chamula

Maya Rituals and the Great Star Disaster

In 1974, a book about the Chamulas of the Yucatan was written. It was called: Chamulas in the World of the Sun: Time and Space in a Maya Oral Tradition, written by Gary H. Gossen. He recorded that in Chamula mythology, the sun was hidden from view for five days. Nothing drastic, and by 1979, Thor Anderson decided to do a video, called Ritual Warfare in a Maya Village, also known as Sacred Games Ritual Warfare in a Maya Village, placed on a VCR tape in 1988, that was about those very traditions, in this way, he put a "face" on those practices, even though he may not have taped the Chamula Festival of the Sun.

I did not connect anything in the book with the star disaster and did not expect to see any confirmation that it even occurred. However, after seeing Thor Anderson's tape, I realized that there are underlying memories of an event that may have occurred many years ago that has been subsequently decked out in more modern concepts. This type alteration of cultural memory is a natural phenomenon and is usually due to the early demise of those charged with passing on the details of the original event. War, pestilence, or a normal, but short, life span are the usual reasons for this.

Another book by Robert S. Carlsen tells us that the Maya groups in Guatemala were almost ignored by the Spanish when then found that there was little or no gold to be had. This enabled the Maya in Atitlan (and probably other Maya groups) to incorporate their religion into the Christianity forced upon them in the beginning by the colonists from Spain who were searching for gold. Jade was not even considered as wealth by the Conquistadores.¹

Besides giving us the out-dated Maya version of the end of the world (the year 2000) Professor Anderson placed the key to the past very near to the end of his tape.

The Sun traveled so low that the earth was scorched.

We can begin with the gross mistake made by Velikovsky about the "birth of the Morning Star [Venus]". He claimed that Phaëthon was worshipped as Evening and Morning star by those in ancient Crete and called Atymnisa. It was also called Ishtar in Egypt; Phaëthon by the Greeks; Quetzalcoatl in Mexico and known by all oriental and occidental peoples.²

The Greeks claim that Phaëthon, son of Helius, took his father's four horse sun chariot out for a day. However, he could not control reins, so he set the sky afire and created the Milky Way. Zeus got angry. He killed Phaëthon with a thunder bolt and brought the sun back to its regular course. Phaëthon fell to earth at river Padus (Po) once called the Eridanus.³

Phaëthon's ride in the sun chariot caused even the Nile River [goddess] to flee in terror and hide its head in the earth where it is hidden yet. Its seven mouths dried up.⁴

Helius, unhappy at death of Phaëthon, did not wish to ride Sun Chariot any more. Zeus commanded him to continue his daily tour, but later Apollo turned Helius out and took over the Sun himself.⁵

From a mythic point of view, the Aztec poem "The Birth of the Fifth Sun" describes the heat from a sun that would not move away from the horizon. It is a perfect confirmation of the old Greek version of the natural reluctance of Helius after the death of his son and the later movement of the Sun because Apollo took over the job of driving the Chariot of the Sun every day. Apollo

The main gods in the Aztec tale have different names, but even later still, they were called Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl. Quetzalcoatl that took on the role of the Sun (until replaced by the Christian Christ figure [Apollo]) and Xolotl sacrificed himself (as Phaëthon did) to save the sun from its own destruction.

A current website,⁶ says that the Diving God was, in fact, the Sun God. This would agree with Huitzilopochtli that entered the volcanic lake Texcoco and with Xolotl who apparently entered the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf, both of the Aztec world, and the Carolina Bay meteorites (tracked on the above map as smaller tektites) that also fell into the Ocean, creating the tsunami recorded by the Greenlanders.^{7 & 17}

Both of these "gods" are shown on the wall mural in Chichen Itza. The battle below them are probably the warriors of the sun, about to burn up the roofs of the village as it did in Chamula territory. Quetzalcoatl sits in the large sun serpent orb and Xolotl tags along behind in a smaller orb attached to the tail of the [comet] serpent.⁸ The various names are used independently by each Aztec or Maya group, even though the glyphs found on the monuments were probably standardized for most of the country.

