El Tajín Ballcourts and Knots
A False Sun and Moon

What seems like a long time ago, a friend of mine, Jan Adams, wanted to do a paper on knots. When she passed away, her notes on the subject came to me. I had no idea what to do with her theory about knots. She had not explained it to me because it was still in the germination stage and there was no handle on her musings at that time.

Just recently, I changed my books around in my personal library and came across the Official Guide to El Tajín published by INAH in 1976. It ended up on my desk and I never quite managed to find a place for it. For two months, it was opened and closed on a fairly regular basis. The line drawings of the South Ball Court by M. E. Kampen were well done and much easier to look at than the almost faded photographs of the actual stone panels.

Then, one more time, I opened the booklet and found myself on page 20, with an explanation of the symbol OLLIN (Movement). The shield like drawing shows a circle with a knot within the empty center area that was either an intertwined atl (spear) or an arrow. (See above) This type of knot without the arrow and spear endings, appeared at least once on all the drawings of the South Ball Court, except for the North Central Panel 2.

Tne night sky in the tropics is filled with stars, large and small. And the drawings of the various panels of the South Ball Court contain men wearing star symbols in their headdresses. The "knot" is found on their belts or above their heads in the borders.

The panels of the North Ball Court were smaller and less interesting, although Panel 6 of the southeastern section did have a almost visible male figure with two serpents in his lap. Over his head was a very basic Venus glyph. Even so, the panel was so deteriorated that the male figure was no longer identifiable.
What did the OLLIN (Movement) "knot" mean? Was it an earthquake symbol? Or was it a "knot" symbol that indicated "movement" even in the heavens? The Net Jaguar in conjunction with Tlaloc is shown in Teotihuacán covered with a "knotted" net that is over its whole body?1 The Northeast Panel 1 uses OLLIN in the top border and again in the belt of the person holding the man who is to be decapitated.

If this is a star representation of the ball game, then it may be that the decapitation is of One Hunahpu, the father of the twins, Hunaphu and Xbalanque. One Hunahpu, lost his head in Xibalba, when he could not accomplish the tests given him by the Death God and his cohorts. Panel 2 in the North Central side of the Southern ball court, has the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque, face to face (the position that they leaped together into the fire2) in the top border of the panel. Below, in the main scene, there are three persons, one with an olla under his arm, is pointing to a fourth who is wrapped as a mummy but with head and feet showing, signifying that in Xibalba, dead people are "alive."

It was said that it was a pulque ceremony, (p. 20 and 40) but, in the Popol Vuh the twins had to trick their grandmother by creating a magic hole in the water jug, which only they could fix, so that the rat could show them where the playing equipment was in the rafters.

Apparently, this segment the various god forms and a dead person to prove that it was Xibalba, together with the presence of the twins overhead, who were on their way to play a ball game with the Lords of the Dead.
The Northwest panel 3, shows the twins, with a knot above them and between them, with the rabbit waiting on a hill to be called into play by them. One of the gods with fire over his headdress is listening to Xbalanque as he prepares to continue the game.

The Southwest Panel 4 is not so much an initiation to the ball game, but the game in the world above making so much noise that the "gods" are not able to rest. The bird indicates the owl/ or the falcon used as a messenger of Xibalba, who is announcing that the twins are above ground and playing, making the disturbance. This then, should be Panel 3 and Panel 3 should be Panel 4.

Using OLLIN as a visual marker, the concept that appears to be within the panels is that these characters, including the Death Gods, are entities that move across the starry skies. If this is so, then the panels are illustrating the story of the Twins as they earned the right to play the ball game with the lords of the Underworld. And sure enough, there is a rabbit seated on the stones not only on the Northwest Panel 3 but also in the South Central Panel 5 flying overhead. Here, one of the twin is visible in front of the gloating Xibalba lord. The twins had become fish after their ground up bones were thrown into the river.

In other words, the panels around the ball court at El Tajín, tell the story of Hunhapu and his brother Xbalenque. Since these two entities were reborn as the Sun (Hunahpu) and the moon (Xbalanque) in the Popol Vuh, it stands to reason that they were stars to begin with; the Maya story of the stars that traveled out of their proper realm in the sky to avenge the death of their father in the Underworld.

Not the true sun or even the true moon, since Blood Moon (the true moon) was their mother. The "blood" red is in reality the burnt orange of the University of Texas as in July of 2004 when a comet or asteroid dropped a gift in her left hand. The twins were just elements that had the appearance of the sun, but was not as warm as the ordinary sun until it entered our atmosphere and was close enough to burn. The "moon" was just another very bright star in the sky. It may have been the "Venus" star that was not the planet, just a very bright star in the ancient sky that blossomed brightly, then faded into oblivion.

Panel 6 in the Southeast corner of the Southern Ball Court is interesting insomuch that it contains a "greek" symbol of a comet that is located over the head of the standing figure. The Greeks said that the comet appeared in the sky like a flaming sword. The image over the head of the standing figure is pointed and could be considered a flaming spear or a sword. This is the end of the story of the twins. They returned to their rightful places in the heavens, but not as the sun and the moon, only as the false sun and a bright star that shone as bright as the moon. This image of a double entity flying across the sky is found on the wall mural of Chichen Itzá. The larger sun image and the smaller image of a person in the back, connected by the body of a serpent. Deny it? Sure why not. There is no evidence at all about this event other than the pictures that no one can understand.

The smaller ball court at the other end of El Tajin contained the rest of the story, the less believable one, that of the falcon or a quetzalcoatl and its association with the double serpent. It was the first glimmer of the Aztec world view, that of the great serpent Quetzalcoatl of Teotihuacán with the head of Tlaloc on the other end.

There, in Teotihuacán, the head of Tlaloc with the rattles of a rattle snake and its sea shells at the end of the quetzal head, indicates that Bonampak with its giant lobster headed men was not imagination, but a fact. The event of how the water inundated the land is also mentioned in the Popol Vuh. It is a very vague description because most of the Maya who wrote the information into the Popol Vuh were in the mountains, not in the lowlands where the great tsunami destroyed all who were there. That description can be found on page 77 when "the mountains were softened by him. . ." the god called "Earthquake," the earth son of Seven Macaw. It was Seven Macaw who claimed to be "the metal of the sun."

In order to read the glyphs or the panels of the Maya, one must know the history of their people and of their beginnings. Without this information, no logical sequence can be made about the mythic history, or the real history.
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1 INAH (1976) El Tajín, Guía Oficial.
2 von Winning, Hasso (1968) Pre-Columbian Art of Mexico and Central America and
Pasztory, Esther, (1974) The Iconography of the Teotihuacán Tlaloc, Washington, DC. Trustees for Harvard University , At Teotihuacán, Zone 3, a Jaguar-Tlaloc bust has been found superimposed on the net emblem of the jaguar.
3 Tedlock, Dennis (1996) Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings New York: Simon and Schuster/A Touchstone Book, Revised edition, p. 112.