A. The Popol Vuh
1. The Primordial Triad and Differentiation:
The Topological Metaphor, Mayan Style
Like the Hindu cosmology laid out in stone reliefs at Angkor Wat, The Popol Vuh begins in an abyss of mystery, an abyss laid out in eloquent and elegantly simple words and imagery whose power is made even more manifest by their poetic simplicity:
This is the account, here it is:
Now it still ripples, now it still murmurs, ripples, it still sighs, still hums, and it is empty under the sky.
Here follow the first words, the first eloquence.
There is not yet one person, one animal, bird, fish, crab, tree, rock, hollow, canyon, meadow, forest. Only the sky alone is there; the face of the earth is not clear. Only the sea along is pooled under all the sky; there is nothing whatever gathered together. It is at rest; not a single thing stirs. It is held back, kept at rest under the sky.
Whatever there is that might be is simply not there: only murmurs, ripples, in the dark, in the night. Only the Maker, Modeler alone, Sovereign Plumed Serpent, the Bearers, Begetters are in the water, a glittering light. They are there, they are enclosed in quetzal feathers, in blue- green.
Thus the name, “Plumed Serpent.” They are great knowers, great thinkers in their very being.
And of course there is the sky, and there is also the Heart of Sky. This is the name of the god, as it is spoken.
And then came his word, he came here to the Sovereign Plumed Serpent, here in the blackness, in the early dawn.... ThunderboltHurricane comes first, the second is Newborn Thunderbolt, and the third is Sudden Thunderbolt.
So there were three of them...7
By now, this powerful, evocative imagery should recall the image of Vishnu at Angkor Wat, superintending the cosmic tug-of-war of the great naga serpent in the Milky Ocean.
Yet, this appears half a world away, in an entirely different culture!
Note too, that the topological metaphor of a primordial trinity is preserved. Everything begins as an emptiness “under the sky” and there is not yet any differentiation within it: “there is not yet one person, one animal” and so on. There is only an empty sky, and pooled water at rest beneath it. The only thing existing is Sovereign Plumed Serpent and a mysterious reference to “Bearers” and “Begetters in the water” who are described as “great knowers, great thinkers in their very being,” who are later found, just like Vishnu, to be manifestations of Sovereign Plumed Serpent.
The Popol Vuh is telling us, in other words, the same thing we saw at Angkor Wat: there is a primordial “nothing”, Sovereign Plumed Serpent, and then there is a primordial “trinity,” of endless indistinct “sky” and below it a “sea”, and the implied common surface between the two. Nothing else whatsoever, at this juncture, exists, except a faint “murmuring” and “rippling” in the night, implying somehow that sound, frequency, vibration give rise to all the fecund distinctions and variety to follow.
Indeed, at the very beginning, the Popol Vuh informs us that “This is the beginning of the Ancient Word, here in this place called Quiché. Here we shall inscribe, we shall implant the Ancient Word, the potential and source for everything done...in the nation of the Quiché people.”8 Note that the Ancient Word is something to be implanted, again recalling the imagery of Vishnu ejaculating into the primordial sea, which was but himself under another manifestation. Note too the very suggestive notion that this Word, this sound or vibration as it were, is “the potential and source for everything done,” that is, that all the diversity that arises, arises from this pure and infinite potential.
Consequently, it would appear that the Popol Vuh, in its very opening pages, is suggesting the very same topological metaphor of the physical medium that we encountered in chapter three, in connection with Vishnu’s “trifurcation” and differentiation of himself as a primordial Nothing, and that we also discovered operative in some passages in the Hermetica, which were of Egyptian provenance, only here the metaphor of that “differentiated Nothing” is even more clearly suggested by the notion of an endless sky and endless sea, in neither of which nothing else exists; there is only the sky, the sea, and the surface touching, differentiating, or bracketing, both; again we have three entities of yet another primordial triad.
Thus, our chart from chapter three now looks like this:
So now, we may add to what we stated about this topological metaphor of the medium in chapter three, for now we encounter yet more imagery — sky, sea, and the implied surface between the two — all saying the same thing: that we are dealing with a differentiated Nothing, whose first differentiation must always be triadic or trinitarian in nature:
1) the “bracketed” region of Nothing, or , Hermes’ “Kosmos”, the Padama Purana’s Shiva, and now, the Popol Vuh’s “sky”;
2) the rest of the Nothing, or , Hermes’ “God,” the Padama Purana’s Vishnu, and now, the Popol Vuh’s “sea”; and,
3) the “surface” Nothing that the two regions share, or , Hermes’ “Space,” the Padama Purana’s Brahma, and now, thePopol Vuh’s implied common surface between “sea” and “sky”.
