When the author of the Troano MS., speaks of the Master of the land" par excellence, that is king Can deified, he pictures him sometimes with a human body, painted blue, and the head of a mastodon. On the facade of the building at Chichen Itza called by the natives Kuna, the house of God, to which Stephens, in his work on Yucatan, gives the name of Iglesia, is a tableau representing the worship of that great pachyderm, whose head, with its trunk, forms the principal ornament of the temples and palaces built by the members of king Can's family.
This tableau is composed of a face intended for that of the mastodon. Over the trunk and between the eyes formerly existed a human head, which has been destroyed by malignant hands. It wore a royal crown. This is still in place. On the front of it is a small portrait cut in the round of some very ancient personage. On each side of the head are square niches containing each two now headless statues, a male and a female; they are seated, not Indian fashion, squatting, but with the legs crossed and doubled under them, in a worshiping [94] attitude. Each carries a symbol on their back; totem of the nation or tribe by which the mastodon was held sacred. Under these figures, are two triangles emblems of offerings and worship in Mayax as Egypt. So also was the other symbol image of a honey-comb, an oblation most grateful to the gods, since with the bark of the Balche tree, honey formed the principal ingredient of Balche, that beverage so pleasing to their palate: the same that under the name of nectar, Hebe served to the inhabitants of Olympus. It is the Amrita, still enjoyed, on the day of the full moon, by the gods, the manes and the saints, according to the Hindoos; although it was the cause of the war between the gods and the Titans, and is the origin of many sanguinary quarrels among the tribes of equatorial Africa even in our days.
These symbols leave no doubt as to the fact that the personages represented by the statues are in the act of worshiping the mastodon.
The corona of the upper cornice, that above the mastodon's head, is formed of a peculiar wavy adornment often met with in the ornamentation of the monuments erected by the Cans. Emblematic of the serpent, it is composed of two letters N juxtaposed, monogram of Can. The corona of the lower cornice is made of two characters [95] that read in Maya Ah aam, He of the throne - the monarch.
In Japan the seven members of the Can family, deified and figured by the same symbols as in Mayax, are worshiped today in the shrine of the palace at Tokio, dedicated to the goddess symbolized by a bird. This goddess calls to mind the goddess Moo of the Mayas, or Isis of the Egyptians. In the upper part of the shrine, over and above all the other attendants who have wings and beaked noses, is seen an elephant couchant, the god of fire standing on his back. In the midst of the flames that surround him is the head of a bird. So in Chichen we see the followers of queen Moo, who, we are informed by the author of the Troano MS. became the goddess of fire, carrying her totem, a bird, in their head-gears.
The Japanese claim to be offspring of the gods, and produce two different genealogical tables in support of their assertion. These gods amounting to seven, are said to have reigned an almost incalculable number of years in the country; although they assert that these primitive gods were spiritual substances, incorporeal. They were succeeded by five terrestrial spirits, or deified heroes, after whom appeared the Japanese themselves.
Here again we have a reminiscence, as it were, of the twelve gods, that the Egyptians told Herodotus, [96] had governed their country, an incalculable number of years, before the reign of Menes their first terrestrial king. These gods were converted by the Greeks into the twelve deities, dwellers of the Olympus. The twelve serpent heads, brought to light by me in December, 1883, from the center of the mausoleum of the high-pontiff Cat, at ChiehenItza, are emblematic of the twelve rulers, who had reigned in Mayax in times anterior to the great cataclysm hen the Land of Mu was submerged; whose portraits, with the sign cimi, dead, adorn the east facade of the palace with the tableau of creation, showing that they existed in very early times. Of these rulers we again find a dim tradition in China in the Tchi, also called che-cull-tse-the twelve children of the emperor of Heaven, Tien-Hoang, who had the body of a serpent. Each of these Tchi are said to have lived eighteen thousand years, and to have reigned in times anterior to Ti-hoang, sovereign of the country in the middle of the land.
From this short digression let us return to the worship of the mastodon which we find very prevalent in India in that of the elephant Ganesha, the god of prudence, of wisdom, of letters, represented as a red colored man with the head of an elephant. He is invoked by the Hindoos of all sects at the outset of any business. No one would dream of writing a letter or a book without previously [97] saluting Ganesha. His image is seen at the crossing of the roads, oftentimes decorated with a garland of flowers, the offering of some pious devotee. Architects place it in the foundation of every edifice. It is sculptured or painted at the door of every house as a protection against evil; at one of the entrances of every Hindoo city, that is called Ganeslapol, as well as in some conspicuous door of the palace. We have already seen that in the most ancient edifices of Mayax the mastodon's head with its trunk is the principal and most common ornament. Are these mere coincidences? The name Ganeshapol would be according to the Maya language, the head of Ganesha; pol, in Maya, being the head. If I wished to go further I might say that in Ganesha we have a dialectical pronounciation of Can-ex, "the serpents." No deity in the Hindoo pantheon is so often addressed; and his titles are so numerous that like Osiris it might be named Myrionymus "with ten thousand names."
So many are the legends accounting for the elephant head, it may be safely assumed that its origin is unknown. May not its worship have been introduced in India, with many other customs, that for instance of carrying the children. astride on the hip; of printing an impression of the human hand, dipped in red liquid, on the walls of the temples and other sacred buildings by devotees [98] etc.; by colonists from Mayax where these customs prevailed, and the worship of the mastodon was widely spread in not general? This surmise assumes the semblance probability when we consider that the body of Ganesha is painted red, the color characteristic of the American race, and the symbol of nobility of race among the Egyptians.
The elephant was not among the animals worshiped by them. They do not seem to have been Much acquainted with it. But the imprint of the red hand, so commonly seen on the walls of the temples of Mayax and India, has never been observed in the temples of Egypt; neither did the Egyptian women carry their children astride on their hip, as do still those of India and Yucatan, althongh many other customs were common to the people of these countries. It is probable that the colonists from the " Lands of the West " who settled in the valley of the Nile, replaced the worship of the mastodon, which did not exist in the country, by that of the bull, the largest and most useful of their domestic animals; and that this was the origin of their veneration for the bull Apis, as those who were initiated into the mysteries of Osiris well knew, being told that Apis ought to be regarded as a fair and beautiful image of their soul.
From the remotest antiquity the serpent was held by every people in the greatest veneration as [99] the embodiment of divine wisdom. We have already said that Eusebius asserts that the Egyptians figured emblematically Kneph, the Creator, as a serpent; and that the Maya learned priests represented the engendered, the ancestor of all beings, in the sculptures, protected within the coils of the serpent. Mr. Stanyland Wake, in his book on the origin of the serpent worship writes: " the student of mythology knows that certain ideas were associated by the people of antiquity with the serpent, and that it was the favorite symbol of peculiar deities; but why that animal rather than any other was chosen for that purpose is yet uncertain."
The late Mr. James Fergusson in his work on "Serpent and Tree Worship," a work so full of erudition and interesting researches, whilst he conclusively shows that these worships were common to all civilized and half civilized nations of antiquity, fails to indicate the country where they originated. All authors who have written on the subject, admit that their origin is still an impenetrable mystery; although they agree that they are so intimately connected as to make it impossible not to believe it must have been the same.
The limited scope of this book does not allow me to give the matter all the space it deserves. I will therefore content myself, with bringing forth such facts as will conclusively show, at least to [100] unprejudiced minds, that the serpent and tree worship indeed originated on this "Western continent," and from the, same cause; "the love of the country," from the amor-padrioe, still so firmly rooted in the heart of the adorigines, that it is difficult to induce them to leave the spot where they are born, even to bettor their condition. Everywhere on the Eastern continents serpent worship is connected with mythological narratives, metaphysical speculations, or astronomical conceptions, far above the intellectual and scientific attainments of the mass of people among whom it prevailed.