The Maya version probably names Xolotl as God K with a cigar icon stuck in his forehead. The Jaguar of the Underworld is another version of God-K or Xolotl while our knowledge of Aztec lore brings to bear yet another name for him, that of Huitzilopochtli, who fell into the volcanic lake "bosom" of Coatlique as a fire (feather) ball from the sky.

So now let us look into the symbols of the "Sacred Games" that were taped and were repeated world-wide. Since these "clues" are astronomical, then the path of the star event can probably be traced in its orbit around the world. However, even a comet like Halley's cannot be seen inall parts of the world during its appearance in the skies.

Here is a list compiled from my notes:

The most important is the Greek version of Phaëthon's erratic ride across the heavens with four horses (now called the Four Horses of the Apocalypse).

1. The explosion of the nova, like fireworks.
The Ring Nebular was identified by the Greenich Royal Observatory in England as having exploded about 1500 years ago, (Nov. 11, 2007) or about the time that Linda Schele decided to call the "venus" glyph attached to the flod glyph "Star Wars." (Schele & Grube, Maya Meetings, 1994, 113)

It is a tribute to just how accurate the ancient Maya astronomers could be without our huge mechanical astronomy equipment.

Chamula festival has a mock bull running with fireworks coming off his body and the clowns chasing him around the plaza with more fireworks.⁹
The Lance of the Sun God is paraded around the zocalo three times, backwards, from west to east. There seems to be a problem with translations in the Popol Vuh with the appearance of the "sun that is not the one we see," that came from the west. Most of the time, it is justified and replaced with the phrase "the sun rose in the east."

2. Sun god is called a "four-cornered flowery sun."
Nuttall depiction of the blazing star shows the four elements of the main star.

Ezekiel's description (1:5) of four "angels" are possible comets that are connected by their tails emitting strange sounds.
The video tape of the festival tells us that the four monkeys who made sounds like whistling or cacophonous (discordant) bells. are the official companions of the headman (called Pasíon). They have blue stitching on their leather leggings just as the Hebrew talit prayer shawls have a blue thread in each of the corner tassels in honor of the four blue comets .¹⁰

3. Sky so hot it is like a magnifying glass
Sun created jaguar with power of sun and voice of thunder.
p. 98: Lightning of quartz cylinders at enemy by Jaguar sun who lives near harpy creatures and buzzards.¹¹
Ezekiel (1:22) tells us that the sky was "like a terrible crystal."

4. Water so hot, even in the marshes, that the normal animals of the water,
leave it for cooler places in or under houses. Nevertheless. the people in Athens, Greece, jumped into water (and wells) in an attempt to cool off.
In 426 B.C., Athens was in a heat wave (Etesian) northwest winds did not blow, heat intensified and air grew fiery. Bodies wasted away, fevers came on, sick threw themselves into cisterns and springs to cool themselves. (See 59 - 1 - 3) re great catastrophe that tore through peninsula.¹²

6. The "moon[-like star] stayed in its house" during a comet/meteor/meteorite
sky outrage that made sounds like whistling or cacophonous (discordant) bells.
A Greek philosopher/mystic Apollonius slept on the ground then rose at midnight and sang hymn to the ray of light suspended aloft in the air as if it were midday.¹³

7. The comet/meteor/meteorite went around the world three times, from northwest to southeast. (Reversed from the path of the true sun.)
Clowns run the same reverse [sun] direction during the taped festival. ¹⁴
E. Jensen reports that the Dogons of Africa gave the information that the comet passed by three times.

8. Food and drink made in homes that were closed tight against the sun.
The video tale: Heat from sun so bad that the old thatch on top of roofs burst into flames [implied] and destroyed the houses. People ran from homes through burning village, up the mountain to the safety of the caves just as the monkey attendents do during the festival games.
Caves (ancient burial places) were used by people to stay cool in abnormally hot temperatures. Though the origin of this is no longer associated with the disaster, even the iconography below shows the sun and the moon above the cave of the corpse and when the item is turned around, becomes the source of life (and food) for humans

Most cave "myths" tell that the "first fathers" emerged from "under the earth" or from the caves.¹⁶ In many cultures, Mother Earth is actually an earth "serpent" image. . .and accepted as humans as the source of power (see God K of Palenque above where the rule of the serpent was replaced gradually by the rule of God K or as Linda Schele recognized it: "Star Wars".)

