In order to comprehend the first, or esoteric, we must recall to mind that Eusebius says that the Egyptians represented emblematically Kneph the Creator, and the world also, under the figure of a serpent, which, Horapollo asserts, was of a blue color with yellow scales; but they fail to inform us as to what may have been their motives for thus symbolizing the First Cause; or from whom they had received this symbol, that was the same used by the Mayas. A clue to this mystery can no doubt be found in the cosmogonical notions prevalent among the ancient civilized nations; for, strange to say, they seem to have been alike with all. We read in the Manava-dharma-sastra that the visible universe in the beginning was nothing but darkness. Then the great, self-existing Power dispelled that darkness, and appeared in all His splendor. He first produced the waters; and on them moved Narayana the divine spirit.
Berosus, recounting the ancient legend of the creation according to the Chaldeans, says: "In the beginning all was darkness and water; and therein were generated monstrous animals and strange and peculiar forms.... A woman ruleth them all." Her name in Chaldee is Thalath, in Greek Thalassa (the sea), that is in Maya Thallac (a thing without steadiness).
Genesis recounts that: "In the beginning the Earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. And God said, Let there be light and there was light."
In Primander, that modern critics consider the most ancient and authentic of the first philosophical books of Egypt, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, in the dialogue between Thoth and Primander, the Supreme Intelligence, we read these words of Thoth. "I had then before my eyes a most prodigious spectacle. All things had resolved themselves into light. A marvellous, pleasing and seducing sight it was to contemplate. It filled me with delight. After a while a horrid shadow, which ended in oblique folds, and assumed a humid nature, agitated itself with terrific noise. From it escaped smoke with uproar, and a voice was heard above the din. It seemed as the voice of the light; and the verb came forth from that voice of light; that verb was carried upon the humid principle. Out of it came forth the fire pure and light, and rising, it was lost in the air that, spirit-like, occupies the intermediate space between the water and the fire. The earth and the water were so mixed that the surface of the Earth covered by the water appeared nowhere."
And in what are termed the modern Hermetic books, the origin of things is thus explained: "The principle of all things existing is God, and the intellect, and nature, and matter, and energy, and fate, and conclusion, and renovation. For there were boundless darkness in the abyss, and water, and a subtile spirit, intellectual in power, existing in chaos. But the holy light broke forth, and the elements were produced from among the sand of a watery essence."
In the Popol-Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiches, we read: "This is the recital of how everything was without life, calm and silent, all was motionless and quiet; void was the immensity of the heavens; the face of the Earth did not manifest itself yet; only the tranquil sea was, and the space of the heavens. All was immobility and silence in the darkness, in the night; only the Creator, the Maker, the Dominator, the Serpent covered with feathers, they who engender, they who create, were on the waters as an ever increasing light. They are surrounded by green and blue, their name is Gucumatz."
We have already said how the Maya sages have taken care to perpetuate their cosmogonical conceptions, by causing the narrative of the creation to be carved, in high relief, over the doorway of the east façade of the palace at Chichen-Itza, and that these conceptions were identical with those of the Hindoos and the Egyptians. It cannot be argued that this identity of ideas about the origin of things, arrived at by the wise men of India, Egypt, and Mayax, and expressed in as nearly the same words as the genius of the vernacular of these various countries admits, is purely accidental; or, that they have arrived separately at the same conclusions on the subject, without communicating one with the other. The notion and its explanation must have originated with one, and been taught to the others just as our modern scientific discoveries, or religious beliefs, are carried from country to country, even the most remote, and made known to their inhabitants. What should we think of the man who would pretend that the railway, electric telegraph, and many other of the latest inventions, instead of having originated in one particular country, nay, more, in the brain of a particular man, have sprung simultaneously among all the various nations which make use of them? Would not that man be regarded as a born idiot or a fit subject for a lunatic asylum? We can easily understand how these cosmogonical notions have passed from the Egyptians to the Chaldees or to the Hindoos or vice versa; but who brought them to the "Lands of the West" and when? Who can say they did not arise among the inhabitants of the "Western continent;" and were not conveyed by them to the other nations?
In my work "The Monuments of Mayax," I have shown how the legends accompanying the images of several of the Egyptian deities, when interpreted by means of the Maya language, point directly to Mayax as the birthplace of the Egyptian civilization. How the ancient Maya hieratic alphabet, discovered by me, is as near alike to the ancient hieratic alphabet of the Egyptians as two alphabets can possibly be, forcing upon us the conclusion that the Mayas and the Egyptians either learned the art of writing from the same masters, or that the Egyptians learned it from the Mayas. There is every reason to believe that the cosmogonical conceptions, so widely spread, originated with the Mayas, and were communicated by them to all the other nations among which we find their name.
An analysis of the tableau of creation, carved on the façade of the palace at Chichen-Itza, cannot fail, therefore, to prove interesting. In it we shall find a proof of the scientific attainments of its designers; and also the reason why the serpent came to be worshiped all over the Earth.
The philosophers of Mayax must have known that the waters cover the greatest part of the globe (about three fifths); and that water being a combination of gases (oxygen and hydrogen), the most subtile of fluids, must have been the first form of matter produced. This is why on each side and on the top of the tableau they placed the symbol of water