These were mere fictions invented by the priests and learned men, to conceal either the real facts, or may be, their own ignorance of them. Still, anxious to maintain the preponderance and power that knowledge gave them over the multitudes, and having to satisfy their curiosity, they imagined such explanations as best suited the notions current in then- times and the ideas of the people.
In early days the serpent, emblem of Kneph, the Creator, was the agathodoemon, the good genius. It is still so regarded by the Chinese, who consider it one of their most beautiful symbols. Later, when it became emblematical of Set or Typho, the slayer of Osiris, it was looked upon with horror, as the evil principle, the destroyer, the enemy of mankind. It has ever since continued to be so held by [101] the Jews, the Christians, the Mahometans, in fact by all peoples whose religious tenets are founded on the Bible. If the tree and serpent were worshiped throughout the Eastern continents from the shores of the Atlantic ocean to those of the Pacific, from Scandinavia to Egypt and the Asiatic peninsulae, their worship was not less spread amongst the nations that inhabited the "Lands of the West." We find vestiges of it everywhere on the Western continent; from the banks of Brush creek, in Adams county, in the State of Ohio, where still exists, on the crest of a mound, the effigy of a great serpent 700 feet long, entirely similar to that discovered by Mr. John S. Phene in Glen Feechan, Argyleshire, in Scotland, to the ancient city of Tiahuanuco, whose ruins are 13,500 feet above the level of the Pacific on the shores of lake Titicaca, near the frontier of Bolivia, on the high plateau of the Andes. There is yet to be seen a very remarkable doorway formed out of a single monolith 13 feet 5 inches long, 7 feet high above the ground, and 18 inches thick. This monolith as attracted the attention of d'Orbigny and the other travelers who, like myself, have been struck with astonishment by the beauty of the sculptures that adorn its south-eastern facade. Mayas, no doubt, were the unknown builders of that great city; since in the sculptures mentioned, we find, as in the temples [102] of Japan, the totem of prince Coh, of his wife and sister Moo, and of their father king CAN (serpent).
I will make here a short digression in order to describe these sculptures, that with the knowledge we possess today of the history of the founders of the principal ruined cities of Mayax, afford us another proof that, flue builders of that city of Tiahuanuco belonged to a then highly civilized nation, which sent culonists to the remotest parts of the earth, as the English do today, and to whose historical annals may be traced many of the primitive tradition, of mankind. This city was already in ruins when Manco Capac laid the foundation the Inca's empire, and had been constructed by giants before, the sun shove in heaven, as the natives said to the Spaniards when questioned as to its antiquity.
We have seen that the members of the family of king Can, are still worshiped in the temples of Japan, as of old they were in those of Egypt; we now meet unimpeachable records of them, carved on very ancient monuments, on the shores of lake Titicaca, at the foot of the great glaciers of Sorata and Illimani, as we have found them in mythological lore of India and Greece. Will it be said that these are mere coincidences?
The front of this monolithic gate was once upon [103] a time as highly polished as the material, trachite, will permit. The whole space above the doorway is divided into four bands about eight inches high. The lower band contains seventeen small heads, in low relief, adorned in a somewhat similar manner to that of the central figure. Seven of these, those directly under that figure wear, like it, a badge that seems to be a plume composed of three feathers. These small heads are separated by grecques having macaw's heads at their salient sides; these grecques are the symbol of power and strength. In the ancient Maya and Egyptian alphabets the grecque is equivalent to our latin letter H. Ah is the Maya masculine article, and it conveys to the mind the idea of might and power; this, taken in connection with the macaw's head, totem of Moo, the queen of Chichen, signifies the mighty, the powerful Moo.
The other bands are divided into squares of the same size, except in the center over the doorway, where there is a figure 32 by 31 inches.
Its head, the form of which is not only
conventional, as its square eyes and mouth indicate, but likewise
emblematical, consists of three superposed layers in the shape
of escutcheons, the uppermost of which is sculptured so as to
represent a human face. These three escutcheons as the three feathers
of the plume that adorns it, the triple throne on which the figure
seems to stand, the three dots on each cheek, [104] the three
oblong squares on the breast-plate, the three macaw's head at
the extrexnities of the triple sceptre it holds in its hands,
are symbolical of the three great western regions that the Egyptians
designated by the generic name of "Lands of the West, "and
represented by the character 
which
is an image of the crown worn by some of the high chiefs in Mayax.
That the central figure was meant to represent these countries, the sign | |, that stands in lieu of the mouth, indicates. It is the letter M, pronounced Ma, of the Maya and Egyptian ancient alphabets. It is the radical of Mayax, name of the Maya empire. But Ma in Egypt as in Mayax, is a word that signifies land, country, and by extension universe; and in Mayax as in Egypt | | is one of the signs for land.
The head is surrounded by rays divided into
groups of four; four on the top, four on each side, and four on
the under part. Each ray is terminated by a circle with a dot
in the center 
, a sign very often met with on
the monuments of Mayax; particularly on the trunk of the mastodon's
heads. It is the first letter of the ancient Maya and Eyptian
alphabets, [105] and correspond to our letter A, the initial of
the Maya word Ahau, king. This would indicate that the central
figure was likewise symbolical of the king par excellence, ruler
of the empire, whom the kneeling personages that surround it,
are in the act of worshiping as shown, not only by their posture,
but also by the sign 
, carved on the
neck of the macaw-headed figures, the followers of the queen Moo
(macaw), which again in Mayax as in Egypt is the symbol of offering,
worship, and adoration. The name of this great king we read in
the four heads of leopards, terminating the rays at the upper
angles, and those in the middle on each side of the escutcheon,
and in the four rays of each group. Translating these symbols
by means of the Maya language, we find that Can Cola was the name
of the potentate; and that he was a member of the Can family,
rulers of Mayax. This fact is indicated by the serpent heads at
the lower angles of the escutcheon, those at the extremities of
the breast-plate, the four oblong squares carved on the ribbons
that support it, and the number of rays forming each group round
the head.
In Maya four is can; but can also means serpent, likewise power. Number four according to Pythagoras, was particularly connected with Mercury, the Thoth of the Egyptians, as the deity who imparted intellectual gifts to man. The Tetraktus or number [106] four represented the mystic name of the Creative Power; and in later times it meant intellect, wisdom, all that is active. Pythagoras asks: "How do you count?" Mercury: "one, two, three, four." Pythagoras: "Do you not see that what are four to you are ten and our oath? those (1, 2, 3, 4,) added together, forming ten, and four containing every number within it." The four leopard heads are his totem, Kancoh, Coh being leopard. Further on, I will refer more in detail to these personages, and to the rule they have played in the civilization of the world, having been, and being still, worshiped in many countries under different names. The peculiar shape of the sceptre held in the left hand of the figure, the upper part of which is bifurcated, each end terminating with the head of a macaw, totem of the queen Moo of Chichen-Itza, sister and wife of Coh, and its undulations, like those of a serpent in motion, seem intended as an emblem of the three great regions that composed the empire that is likewise portrayed in the three rows of kneeling winged personages. The upper portion of said sceptre is symbolical of the Western continent, divided into two great parts united by the Isthmus of Panama. The lower was meant to represent that extensive island that sunk beneath the waves of the Atlantic ocean, about 11,500 years ago.
The sceptre held in the right hand of the central [107] figure being whole, would show that the entire country was governed by a potentate to whom the rulers of the seventeen nations, into which the empire was divided, paid homage and acknowledged as their suzerain. These seventeen divisions of the empire are indicated by the seventeen small heads sculptured on the lower band, and the seventeen signs of land that adorned the arms, the breastplate, and the ribbon from which it is suspended.
Of the small kneeling winged figures, those of the middle row are portrayed with the heads of macaws to signify that they are the particular adherents of queen Moo, that here, as in Mayax, carry her totem as a badge or sign of recognition; whilst the others have human heads, but wear on their crowns her totem, in token that they recognize her as their suzerain. All these figures are ornamented with twelve serpents, arranged in groups of three, whilst the sash they carry across their body from the shoulder to the waist on the opposite side, terminates in a peculiar knot adorned with the four circles, that we have said stood for the word Ahau, that is king, indicating that their lord paramount is a member of the Can (serpent) dynasty. The whole tableau recalls vividly, that presented by the kneeling beaked nosed personages in attendance at the shrine of the bird deity at Kioto.
