Queen Moo's Talisman: The Fall of the Maya Empire

by Alice D. Le Plongeon

In a carving on stone, as well as in the Troano MS. and the Codex Cortesianus, Dr. Le Plongeon has found records of the destruction by earthquake, followed by submergence, of a great island in the Atlantic ocean. The author of the Troano MS. affirms that this land disappeared under the waves 8,060 years before the inditing of that volume. It is not known when the book in question was written, but judging from Egyptian records, the cataclysm must have occurred between ten and eleven thousand years ago. In the Maya books the lost land is called MU.

Lately Dr. Le Plongeon has discovered, in translating the inscriptions, written in Maya language with Egyptian and Maya characters, which adorn the faces of the Pyramid of Xochicalco, situated sixty miles to the southwest of the city of Mexico, in the State of Morelos, eighteen miles from the city of Cuernavaca, that said pyramid was a commemorative monument raised to perpetuate the memory of the destruction of the land of Mu among coming generations, and that it was made an exact model of the sacred hill in Atlantis which Plato in his Timœus describes as having been crowned by a temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon.

Looking at scenes depicted in mural paintings, one is driven to the conclusion that the Mayas were much addicted to the study of occult forces; they certainly used magic mirrors and appealed to haruspicy in their desire to foretell events. As may be seen in Dr. Le Plongeon’s “Queen Móo”, one tableau represents a wiseman examining the cracks induced by heat on the shell of an armadillo and the marks made by the vapor; from these signs he endeavors to read the fate of the young Princess Móo. The soothsayer, of the imperial family of China uses a turtle in the same way in a ceremony called Puu, for the royal family only, and in state affairs of exceptional importance.

Another tableau, also reproduced in “Queen Móo”, represents one man in his feather mantle, mesmerizing another, showing that hypnotism was anciently made use of in Yucatan by priests and wisemen.

There can be no doubt that certain stones were considered efficacious, as talismans. Jadeite, particularly that of a beautiful apple-green, mottled with grey, was held in high esteem by the Mayas, if they did not regard it as sacred. They called it “Bones of the Earth” because it was the hardest stone known to them. Of the many varieties of jadeite, for which no less than a hundred and fifty names have been found, according to Fischer, the apple-green is the most rare.

In the great square of the old city of Chicħen, Dr. Le Plongeon discovered, in the thick forest, two very ancient tombs with some of their decorative sculptures yet in place; those on one, enabled him to see that the tomb had been erected to the memory of Coh by his widow, Queen Móo. In it he found a statue of the Prince consort; also a large white stone urn, containing what proved, by chemical analysis, to have been human flesh, charred and preserved in red oxide of mercury. In the same urn, among other relics, was a beautiful ornament of green jadeite, like those decorating the necks of various personages portrayed in the sculptures of certain edifices.

In connection with the statue it must be observed that the ancient Mayas held a belief similar to that entertained by the Egyptians, regarding the condition of the soul after death, and in the same way made a statue of the deceased, with the idea that this would give the individual a hold upon life. The natives who aided in bringing Coh’s statue to light, out of the mausoleum where it had remained concealed for thousands of years, invariably spoke of it as the “Enchanted Prince”, and frequently assured its discoverer that he had succeeded in finding it because he himself had dwelt there in past ages, and was one of the great men whose effigies were seen on all sides.

When the larger portion of the charred viscera found in the urn was burned, to reduce it to ashes, the natives standing by exclaimed—“A majestic shade ascends amid the smoke! It is the form of the enchanted Prince, that seems to fade into nothingness.” So impressed were the men by what their imagination had evoked, that all ran from the spot in a state of agitation.

On the day when the statue, weighing three thousand pounds, was taken out of the monument, a party of hostile Indians suddenly emerged from the forest. One of their number was aged, and he remarked to his companions, “This represents one of our great men of antiquity.” Then the young men paid homage to the statue by bending one knee, in a manner peculiar to those people.

Traditions of their ancestors are not altogether lost among the natives, as some travelers assert. Many still perform rites and ceremonies in the depths of forests or in unexplored caverns, in the darkness of the night, but keep their secrets to themselves, remembering the tortures inflicted on their fathers by the Spanish priests to oblige them to forego the religious observances that had been dear to those of their race for countless generations.