But there's but one in all doth hold his place.”[70]
This inscribed tablet, which constitutes one of the most important documents in the history of the human race, is as clearly an image of the nocturnal heaven as it is of a vast terrestrial state which once existed in the valley of Mexico, and had been established as a reproduction upon earth of the harmonious order and fixed laws which apparently governed the heavens.
The monument exposes these laws, the dominion of which probably extended throughout the American Continent, and still faintly survive in some existing aboriginal communities. It not only sets forth the organization of state government and the subdivision of the people into classes bearing a fixed relation to each other, but also serves as a chart of the territory of the State, its capital and its four provinces, and minor topographical divisions. Finally, it reveals that the progress of time, the succession of days, years and epochs, i. e. the Calendar, was conceived as a reproduction of the wheel of sinistral revolution described by the circumpolar constellations around Polaris. The Septentriones served as an indicator, composed of stars, the motive power of which emanated from the central luminary. This marked not only the march of time each night, but also the progress of the season by the four contrapositions apparent in the course of a year, if observed at a fixed hour of the night.
The twenty familiar day and year signs of the native calendar are carved on a band which encircles the central figure on the stone. I am now in a position to prove satisfactorily that these signs were not merely calendaric and that they equally designated four principal and 4×4=16 minor groups of stars; four chiefs and 4×4=16 minor tribal groups or divisions of men.
Figure 56.
Merely a few indications will suffice to prove how completely and unmistakably the symmetrical design on the monolith (fig. [56]) expounds the great plan which had impressed itself so deeply and indelibly upon the minds of the native philosophers and influenced all their thoughts and speculations.
The head and face in the middle of the monument conveys the [pg 249] idea of duality, being masked, i. e. doubled-faced and bearing the number 2 carved on its forehead. It conveyed the conception of a divine power who ruled heaven and earth from a changeless and fixed centre in the heaven; expressed the dual government of the earth by twin-rulers who dwelt in a central capital. It typified light and the heaven itself with its two eyes; the sun and moon and darkness and the earth by the mouth; whilst the symbols for breath issuing from both nostrils and the tongue protruding from the mouth denoted the power of speech, which was so indissolubly connected with the idea of chieftainship by the Mexicans that a title for the chief was “the Speaker.” The central head likewise denoted a “complete count”=one man, and was expressive of a great era of time, embodying twenty epochs.
As a synopsis of the whole, the following titles recorded in the chronicles would be applicable to the central ruler, celestial or terrestrial: the two lord, the divine twin; the two-lord and two lady; the quadruple lord, “He who looks in four directions;” the lord of the thirteen powers; the one lord, i. e. embodying a complete count=20; the lord of five (i. e. of the Middle and Four Quarters); of seven, i. e. of the Middle, Above, Below, and Four Quarters; of thirteen, i. e. of the duplication or male and female or celestial and terrestrial divisions of the Above, Below and Four Quarters plus the Middle.