Mr. Angrand, the well known French [108] archaeologist, finds, and with reason, a coincidence between these sculptures and those of Central America, having a corresponding symbolical significance. In them he sees the proof of the identity of origin, of the intimate relationship of the builders of Tiahuanuco and those of Palenque, Ocosingo, and Xochicalco. He might have added, and be nearer to the truth, those of the cities of Mayax, that were founded many centuries before those mentioned by him.
In Mayax, it is where, indeed, the image of the serpent, as a symbol, is most commonly met with. We see it on almost every edifice in every city. It is ono of the favorite ornaments, especially at Chichen-Itza, of which place it seems to have been the particular protecting genius. There it is found everywhere. It guards the entrance of all public edifices. It is at the foot of their grand stairways, as if defending the ascent. The columns that support their porticos are representations of it. Its head forms the base, its body the shaft. The nobles and other personages of high rank wore adornments made in the shape of serpents. Chichen may indeed be called the "City of Serpents" par excellence. If we, therefore, wish to know the true meaning of the serpent as a symbol, if we desire to inquire as to the motives that led to its worship, it is necessary to question the learned priests [109] of that city; to consult the books in which the philosophers of Mayax have consigned their knowledge and their esoteric doctrines.
The origin of the " Serpent Worship " they tell us, can be traced to two apparently distinct causes. One, the esoteric, taught only to a few select of those initiated in the greater mysteries, is the homage to be tributed by the creature to the Creator. The other, the exoteric, inculcated on the uninitiated, was the love of the country, and the respect due by the subjects to their rulers, living images and vicars of the Deity on earth.
In order to comprehend the first, or esoteric, we must recall to mind that Eusebius says that the Eygptians represented emblematically Kneph the Creator, and the world also, under the figure of serpent, which, Horapollo asserts, was of a blue color with yellow scales; but they fail to inform us as to what may have, been their motives for thus symbolizing the First Cause; or from whom they had received this symbol, that was the same used by the Mayas. A clue to this mystery can no doubt be found in the cosmogonical notions prevalent among the ancient civilized nations; for, strange to say, they seem to have been alike with all. We read in the Manava-dharma-sastra that the visible universe in the beginning was nothing but darkness. Then the great, self-existing Power [110] dispelled that darkness, and appeared in all His splendor. He first produced the waters; and on them moved Narayana the divine spirit.
Berosns, recounting the ancient legend of the creation accrording to the Chaldeans, says: "In the beginning all was darkness and water; and therein were generated monstrous animals and strange and peculiar forms. . . A woman ruleth them all." Her name in Chalked is Thalath, in Greek Thalassa (the sea), that is in Maya Thallac (a thing without steadiness).
Genesis recounts that: "In the beginning the Earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. And God said, Let there be light and there was light."
In Primander, that modern critics consider the moat ancient and authentic of the first philosophical books of Egypt, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, in the dialogue between Thoth and Primander, the Supreme Intelligence, we read these words of Thoth. "I had then before my eyes a most prodigious spectacle. All things had resolved themselves into light. A marvellous, pleasing and seducing sight it was to contemplate. It filled me with delight. After a while a horrid shadow, which ended in oblique folds, and assumed a humid nature, agitated itself with terrific noise. From it escaped smoke with [111] uproar, and a voice was heard above the din. It seemed as the voice of the light; and the verb came forth from that voice of light; that verb was carried upon the humid principle. Out of it came forth the fire pure and light, and rising, it was lost in the air that, spirit-like, occupies the intermediate space between the water and the fire. The earth and the water were so mixed that the surface of the Earth covered by the water appeared nowhere."
And in what are termed the modern Hermetic books, the origin of things is thus explained: " The principle of all things existing is God, and the intellect, and nature, and matter, and energy, and fate, and conclusion, and renovation. For there were boundless darkness in the abyss, and water, and a subtile spirit, intellectual in power, existing in chaos. But the holy light broke forth, and the elements were produced from among the sand of a watery essence."
In the Popol-Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiches, we read: " This is the recital of how everything was without life, calm and silent, all was motionless and quiet; void was the immensity of the heavens; the face of the Earth did not manifest itself yet; only the tranquil sea was, and the space of the heavens. All was immobility and silence in the darkness, in the night; only the Creator, the Maker, the Dominator, the Serpent covered with feathers, they who [112] engender, they who create, were on the waters as an ever increasing light. They are surrounded by green and blue, their name is Bucumatz."
We have al ready said how the Maya sages have taken care to perpetuate their cosmogonical conceptions, by causing the narrative of the creation to be carved, in high relief, over the doorway of the east facade of the palace at Chichen-Itza, and that these cone-options were identical with those of the Hindoos and the Egyptians. It cannot be argued that this identity of ideas about the origin of things, arrived at by the wise men of India, Egypt, and Mayax, and expressed in as nearly the same words as the genius of the vernacular of these various countries admits, is purely accidental; or, that they have arrived separately at the same conclusions on the subject, without communicating one with the other. The notion and its explanation must have originated with one, and been taught to the others just as our modern scientific discoveries, or religious beliefs, are carried from country to country, even the most remote, and made known to their inhabitants. What should we think of the man who would pretend that the railway, electric telegraph, and many other of the latest inventions, instead of having originated in one particular country, nay, more, in the brain of a particular man, have sprung simultaneously among all the various nations which make [113] use of them ? Would not that man be regarded as a born idiot or a fit subject for a lunatic asylum ? We can easily understand how these cosmogonical notions have passed from the Egyptians to the Chaldees or to the Hindoos or vice versa; but who brought them to the " Lands of the West" and when? Who can say they did not arise among the inhabitants of the " Western continent; " and were not conveyed by them to the other nations?
In my work "Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx," I have shown how the legends accompanying the images of several of the Egyptian deities, when interpreted by means of the Maya language, point directly to Mayax as the birthplace of the Egyptian civilization. How the ancient Maya hieratic alphabet, discovered by me, is as near alike to the ancient hieratic alphabet of the Egyptians as two alphabets can possibly be, forcing upon us the conclusion that the Mayas and the Egyptians either learned the art of writing from the same masters, or that the Egyptians learned it from the Mayas. There is every reason to believe that the cosmogonical conceptions, so widely spread, originated with the Mayas, and were communicated by them to all the other nations among which we find their name.
An analysis of the tableau of creation, carved on the facade of the palace at Chichen-Itza, cannot fail, [114] therefore, to prove interesting. In it we shall find a proof of the scientific attainments of its designers; and also the reason why the serpent came to be worshiped all over the Earth.
The philosophers of Mayax must have known
that the waters cover the greatest part of the globe (about three
fifths); and that water being a combination of gases (oxygen and
by hydrogen), the most subtile of fluids, must have been the first
form of matter produced. This is why on each side and on the top
of the tableau they placed the symbol of water 
taking care to leave without it, at the upper part, a portion
equal to two-fifths of its length. In the midst of the waters
they represented, the figure of an egg, that is a germ. Why an
egg and not any other seed? Is it because their study of physiology
had made them acquainted with the fact, that no being exists on
Earth, but that is born from an egg ? They represented the egg
emitting rays. The rays of the light into which says Thoth, all
things resolved themselves; that, says the Quiche, author of the
Popol-Vuh, appeared on the water as an increasing brightness that
bathed the. Creator, the f'eathered serpent, the Knepla, as the
Egyptians would name it, in green and azure. It is well to notice
that the symbols of water terminate with the head of serpents;
because they compared the waves of the ocean to the undulations
of [115] the serpent's body while in motion. For this reason the
Mayas named the sea Canah, the great, the powerful serpent: and
in the Troano MS., the sea is always designated by a serpent's
head. This explains why the Quiches, the Mayas, the Egyptians,
the Hindoos, represented the world, and, by extension, the maker
of it, as a serpent. Thus it is that they placed a serpent within
the egg, behind the creator to indicate that this symbol is the
totem of the ancestor of all beings. And here we have one of the
origins of the serpent worship: that is, the adoration of the
Creator.
