The Maya and Mexican fire altars and sockets and their association with the earth-mother and alligator in the native Codices has been discussed. The Mexican day-sign cipactli figures an alligator and is associated with a female deity. The alligator altar at Copan, is described on p. [228]. Were it not for limit of space additional testimony could be cited here, proving that in Mexico the alligator was associated with the mother of the race, the fire-socket, and was a tribal totem.
“As the mother Maga she is the maker or kneader, the mother of the building and constructing races ... they were the first builders of towns.... They adored the god of the twirling or churning fire-drill.... They employed the name Ku, Ukko, Pukka and Pukan to designate the rain and thunder god and star-god who guides the stars in their courses and rules the beginning of the year” (Hewitt, p 438). The Finnic and Esthonian “Ukko is also called Taivahan Napanen, meaning the navel of the heaven and this is called the place of the pole star, the star at the top of the heavenly mountain” (vol. ii, p. 155).
Compare Ku in Maya list, appendix [iii], also Tezcatli-poca or puca=Mexican fire-drill god, Ursa Major.
“They worshipped Nag or Nagash,=the serpent and fire-drill constellation of Ursa Major, and consequently called themselves also the sons of Naga=the Nahushas. They worshipped the Pleiades=the mother stars....”
The Nahuas traced ancestry to seven stars of Ursa Major and began their religious year at the culmination of the Pleiades at midnight.
“The Nagas united with the navigating Shus or Phœnicians ... the red men, who worshipped the ruler of heaven.... These Shus ... called in the North, Hus ... were the Sumerian trading races of the Euphratean delta and Western India, who traced their descent to Khu, the mother bird of the Akkadians, Egyptians and Kushites.... They reverenced the sacred ‘shu’ stone, the begetter of fire and of life fostered by heat,... designated as the precious stone, the strong stone, the snake stone, the mountain stone.... The pregnant mountain of the Shu stone was to the Akkadians the central point of the earth. The people who are said in the Rig-Veda to have first found fire by the help of Matarishoan, the fire-socket, and to have brought it to men, and are said to have placed it in the navel of the world ... as the sacred Shu stone.”
It should be added here that the Hittite sign for Ishtar was a triangle enclosing a stone: “the mountain enclosing the stone of life.”
About 270 A.D. the Tutul-xius=(cf. Kukul) under a great chief or lord Kukulcan reigned at Chichen-Itza ... (p. [206]). In Mexico the name for turquoise is xiuitl and the god of fire is named Xiuh-tecuhtli. Jadeite is designated as chal-chiuitl and is associated with Chalchiuitlycue, the mother-goddess. The spark-producing, flint knife=tecpatl is also employed as a symbol of generation.
“Their kings, like those of Egypt, wore the uræus serpent as a sign of royal authority and made this the emblem of kingly rank in countries so widely distant from one another as India and Egypt....”
We learn from Prof. A. H. Sayce (Ancient Empires of the East, p. 200), that customs that had originated in a primitive period of Semitic belief survived in Phœnician religion and that clear traces of totemism are found amongst the Semites. “Tribes were named each after its peculiar totem, an animal, plant or [pg 522] heavenly body.... David, for instance, belonged to the serpent-family, as is shown by the name of his ancestor Nahshon, and Professor Smith suggests that the brazen serpent found by Hezekiah in the Solomonic Temple was the symbol of it. We find David and the family of Nahash, ‘or the serpent,’ the king of Ammon, on friendly terms even after the deadly war between Israel and Ammon, that had resulted in the conquest and decimation of the latter.”