The Paddler Gods And Their Journey

South Central Conference on Mesoamerica

 11/4-/6/2011    

 D.M. Urquidi 

    

    

     Thanks to you and all the researchers whose works I have avidly read. I was able to glean quite a bit of useful information many disciplines. As a result, I found myself writing about astronomy as early as 1994. However, I always denied doing it. Two of my astronomy classes were horrible torture chambers of improbable calculations that I had absolutely no faith in. Yet, every time, I turned around I would find another ancient astronomy statement that seemed to have a special meaning. But I digress. The first thing to consider here are the waters of the Milky Way. 

Canoes cannot be paddled without water. In fact, thee were no canoes in Tikal, not the ones with the rounded prows and sterns. So we can assume that the Paddlers Gods have given all of us a very special message as verification of what they are describing as the canoe splits apart and sink under the “waters” of the Milky Way.

The Via Lacta is not only well known to astronomers but also to people like us.  We see only one leg or spiral each half of the year but here on this slide, all the stars (both winter and summer) are theoretically in one spiral. It is a theory based on the view seen by a giant telescope.

    

    Fig. 01: Constellations in our spiral of the Galaxy

Yet, it seems impossible because if they are seasonal by a six-month span and we have opposite seasons in North and South America, one has to ask how?   It is true that one must make a huge sky “cube” because bright stars are closer and dimmer stars may be hundreds of parsecs away but on the same latitude or longitude of the cube at any depth or location. But it seems odd that there is no six-month wide space between them here. In the above, Cygnus and Orion are just one step apart Orion being the lower star set.

The Maya concocted a mythical journey of the Paddler Gods in a boat that sunk. The Aztecs and the Mixtecs created a different story: the tree broke in half and the top fell over but was not disconnected from its roots; or the Tree actually broke split in half down the middle of its trunk. Three different versions in a country that has many different languages; all different and all within a few miles of each other, All these languages relate back to one now called proto-Chol. One of these Maya language branches is called Kekchi,

Since the sun does not move, most everyone is aware of our 23.5 degrees back-and-forth drift of the earth between winter and summer but why do we have two spirals or mythical trees of the Milky Way? Did the Maya know what happened when earth changed its spinning direction?  The Bones of Tikal tell part of the Maya version; the text of the Popol Vuh gives us the rest of the story.

 

 

 

Fig. 02: A-MT 51A. Canoe breaking up going forward;

Fig. 03: B-MT 38D. Fishermen nearby in boat;

Fig. 04: C- MT 38C. Canoe breaking up moving backward

Fig. 05: D-MT 51B. Fishermen‘s nearby boat: “Shall we?”

 

 

 

Fig. 06: E-MT 38B. Half-drowned gods recovering in the boat;

Fig. 007: F-MT 38A: The new boat with recovered gods.

All six bones can be found in Kelley, (1977, 234-5) Fig 80

Here are all the passengers of the Paddler Gods. Its five passengers are:

v  Xolotl, companion of Quetzalcoatl, who sacrificed himself to save the sun (that in this story is Quetzalcoatl.)

v  Seven Macaw who lost his turquoise teeth and metallic eye decorations to the twin paddlers but not before he stole a part of Hunahpú’s arm [See Stela 25 of Izapa.].

v  The Maize god who was to be reborn, Since star-watching lovers frequently have children, so too, the gods also must be born or re-born in the stars.

v  The Howler Monkey as a God implies North and the howler sounds imply the noise that was to come from comets of the northwestern skies.

v  And the Iguana that Thor Anderson discovered was the god in the center of every Maya home. Its tail was stretched to the heavens. Not as a dragon, not as a crocodile as on Izapa stela 25 with armless Hunahpú, but as an iguana that had the appearance of a crocodile.

 

 What [might have] happened to the Milky Way?

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Fig. 08: Vase K-7912:

In order to understand the splitting of the Milky Way and ”raising of the sky,” one must return to when the

star was beginning to become brilliant and needed special attention from "binder of the years"

Comments; The Maize God in the upper register. A woman holding the baby. Maize God speaks to the Hero Twin Hun, Ahaj. Behind the Twin is his brother as God A-prime.  

