Chapter Two : Count of Days
Four months earlier, my journey with Professor James Hornsby started out innocent enough. As an impressionable university graduate student studying archetype psychology, I was eager to follow the world-renowned anthropologist on an expedition into the jungles of Central America. The opportunity was timely because I had just finished my undergraduate studies in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. During that time, I was drawn to the symbolism and the mythology of the Pre-Columbian period.
I focused on the writings about the Nahua and Maya tribes of Mexico and Guatemala respectively. My nights were spent pouring over the incredible Mayan ruin exploration discoveries written by lawyer John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and the Yucatan, and drawn in detail by his colleague architect, Fredrick Catherwood, in 1839. During the day, I meticulously studied diagrams and photographs of ancient temple sites, the monumental stone stele and the temple sculptures of hieroglyphics that showed a great dexterity with an interpretive iconic language.
In my daydreams, I wished that something recognizable would leap off the pages. But the more I read, the less I understood. Still, the essence of the Maya epoch felt hauntingly familiar; resonating within my own psyche. Though I never could see myself as an acclaimed expert, because of my Indo-European heritage, my chimera was to emerge with a new awareness about the Maya codex.
The fact that few cultures of human antiquity with comparably primitive features had focused to such a degree of possibilities in interrelating the phenomenal reality of the universe to their daily lives astonished me. The symbol-woven matrix of the Maya philosophy had perplexed archeologist, anthropologists, paleontologists, astronomers, historians and many other scientific researchers for decades if not centuries.
It was John Lloyd Steven’s century old question that burned inside of me to be answered: “One thing I believe, that its history is graven on its monuments. Who shall read them?”
The prospect excited me in solving the riddle in my Masters thesis based upon the archetypal consciousness of the Mesoamerican indigenous. I was hopeful of capturing for myself some prestigious academic stature if Hornsby proved his theory correct. This is how I met the renowned anthropologist, Professor James Hornsby.
“This ladies and gentlemen was the means to recorded time, at the peak of the high civilization of the Olmec’s or rubber people who invented the ritual ball game later adapted by the Maya, and worshiped the Jaguar called Nama, which the Maya later called Balam, or high priest.”
“As I mentioned earlier, the Tzolk’in calendar calculated with the numbers thirteen and twenty when multiplied equals two hundred sixty. Shown here are the twenty emblem glyphs or ‘faces of creation’ and their relationship to the count of days. The baseline of the Tzolk’in was astronomically determined by the sun’s zenith during the first passage, verified by the position of Pleiades in the Constellation Taurus, which was fabled as the four hundred youth in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel.
The audience stirred. Hornsby was unrelenting.
“It seems self evident from the comparison of these drawings I’ve presented here today,” Hornsby continued in a manner of profundity, “that the ouroboros Carl Jung described in his research of symbolic psychology and Nietzsche wrote about as the eternal return, shows that buried in the primal genetic code of all of us is the remembrances of an underlying archetypal infrastructure or what philosopher Immanuel Kant called, a priori. We live in a closed cyclic system of galactic proportions based on a preset formula.” Hornsby’s analogical ingenuity was stunning.
“Could it be?” I wondered.
I had read through over a hundred and fifty years of published transcripts produced by the pioneers of Mayan glyph decipherment. There was Abbe Charles Etienne Brasseur who found Friar Diego de Landa’s four hundred year old A,B,C, Mayan alphabet that was discarded by the Catholic Church as insufficient in learning the Mayan language; Alfred Percival Maudslay who published the first Mayan inscriptions, and Sylvanus Griswold Morley’s The Ancient Maya.
But interpretations had not been without scandal and controversy over the decades. Such was a critical argument between Sir J. Eric S. Thompson and Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov about the significance of the glyph’s linguistic symbolism.
Knorosov, shut away behind the Iron Curtain in his native country of socialist Russia, had never set foot in the jungles of Central America to have seen first hand the ruins of temples, pyramids and ball courts. But as a Russian soldier, who participated in the siege of Berlin in 1945, fate fell into his hands.