However, the Popol Vuh goes on to make an even more interesting and suggestive set of statements that would seem to associate the creation of mankind itself with this process of emerging differentiation from some sort of materia prima or “primordial nothing.”
2. The Engineering of Man
Very quickly after this account of the initial “trifurcation” of creation, the Popol Vuh moves to the creation of mankind himself, after the creation of land and animals,9 and it does so once again, in equally evocative, elegant, and powerful poetic imagery:
Again there comes an experiment with the human work, the human design, by the Maker, Modeler, Bearer, Begetter:
“It must simply be tried again. The time for the planting and dawning is nearing. For this we must made a provider and nurturer. How else can we be invoked and remembered on the face of the earth? We have already made our first try at our work and design, but it turned out that they didn’t keep our days, nor did they glorify us.
“So now let’s try to make a giver of praise, giver of respect, provider, nurturer,” they said.
“So then comes the building and working with earth and mud. They made a body, but it didn’t look good to them. It was just separating, just crumbling, just loosening, just softening, just disintegrating, and just dissolving. Its head wouldn’t turn, either. Its face was just lopsided, its face was just twisted. It couldn’t lookaround. It talked at first, but senselessly. It was quickly dissolving in the water.
“It won’t last,” the mason and sculptor said then. “It seems to be dwindling away, so let it just dwindle. It can’t walk and it can’t multiply, so let it be merely a thought,” they said.
So then they dismantled, again they brought down their work and design.10
Note that the rough order of creation in the Mayan mythology is that of the biblical Genesis: land forms, then animals of various types, and then finally this first “protohuman.”
But what is very different about the Mayan version is the clear indication that mankind is the result of an experiment, one that was for the express purpose of creating intelligent servants to “the gods.” In other words, the Mayans are reproducing, centuries later, and half a world and an ocean away, and what was first suggested in the texts of Mesopotamia: mankind was an engineered creation, created for the express purpose of servitude to the gods. He was property.11Life, on this view, was less a gift, than a debt to be paid in endless service.
The Popol Vuh gives a further hint of this concept of mankind as an experiment, and with it, the Flood is introduced:
This was the peopling of the face of the earth:
They came into being, they multiplied, they had daughters, they had sons, these manikins, woodcarvings. But there was nothing in their hearts and nothing in their minds, no memory of their mason and builder. They just went and walked wherever
they wanted. Now they did not remember the Heart of Sky.
And so they fell, just an experiment and just a cutout for humankind. They were talking at first but their faces were dry. They were not yet developed in the legs and arms. They had no blood, no lymph. Their complexions were dry, their faces were crusty. They flailed their legs and arms, their bodies were deformed.
And so they accomplished nothing before the Maker, Modeler who gave them birth, gave them heart. They became the first numerous people here on the face of the earth.
Again there comes a humiliation, destruction, and demolition. The manikins, woodcarvings were killed when the Heart of Sky devised a flood for them. A great flood was made; it came down on the heads of the manikins, woodcarvings.12
A little further on, there is even more commentary:
Such was the scattering of the human work, the human design. The people were ground down, overthrown. The mouths and faces of all of them were destroyed and crushed. And it used to be said that the monkeys in the forests today are a sign of this. They were left as a sign because wood alone was used for their flesh by the builder and sculptor.
So this is why monkeys look like people: they are a sign of a previous human work, human design — mere manikins, mere woodcarvings.13
In other words, there is no notion or conception of anything resembling evolutionary theory; rather, monkeys are the signs of another failed attempt at “the human work and design.”
3. The Primordial “Masculine Homosexual Androgyny” of Man and the Tower of Babel Moment
The strangest aspect of the Mayan account of the creation of mankind is its suggestion of a kind of “primordial masculine homosexual androgyny” for the creature, and its coupling of the subsequent division of the sexes with a loss of human knowledge and intellectual power in a kind of Tower of Babel moment.
This part of the Popol Vuh begins by noting that at the beginning of the “conception of humans” there was a search for “the ingredients of the human body” by the “Bearer, Begetter, the Makers,Modelers named Sovereign Plumed Serpent.”14 It is interesting to note that one is dealing with Quetzlcoatl again, but note that this deity is spoken of both in singular and plural terms, rather like a “council of the gods.” This fashioning of mankind is called the making or modeling “of our first mother-father,”15 and with that, we have encountered our first Mayan androgynous image for God Himself.
The Popul Vuh goes on to explain this androgyny in explicitly masculine terms: “They were good people, handsome, with looks of the male kind.”16 Then follows one of the most bizarre passages in the entire book:
And then they saw everything under the sky perfectly. After that, they thanked the Maker, Modeler:
“ Truly now,
double thanks, triple thanks
that we’ve been formed, we’ve been given
our mouths, our faces,
we speak, we listen,
we wonder, we move,
our knowledge is good, we’ve understood
what is far and near,
and we’ve seen what is great and small
under the sky or on earth.