 

The Comments are expanded into “Iconographic Elements” in the footnotes, as not one, but several names for each entity to accommodate all possible variations, until the real name will be found found.

I saw the picture of this vase rollout quite by mistake, it had some interesting elements that I had thought worth keeping, so I had downloaded it to my desktop.  Recently, I had clicked on its icon by accident but since it was not what I was seeking I closed it. Yet, the images I had seen  before me, still bothered me.

On the left side I thought I had seen a man with a rope on his shoulder. He is holding a baby girl [with a skirt, not nude as infant boys are usually portrayed.] Hunahpú with the sun dots is in the middle and he wears a configuration thought to refer to his “soon-to-be” sun status.  Instead it is the configuration for the constellation called the Summer Triangle as it is viewed north of the equator. But Xbalenqué, was not at the right. So what was wrong with the picture and why are the sunspots placed in the position similar to the Summer Triangle?

I went back and l looked again. The Commentary for the vase said that a woman was holding the baby girl. Then, why was the rope on her shoulders? And why was it not Xbalenqué seated in back of Hunahpú?

I concluded that One Hunaphu is the central figure; Seven Hunahpú is behind him as being “of no account to their story in the Popol Vuh,” hence his small, yet adult size.

One Hunahpú, the father who since he will die soon, wears death bells as a collar. The father is headless in D-2 of the Dresden and in the Madrid, it is unspotted but still headless on M-54. We know Hunahpú the Twin, was also beheaded, but Xbalenqué, helped him so that he did not die until they leapt into the fire together.

The baby is just a new star [about 1-1/2 years old] that began to glow when it was first born. This child, as a star, had no need for a mother, but it did need a sky guardian, what better guardian to have than he who binds the years with the ropes. The guardian, male or female, has a fringed skirt, a fringed top, but no female bust to speak of at all.

Overhead, is a planetary strip of sky. In the topmost register the text, two glyphs caught my eye, a macaw and a comet-type icon attached to a possibly lady glyph. Both are directly over the child. The three are possibly connected to the figures below the planet sky strip.

      The female may be the young star, Tlaltecuhtli, who, later, is as a   female “giving birth” [to meteorites] with the strength of a man as the androgynous . The Californian Indians called this

goddess, “Isis (but it is a male entity) who was hidden in a boil the knee of Kumush.

 

, a similar close connection to the knee as the child of Justin Kerr’s vase k-7912. Tlaltecuhtli story is the same as the Aztec Coyolxauhqui of the moon disk. However, in 1993, Mary Miller and Karl Taube identified her as Tlaltecuhtli, a Maya goddess not Aztec.

Fig. 13: the Aztec Coyolxauhqui

On the website, Flickr this goddess is shown with blue earrings and the color blue is on every joint, even with blue nipples as an indication of her androgynous blue star status in the sky. In the Bodley Codex during her birth in the flaming tree (the Milky Way) which Alfonso Caso records her as the Earth Lord, a male entity of the earth.

 

 

 

Our Galaxy

Fig. 09a-b:    looking down      looking over

 

Our galaxy, shown looking down, [a] or looking over the edge,  [b] indicates where our sun is located (the arrow points) but it cannot show us where our earth is located.

       

     Fig:  10-a                               Fig. 10-b

         As a full circle           around the equator

         “River of Salt”          Old Milky

The ancient Babylonian clay map has a northwest orientation and indicates that a river of salt that surrounds the known world. The river of salt, thought to be of the oceans, is sparkling and grainy, just as salt sprinkled in the sun on a table. It is the sparkling stars as the Milky Way.

If the sun is exactly in the middle of one of the spiral arms, we would only be as the Babylonian version, living with only half a sun.

       

        Fig.11:  The “Raising of the Sky” by 23.5 degrees

The repaid 23.5-degree shift of the earth I have illustrated in Fig. 11, is also found on Stela 22 in Izapa, as a giant-sized glyph for all to see and understand.

 

 

                                

Fig; 12a-b: The Giant-sized Glyph “Raising of the Sky.”

With a Northwest Orientation

 

The triangle of the roof and the angles of the 23.5-degree shift are equal.  The “raising of the sky: by 23.5 degrees caused the river of “salt” [of Babylon] to break into two pieces, It is no longer a single circle. It became two legs or spirals of the galaxy.