In Egypt the goddess Uati, the genius of the lower country, is at times represented as a serpent with inflated breast, the body standing erect over a basket or sieve, the lower part resting against a figure resembling our numeral 8. At times again, as a winged serpent, with inflated breast, wearing on its head a cap or crown of peculiar shape, that it
is said to be the crown of lower Egypt. Why the Egyptians selected such symbols to represent the lower country, we are not informed; and it is doubtful [116] if the learned Egyptologists could explain the motive.
Now it is a most remarkable fact, that these are the very symbols used by the Maya hierogrammatists and artists to figure their own motherland, the Maya empire.
The author of the Troano MS., sometimes pictures Mayax as a serpent with an inflated breast (Plate. XVII, Part II.), at other times as a serpent with part of the body bent in the shape of the Yucatan peninsula,* and the artists who executed the
* An interpretation of the Maya legend explanatory of the illustration may not be amiss, inasmuch as it shows that the serpeant was the symbol of the country.
[117] paintings in the funereal chamber of Prince Coh, typified the country as a winged serpent, with the back painted green, the belly yellow, wearing a blue crown on the head, its tail ending with a peculiar dart resembling in general contour the southern continent of America.
This is not the place to give minute explanations
of these symbols which I have considered in another work, I simply
wish to consign here such facts as cannot be attributed altogether
to hazard. So the peculiar twist against which rests the body
of the serpent, emblem of the lower country, is exactly the same
that forms the symbol used in the Troano MS., to represent the
gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea, whose waters bathe the 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beginning at the top of the column, it reads as follows:
that is literally: He-water-Basin turn abundant fluid submerge the land.
Freely translated,
The Master of the basin of water turns it: abundant fluid submerges the land.
A glance at the illustration will suffice to show that the interpretation is correct. In my work "The Monuments of May ax," etc., I give a more complete explanation of it.
[118] peninsula of Yucatan, that seems as
if standing erect between them as the serpent in the Egyptian
sign. As to the sieve, it is called,
by the natives of that country, MAYAB. Mayab was, in past ages,
one of the, names of the peninsula. The crown of Lower Egypt,
is precisely that worn by certain
chieftains, whose portraits we see in the bas-reliefs at Chichen-Itza.
There the peak was worn in front; in Egypt at the back: may be
as a mark of respect on the part of the Egyptians toward their
mother country, to signify that as the child, Egypt must stand
behind its parent, as it is customary for children to do among
the aborigines of Yucatan.
Since the Egyptians and the Mayas used identical signs as symbols of the country in which they lived, may it not be inferred that the same cause prompted their selection? We must not lose sight of the fact that the winged serpents introduced into the paintings of Egypt, are merely emblematic representations connected with the [119] mysterious rite, of the dead, and the mode of being in Amenti; that is, in the " Lands of the West " where the souls of the departed were supposed to return and. exist, after being liberated from their mortal body. In early days Uati or Mati, the country of Mayax, was one of the divinities, worshiped by the settlers on the banks of the Nile; and the asp, not any other snake, played a conspicuous part in the religious mysteries, and was universally honored.
Here, again, we may ask why? What possible
relation can exist between the asp and the country; between the
asp and the office of king or the attributes of Deity? Still it
was the badge of royalty, worn as an ornament on the head-dress
of kings and gods. Is the selection of the asp as a mark of distinction
to be ascribed to a mere whim? May not that predilection he assigned
to the fact that, when angry, it dilates its breast; and when
in that condition it recalled to the minds of the colonists, the
geographical contours of the land of their forefathers in the
West, and the way it was represented in the books, from which
they had studied in their childhood? If we look at a map of the
Western continent, it will be easy to perceive that the contours
of Central America--that is the Maya empire of old--figure a serpent
with an inflated breast, in a position similar to that of the
[120] emblem of lower Egypt (Figs. 1 and 2, p. 115.), the head
being the peninsula of Yucatan, anciently the seat of the government;
and that the southern continent would be the dart of its tail,
as pictured by the Maya artists. The green color of
its back, the verdant tropical forests that cover the land; the
yellow belly, the internal volcanic fires that cause the surface
to wriggle like a serpent; the blue crown on its head, the blue
canopy of heaven above; the wings, the smoke of the volcanoes;
the fins, the high peaks of the chain of mountains that traverses
the country from north to south, part of the Cordilleras, that
are as the backbone of the continent.
The intense love of their country is one of the [121] most striking characteristics of the aborigines to the present day. That love may be said to amount to fanaticism. In it we find another origin of the serpent worship, emblem of the motherland.
In the Serpent mantra, in the Aytareya Brahmana, a passage speaks of the Earth as the Sarpa Rajni, the queen of the serpents, and the mother of all that moves, still worshiped by the Nagas, dwellers in the valley of Cashmere.
In Mayax the primitive rulers derived their title CAN (serpent) from the shape of the contours of their empire, as the priests of the sun received theirs from the name Kin of that luminary. Their emblem however, was not a winged serpent, with a dart at the end of the tail, but a rattlesnake covered with feathers; image of the feathered mantle used by the king, the high-pontiff, and other high dignitaries, as ceremonial dress. This feathered rattlesnake adorns the walls of the royal mansions. It is seen at Uxmal, on the east facade of the west wing of king Can's palace and at other places. After their death these rulers, images of Deity on earth, received the honors of apotheosis. They became gods and goddesses and were worshiped as such. In Assyria the symbol of the winged serpent was replaced by that of the winged circle, emblem of Asshur, the supreme deity of the Assyrians; and this symbol is [122] seldom found in the sculptures except in immediate connection with the monarch. It seems to be also closely related with the sacred or symbolical tree.
Here again, is another origin of " Serpent Worship, " in that of the kings of Mayax under the symbol of the " feathered serpent." One of the names for rattlesnake, in Maya, is Ahau-Can, the royal serpent ln the sculptures the king is often represent. In this emblem with seven rattles at the end of the tail; seven having been the number of the members of king Can's family. In Egypt the kings and queens were honored as gods after their death. In Greece and other countries, the heroes were deified and worshiped as divinities.
From all antiquity and by all nations, the tree and serpent worship have been so closely identified, as to guarantee the inference that their origin is the same, although it seems difficult to comprehend what possible analogy may exist between them, without a knowledge of the place where it originated, of the people that first instituted it, of their traditions and peculiar notions. Many learned students have published the results of their researches on the subject. None, however, has yet assigned a birthplace to the tree or serpent worship.
The late Mr. James Fergusson tells us that he is inclined to believe that it was in " the mud of [123] the lower Euphrates, among a people of Turanian origin, and spread hence to every country of the old world. " This is truly indefinite. Then comes the query: what about the tree and serpent worship among the inhabitants of the Western continent? For they also had their sacred trees; and with them as with the natives of the Eastern world, the tree was symbolical of eternal life.
The oak tree was dedicated to Baal, the chief god of the Phoenicians and other eastern nations. Under it the Druids performed their most sacred rites in honor of Eseus, the Supreme Being. The ash was venerated by the Scanndinavians. The inhabitants of the island of Delos believe the gigantic palm tree to be the favorite production of Latona. The people of Samos, Athens, Dodona, Arcadia, worshiped in sacred groves, as those of Canaan. In India the worship of the tree is o{' very ancient date, as in the island of Ceylon: in the courtyard of every monastery a bo-tree (ficus Indicus) is planted. Nowhere, however, do we find the origin of that worship mentioned.