Thanks to you we’ve been formed,
we’ve come to be made and modeled,
our grandmother, our grandfather.”
they said when they gave thanks for having been made and modeled. They understood everything perfectly, they sighted the four sides, the four corners in the sky, on the earth, and this didn’t sound good to the builder and sculptor:
“What our works and designs have said is no good:
“‘We have understood everything, great and small,’ they say.” And so the Bearer, Begetter took back their knowledge.
“What should we do with them now? Their vision should at least reach nearby, they should at least see a small part of the face of the earth, but what they’re saying isn’t good. Aren’t they merely ‘works’ and ‘designs’ in their very names? Yet they’ll become as great as gods, unless they procreate, proliferate at the sowing, the dawning, unless they increase.”
“Let it be this way: now we’ll take them apart just a little, that’s what we need. What we’ve found out isn’t good. Their deeds would become equal to ours, just because their knowledge reaches so far. They see everything,” so said
the Heart of Sky, Hurricane,
Newborn Thunderbolt, Sudden Thunderbolt, Sovereign Plumed Serpent,
Bearer, Begetter, Xiyacoc, Xmucane, Maker, Modeler
as they are called. And when they changed the nature of their works, their designs, it was enough that the eyes be marred by the Heart of Sky....
And such was the loss of the means of understanding, along with the means of knowing everything, by the four humans. The root was implanted....
And then their wives and women came into being.17
This passage requires careful scrutiny and unpacking in order for the full weight of its implications to sink in.
1) Note first of all that, just as in the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel,18 there is no notion of morality in play, for the activities of mankind are not perceived so much as immoral but rather as an implicit threat to the power of the gods “just because their knowledge reaches so far.” One is reminded of the biblical reason given for the confounding of languages at the Tower of Babel, for if the Tower was completed, mankind would be able “to do whatever it imagined to do;”
2) This human knowledge, in so far as the Popol Vuh is concerned, relates somehow to mankind’s cosmological knowledge, to his understanding of the physics of the cosmos and being able to sight “the four corners in the sky, on the earth.” Given thetopological metaphor we have examinedpreviously, the metaphor here seems to be suggesting thatmankind’s knowledge was of the very way the physical medium itself was constituted and of how it operated. This too is mirrored in the biblical Tower of Babel story, where the purpose of the Tower is to “reach unto heaven;”19 again implying that somehow human knowledge was of a deep physics;
3) In the Popol Vuh, all this knowledge and deep insight is coupled somehow to what can only be described as mankind’s primordial “masculine homosexual-androgyny,” a fact that seems also to be reproduced in the way that this creature refers also to the Sovereign Plumed Serpent, or God, both as grandmother and grandfather, as an androgyny; God, in other words, is viewed in the same way and this, somehow, suggests that in mankind, in his primordial masculine homosexual-androgynous constitution, had knowledge of some characteristic of the physical medium that he would not otherwise have had; this leads to the next point:
4) The Popol Vuh makes it very clear that this primordial “masculine homosexual-androgyny” had to be divided “just a little” in order to eradicate the threat posed by the knowledge he possessed in that original state; the division of the sexes is accomplished, and at this point “their wives and women came into being,” causing procreation and the corresponding loss of human knowledge. This seems to imply that in mankind’s primordial state, immortality was the natural consequence, and therefore with it, a commensurately wide knowledge. It is worth noting that a vaguely similar idea is even suggested in the biblical account of the Tower of Babel moment, where it says “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one.” Again, the solution is to divide humanity; in the biblical instance, it is division through multiplication of languages; in the Mayan instance, it is division by the division of the sexes;
5) And lest it be thought that this primordial view of mankind as a kind of “masculine homosexual-androgyny” is far removed from the world of the Old Testament half a world andcenturies away, a closer look at Gen 1:27 is in order. In the standard English translation the verse reads “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; make and female created he them.” But in the Septuagint Greek of the verse, the word “them” is actually “them,” but with one difference, the word “them” here is also masculine in gender, but lacks a second repetition of the word “them” in the feminine gender. Thus, wh
ile the verse can certainly be interpreted in the traditional manner with the masculine “them” as a pars pro toto usage designating a male and female “them,” it is also worth nothing that it is capable of bearing a Mayan-like interpretation as well, as indicating a kind of “primordial masculine homosexual-androgyny,” with the subsequent division of the sexes in Genesis chapter two representing a kind of “second creation;” this little-known possibility would in fact lead to many interesting speculations in the early centuries of Christianity, but this is not the place to delve into them.20
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