Vase A-708 from Sacul I
When I first saw this vase in Mexicon
(December, 2003, vol. XXV. nbr 6, p. 143) I ignored it. The picture was not very
clear; the rabbit had one short and one long ear; and the explanations were of
the common kind: the lady was the Moon Goddess and the Rabbit was her companion.
The gentlemen on the other side of the vase were almost invisible also. In fact,
I did not even read about them at all.
One evening, when I had little else to do, I opened up Mexicon and
was surprised to see that I recognized two components of the graphics that I had
not noticed previously. Not only that but one of those components was repeated
on the other side with the two gentlemen. That particular segment was the turtle
carapace. The hooked nosed man with the protruding chin and hollow cheeks on the
other side was wearing one on his back.The man should be very ancient, as ancient
as the first stars. The man above him had a bird's head, but, being partially
obliterated, no real identification could be made of him.
On the other side, the "goddess" holding the "rabbit" is wearing a skirt
with the turtle carapace design and the "rabbit" is wearing a "drum major" hat
so familiar to us in the Palenque art. Attached to it are two star forms similar
to comets. It was the turtle carapace design that
caught my eye this time around. I had been working on the Becker-Colombino
Codex and had drawn out a turtle man or two, so the shell was still fresh in
my mind. The "drum major" hat came a while later.
With new information that came out in November 7, 2007 from the Greenwich Royal
Observatory, the lady is not Moon (Goddess). She is inside of a turtle carapace,
however soft and comfortable it may be, the vase might be telling us that it was only the
Ring Nebular that was shining as bright as the Moon in the Turtle Constellation According to Richard H. Allen in his book Star Names:
Their Lore and Meanings was once the name of Lyra. The "goddess" of the Turtle.
Then, her carapace skirt is actually the Blue Star nova that blazed out of control
about 1500 years ago. In some countries she is a he, but in all instances, she is blue
and a caring goddess, the Mother of all creation. This may be the first
first star formation ever identified by the astronomers of Sacul, Peten.
The Aztec poem "The Birth of the Fifth Sun" in the book Time and
Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos tells us that there were two bird-men in
the sky, and the one that a rabbit thrown into his face so that he would move
away from the earth became the Moon. So, here, we can add a bare-breasted
female for emphasis and designate her as the "Blue goddess" of the Turquoise skirt,
just because she was in the area of Lyra (the Turtle) at the time the rabbit, was thrown at the moon. Above his "drum major" headdress is a long stem with fire
feathers on it in the original picture that should confirm his sudden "birth" on
the face of the moon.
The face of K'awii'l appears to be on the back of the lady's throne and the throne
itself is seated upon a sky band. No denying that these participants are sky
entities, including the rabbit.
There is no better way to remember astronomy when books for the general
public were not always available. Was it an astronomical story? Well, if the
Moon and the Rabbit of the Moon are in the sky, then the rest of the tableau
should have been there also. We know that the Aztec Hummingbird of the South
(Huitzilopochtli) was a fireball from the sky and he was very impressive
as a blue sky-bird. He even considered the stars to be his brothers and sisters.
As for the "drum major" headdress that is so similar to the one made of
jade in Palenque, it is apparent that the "rabbit" became a very important
entity in the sky. Did he control the rain and the mists at night? Or did
he just become the great recording scribe of the sky gods? Since women made
tortillas and food, but did not usually read and write in that era, the rabbit
probably took over the role of scribe, since the real moon was so regular in its
appearance in the sky. The blazing nova was a different phase of astronomy altogether.
When one is investigating an artifact, would it not be more reasonable
to take all the myths and traditions of the area into consideration before
"guessing" at a "reasonable" solution? And if there is any indication that
stars may have been involved, not people, then the star mythss should be considered
using the same process even when they are called "people."