Mr. Fergusson advises us to look to the Egyptians, these being the most ancient civilized people, for an explanation of it, averring that it undoubtedly prevailed among them before the multifarious Theban pantheon, was elaborated. In Egypt the tamarisk was the holy tree chosen to [124] overshadow the supposed sepulchre of Osiris, the king of Amenti. The persea was sacred to Athor, the regent of the West, often identified with Isis. The sycamore was consecrated to Nut, mother of Isis and Osiris, frequently represented in the paintings of the tombs, standing in its branches, pouring from a vase, a liquid which the soul of the departed, under the form of a bird with a human head, catches in his hands. It is the water of eternal life. So the trees were particularly sacred to the deities connected with Amenti, that is, to the deified kings and queens from the "Lands of the West."
We are told that the sacred tree was an emblem found in frequent association with the "winged circle" in Assyria. As this symbol is always met with in immediate connection with the monarchs, it would seem that the worship of the tree bears a close relation to, if it is not typical of, that of the deified heroes and kings.
To understand the relationship between the tree, the winged serpent or "circle" and the "monarchs" it is again necessary to consult the annals left carved in stone or written in their books by the wise men of Mayax. From them we learn that the Mayas held certain trees sacred, Landa, Cogolludo, and other early writers tell us that, even as far down as the time of the Spanish conquest, the aborigines believed in the immortality of the soul, [125] that would be rewarded or punished in the life beyond the grave, for its deeds whilst in the body. Their reward was to consist in dwelling in a delectable place, where pain was unknown, where there would be an abundance of delicious food, which they would enjoy, with eternal repose, in the cool shade beneath the evergreen and spreading branches of the yaxche (ceiba tree), which is found planted, even today, in front of the main entrance of the churches, throughout Yucatan and Central America. Sometimes the churches are built in the midst of groves of ceiba trees, that in some localities are replaced by the gigantic palm tree (Palma real).
The Maya empire was of old, according to the author of the Troano MS., figured as a tree, planted in the continent known today as South America, its principal branch being formed by the Yucatecan peninsula. (See map, page 120.) Here we have the key to the origin of the tree worship, and its intimate relation to the winged serpent and the king. It is again the worship of the country symbolized by a tree, as it also was by a serpent, or by the Ruler. Thus we find a natural explanation of the tradition current among the ancient nations, that the TREE par excellence, the tree of life, that is of civilization, of knowledge, was placed in the middle of the land, of the garden, of the primitive country (Mayax) of the race; the empire of the Mayas being placed [126] between the two great continents, North and South America, forrming the "Lands of the West." *
Freely translated :
Can, the master of the basin of water, who was dead, forcing his way by means of the earthquake, has risen. Can's foot sank, the air having filled up the crater of the volcano. Six fertile lands have appeared in Umukan (Cuba) and four volcanoes in Timanik (one of the small Antilles.)
The Maya writers, as the author of the Troano, etc" sometimes represented the Earth under the figure of an old woman and called it mam-the grandmother. She is here represented holding in her left hand the sign of the smoke, and darting a javelin emblem of the volcanic energy, and in her right hand she holds the symbol of the " Land of the Scorpion" "Zinaan," the West India Islands of our days. The deer head represents the Maya Empire.
[127] This relation of the tree, the serpent and the country in the middle of the World, is confirmed by the Chinese writers, commentators on the Chouking, one of the most ancient literary monuments of China. Speaking of the Tien-Hoang or kings of heaven, Yong-chi says: Tien-hoang had the body of a serpent. He was the origin of letters. He gave names to the ten KAN, and to the twelve Tchi, in order to determine the place of the year; and Yuen-leao-fan, another writer, says that KAN means the trunk of a tree, and that TCHI are the branches, reason why they are called CHE-CULL-TSE, the twelve children. It is well to remark ere that the children of king (!an were called CAN-CHI, which is still a family name among the aborigines.
TI-HUANG, king of the Earth, is also called Hoangkiun, that is, he who reigns sovereignly in the middle of the earth, and also TSE-YUEN, or the son principle, the engendered, the Brahma of the Hindoos, [128] the Kneph of the Eygptians, the Menen of the Mayas.
The cross is another sacred symbol much reverenced by all nations, civilized and semi-civilized, ages before the establishment of Christianity: and although we find representations of it in almost every part of the world, from its mere delineation scratched on the rock, to the stately temples and admirably hewn caves of Elephanta in India, still nowhere do we learn of its origin. There are several varieties of crosses, but all may be traced back to the primitive form which resembles the Latin cross.
Among the earliest type known on the Eastern continents is the "Crux Ansata," called the "Key of the Nile." It was the "symbol of symbols" among the Egyptians, the Phoenicians and the Chaldees, being the emblem of the life to come. It was placed on the breast of the deceased, sometimes as a simple T on the fulcrum of a cone; sometimes represented as supported on a heart. It is also seen adorning the breasts of statues and statuettes in Palenque, Copan, and other ancient cities of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and various localities of Central America. Everywhere it was associated with water. In Babylon it was the emblem of water deities. In Egypt, Assyria, and Britain, it was emblematical of creative power and eternity. In India, China, and [129] Scandinavia of heaven and immortality. In Mayax of rejuvenescence and freedom from physical suffering. The cross, as a symbol, was placed on the breast of the initiate after his new birth was accomplished in the Bacchic and Eleusinian mysteries.
Remesal and Torquemada assert, in their respective works, that when in 1519, the Spaniards, under Hernan Cortez, landed at the island of Cozumel, they found crosses which the natives worshiped as gods in their temples. After them many writers, on their authority, have affirmed the same thing. This, however, seems to have been a mistake. Bernal. Diaz del Castillo, who accompanied Cortez, does not mention the existence of such symbols in Cozumel, but emphatically says that Cortez, having ordered the destruction of the idols that were in the sanctuaries, caused an image of the Virgin Mary to be placed in their stead, and near it a wooden cross, made by two of his carpenters, to be erected, recommending the natives to take great care of them when he left. Dr. Pedro Sanchez de Aguilar, another of the early writers, maintains that the stone crosses found afterward in the island were made in imitation of that of Cortez; and Bishop Landa, although a most zealous missionary, intent on converting the aborigines to the Catholic faith, does not mention the existence of crosses in Cozumel before the advent of the Spaniards; a fact he would [130] certainly have taken advantage of in his predication of the gospel, and would not have failed to mention in his work, had he been satisfied that the symbol really existed.
There can be no doubt that in Mayax, in very remote ages, the cross was an emblem pertaining to the sacred mysteries. No external vestiges of the symbol are to be found among the remains of the temples and palaces of the Mayas, such as those seen at Palenque and other places of Central America. Only one image of a perfect cross have I ever met with in the ancient edifices of Yucatan besides the ground plan of the sanctuary at Uxmal. (See page 35.) It forms part of the inscription carved on the lintel of the doorway of the east facade of the palace at Chichen. Still tradition tells us that the cross was symbolical of the " God of Rain." If so, they made no image of it, nor did they celebrate any festival in honor of it at the time of the conquest, but held it simply as a notion of their forefathers.
The ancient Maya astronomers had observed that at a certain period of the year, at the beginning of our month of May, that owes its name to the goddess MAYA, the good dame, mother of the gods, the " Southern Cross," appears perfectly perpendicular above the line of the southern horizon. This is why the Catholic church celebrates the feast of the [131] adoration of the holy cross on the third day of that month, which it has consecrated particularly to the Mother of God, the Good Lady, the virgin MaR-ia, or the goddess Isis anthropomorphised by Bishop Cyril of Alexandria.
In all localities situated within the 12th and 23d degree of latitude north, about the beginning of January, the dry season sets in and no more rain falls during several months. In May and April in the countries like Yucatan, where there is no water on the surface of the ground, all things become parched; the trees and shrubs lose their leaves, nature looks desolate, all living beings thirst for a drop of moisture, the birds and other wild creatures, mad with thirst, lose their characteristic shyness and venture near the haunts of man, imperiling their lives in search of water; death, for want of it, seems to threaten all creation.