When searching for Nazis in a vacated government building, Knorosov stumbled upon parchments similar to Friar Diego de Landa’s A, B, C Mayan alphabet. Taking his small treasure back to Russia, Knorosov had a template to work from in deciphering the symbolic glyphs.
Knorosov believed as a scholar of Egyptian, Chinese and Japanese writings that the Mayan hieroglyphics were phonetically an idea-based language. Thompson, who wrote Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, A Catalog of Mayan Hieroglyphs and The Rise and Fall of Mayan Civilization, was convinced that the Mayan hieroglyphics was something entirely different.
Unlike Knorosov, Thompson’s paradigm was based on European perceptions of the Paleocene interpretations of cave drawings.
Tatiana Proskouriakoff was a Russian born emigrant to the United States. Unable to find work in her profession as an architect, Proskouriakoff signed with an expedition into the Chiapas region of southern Mexico to make surveys and restoration drawings of the Mayan ruin Piedras Negras along the Rio Usumacinta, commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania in 1936.
From her notes she hypothesized three clues: each group of contemporary dates began with a specific glyph that she nicknamed the “upended frog” followed by another glyph nicknamed, “toothache grin”. These two glyphs were always the same within any given group of monuments and sets of dates and varied from one group to the next. In her third clue the initial “upended frog” referred to birth and the “toothache grin” referred to a rite of passage into adult maturity.
Inspired, Proskouriakoff traveled up the Rio Usumacinta to the Maya city ruins of the island ruin of Yaxchilan where she identified a “Shield Jaguar” and “Bird Jaguar” glyph in addition to identifying the emblem glyph “capture” of enemy warriors and the emblem glyphs for a ruler’s age and death. Her groundwork proved Knorosov’s theory correct and opened the door for further interpretations of the densely symbolic glyphs.
I watched Hornsby standing with a straight back, speaking with the presentation of a polished academic lecturer, but an adventurous character contrasted his presence. He resumed in his characteristic vein to drive his point home to us.
“I have hypothesized that the Nine Lords of Time were like extraterrestrial envoys who integrated into the ancient Olmec culture, whose sanctified foundation had grown out of the Neolithic shaman culture centered on the nagual or spirit of the Jaguar. From Monte Alban, where we have the Danzante glyphs, the Mesoamerican culture spread out as thirteen tribes, seven of which settled in Guatemala, the lowland jungle and basin plains reaching into Honduras. At this point in time, the great city center of Teotihuacan was built in Mexico and of course, many more later, such as Tikal and Palenque in Guatemala.
“Teotihuacan means, ‘Place Where the Gods Touched The Earth’ and commemorates the primal origin of the Mayan birthplace known as Tulan, the place of entry into this world, unrelated to the actual ruin site of the same name in Mexico. At the core of Teotihuacan’s civilization was the Pyramid of the Sun, the foundation measurement is exactly the same as the Great Cheops Pyramid in Egypt, built between 2718 B.C. and 2324 B.C.
“Like the Egyptians, Teotihuacan blossomed into an intensely spiritualized and artistically inclined heliocentric civilization of abundance and beauty. These were the Toltecs, lead by the great ruler, Quetzalcoatl. The Maya named him Kukulkan.”
A slide of the Feathered Serpent ruler appeared behind Hornsby on the projection screen.
Quetzalcoatl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl
“As an anthropologist, I am not content to be a spectator, essayist or to be in awe of the Pre-Columbian legacy. I prefer further investigation between the Mayan form and function that is neither obvious nor familiar, as an open-ended process of discovery, forcing us to shrug off our own Eurocentric’s ignorance. Up till now Western science has been happenstance in their expeditions, stumbling upon ruins shrouded in the jungle overgrowth without knowing why or what they are looking for.
“Because the secret to the mystery, ladies and gentlemen, is always the deepest at the gateway of its origin… where in this case, the Maya, the cosmic navigators who used this mystical portal to travel through the galaxy. I hypothesize that there is a lost temple waiting to be discovered in the jungles of Central America, which contains the secret of Quetzalcoatl and our, I mean humankinds, salvation.”
