The sense of responsibility, superiority and, possibly, rivalry would act upon such individuals as a powerful incentive to further [pg 023] observation and thought and it is evident that, as their mental faculties expanded and one generation transmitted its store of accumulated knowledge to the next, a regular caste of astronomer-leaders would develop, with a tendency to conceal the secrets of their power from the ignorant majority. A broken line, carved on a rock by one of these primitive observers, would have constituted a valuable secret note of the position of Ursa Major on a memorable occasion and would be looked upon as a mystic or magical sign by the uninitiated. A series of such inscriptions might represent the store of astronomical knowledge accumulated by several generations of observers, and it is interesting to recognize that such astronomical records as these were probably the first which men were impelled to perpetuate in a lasting form; since it was absolutely necessary that they should be permanently available for reference at prolonged intervals of time. What is more, the mere fact of being obliged to refer to these inscriptions would cause the astronomers to reside permanently in one locality. The habit of consulting the prophet or oracle before undertaking important steps, involving the welfare of the tribe, would gradually cause the rocks or cavern in which he resided to be invested with a certain sacredness.
It is thus evident that the first men, who rudely scratched the outline of Ursa Major or Minor on a rock, took what was probably one of the most momentous steps in the history of the human race, and it is easy to see how a variety of combinations of circumstances would have led many men, in widely-separated localities and at different periods of the world's history, to perform precisely the same action. In some cases, under favorable surroundings, the rudimentary attempt would mark the starting point for a long line of patient observation and study, which would inevitably lead to the creation of centres of intellectual growth, to the association of the different positions of the constellation with the seasons and culminate in the habitual employment of a swastika as the sign for a year, or cycle of time.[2]
The idea of rotation, associated with calendar signs and periods, finds its most striking and convincing exemplification in the following description of the ancient Mexican game “of those who fly,” translated from Clavigero (op. et ed. cit. p. 236). This performance, which furnished a diversion to the Spaniards after the Conquest, had evidently been, originally, connected with religious ideas. “The Indians selected a tall, stout and straight tree, and, lopping off its branches, planted it firmly in the centre of the great square” (which was always situated in the centre of the city and had four roads leading to it from the four quarters). “On the summit they placed a large cylinder of wood, the shape of which was compared by the Spaniards to that of a mortar. Four strong ropes hung from this and supported a square frame composed of four wooden beams. Four other ropes were fastened by one end to the pole itself and wound around it thirteen times. Their loose ends were passed through holes in the middle of each beam and hung from these. Four Indians, masked as eagles or other birds, ascended the pole singly, by means of certain loops of cord, and mounting on the cylinder they performed in this perilous position a few dance-like movements. Each man then attached himself to the loose end of one of the hanging ropes, and then, with a violent jerk and at the same moment, the four men cast themselves into space from their positions on the beams. This simultaneous movement caused the frame and cylinder to revolve and uncoil the ropes to which the men were fastened and these descended to the ground after performing a series of widening circles in the air. Meanwhile a fifth individual, who had mounted the wooden cylinder [pg 025] after the others, stood on this as it revolved, beating a small drum with one hand, whilst he held a banner aloft with the other.” Whilst it is obvious that this peculiar and dangerous performance clearly symbolized axial rotation, typified by the revolving pivot and the four men in aërial motion, its full meaning and intention are only made clear by the following explanation recorded by Clavigero. “The essential point in this game was to calculate so exactly the height of the pole and the length of the ropes, that the men should describe precisely thirteen circles each before reaching the ground, so as to represent the cycle (of 4×13=)52 years.”
This passage constitutes absolute proof that the Mexican Calendar system was intimately associated with axial rotation and ideas such as could only have been derived from observation of Polaris and of the circumpolar constellations. The game itself was a beautiful and well-conceived illustration of the flight of time, typified by the aërial circles performed by the men masked as birds, and of its methodical division into fixed periods.
Leaving the subject of the calendar for the present we must revert to my tables recording the apparent annual and nocturnal axial rotation of the circumpolar constellations.
Whilst studying these the reflection naturally arose, that the people who observed Ursa Major must have paid equal attention to Cassiopeia and noticed that these constellations ever occupied opposite positions to each other as they circled around the pole. Dwelling on the fact that in ancient Mexico Ursa Major was associated with an ocelot, I remembered the many representations in which an ocelot is represented as confronting an eagle, usually in mortal combat. Mexican war-chiefs were classed into two equally honorable grades, designated as the “ocelots and the quauhtlis, i. e., eagles.” The constellation of Cassiopeia presents to me, a marked resemblance to the image of a bird with outspread wings, whose head is turned toward Polaris. The fact that when this star-group seems to be above, Ursa Major seems to be below, and vice versa, would obviously suggest the idea of an eternal combat between two adversaries who alternately succumbed and resuscitated. It was interesting on reasoning further, to note that once the above idea had taken root it must have been impossible not to associate in course of time, the quadruped and the bird with the elements to which they seemed to pertain, and gradually to conceive the idea of an everlasting antagonism between the powers of [pg 026] the sky and of the earth, or light and darkness, and other opposites which suggested themselves naturally, or were artificially created, by the fertile mind of man. In this connection it should be observed that the mythical adversary of Tezcatlipoca, the ocelot, designated as Ursa Major, is Huitzilopochtli, whose idol, in the Great Temple of Mexico, represented him masked as a hummingbird (see Atlas Duran). The special reason why this bird became associated with the god is explained by the following passage in Gomara (Histoire générale des Indes. Paris, 1584, chap. 96, p. 190): “This bird died, or rather fell asleep in the month of October and remained attached by its feet to a twig. It awakened again in April when the flowers blossomed. For this reason, in the language of the country it is named Huitzitzilin, the resuscitated.” We therefore see that whilst it is stated in the myth that the ocelot arose again after having been cast down from the sky by Huitzilopochtli, the very name of the latter betokened that the bird-god had also only just “resuscitated” from a presumably similar defeat.
Figure 8.
As one and the same object may suggest several resemblances at the same time or consecutively, and thus give rise to a group of associations around a single figure, I venture to point out that the zigzag form of Cassiopeia may well have been compared to forked lightning and caused the idea of lightning and thunder to become indissolubly connected with the conception of a great celestial bird. Again there is the possibility that the same star-group may have more strikingly suggested, to other people, the idea of the winding body of a serpent describing a perpetual circle around a central star. In Mexico, as elsewhere, we find the serpent closely associated with the idea of time. It is represented as encircling the calendar wheel published by Clavigero (fig. [8]). Four loops, formed of its body, mark the four divisions of the year. Twin serpents, whose heads and tails almost meet, are sculptured around the famous calendar-stone of Mexico. Four serpents whose bent [pg 027] bodies form a large swastika and whose heads are directed towards a central figure, are represented in the Codex Borgia in association with calendar-signs (fig. [9], cf. Féjérvary, p. 24). I shall have occasion to refer in detail to Mexican serpent-symbolism further on.