The name of the culture hero Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl incorporates the word serpent in Maya and Nahuatl. The conventionalized open serpent's jaw forms the usual head-dress of the lords sculptured on the Central American stelæ and bas-reliefs. The existence of totemism in America is too well known to require comment, and the arbitrary method by which it was established by the Incas of Peru, when they founded the new colony, has been described.
“... I have already shown that the snake-father of the snake races in Greece and Asia Minor and of the matriarchal races in India was the snake Echis, or Achis, the holding snake, the Vritra, or enclosing snake of the Rig-Veda, the cultivated land which girdled the Temenos. This was the Sanscrit and Egyptian snake Ahi.... But the Naga snake was not the encircling snake, but the offspring of the house-pole and in this form it was called by the Jews the offspring or Baal of the land. But as the heavenly snake it was the old village snake transferred to heaven, called the Nag-ksetra, or field of the Nags, and there it was the girdling air-god who encircled the cloud mothers, the Apsaras, the daughters of the Abyss, the Assyrian Apsa, and marked their boundaries as the village snake did those of the holy grove on earth. But on earth the water-snake was the magical rain-pole, called the god Darka, set up by the Dravidian Males in front of every house ...” (p. 194). “They are the Canaanites, or dwellers in the low country, and the Hivites or the villagers of the Bible and the race of Achæans of Greece. These are the sons of the Achis=the serpent, the having or holding snake, the girdling snake of cultivated land which surrounded the Temenos or inner shrine, the holy grove of the gods” (Hewitt, p. 175).
Attention is drawn here to the twin serpents which enclose the Mexican Cosmical Tablet (fig. [56]), whose bodies may be seen to consist of a repetition of the conventional sign for tlalli=land, consisting of a fringed square. Each square in this case encloses a sign resembling that of fire=tletl and the numeral ten. These girdling serpents, whose heads unite, [pg 523] being directly associated with land, appear as the counterpart of the Old World Achis, a curious fact when it is considered that they are represented as springing from the sign Acatl (see p. [257]).
On the other hand, the heavenly “feathered serpent” of Mexico and Yucatan is distinctly associated with the air and the circle; its conception curiously coinciding with that of the “girdling air-god” mentioned by Hewitt. It is well known that the walls enclosing the court of the Great Temple of Mexico, were covered with sculptured serpents, and at Xochicalco, Mexico, and in Central American ruins (Uxmal, for instance), great sculptured serpents surround the buildings. It is remarkable that the sign Acatl not only figures conspicuously on the Great American Tablet, but also on the allegorical figure of the “Divine Serpent,” which may well represent the totemic divinity and ancestor of a snake tribe, associated with the word Acatl, possibly conveying their name. The undeniable association, in Mexico, of the serpent with Acatl, curiously agrees with the name of the “sons of Achis, the serpent”=the Achaians: and deserves consideration.
In the Genesis genealogy of the kings of Edom, the land of the red man, the priest king of the Hus or Shus is mentioned “... his people had replaced the Tur, the stone pillar, the Egyptian obelisk by the temple, the home and symbol of the creating god, who had been the pillar of the house.... But in their eyes the father-god was not the central pillar but the two door-posts and thence they called the temple gates Babel or the gates of god.... This gate was guarded by the holy twins.... The doorposts, and night and morning are invoked in the Rig-Veda.... The Magas were the discoverers of magic, mining, metallurgy, handicrafts—the pioneers of scientific research and the first organizers of a ritual of religious festivals.”
Twin pillars, sculptured in the form of great serpents, whose names signify twinship, support the entrances to the ancient temples of Yucatan, Central America, and have been found on the site of the Great Temple of Mexico. The Mexican and Maya accounts of the culture hero Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan state that he and his followers were “great necromancers” and magicians and that they taught handicrafts, metallurgy, and instituted calendar, social organization and ritual. A personal, close examination of a large number of old Peruvian and Mexican as well as Coptic textile fabrics, has convinced me moreover of their identity of technique.
“The Magas sacrificed dogs,.... They wore long hair,.... They made human sacrifices in order to obtain rain” (Hewitt).
“The Phœnician priests scourged themselves or gashed their arms and breasts to win divine favor.... Human sacrifices [pg 524] were made, to Moloch or Milkom ... the parent was required to offer his eldest or only son as a sacrifice and the victim's cries were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes” (Sayce).
The human sacrifices of Mexico are familiar to all. The native dog and various kinds of birds were sacrificed. The Mexican priests, named papas, wore long hair, practised asceticism, gashed their breasts, arms and legs and pierced their ears and tongues. On the Palenque bas-reliefs, priests with long hair are sculptured. The human sacrifices of Mexico and those of Egypt, Phœnicia and Assyria, described by Sayce and Hewitt (pp. 275 and 348), are closely alike. See also Hewitt's account of the blood brotherhood made between the sacrificer and the land on which the blood is poured (p. 196), and the Chichimec blood sacrifice described in the present work, p. [66].
The foregoing are a few noteworthy analogies which have impressed themselves upon me during the present course of investigation, in addition to the many undeniable and unsuspected evidences I have found, of an identity of star-cult, ritual and social organization in Old and New World civilizations.