9. Fish-eating Wednesday.
[My Note: The most interesting part of the tape was that the whole festival ends on Ash Wednesday which is "fish-eating day."
Ezekiel: 29:5: And I will . . .throw. . . all the fish of thy rivers. . . upon the open fields.
Chamula version: {text 182] tells of the removal of the primeval oceans in the First Creation by the hand of htotik (the sun).

He began to sweep away the sea.
When he swept away the sea, the earth was empty in all directions.
Now only the land remained, mothing more,
Only the open plains, nothing more.
No mountains
No people.
No stones,
No woods,
Only the earth itself.¹⁷

The walls of Bonampak also show that the land was inundated with waters that left strange sea creatures of immense size, who came with discordant sounds of flutes, horns, and drums.

It might be a good thing for geologists to look into such tales found on the east coast of the Americas. They, then might be able to figure out that all the Carolina Bays, that do not seem to have any connection with a meteorite fallout, might just have caused such an ocean upheaval, known today as a tsunami.¹⁸

The Greek versions tells us that Circe bathing her head in salt spray had visions the night before of much fire and flame, strange animals appeared and she related her fears to Jason and his friends. ¹⁹
Alexander reached the Ocean where a strong tide tore up the boats.
p. 449: Horrible sea monsters left by the tide were roaming about. He decided to turn back.²⁰

The most important view of the ancient event in Anderson's tape, was that the ritual drink for the special occasion was made by people "locked" in the cook house, as the fires roared to heat the gruel. Why would it be important to be locked in a house that was so hot that the participants thought it was a just punishment for their transgressions [before the roofs began to burn and they had to flee to the mountain caves]. This appears to be confirmed by the last event of the festival.

Then at the end of the rituals of the New Year, the thatch from various roofs in the village was taken to the central plaza and laid out in a crosshatch pattern, and set on fire, so the monkey people could run through it in a "fire" run. During the preparations for the "Games", the path up the hill is cleared for the Monkey run, even though it may no longer lead to the caves.

As a conclusion, one can say that our familiar skies were very different but was never an event that a camera recorded. For this reason, astronomy claims that it never occurred within our collective human memory. Sixty-five million years solves all problems for them. In spite of this, there are several pieces of art that are similar to photos: One from a cave in Brazil with an impossible (eons ago) date and another from the cave of Punte de Este.

The first shows the position of the nova in a newly created Milky Way and the other shows several star forms enveloped in heat waves of our atmosphere in the sky.

The normal response to these graphics is: Cave art is millions of years old, long before men could do more than grunt and shuffle, dragging their cudgles on the ground behind them. Yet, in all the records around the world, when the star event are mentioned in traditional lore, including the Bible and the Koran,(and the last illustrated in the Blue Mosque and other star burst ceiling in cathedrals) either people had to flee to the caves or the origins of the various cultures emerged from the caves or from the underworld (underground). But, because we have no official recorded memory of such a sky event, it could never have existed, and if it did, it had to be 65 million years ago, even though mankind was not recognized as being here until about 25 mya. Who could have carried the tale through the intervening years? And why are medieval mosque dome ceilings done in such a way that they remind one of an exploding star, either by the color blue (in the Hagia Sophia) or with the stalectite ceiling designs both in the Middle East and in England?

As it is, our space astronomers are now preparing for a time when and if a comet (or meteor or asteroid) should threaten our world. They apparently intend to nudge it off course before it reachs us. However, Tempe I on July 4, a while back was not able to deflect the comet, although much debris was expelled from it because of the impact. They believe it could happen,but they do NOT believe that it DID HAPPEN during our recorded histories and traditional memories. The only reason is that there are no "official" records of such an event. The pictures drawn by native scribes are just fanciful and imaginative art work and mean very little. And the stalactite style of archtecture is only that.