But four bright stars appear in the south. A shining cross stands erect above the southern horizon. It is the heavenly messenger that brings good tidings to all, for it announces that the flood-gates of heaven soon shall be open; that the so longed for rain will shortly descend from on high, and with it joy and happiness, new life to all creatures. Man hails with thankful heart, welcomes with songs of gladness, this brilliant harbinger of the life to come, for indeed it is a god for him, the GOD OF [132] RAIN that rejuvenates nature, frees man and all other creatures from physical sufferings, brings felicity to them - heaven therefore - and, with renewed life, immortality. Is it not the creative power that is eternally renovating and revivifying all things on the surface of the earth? Is it then strange that all nations, in every age, should have worshiped the cross as symbol of the life to come and immortality, and held it in so great veneration? It must be remembered that all the civilized nations in the "Lands of the West" and in the "Eastern Continent," dwelt in latitudes where the constellation known as " the Southern Cross " is visible during the month of May, and that the first showers soon follow its apparition above the horizon. From these of course it was transmitted to the others further north, that accepted the symbol, without understanding its meaning, and in aftertimes many speculations have been indulged in concerning its origin: but the unsophisticated natives, in the midst of their forests today, rejoice at the sight of the "Southern Cross" and prepare to sow their fields.
The origin and meaning of the mystical T, that symbol of "hidden wisdom" as it has been denominated by scholars of our days, found on all Egyptian monuments, in the temples, in the hands of the gods, in the tombs on the breast of the mummies, also met with in the ancient edifices of Mayax, [133] and on the statues and altars in the temples at Palenque, has given rise to many speculations on the part of modern savants. They have not reached yet any conclusion, although its name TAU says plainly, that it is nothing more or less than a representation of the "God of Rain" the "Southern Cross." Effectively tan is a Maya word composed of the three primitives ti, here, a for ha, water, and u month, which translated freely means "This is the month for water;" hence for the resurrection of nature - for the new life to come.
The complex form of the mystical T which is formed of a cone with two arms extending, one each side, and an oval placed immediately above them, has been denominated by the Egyptologists crux-ansata. It is not of Egyptian origin. It has its prototype in the conoidal pillar, surmounted by a sphere, used by the Babylonians as symbol of life and death; death being but the beginning or nursery of life. This emblem was only a reminiscence of the yaxche, the sacred tree of the Mayas, under the roots of which, the natives assert, is always to be found a source of pure cold water. The trunk of the yaxche, from the foot to the top, forms a perfect cone from which the main branches shoot in an horizontal direction. Its leafy top, seen from a distance, presents the appearance of a half sphere of verdure. The cone, the tan and the crux-ansata [134] were for those initiated to the mysteries the same symbol, emblematical of Deity, of the life to come, of the dual powers, of fertility. The Mayas and other peoples of Central. America, in the sculptures or paintings, always represented their sacred trees with two branches shooting horizontally from the top of the trunk, thus presenting the appearance of a cross or tan.
In straying apparently so far from the main object of these pages, and tracing to their true origin the primitive traditions of mankind and many of the religious symbols common to all the civilized nations of antiquity, by dispelling the mists that have accumulated around them in the long vista [135] of ages, my aim has been to show that they all emanated from one and the same source, and that this source was the country of Mayax, in the " Lands of the West." Ancient sacred mysteries, have been celebrated in the temples of Eygpt, Chaldea, and India, from ages so remote that it is no longer known by whom or where they were first instituted. Herodotus tolls us that the daughters of Danaus instituted the Thesmophoria in honor of the goddess Ceres, in imitation of the mysteries celebrated in. Egypt in honor of Isis, and taught them to the Pelasgic women. That Eumolpus, king of Eleusis, instituted in his own country the Eleusinian mysteries on his return from Egypt, where he had been initiated by the priests as Orpheus who founded in Thracia those that bear his name; but who taught the rites of initiation, the use of the symbols and their meaning, to the Hierophants of Egypt, to the magi of Chaldea, to the Gymnosophists of India?
The mode of initiation, the use of the same symbols, with an. identical signification ascribed to them, by peoples living so far apart whose customs and manners were so unlike, whose religion, so far at least as external practices were concerned, differed so widely, show that these mysteries originated with one people, and were carried to and promulgated among the others. As we do not find [136] it mentioned anywhere that they originated either with the Egyptians, Chaldees, or Hindoos, and we have seen that, their primitive traditions have been derived from the history of the early rulers of Mayax, is it not, natural that we should look for the institution of the mysteries among the Mayas, since we find the same mysterious symbols, used by the initiates in all the other countries, carved on the walls of the temples of their gods, and the palaces of their kings? Their history may afford the clue to the original meaning of said symbols, as their language has given us the true signification of the words used by the celebrating priest to dismiss the initiates in the Eleusinian mysteries, or by the Brahmins at the end of their religious ceremonies, and is it has revealed the so long hidden mystery of the mystical TAU.
That sacred mysteries were celebrated from times immemorial in the temples of Mayax, Xibalba, Nachan (Palenque of today), Copan and other places of Central America there can be no doubt, since besides the symbols sculptured on the walls of the temples and palaces, in two distinct instances, we see the rites and the trials of initiation described in the Popol-Vuh; and as these rites and trials were identical with those to which the applicants to initiation in the mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Chaldea and India were subjected, we are justified in [137] seeking in Mayax for the causes that may have induced the founders of the sacred mysteries to the odd numbers 3, 5, and 7, instead of the even 4, and 6 for mystic numbers.
The symbolization of number 3 may possibly
be accounted for in two different ways. One is suggested by the
sceptre of Poseidon, that Plato says was the first king of Atlantis,
and is represented by the Greek mythologists as being a son of
Kronos; his three-pronged trident being an allusion to the three
great islands that formed his kingdom. North and South America
and Mu, that now lies buried under the, waves of the Atlantic
ocean. The emblem 
placed in the hands
of Vul the god of the atmosphere in the Chaldean mythology,found
also in those of the Hindoo gods, may likewise represent the three
worlds or great regions that the Egyptian and Maya hierogrammatists
designed by the character in the hieroglyph
for the name of the " Lands of the West," which the
latter also figured as the sacred tree with three branches,* a
* The legend literally translated reads
as follows:
that is: PPeu, caban for cabahaan has struck again-bat-ax. Freely
translated: PPeu has struck again the tree with his ax.
[138] simile of which we find in Scandinavia, in the three roots of the sacred ash ggdrasil, mystic-world tree, and the three heavens, and the three worlds whose destruction, by water, was prophesied by Vishnu. The deification of the "World" composed of three parts forming a great whole, may have been the origin of the Trimourti, or Triune god, so prevalent among the ancient nations of anitiquity, and probably led to the mystification of number 3. We find it symbolized all over the earth, in every nation. We see it in Mayax in the three platforms on which are raised the most ancient edifices ; in the three rooms that formed the toiuple where the mysteries were performed ; in the three steps that led to the first or lower platform in all sacred edifices ; in the 21 metres (3x 7) of all the principal pyramids in Yucatan; in the three concentric circles of the Zodiac. We meet with it constantly in India, in the vyalritis or three sacred words; the three ornaments or saranas; the three principal classes; the three ways of salvation; the three fetters of the soul
PPeu was the name of one of the twelve ancient rulers who governed the country in times anterior to the great cataclysm during which the Atlantic island was submerged. Deified after his death he became one of the protecting genii of the land, whose effogoes still adorn the east facade of the palace at Chichen Itza, where they are placed, between the eves, over the trunks of the mastodon's lw.ui, and surrounded with an aureola.
