Deity (9 page)

“Look
again,” Chac goaded.

Lori
studied the column closer only to find its length elaborately etched with an
anthropomorphic figure.

“They
call this the Temple
of the Warriors primarily due to the warrior-like figures carved into all four
sides of these columns.”

Lori
straightened.
“Warriors?
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was a
priest of peace and knowledge. Until it was overthrown, Tula was a peaceful city.”

“Then
how do you explain the Atlanteans?” Chac challenged.

The
Atlanteans were four monolithic basalt columns shaped like giant warrior-like
sentries standing guard on the top platform of Tula’s Pyramid B. In fact, they themselves
were thought to have supported the roof of a wooden temple similar to the stone
temple still crowning the Castillo.

Admittedly,
Lori couldn’t explain why the tranquil Toltecs of Tula would carve such
fierce-looking sentries, but that wasn’t going to convince her of a link
between the Atlanteans and these columns of warriors. Chac must have read her
doubts for he spun around on his heel and started for the temple steps. Sensing
more to come, Lori held her tongue and climbed the steps behind him.

At
the top of the temple she noticed the statue of a man reclining along the
broad, platform floor. The figure appeared to be in mid crunch, his knees up,
head up, and he was holding a round disc on the flat of his stomach. The
statue’s head was turned, facing them with a cold, stoic expression that sent
chills down Lori’s spine. She’d known a similar statue in Tula—a statue that occasionally haunted her
dreams.

A chacmool.

Temple
walls fanned out from
an opening behind the chacmool where more roofless columns rose like ghostly
spires. The two middle columns that framed the chacmool were elaborately
designed with gaping serpent heads at their bases. The columns themselves formed
the bodies of these serpents with a blocky, s-shaped bend in the tail near the
top, the rattles pointing straight toward the sky.

Chac
stepped around the chacmool, between the inverted serpent columns and continued
through the temple ruins until he reached the low back wall. There, a large,
bench-like platform spread across short stone supports that were perfectly
shaped like miniature Atlanteans.

“Okay,”
Lori relented. “You win. The Atlanteans are here too.” She shook her head. “But
the Atanteans can’t be warriors if Tula
was a city of peace and learning.”

“You
may be right,” Chac agreed. “These figures may not be warriors at all.”

Lori
was confused.

“I
believe the Atlanteans have been misinterpreted,” Chac explained, walking back
to the front of the temple. He didn’t stop until they were standing above the
temple steps once again, the chacmool glaring at their backs.

“Look
across there beyond the Castillo and tell me what you see.”

Lori
looked across the plaza sprawling below them. She noticed a group of tourists
parting around a stone altar with serpent heads topping its balustrades. That
too resembled the nearly destroyed altar centering the plaza in Tula.
But
just beyond the altar stood a blunt tower with lower stone wing-walls spreading
out from it, much of it receding back into the trees.

It
took her a moment to recognize the peculiar shape of the containment wall. The
portion of the enclosed area she was looking at was shaped like one half of a
letter “I”. There’d only been one type of structure with that tell-tale I-shape
in Tula.

“The
ball court?” she asked.

“There
are ball courts in other Maya ruins,” Chac explained, “but only Tula has one as large as
this one.”

“Maybe
these were the Superbowl cities,” Lori joked.

Chac’s
expression was unmoved. “You don’t understand,” he said. “The ball game wasn’t
just a sport. It was a ritual with significant symbolism. In short, the purpose
of the game was to maintain the cycle of the sun. It was the players’ job on
both teams to pass the ball, or the sun, through night and day without letting
it fall to the earth. The ultimate object was to deliver the ball through a
ring mounted on the ball court wall. The team that failed to succeed lost the
game and
were
decapitated by the winning team.”

Lori
winced in disgust. “That doesn’t sound peaceful.”

“Human
sacrifice was not seen as violent, but essential in keeping all cycles of life
and creation constant. At both Tula and Chichen Itza, the heads of
the losing teams were strung on skull racks, as recorded at both sites.”

“So
what does the ball game have to do with the Atlanteans?” Lori asked.

Chac
smiled. “That’s where my own theory comes in. I don’t believe the Atlanteans
were warriors but ball players who were celebrated much like professional
athletes are today. The winners of the game were held in high esteem. Even the
Maya creation myth celebrates The Twins who defeated the Lords of the
underworld in a ball game.”

“So
if the losing team’s heads were displayed on skull racks, then surely the
winning players were honored in columns of stone,” Lori thought out loud.

She
considered Chac’s interpretation and had to admit her favor toward it. In fact,
as much as she tried to resist it, all the evidence he illustrated did suggest
a strong Toltec influence in Chichen
Itza. But was Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl himself the instigator
of the remarkable similarities to Tula?

“Despite the Toltec features of these ruins, how can you
determine this was all done by one man rather than a migratory group of
Toltecs?” she asked. “I suspect Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl wasn’t the only
individual exiled from Tula.
His followers must have suffered a similar fate. Maybe it was they who migrated
to Yucatan and found a home in Chichen Itza.”

Chac
shrugged. “That is possible,” he agreed. “However, if it is one man’s influence
you’re looking for, you won’t find it in the architecture alone. For that, you
must consider Chichen Itza’s
cosmology.”

Cosmologies
Of
Precession

Chac
turned away from the crowds milling around the ruins below. He was growing
uncomfortable standing there in plain view atop the temple. Although the INAH
had prohibited the public from climbing the temples and pyramids for fear that
the influx of 2012 visitors would accelerate the damage to Chichen Itza’s prized ruins, Chac knew enough
about human nature to know that once he and Lori were spotted, others would
feel justified in joining them. They needed to get off the Temple of the Warriors, but not before he
made one last illustration for his studious companion.

