The Birth of the Three Hearthstones

Once in a while there is a "light bulb" that flashes in one's mind. Some call it an "epiphany." It was like that when I saw the nest with three stars surrounded by the flowers of Tamoanchan, the Paradise of Mesoamericans.

Since flowers only exist where there are bees, (and there are many sky temple bees to be found in the Madrid Codex the obvious location would be somewhere near the "ancient" beehive,1 now replaced at times by a smaller version (actually the "Teapot" of Sagittarius) on the opposite side of the Milky Way in spite of our present astronomical designation of Cancer.

Cancer is near Orion, where the Three Hearthstones are according to Ted and Barbara Tedlock.2 It has been determined that the Three Hearthstones are part of the belt of Orion with the fire source between them as the nebula at the end of the sword.3

The Nuttall Codex on the other hand, indicates that the three hearthstones come from a nest near (or inside of) the Milky Way, on the way to Paradise or Tamoanchan of the flowering "Cosmic Tree." Even Sahagún is sure that the three stars that rise at 3 am, around 5:30 or 6 am and later at 9 am are in or near Tamoanchan. The words he used to describe them was 1. Mastelejos and 2. Mamahuaztli. These stars are associated with Yoaltecutli (Lord of the Night and Yacauitztli (Lady of the Night, Goddess of Cradles and Mother of All Children). 3 A different culture identifies a special star called the Blue URI located in the Northern Cross (Cygnus) as the Mother of All Children, {in the upper short hypotenuse of that constellation.)

As if to further identify the Northern Cross, the translation of, not "Mastelejos,"(as an apparent accidental long stroke for "R" and a non-existent word in Spanish/English dictionaries), but of "Masteleros" that translates as "The main mast of a ship."4 And again, not to confuse but to confirm the place where those stars are located, he also called them the Mamahuaztli.

The Mamahuaztli, has a more complex translation that refers to Tamoanchan and the Cosmic Tree. Both words are associated with the Cabrillas a word commonly translated as the Pleiades; however, the secondary translation for that word is "a sawhorse." This in turn, fits the lower part of the constellation Gemini, not Taurus and the Pleiades, even though they are nearby.

The graphic in the Nuttall,(seen above) with its "nest" struck a latent memory of the Popol Vuh. Ted Tedlock translated the birth of the hearthstones as in Footnote 2, but he also included in his notes, a more succinct version of the "blue-toothed" bird that may have sat on the star-eggs until they hatched. He called the bird, Seven Macaw. This bird made the following statement:

. . . .My light is great. I am the walkway and I am the foothold of the people, because my eyes are of metal. My teeth just glitter wit jewels and turquoise as well; they stand out blue with stones like the face of the sky.

And this nose of mine shines white into the distance like the moon, Since my nest is metal, it lights up the face of the earth. When I come forth before my nest, I am like the sun and the moon for those who are born in the light, begotten in the light.

The blue teeth of Seven Macaw, were damaged when the Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalenque, used their blowguns, so when the twins took on the role of "traveling dentists" they replaced the blue teeth with white corn5 One can assume, that if Seven Macaw, a false sun and/or moon, was once blue, and turned white as ordinary stars, it may well have been a exploding, blazing nova that eventually lost all its splendor and dimmed to an ordinary star status. The Nuttall shows within two columns, that the three stars became larger within a glowing circle in the hands of the goddess. The next column is the end of that particular story as it is closed off by a red line that starts at the top of the page and finishes at the bottom. A new story begins in the fourth column.

1Allen, Richard H. (1963) Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, New York: Dover Publications,
p. 112 probably a recent designation is Cancer as the Beehive. However, it is not found in the Apiarium.

2 Tedlock, Dennis, The Popol Vuh (both 1985 and 1996)
p. 72 The stones, their hearthstones were shooting out, coming right out of the fire, going for their heads causing them plain.
(p. 73: According to Classic Maya descriptions, three hearthstones entered the sky and formed a new constellation at the end of the world that preceded the present one.)

.3Tedlock, Barbara (1999) Maya Astronomy: What We Know and How We Know It, Archaeoastronomy: The Journal of Astronomy In Culture p. 48: Orion as the location of the three hearthstones of the Maya: Alnitak, Saiph and Rigel.

3 Bernardino de (1956) Historia General de Las Cosas de Nueva España. México, DF, México: Editorial Porrua, S.A., Libro VII Capitulo III, p, 262-263.

4 Pequeño Larousse Español-Ingles Diccionario (1976)

sup>5 Tedlock, Dennis, (1996) p. 73-74, and p. 80, Blue teeth of Seven Macaw replaced with white corn.