The Ring Nebula began its journey with a bi-polar jet, having the appearance of a knife that flew out of a decorated ball (star). The next event was the disintegration of that star form until it finally emerged as the beautiful rose next to Vega in the constellation Vega of the Milky Way, all of which is recorded in the Popol Vuh.

One is the beautiful rose tree: of the Ring Nebula and the other as Tezcatlipoca [Tezcatlipuca] of the mirror foot or the tree of the warrior, Orion. Fig: 13: The Ring Nebula as the Rose      of the Beautiful Rose Tree.

      The cause of the shift: Stanley Guenter and Mark Zender translated the Palenque west panel O12 – P12 as G-I threw the heart of the death god into the depths of the sea.    

 Thus the constellations north and south of the equator changed their positions in the sky, but not until the Twins of the Popol Vuh played the second game described by Dennis Tedlock (1996), Goetz and Morley (1954), and Allen Christenson (2007). All occurred before the Birth of the Fifth Sun which dried up the earth after the

flood caused by the rain of “resin” or “turpentine that burned as it fell.”

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Fig: 14a-b: Differences between Peru and Mesoamerica for Same Constellation

In Hawaii there seems to be a 180-degree difference but in Peru, only a 90-degree difference has been photographed.

Fig. 15: Izapa Stela 22 and Stela 67 similar boats and serpent ropes.  

Stela 67 has upside down waves of the sea and elephant seal noses

Fig. 16: Elehant seal with a soft nose

On this page it can be seen that the 23.5 degree angle of the sky of Stela 22, the great glyphic representation of the  “raising of the sky.” Each serpent head and god in the water have square cornered” eyes. I have painted a color over the “squares of amazement.”  It was an idiomatic

phrase [modismo] that I heard from a visitor who lives in Texcoco and was only in Tapachula for a nephew’s baptism.

Stela 67 of Izapa is thought to have a similar boat. However, on stela 67, the serpent holds the boat under the prow and stern that are the poling platforms of an estuary canoe made from a tree log.

The boat on Stela 22 shows the serpents encircling the whole boat both prow and stern, including the poling platforms. The difference leads us to the Peruvian god Ophiuchus: take special note of the belt with the two serpents. One can also see elephant seal noses, as on Izapa stela 6, [See Fig. 18] are on the two upside-down Milky Way (river) gods of Stela 67.

     

Fig. 17-18: Ophiuchus with four serpents over Stela 67.

Again, the angles are the same.

The belt of this god appeared to a viewer on the opposite side of the equator in an upside-down position. The upside-down belt of the god has similar angles equal to those on Stela 67, while the elephant seal with its long soft long nose, is of Baja California. These seal’s seasonal range is along the Pacific Coast from Tierra del Fuego to Baja California every season.  

The belt image as the boat, with its angles, was transferred from Peru to Izapa, by students who studied astronomy at Nasca at Observatory Hill on the Sandy River, just as Three Dog of the Mixtec dynasty had. Were the students trying to show what they had learned about triangulating the stars in Peru when they went to school at Nasca and finally returned to their homes in Mesoamerica?

 Fig. 19: The Bodley Codex Lam 22. The upside down star-viewing cross sticks under his path.

The Aztec Huehueeotl, the old fire god, also came from Peru probably with the Peruvian Inca Astronomy students. His head wears the bowl of fire tied to his forehead, just as Kawi’l of Palenque has a cigar jutting out of his forehead. They probably saw it occur in Peru and had no idea it also occurred in their homes north of the Equator.

   

Fig. 20: Huehueteotl, the old Fire God.

The triangle below as his belly is telling the world where he is located in the sky.  His nursing breasts  [yes, they are nursing breasts] just indicates the basic concept of his androgynous status as a god.

 

Fig 21:  MT 38A. We were going west? Where are we going now?

They are going northwest now. Just as the Babylonian map was defined with its northwestern orientation

Conclusion

The Paddlers Gods are carrying comet components to the northwest [where comets come from]. Without the data from other astronomy observations even within the same continent, the result is a variety of ideologies and names of the same gods that usually are quite colorful and very different from each other. Astronomy is an exact science, except when a comet flies by a disintegrating star.