He
turned and faced the large serpent columns towering over the chacmool behind
them. “See these columns?” he asked. “Just like the shadow-play on the
Castillo, the tails of these serpents point skyward. More specifically, they
point to one specific point in the sky—the space directly overhead.”

“The
zenith,” Lori clarified.

“That’s
right,” Chac said, impressed. Could it be this bright young lady was versed in
archaeoastronomy too? “But there is one specific feature in the sky that the
serpent tails are intended to point to.
The tzab.”

“The tzab?”

“In
the Yucatec language it means ‘
serpent rattle
’ but it
also refers to the Pleiades. Are you familiar with the zenith cosmology of the
Toltecs?”

Lori
indicated that she was. The Toltecs had been keen on the movements of the Pleiades.
To them the star cluster was the tail rattle to the Milky Way, the flying
serpent in the sky. Special ceremonies were held every fifty-two years when the
Pleiades crossed the zenith, but no crossing was as highly anticipated as the
one that had occurred only six months ago. May 20, 2012 saw the Pleiades not
only crossing the zenith, but meeting the sun and the moon there as well. Chac
recalled the solar eclipse that hung directly over Chichen Itza’s Castillo that
day, but he was further impressed that Lori knew the Pleiades had been there
too—the confirmation of the Feathered Serpent’s long-awaited ascent to his
throne. According to the ancient Toltecs, Chac and Lori were already living in
a new age - the age of Quetzalcoatl.

“It’s
clear that the Castillo is an instrument of the zenith cosmology,” Chac added. “The
shape of the pyramid itself points directly toward the zenith.”

“How
can you be sure that it was Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl who inspired all of this?”
Lori asked.

“Simple.
Only priests tracked celestial movements and kept the sacred calendars. The
common people didn’t have such intimate knowledge of the stars. So even if
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl’s followers migrated to Chichen Itza, it’s doubtful they would’ve had
the astronomical knowledge required to build the Castillo. Only a priest could
have calculated the precise position of the pyramid to
effect
the serpent shadow-play and enforce such an elaborate zenith observatory.”

“What
about the Maya priests?” Lori challenged. “They could’ve just as easily
constructed the Castillo.”

“Highly
unlikely,” Chac said, shaking his head.

“How so?”
Lori asked.

“The
Maya weren’t as interested in the zenith as the Toltecs were,” Chac explained. “They
had a cosmology all their own.”

“Okay.”
There was uncertainty in Lori’s voice that indicated they’d reached the limits
of her Mesoamerican cosmological knowledge. The Toltec astronomical
observations were one thing. Mayan cosmology was something entirely different.

“While
the Toltecs were watching the Pleiades at one end of the Milky Way, the Maya
were observing the widest and brightest bulge in the galaxy at the opposite end
of the sky. Astronomers claim that when we look at this bulge we are looking
horizontally across the very center of the Milky Way. Interestingly enough, the
Maya viewed this as their center of creation.”

Lori nodded. “I’m familiar with the bulge in the Milky
Way,” she said. “The Toltecs believed the bulge was the flying serpent’s head. Amid
that bright bulge is a dark cleft created by cosmic dust clouds which they saw
as the flying serpent’s mouth.”

Chac
lifted an appreciative eyebrow. “Yes, but what the Toltecs viewed as a
serpent’s mouth was the portal to the underworld to the Maya,” he countered.

Lori
excitedly snapped her finger as though Chac had struck a familiar theme. “The
Toltecs regarded cavernous spaces like caves to be portals to the underworld
and
 
wombs
of creation. In their
iconography, caves are often represented by the gaping mouths of animals, like
jaguars and snakes.”

Chac
smiled. This girl was quick to catch on. “So now we’ve found the common ground
on which the Toltecs and the Maya might have come together. That is what makes Chichen Itza so
remarkable. This city clearly illustrates the coming together of not only two
separate cultures, but their two polar cosmologies.”

Movement
caught the corner of Chac’s eye. He turned back to the temple steps to find a
young couple climbing toward them. Chac frowned. Others were following behind
like mindless sheep. He’d lingered too long.

“Which
all leads us to this mess,” he growled.

“Mess?”

“The whole 2012 attraction.”
Chac started down the
steps to intercept the visitors. “I’ll explain once we get off this temple.”

* * * *

Lori
was surprised by Chac’s abrupt change in demeanor. Just moments earlier he
seemed relaxed and even enjoying their discussion but now he was quite moody
and considerably abrupt with the visitors he turned back down the temple steps.
And once again, he spoke of 2012 with a distaste that Lori had not experienced
whenever the subject came up before. There were critics, sure, and she was certainly
one who refused to buy into all the hype. But in general, she found people
either excited
, fearful, or just downright dismissive of
2012. Never had she come across someone so aggravated by it.

And
Chac was Maya. Wasn’t this the year the Maya had been looking forward to for
thousands of years?

Patiently,
Lori followed Chac across the plaza that was increasingly filling with
visitors. She waited for signs of her companion’s irritability to simmer down. It
didn’t come immediately, but rather left them in awkward silence until they
reached the walls of the ball court.

“The
people of Chichen Itza
were brilliant astronomers,” Chac finally said, his tone taking on an
appreciation for the subject. “I believe it was here that they observed the movement
of the stars.”

“Movement
of the stars,” Lori murmured thoughtfully.
“As in precession?”

“Exactly.
The
Maya recognized a shift in the stars’ positions due to the slow wobble in the
Earth’s orbit. When they realized that the Milky Way was also shifting, they
calculated that the bulge was slipping toward the point along the horizon where
the December solstice sun was rising. Essentially, the Mayan world was centered
upon the day when the sun would travel through the hollow bulge in the Milky
Way. Their calendar was geared toward the sun’s passage to the underworld.”