Meso-Americans saw it as the  story of the mountains, and, for those who lived along the Amazon River in Brazil, only saw it as a girl coming back to life when her father blew smoke into her lungs.[3] The Peruvians wrote the poem about that wonderful magic mountain range above the Equator. [4]

1 Gary C. Daniels, (2012-09-24). Mayan Calendar Prophecies| Part 1: Predictions for 2012 and   
   Beyond  (Kindle Locations 698-700). The Real Mayan Prophecies.com. Kindle Edition.

2  Daniel Ruzo, (1977) El Valle Sagrado de Tepoztlan, (2a. Edición), Editorial Posada, S. A.

3  Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. (1971). Amazonian Cosmos:  The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano   
    Indians. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. p. 29:  daughter [Ixtacuihuatl] 
     became a rock but Sun could revive her by smoking tobacco.

4  Peru,(1982)  The poem about the story of the lovers, Popocatepetl and Ixtacuihuatl, from one of my 4th grade
    students In Tapachula, Mexico.

     

   

H

Palenque: Temples XIX - XXI - XXII

Sailors with a Slave Carrying a Hawser [Rope]

       A few years ago, I attended the Maya Meetings when the major discussion was about Temple XIX.

The murals on that temple appeared to be a group of men with moustaches, club fingers and one-leg, who seemed to be sailors askpetitioning aid from the ruler of Palenque. As proof of their needs, the slave at the end of the mural wore a hawser rope around his shoulders and chest; a much easier way to carry such a rope, than attemptin to carry a coil of such.

     Since one-legged sailors were very common in the days of galleons with many sails, it ds to reason that fingers could have been removed with the aid of the sail sheets (ropes, quite a bit finer than the hawser that is not as thick as those 6"circumference ropes we use now for the big ships, but thick enough for a middle sized sailing or rowing vessel). It is possible to leave this particular view of the Maya to other sailor/scholars to work on.

Temple XIX - XXI - XXII

     During the lecture, Three temples were mentioned as being areas of sacrifice. A single bowl; one was found in each of these three temples. It was reported that all three bowls were exactly the same. It was also reported that each bowl once contained a heart of a "sacrificed" human. The bowl was not displayed within the workbook, so my interest was even more curious, than if it had been. I attempted to find a copy of one of the bowls, but the web did not have any access to such a bowl either.

       From the single slide shown, the decoration inside the bowl did indicate that it held hearts. but the outer rim was decorated with cloud scrolls. Clouds indicate sky and sky indicates, in turn, astronomy.  But, at that time, I could not understand why it was a sacrifical offering. If the main temples that gave the history of Pacal, [minus the areas had been removed from the beginning of the east panel], how would one know these bowls were used for human hearts?

     The odd element was of such hearts, that the strangers were petitioning assistance. They were not prisoners who had been captured and were being judged for their beauty (lopped off fingers, one-leg equaled "beauty"?) nor did they appear to be religious, as one willing to be sacrificed? They were not prisoners.  They were asking for help and were confident that it would be given.

     This year, the workbook was on a table, in the living room and I had nothing better to do (that I wanted to do} so i browsed the workbook.and discovered I had forgotten that the Temples of the Cross, Foliated Cross and the three temple mentioned in the title, were also part of the discussion at the Meeting.

        I had beensso involved and disappointed at not being able to find a picture of the cup, that I had completely ignored the map os Palenque that included the Temples XIX, XXI and XXII. This time the three temples were noted immediately. . . . they were skewed and a bit out of order. . . .  SKEWED? Why were they skewed?

      The Summer

<    Triangle of

      North America

<  Peru

        The Three 

        Temples at  Palenque         >

      The Three Temples of Palenque create a triangle that, if the top red line were placed directly on the temple to the left of it instead of on its platform, it would approximate the Northern Cross, Cygnus and the Summer Triangle, all of which are different names for the same constellation [and its main star Deneb]. Lyra's star is Vega, and Aquila's is Altair.  The only difference between the north of the Equator views and Peru, is that here in North America, Peru has a 90° "to-the-left" position common to constellations seen south of the Equator.  However, in different world locations, it can vary from a 90° to a 180° difference as in Hawaii, north of the Equator.