[139] or gunas; the three eyes in Siva's forehead; tho three strands of the sacred cord worn by the imitiates of the three principal classes; the three letters of the sacred word A.u.m. In Egypt the three thonged i-lagchmi of Osiris; the triple phallus carried in procession at the festival of the Paaniylia in honor of the birth of Osiris, and also the triads, as likewise in Chaldca.
Another way of accounting for the mystification of number 3, is by taking heed of the indications of Orpheus, Plato, Proclus, and the other Greek philosophers who had been admitted to the participation of the secrets communicsated in the mysteries to those worthy of being entrusted th them. They tell us that the three intellects of the Demiurgos, of the triple deity, were "three kings."
The author of the Troano MS., relates at some length the history of the three sons of king Can; and of the troubles that arose among them when, after the death of their father, the reins of the government fell into their hands. Of that fact a faint tradition, very much distorted, seems to have still existed among the aborigines of Central America
*Symbol of the three sons of King Can-represented under the emblem of the three deer heads-Uluumil ceh, "the land of the deer," being one of the names of the country of the Mayas.
[140] at the time of the Spanish conquest;
for Bishop Landa states: "That is was said that once upon
a time three lords, brothers, governed the country together."
Those three brothers, sons of king Can, are realities, personages
who have certainly lived a mundane existence, since we not only
have their portraits, their weapons, and their ornaments, but
also their mortal remains. They recall vividly the three sons
of Adam, the three sons of Seb, and the three sons of Kronos.
The author of the Troano MS., informs us that the members of the
family of king Cart were deified after their death, and worshiped
in temples, the ruins of which still exist buried in the depths
of the forests of Yucatan under a shroud of verdure. It is not
at all improbable that Cay, the elder brother and high-pontiff
having instituted with his father the sacred mysteries, took as
symbol of the various degrees into which they divided them, the
number of the members of their family, in order to perpetuate
their name and history through the coming ages. This explanation
seems the more plausible, if we remember that Eusebius tells us
that the Egyptians represented the supreme Deity under the shape
of a serpent (Canhel) that was as superior to the triads, as the
father is to his children in whom he rejoices. "Numero Dens
impare gaudet." In this connection the three Hoang-ti, of
Chinese mythological times, might
[141] also be mentioned. They too had the shape of serpents.
Among the ancient civilized nations of the eastern continents number 5 was also considered mystic. Frequent mention is made of it in their sacred books. In China it occupies a conspicuous place among the celestial or perfect numbers, as 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, are called in the y-king, or Canonical book of Changes; a very ancient work, so highly esteemed by the wise philosopher Confucius (Kong-fou-tse) that he was seldom seen without it. There we read of the five elements, water, fire, wood, metal, and earth; of the five kinds of grain; of the five colors, black, red, green or blue, yellow and white; of the five tastes, salt, bitter, sour, acid, and sweet; of the five tones in music; of the five relations of life between men; those between a king and its ministers, a father and his children, a husband and his wife, elder and younger brothers, and between friends; of the five virtues, philanthropy, uprightness, decorum, prudence, fidelity; of the five organs of the body, kidneys, heart, liver, lungs, and spleen; of the five Chang-ti, or elementary generations; of the five parts that form the heavens; of the five seasons of the year; of the five genii that govern the five elements; of the five principal mountains of the empire; of the five tutelary mountains.
In India number 5 is also very prevalent in things [142] pertaining particularly to psychological conceptions or religious observances; so they speak of the five organs of intelligence, by means of which the external objects are perceived; of the five organs of action; the five elements, the five great oblations; of the five great sacrifices; the five great fires, etc. In Mayax it was likewise a mystic number, since we find this simbol carved at each end of the southern apartment in the edifice consecrated to the celebration of the sacred mysteries. It appears in the number of steps leading from the courtyards or terraces to the principal apartments in the "House of the Governor," "the palace of king Can" and other edifices at Uxmal, and in other buildings. It is the number particularly set apart for the second of the three platforms that compose the base on which all the ancient temples and palaces of the Mayas are raised. In the rites of modern Freemasonry, it is still the sacred number related to the second degree. In the Troano MS., the legends of all the compartments into which the work is divided, as in chapters, are composed of five characters, to indicate that said legends are the headings, that is ho-ol, the beginning, the head.
This number may have become sacred, in the mysteries, among the Mayas, in remembrance of the number of the children of king Can; for besides his three sons Cay, Aac, and Coh, he had, by his [143] wife Zoo, two daughters, Moo and Nicte, whose names bear a striking resemblance to T-Man one of the names of Isis and Nike her sister. So king Can by his wife Zoo, had five children, just as Seb had by his wife Nut in Egypt; these being Aroeris, Set, Osiris, Isis, and Nike. Strange coincidence, that may, however, give us a knowledge of the origin of the mystification of number five.
SEVEN seems to have be on the sacred number par excellence among all civilized nations of antiquity. Why? This query has never been satisfactorily answered. Each separate people has given a different explanation, according to the peculiar tenets of their religion. That it was the number of numbers for those initiated to the sacred mysteries there can be no doubt. Pythagoras, who had borrowed his ideas on numbers from the Egyptians, calls it the "Vehicle of life," containing body and soul, since it is formed of a quartenary, that is: Wisdom and Intellect; and a trinity or action and matter. Emperor Julian, in Matrem and in Oratio, expresses himself thus: "Were I to touch upon the initiation into our secret mysteries, which the Chalices bacchised, respecting the seven-rayed god, lighting up the soul through him, I should say things unknown to the rabble, very unknown, but well known to the blessed Theurgists."
Whatever that knowledge may have been, and [144] their esoteric explanation of the cause of the mystification of number seven, can only be surmised today; but it is not improbable that it was to be found in some event in the early history of the race whose traditions we find scattered broadcast over the Earth. We have seen that the family of king was composed of seven members, who became rulers of the seven cities that bear their names, the ruins of which still exist in the forests of Yucatan, and by the beauty and richness of the ornamentation, the massiveness and finish of the walls of their temples and palaces, excite the admiration of the beholder. These personages, deified after their death, have been worshiped in various countries, and are yet in some, under different names. May not the remembrance of the existence of these seven ancient rulers of Mayax, have been the origin of the tradition of the seven divine rulers of Egypt; of the seven manous that according to the Brahmins, governed the world in the night of times; of the seven Richis or holy personages who assisted them; of the seven princes of the Persian court; and the seven councillors of the king; of the seven Ameshas pants or first angels; of the seven great gods of the Assyrians; or the seven primitive gods regarded by the Japanese as their ancestors and said by them to have governed the world during an incalculable number of years; of the seven Cabiri, worshiped [145] by the Pelasgians at Lemnos and Samothracia; the seven great gods in theogony of the Nahuatls? Do we not see a simile of the Ah Ac chapat or sevenheaded serpent, of the Mayas, totem of their seven primitive Rulers, that is of the seven members of king Can's family, in the seven-headed heavenly Serpent on which rests Vishnu, the Indian creator, that corresponds to the Egyptian Kneph or the Mehen (Canhel) of the Mayas; or in the seven serpents that form the crown of Sira; or again in the Sevenrayed god Heptaktis, of which the emperor Julian was so reluctant to speak?
It would seem that the duration of certain religious festivals was fixed to commemorate the existence on Earth of these seven primitive gods or rulers, the tradition of which we find in all countries where we meet with vestiges Of the Mayas. So we see the seven days of the festival of the Eleusinian. mysteries; the seven days of the festival in honor of the bull Apis, a symbol of Osiris; the seven days of the feast of the tabernacles. The septenary system was also adopted for the same purpose no doubt, in Mayas, since we find the seven cities dedicated to each of the members of king Can's family; the seven pyramids that adorned the city of Uxmal; the seven turrets that ornamented the south facade of the north wing of king Can's palace at Uxmal, each turret inscribed with the name of one of the members [146] of his family; those dedicated to the females being on the east end of the wing. The seven gradients into which is divided the third or uppermost of the three platforms that serve as a substructure to the temples and palaces; the seven superposed gradients, forming all the pyamids, calling to mind the seven terraces of the temple of the seven lights at Borsippa, the most perfect form of Chaldee "temple tower," and the "pyramid degrees" at Sakkara, although in this Egyptian pyramid the gradients are more numerous. The seven rooms built on the west side of the conical mound that supports the temple in which the mysteries were performed at Uxmal: each room again being dedicated to one of the members of king Can's family; the bust of the person to whom it was consecrated being affixed over the doorway. The seven courses of the stones used in the construction of the walls and of the triangular arches that form the ceilings of the rooms. The same system prevails in the arrangement of the grand gallery in the centre of the great pyramid at Ghizzeh in Egypt. In that monument as in all the antique edifices of Mayax, the proportional scale followed by the architects in the drawing of their plans is in accordance with the numbers 3, 5, 7, and their multiples.
