The Maya between mysteries and prophecies
THE MAYAN CULTURE
The Maya was considered the most important Amerindian culture. Its distinctive aspects were astronomical and mathematical knowledge (especially for the use of zero) and urban planning, combined with the use of a very precise calendar and an initially ideographic writing system (glyphs) and then with a dot and dash system.
Geographically, the Mayan occupied the areas of eastern Mexico, the Yucatan peninsula, Belize, some areas of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. This area is very particular from a climatic and topographical point of view, as it ranges from dense rainforests to lowland areas, yet these people managed to create a great empire with enormous city-states.
The geographical area of the Maya includes numerous sites in which we can still admire the ineffable remains of this population who, like other pre-Columbian populations, had an art of building that leaves one perplexed due to its extraordinary precision.
Historians tend to divide the history of the Maya into three periods:
- preclassic period: from 2000 BC to 250 AD;
- classical period: from 250 AD to 900 AD;
- postclassic period: from 900 AD to 1519, the date that marks the arrival of the Europeans and the subsequent extermination of the Maya civilization.
There is a lot of talk about the Mayans: good astronomers, good builders and there are also different theories about their disappearance.
Among the most important Mayan cities we remember, in the Yucatan peninsula, Chichén Itza which was most likely a temple (with a source) dedicated to Kukulcan (or Kukumatz), or "the Feathered Serpent", who the Aztecs called Quetzalcoatl.
The Feathered Serpent is not really a god, as is claimed; he was, according to the pre-Columbian populations, the bearer of civilization, a wise man with a long white beard who brought culture and civilization to Central America.
In Mexico we remember Palenque, known for its art and sculptures which have affinities with Egyptian ones. It is argued, in fact, that there may have been a relationship between the American and Egyptian civilizations or, even, as Peter Tompkins claims, that the pyramids of these two cultures were built by the same civilization.
THE CALENDAR
One of the most representative cultural elements of the Mayan civilization is the calendar. Indeed, there are divergent theories on it: some sources speak of two calendars: the "tzolkin", i.e. the sacred calendar, and the "haab", i.e. the civil calendar. Other sources, on the other hand, also mention a third calendar, the "tun", aimed at long calculations. The "tun" seems to be inserted in the civil calendar, that is, to be a synonym to define the civil calendar: the use of long calculations, in fact, can only be done with a long calendar which is precisely the civil one.
The “tzolkin” instead seems to be a calendar of a divinatory and ritual nature, divided into thirteen months of twenty days each for a total of two hundred and sixty days. In this calendar there is the concept of day (kin) and there are two types of quantities greater than the day but not comparable to either our week or our month. However, there is a name to define the month in the Tzolkin calendar: “uinik”.
The Maya had a certain attitude towards days and numbers: they saw them from a divine aspect. There were days considered auspicious and others considered inauspicious. As a result, some important decisions were taken exclusively on certain days.
The second calendar, the "haab", was instead of three hundred and sixty days plus five and corresponded to the solar year. The Maya were aware that the solar year was 365.242 days and decided to correct this error (i.e. the numbers after the decimal point) in order to have an integer for greater precision; they thus created this calendar by dividing it into eighteen periods (pop) each of twenty days ranging from zero to nineteen. The last day of a month (marked by the number “zero”) was the first day of the following month. At the end of the eighteen periods another was added, consisting of only five days. This period was called “uayeb” and was considered inauspicious.
CALCULATIONS
The Maya knew zero.
These people calculated with a vigesimal system, that is, in base twenty.
After a period of using hieroglyphics, the Maya adopted a dot-and-dash numbering system. The dots marked the numbers one through four, while the line corresponded to five. Zero was represented with an eye-shaped symbol. Their system was additive but also positional, so the Maya were skilled at writing numbers of any value.
THE SACRIFICES
Among the glyphs found and translated there is one that expresses the spilling of blood. The Maya used to make bloody sacrifices which mainly concerned kings and priests who had to evolve and have a vision of the sacred Serpent and they also used to practice self-sacrifices.
Self-sacrifice was different for men and women: men had to pierce their penises with thorns or sharp obsidian objects and had to insert straw stalks into the holes; women, conversely, had to pierce their tongues and lips. The ritual caused a state of trance, also due to the use of certain substances. The trance in turn declined in the vision of the sacred Serpent.
The Maya believed that blood was a means to create a connection between the upper world and the lower world, that is, it was a key to reaching the divine. Blood and water were considered the basis of life.
Some iconographic elements used to indicate blood combine the presence of this element with the representation of pearls.
THE GODS
The Maya, from a religious and spiritual point of view, worshiped in Yucatan a so-called Supreme Being, creator of heaven and earth (perhaps comparable to our God) called Haunab Ku.
Other deities included:
- Itzamna: god of the Sun and the sky, of culture, of medical science, of agriculture, of writing and of the calendar;
- Bacab, son of Itzamna;
- Ixchel, companion of Itzamna, goddess of the earth and the moon;
- Kukulcan or Kukumatz, i.e. the Feathered Serpent, protector of priests.
THE END OF THE MAYANS
In 1517 Hernandez de Cordoba landed in Yucatan and his landing was disastrous for the native populations. He and the other invaders had their first encounter with stone buildings. After the Spanish conquest, the Mayan culture began to show its first signs of decline.
