It relates that, at a certain stage of the creation, “the most perfect of all priests and fathers named Yanáuluha ... brought up from the underworld, the water of the inner ocean and the seeds of life production” ... Subsequently, on a feathered staff he carried, “appeared 4 round things, seeds of moving beings, mere eggs they were; two blue like the sky and two red like the flesh of the earth-mother.”...
I cannot but think that these words from a purely native source explain the Copan sculpture more correctly than any inference that could be made, and authorize the explanation that the central figure represents the “four times lord,” or “lord of the four winds,” titles which were applied in Mexico to Quetzalcoatl and Xiuhtecuhtli. At the same time the bas-relief teaches us that “the four winds” had a deeper meaning than has been realized, for it represents life-giving breath carrying with it the seeds of the four vital elements, emanating from the central lord of life, spreading to the four quarters and dividing itself so as to disseminate vitality throughout the universe. The title Kukulcan=the Divine Four, also serpent, proves to be even more expressive of this conception of a central divinity than the Mexican Divine Twin, or serpent. I am therefore inclined to consider that it originated with a Maya-speaking people, to whom, more graphically than to any one else, this bas-relief would have served, as a [pg 224] joint image of the star-god, the heart of heaven, named Hura-kan; of the terrestrial lord Ah-cuch-cab, the heart or life of the State; of the State, with its hun-kaal or one count of twenty subdivisions of people and its quadruple head and body and, finally, of the native cosmology.
The Copan swastika enables us to come to another interesting conclusion. It is a refined representation of the set of thoughts suggested by Polaris, the idea of a stable centre being graphically rendered. Movement in four directions is also symbolized. As, in the latitude of Copan, Ursa Minor is the only circumpolar constellation which could have been observed in four opposite positions, it is obvious that Ursa Minor with Polaris must have constituted the Maya Celestial Heart or Life=cuxabal. The following points remain to be discussed in connection with the Copan swastika.
1. To be complete and in keeping with native modes of representation it must have originally been painted with the symbolical colors of the Four Quarters.
2. It is on a wooden club from Brazil or Guiana that, strange to say, I find a cross symbol with bifurcated branches, which most closely resembles the Copan type. Directing the readers to the illustration of this club as fig. 8, pl. xv, in Dr. Stolpe's work already cited, I would ask them to examine also his fig. 7, with a design expressing dual and quadruple divisions; fig. 9b, with circles containing cross lines; 9a, with what resembles somewhat a Maltese cross but also conveys duality; fig. 11b with a cross in a scalloped circle and a curious disc between four signs, with a band of alternate black and white squares and its reverse 11a, with triangles, to which I shall revert; and figs. 10c and d, each with a mound from which a tree is growing. Though tempted to refer to many other symbols I shall limit myself to pointing out that his fig. 1, pl. xiv, exhibits a group of five circles in a circle which strikingly recall the Mexican examples and the Maya ho=5. As each of the foregoing symbols is intelligible and belongs to a group of ideas which I have shown to have been general throughout America, but to have necessarily originated in the northern hemisphere, it seems pretty clear that they must have gradually found their way to Brazil and Guiana from the north by means of coast navigation and traffic.
3. Concerning the bowl in the hand of the figure occupying the [pg 225] middle of the swastika a few remarks should be added to those already given on pp. [72] and [93].
Formed of clay the bowl was an expressive symbol of the earth. Placed in elevated positions on the terraces of the temples, and filled by the first annual showers which fell upon the parched earth, the bowl of celestial water naturally became invested with peculiar sanctity, and was gradually regarded as containing particular life-giving qualities. One use to which bowls full of water were put, in ancient Mexico, seems to explain further the ideas associated with them. It is well known that bowls of water were used at night for divination purposes, just as were black obsidian mirrors. This seems to prove that the latter were a subsequent invention which was adopted because it permanently afforded a surface for purposes of reflection.
In the native Maya chronicles the reflection of a star upon the trembling and moving surface of the water, is given as the image of the Creator and Former, the Heart of Heaven, and it was believed that the divine essence of life was thus conveyed to earth by light shining on and into the waters. It is well known that it was customary for the priests of the Great Temple of Mexico to bathe at midnight after fasting, in a sacred pool so deep that the water appeared to be black. This artificially-produced peculiarity would have rendered its surface particularly useful for the observation and registration of the movements of stars by their reflections.
Thomas Gage quaintly tells us, moreover, that at the consecration of a certain idol “made of all kinds of seeds that grow in the country ... a certain vessell of water was blessed with many words and ceremonies, and that water was preserved very religiously at the foot of the Altar for to consecrate the King when he was crowned and also to blesse any Captain Generall, when he should be elected for the Warres, with only giving him a draught of that water” (op. cit., p. 53). It is well known that infants also underwent a form of baptism.
The preceding and other evidence, which is scarcely required, enables us to realize the full significance which the symbol of a bowl surmounted by the glyph ik=life, breath, soul, was intended to express and convey.