The predilection of the nations of antiquity in which the sacred mysteries were celebrated, for [147] number seven appears in many ways. The seven days that, the rainfall that produced the deluge lasted, according to the Chaldeans, is reproduced in the seven days of the prophesy of the deluge by Vishnu to Satyravata, as we read of it in the Bhagavata purana: and the seven days of the prophesy of the same event, made by the Lord to Noah, according to Genesis; on account of the seven days of rainfall the Babylonian priests used seven vases in the sacrifices; and in the hierarchy of Mazdeism, the seven Marouls or genii of the winds; the seven rounds of the ladder in the cave of Mithra. The Aryans had the seven horses that drew the chariot of the sun; the seven Apris or shapes of the flame; the seven rays of Agni; the seven steps of Buddha at his birth. The Egyptians had divided their nation into seven classes; the week into seven days: according to them the creation was completed in seven days. Among the Hebrews, we find the seven lamps of the ark, and of Zacharias vision; the seven branches of the golden candlestick; the seven days of the feast of the dedication of the temple; the seven years of plenty; and the seven years of famine. In the Christian dispensation, the seven churches with the seven angels at their head; the seven golden candlesticks; the seven heads of the beast that rose from the sea; the seven seals of the book; the seven trumpets of the angels; the [148] seven vials full of the wrath of God; the seven last plagues of Apocalypse. In Greek mythology, the seven heals of the hydra killed by Hercules, the seven islands sacred to Proserpine mentioned by Prochis.
The provalence of seven as a mystic number among the inhabitants of the " Western Continent is not less remarkable. It frequently occurs in the Popol-Vuh. We find it besides in the seven families said by Sahagun and Clavigero to have accompanied the mystical personage named Votan, the reputed founder of the great city of Nachan, identified by some with Palenque. In the seven caves from which the ancestors of the Nahualts are reported to have emergod. In the seven cities of Cibola, described by Coronado and Niza, the site of which has been accurately fixed by Mr. Frank Cashing in the immediate neighborhood of the village of Zuni. In the seven Antilles; in the Seven heroes who, we are told, escaped the deluge.
Can it be maintained that this acceptation of seven as a mystic number by nations so heterogeneous and living so far apart, and from the remotest ages, is purely accidental? The origin of its mystification has never been explained. It has been transmitted to us by our predecessors, who themselves had accepted it from theirs, without knowing why it was made the sacred number of the third [149] degree in the rites of initiation into Freemasonry. True, in receiving the degree the initiated are told the esoteric meaning attached to it in. modern times; but this a meaning does not give the origin of its mystification. In fact, it is an invention of our days.
That it was the sacred number of the highest degree of the sacred mysteries in Mayax is evident. We have seen that 3 was the number of the male children of king Can; 5 that of his sons and daughters; 7 was consequently that of the members of the whole family. It is not therefore improbable that to commemorate that; fact, 7 was made the sacred number of the third degree of their sacred mysteries, and that this was the origin of its mystification.
In these pages I have presented, without commentaries, a few of the facts that twelve years researches among the ruins of the antique temples and palaces of the Mayas, a knowledge of their language (still spoken by their descendants, and in some places, as in the vicinity of Peters, in all its pristine purity); the deciphering of certain mural inscriptions; the study of the sacred book of the Quiches, and the interpretation of passages in the Troano MS., have disclosed to me concerning the history, civilization, cosmogonical conceptions, religious tenets and practices of the ancient inhabitants of Yucatan.
[150] It is for you, reader, to judge if such facts are worthy your consideration, and of the truthfulness of my assertion that a knowledge of the history of the primitive dwellers in these "Lands of the West" will help to raise the veil that has covered so many centuries the origin of the first traditions of mankind. Although in the first annual report of the executive committee of the "Archaeological institute of America," we read that: "The study of American archaeology relates indeed to the monuments of a race that never attained to a high degree of civilization and that has left no trustworthy records of continuous history. It was a race whose intelligence was for the most part of a low order, whose sentiments and emotions were confined within a narrow range, and whose imagination was never quickened to find expression of itself in poetic or artistic forms of beauty. From what it was or what it did, nothing is to be learned that has any direct bearing on the progress of civilization." With all due respect for the learning of the gentlemen who have attached their names to so astounding an assertion, I beg to differ from their opinion expressed so emphatically. I differ because I have seen and photographed the constructions left by the mighty races that have preceded us on this continent. They have not. Because I have studied for years, in situ, these monuments that attest to the [151] high civilization of their builders. They have not. Because I have learned the language in which they have consigned part at least of their history in inscriptions carved on stones, and read some of said inscriptions. They have not. Indeed, on this continent, not far from New Orleans, exist the relics of past generations which are as interesting, if not more so, as those of Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Italy; as deserving the attention of all students of archaeology, of history, of ethnology, and philology. It is time yet to save from utter destruction the last records of ancient American history, that are crumbling every day more and more, and are being destroyed by Me hand of ignorance and cupidity. A few years more, and all intelligible traces of them will have disappeared. Will nothing be done in this country to preserve What remains of the ancient American civilization? of that civilization which seems to have been the fountain-head at which the philosophers of all nations, in the remotest antiquity, have come to acquire knowledge and drink inspiration from the learning and wisdom of the Maya sages.
Americans have established in Athens schools for the study of Greek Archaeology; in Alexandria, for the decipherment of the inscriptions carved on the walls of the temples, on the obelisks, and in the papyri found in the tombs in Egypt; is it not time [152] that students in United States should direct their attention to the ancient history of the continent on which they live? It is not altogether lost, and the tongue in which it is written is not a dead language. Maya is one of the oldest forms of speech, coeval, if not anterior to Sanscrit. The names Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc., etc., of the letters of the Greek alphabet, form a curious epic poem in that language. There are many interesting inscriptions in it that only await decipherment to illumine the past records of the race in America. Many of these precious dociuuents exist in the City of New York. They will the history of the mighty nations that have dwelt on this "Western Continent;" they will tell us of the origin of many of our primitive traditions. Why then not found in Yucatan, in the midst of the ruins of the temples and colleges of the learned priesthood of Mayax, a school where students of American archaeology can learn with their language, what the Maya sages knew of man's origin, of his intellectual development, of the past of their people, of the colonists they sent to other parts of the world, where they carried the arts, sciences, and religion of the mother country and its civilization from which our own is descended?
After twelve years of incessant labors and
great hardships, unaided by any government or scientific society,
having to encounter opposition, and [153] surmount countless difficulties
placed maliciously in our way by those whose duty it should have
been to afford us all protection, robbed of our finds by the Mexican
government which has even refused to indemnify us for the money
expended in making hese discoveries, Mrs. Le Plongeon and myself,
after saving from destruction many important documents and relics,
have at last found a key that will unlock the door of that chamber
of mysteries. Shall it be allowed to remain closed much longer?
We have lifted, in part at least, the veil that has hung so long
over the history of mankind in America in remote ages. Shall it
be allowed to fall again? Will no efforts be made by American
students, by men of wealth and leisure in the United States, to
remove it altogether?
Back to Sacred Mysteries [ Previous ]