      This is due to the location of earth as its north and south latitudes spin seasonally between the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn, as the earth follows its orbit around the sun.

      So what is so important about the Summer Triangle? Nothing per se, but the main star in Lyra located in the Upper Register of the Milky Way was called Vega, was once the bowl tnext to a disintegrating nova, now called the Ring Nebula. The Aztecs called that star, also located in the Milky Way, The Beautiful Rose [in the] Tree, called the Milky Way. The lower register of the Milky Way had also just acquired a new bright star, Sirius, that complemented the exapnded Orion constellation that was then called The Tree of the Warrior.

     So if we assume that the three temples in Palenque are honoring the Summer Triangle, aka Northern Cross, aka Cygnus, could it be so important that it was also honoring the Three Hearthstones that contained the great fire stars [comets] during the turmoil in the heavens.

     Well, when the star disintegrated, meteors, meteorites and fire dust fell to earth.  And that was when the sky gods laughed so hard, they fell out of their seats [positions] in the sky.  Thus, to further honor the Summer Triangle, [aka the Three Hearthstones, aka Cygnus [Seven Macaw], and aka the Northern Cross], the priests searched for an found small meteorites, [that were discovered to be "magic' except that that magic we now call "magnetic."]  These magical stones were placed within the cups of the three temples and they were honored as the "Hearts of the Sky," not human hearts at all. When the Friars learned about the stones, they insisted that they were of the "devil" and asked all temple priests in Mesoamerica to turn them into the Churches.

     The event was such when the sky gods laughed so hard, they fell out of their seats [positions] in the sky. It is here that we first find the sky netting. But the Maya version only says it was a net bag used by Blood Moon to carry maize [corn cobs] to her new mother-in-law.

     It is in the Greek and Roman myths that the sky net was first appreciated for what it does. Basically Aphrodite and Aries were involved in a very serious meeting in the Greek version; and Venus with the same planet called Mars were just as involved in the Roman version, Hephaestus [or Vulcan] got angry, went to his forge and created a golden net in Greek; or a brass net in the Roman tale. 

     Hephaestus [Vulcan] then waited until Aphrodite and Aries were together again and threw the net over them and pulled the netting tight about them. It was then that the sky gods laughed so hard, they fell off their thrones. When they stopped laughing and rolling on the floor, they each returned to the seats, but after a bit, realized that they had each gone and sat in their neighbor's seat, not their own.

Once the sky net was seen and it was recognized by many as a great way to keep track of the stars,  the sky nets became very useful for astronomers and for any shaman who read horoscopes. The net clothing decorations were specifically designed for the sky gods apparel. Temple priests of astronomy also were given special permission to wear netted decorations over their regular temple attire. It became a great honor to wear such netting because it indicated that the priest was an astronomer of long standing. A man to be revered because upon his death he would join those stars which he had honored in his lifetime.

Conclusion

     The story is mixed up with too many outside sources . . . No it is not. The disaster was noted in many lands around the world. I only chose the lands that were contained in the unknown Americas. But the net capture scene had to be remembered and not deleted from history. So the obvious thing to do was to incorporate it into a "sexy tryst" between a wandering goddess and an orbiting planet  Such a text would be safe even in the monasteries. No one would even guess that it was an actual astronomy event. It would only indicate that even the gods, when cuckolded react in real anger. Some day when we are wiser, the world will understand that the stars are universal and, even with the lop-sided spin that we acquired, most sky events, [very serious ones], were also universally seen.

    

       The net in the sky was very real, It enclosed two star entities in the sky for a time and then, when the other entities rolled around in the sky and switched their locations accidentally, it disappeared from sight. but not from the memories of the Aztec and Maya people. The death toll was horrible to even consider. The tribes that disappeared were noted at the end of the Popol Vuh and their main god Tohil also permanently left the scene. The new sky gods were taken by the Twins into the northern sky in a canoe that was able to travel on the Milky Way, the River of [sparkling] Salt.

      We know the Ocean-sea is full of salt, it is our sole scientific reference, but how often has mankind wasted salt just to view a trail of that once precious commodity, salt, only to admire its brilliance in the sunshine or in the moonlight? To waste salt would probably have been a crime because it was so valuable. Who got sacrificed as a political enemy when they used salt to demonstrate the shimmer of the Milky Way at night?