¹ Ezekiel , Torah version and the KJ Bible version are a tad different, but contain the same information. Carlsen, Robert S. (1997) The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town, Austin, Texas: Univ. of Texas Press. p. 87.
p. 98, Figure 20, San Juan holds a lamb that has black spots, whiskers and fangs protruding from the mouth. Thus he is probabally the Maya Lord of the Wild Animals [Rjawal Pek'chila Chkop]. The Chamula say that Christ is the Sun and Mary is the Moon. The bursting nova apparently is the fire bull, a possible constellation, but not necessarily Taurus. Any constellation with a wide area (i.e. wings or the cross bar of a cross) and an area that is narrow (a neck or lower end of a cross)will fit a description of a "bull" emiting fire balls and sparks.

² Velikovsky, p. 160, Birth of morning star, [He assumed it to be Venus.]

³ Diodorus, V - 23 - 2 - 3, p. 159. Phaëthon, son of Helius, the Greek sun god. [My Note: Here we also have the creation of the Milky Way, verified by the Turkish poem, the new Greek messenger goddess Iris, the Aborigines of Australia and the Hawaiian Goddess Mother of Creation, URI. Astronomers were quick to assert that the Milky Way could never have been created that way because we are in the between the arms of a huge Galaxy that is the source of our Milky Way. According to them, the stories are only "fairy tales" because the Earth has always been between the arms of the Galaxy. My answer is one found in more than a few myths, that the day was longer on one side of the world and that the night was longer on the other side of the world. In short, we were tipped over (all at once) and even though the "earth" righted itself, it was only a partial return to its original orbit so that now we see a completely different view of that spiral arm.]

⁴ Ovid, Metamorphoses, II - 254 - 256, p. 77. The Nile River

⁵ Rouse, (1957) p. 141. The transfer of the sun to Apollo.

⁶ http://www.michielb.nl/maya/astronom.html

⁷ Gordon, V - 11, p. 190,In the Konungs Skuggsjá the great waves are described. (See also note 17.)

There is still another marvel in the Greenland seas. It is called hafgerdingar, and it has the appearance as if all the waves and tempests of the ocean had been collected into three heaps, out of which three huge waves are formed. These close in the entire sea, so that no opening can be seen anywhere; they are higher than lofty mountains, and resemble steep overhanging cliffs. Seldom have men been known to escape who were on the seas when this occurred’ Dainish scientist Japetus Steenstrup in article in Aarboger 1871, explained waves were result of when seaquakes subsided.

Corliss, W. R. (1953). Strange Planet: A Sourcebook of Unusual Geological Facts. Information about the Carolina Bays.

⁸ Chichen Itza Wall mural showing warriors of Sun God (above then) on "paja" roofs of Maya homes, {\[inorderf to burn the inhabitants out of the houses]. A full grown man would have a problem on a roof of "paja" (palm fronds), and if not carreful could fall through in a second.\.

⁹ Gossen, p. 58, and 137.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 144. p. 319 tells of the blue stitched leggings. My Note: If the four monkeys are, in fact, the four comets (angels, meteorites, or companions) from the star event, then the blue stitches are the same as the blue thread in the tasse the corner tassels of the Hebrew talit. Both were forbidden by the medieval church and hence had to be made an insignificant part of the "prayer" sequences.

¹¹ Reichel - Dolmatoff, p. 28 and p. 98.

¹² Dodorus, XII - 58 - 5 - 6,

¹³ Philostratus, Apollonius Tyanis III - XXXIII, p. 305,

¹⁴ Gossen, p. 137.

¹⁵ Jensen, E., p. 70, Bibliography: M. Griaule, Dieu d'Eau, Entretiens avec ogotemm�li, Paris 1

The first shows the position of the nova in a newly created Milky Way and the other shows several star forms enveloped in heat waves of our atmosphere in the sky.

los Dogones en el Sudan. El herrero celestial rompio un pedazo del sol para llevarlo a un granero de la Tierra. Durante la huida perdío algo del fuego y lo levantó con su cayado. Tres veultas dio al granero, (he looked for the granery three turns [around the sky]) hasta que, en su miedo, he finally found the doorway and hid the fire inside. El espí;ritu celestial encolerizado por el robo, le lanzó dos rayos que no lo alcanzaron.

¹⁶ Cave stuff here.

¹⁷ Gossen, p. 144.

¹⁸ See Corliss Note 7 above)

¹⁹ Argonautica, IV, p. 339.

²⁰ Rolfe, Alexander the Great, Vol. II, p. 443-451.