Inside Yucatan there were the first clashes with indigenous populations that inflicted losses on the Europeans, including the death of Hernandez de Cordoba himself. Other Europeans continued their ferocious actions in those areas.
In 1562 Bishop Diego de Landa continued, in the name of God, evangelization and ethnic destruction through murders, torture and destruction of everything that could be passed down. This was how these civilizations died but it is also true that the end of the Maya still represents a mystery because there are those who maintain that the Maya actually moved to another dimension.
The only Mayan books that have come down to us were: the "Dresden Codex", the "Madrid Codex", the "Grolier Codex" and the "Paris Codex" (the Codexes bear the names of the cities in which they are preserved) and “Relacionas de las cosas de Yucatan” which is an essay in which Diego de Landa exposes the culture and thought of the Maya in the period of conquest, providing ideas for the interpretation of the glyphs and the calendar.
THE LACANDONANS
Today the only original descendants of the Maya are the Lacandonians. For two and a half centuries the four hundred Lacandons lived in the jungle of Chiapas but today with modern means of communication they are becoming part of Western culture and in this way their culture of origin is perishing again.
The Lacandons, who currently live in the Chiapas forest south of Mexico, venerate the ruins of monuments built by the Classical Maya. According to the beliefs of these descendants, those ruins were constructions created by supernatural beings that they call "k'hu", that is, "gods". That is, they are the houses of the gods but our eye, according to their beliefs, is not able to see them in all their beauty and only sees stones.
In addition to venerating the ruins of ancient buildings, the Lacandons also venerate large rocks on the shores of lakes and use terracotta incense burners to communicate with the gods. These religious customs are the same ones used by the ancient Maya.
During some religious rites the Lacandonians paint their face, tunic and censer with oriana, that is to say a blood-red substance extracted from orellana, to recall the human sacrifices practiced by the ancient Maya in the postclassic era. As also explained previously, the Mayans believed that blood was a connection to the supernatural. The Lacandons themselves assert that "the blood of men is the oriana of the gods"; the gods, according to these beliefs, would delight in the smell of human blood.
The Lacandons bring with them a strong belief inherited from the ancient Maya, that is, that of the end of the world or more precisely of the end of "this" world, of this time.
According to the Maya there were five cosmic eras:
- age of water;
- age of the air;
- age of fire;
- age of the earth;
- age of gold.
Each era corresponds to a civilization. These eras, with their corresponding civilizations, would all end with cataclysms because the earth periodically undergoes shifts in the planet's axis.
We would find ourselves in the golden age (but in reality there are very divergent theories regarding these eras) governed by the famous Quetzalcoatl and this era of ours, according to the Mayan calendar, would end between 21 and 23 December 2012.
According to the researcher Maurice Cotterell, the prophecy relating to the end of our era derives from a calculation of the next reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, scheduled for 2012. For that year, Venus was expected to approach the Earth and cause a vibrational change.
The Lacandons claim that the end of the world will begin with a solar eclipse that will plunge their forest into total darkness.
Many Lacandons have converted to Christianity precisely because they know that the last day (the xutan) is coming and on that day they wish to go to heaven with Jesus. They wish to be saved.
“I KNOW THAT THE LAST DAY IS NEAR, WHEN THE GODS WILL END THIS CYCLE OF THE WORLD (…). MY GRANDFATHER SAID HE WAS STILL FAR AWAY, MY FATHER SAID HE WAS NOT CLOSE YET. BUT THE GODS TOLD ME TO ME: THE XUTAN IS ABOUT TO COME."
Indeed, other sources maintain that on that date, again according to the Maya, there will indeed be a change but the human race will continue to exist: the catastrophic images described by the Apocalypse (a term which means nothing other than "revelation") would be nothing other than the projections of our fears because the current era is characterized by fear.
THE MYTH OF ATLANTIS
Some scholars say that the first civilization, the one corresponding to the age of water, was Atlantis, which was destroyed by water. It is claimed that Atlantis sank due to a shift in the Earth's axis.
Plato, in Critias and Timaeus, speaks of Atlantis, an island that was found beyond the Pillars of Hercules. It can be assumed that current America was anciently colonized by the Atlantean people who were a more advanced people than us.
It is indeed strange that a people like the Maya, who did not have many years of civilisation, reached such a high level of evolution to the point of building surprising buildings. The same goes for the Incas and other pre-Columbian civilizations.
It can be noted that the most majestic and mysterious works such as the Sphinx, the pyramids, the statues of Easter Island etc. all have a certain structural relevance and one wonders whether they were created by the survivors of Atlantis or even whether extraterrestrials created them. Some believe that Atlantis itself may have been created by extraterrestrials. Many authors suggest that extraterrestrials provided the Egyptians and Mayans with "the technology" for building the pyramids.
The Maya had superior knowledge, for example they knew that the shape of things affects energy, they knew that there are wavelengths that travel between human beings and that therefore we see material reality only because we look at it with materialistic eyes.
This is only a small part of the mysteries that surround the Mayan civilization: it is not known where they came from or where they ended up.
Maybe it's true that they moved to another dimension...!