Four months earlier, my journey with Professor James Hornsby started out innocent enough. As an impressionable university graduate student studying archetype psychology, I was eager to follow the world-renowned anthropologist on an expedition into the jungles of Central America. The opportunity was timely because I had just finished my undergraduate studies in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. During that time, I was drawn to the symbolism and the mythology of the Pre-Columbian period.
I focused on the writings about the Nahua and Maya tribes of Mexico and Guatemala respectively. My nights were spent pouring over the incredible Mayan ruin exploration discoveries written by lawyer John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and the Yucatan, and drawn in detail by his colleague architect, Fredrick Catherwood, in 1839. During the day, I meticulously studied diagrams and photographs of ancient temple sites, the monumental stone stele and the temple sculptures of hieroglyphics that showed a great dexterity with an interpretive iconic language.
In my daydreams, I wished that something recognizable would leap off the pages. But the more I read, the less I understood. Still, the essence of the Maya epoch felt hauntingly familiar; resonating within my own psyche. Though I never could see myself as an acclaimed expert, because of my Indo-European heritage, my chimera was to emerge with a new awareness about the Maya codex.
The fact that few cultures of human antiquity with comparably primitive features had focused to such a degree of possibilities in interrelating the phenomenal reality of the universe to their daily lives astonished me. The symbol-woven matrix of the Maya philosophy had perplexed archeologist, anthropologists, paleontologists, astronomers, historians and many other scientific researchers for decades if not centuries.
It was John Lloyd Steven’s century old question that burned inside of me to be answered: “One thing I believe, that its history is graven on its monuments. Who shall read them?”
The prospect excited me in solving the riddle in my Masters thesis based upon the archetypal consciousness of the Mesoamerican indigenous. I was hopeful of capturing for myself some prestigious academic stature if Hornsby proved his theory correct. This is how I met the renowned anthropologist, Professor James Hornsby.
One day there was a bulletin posted in the psychology library announcing 
Hornsby’s guest appearance lecture on deciphering the Mayan Mystery. I was thrilled at the opportunity to hear him speak, so I immediately searched for anything he had written in the university library archives.
Hornsby’s guest appearance lecture on deciphering the Mayan Mystery. I was thrilled at the opportunity to hear him speak, so I immediately searched for anything he had written in the university library archives. Hornsby was an acclaimed scholar in the field of social indigenous anthropology for the past twenty years. He had made his anthropological mark with the Australian Aborigines. Breaking away from the functionalist approach of the physical kin-ship based research model, Hornsby devised a method of recording Aboriginal data relating to their social life, material culture and environmental relationships, “before this observable data would be irretrievably lost through domination of a homogenized Western influenced socialized community,” he wrote.
To his credit, he had proven himself as an exemplary “salvage ethnographer,” producing exceptional interpretations of the sacred “dreamtime” rock art in Australia “made when the rocks were still soft” according to Aboriginal legends. He wrote:
Aboriginal dreamtime, or tjukurpa, was communing with their spirit ancestors who instructed them on the development of their social structure. This was a ritual that had gone on for over 18,000 generations.
I had read magazine interview articles about his harrowing adventures that took him to the edge of perishing while trekking the outback of Australia’s barren wilderness. In one instance, Hornsby claimed to have been miraculously cured by an Aboriginal shaman after falling off a cliff and breaking his back. The experience was in one of his published diaries covering a two-year span of living with a wide cross section of Aboriginal tribes.
I lay there all alone, paralyzed from the waist down, no hope of rescue. I had resigned myself to becoming a feast for the dingo dogs when an Aboriginal tribesman appeared long enough to observe that I was injured. He quickly disappeared back into the bush. Moments later he returned with their tribal medicine man. The frail aged man made two small slits in my lower back and then put his mouth about the bleeding wound. I could feel an extraordinary sensation as he sucked for what seemed an eternity. Fiery warmth radiated from the site of my injury down my legs. The shaman kept on sucking harder till the sensation of a cool rushing surge ran though my blood. I suddenly felt a warm tingling in my legs and feet. I could flex my leg muscles and wiggle my toes where moments before I had no sense of them at all. The shaman then got up and staggered a few feet before collapsing on the ground in a prostrate position convulsing in what resembled an epileptic fit. He spewed out a grotesque reddish-brown mucus substance from his mouth and nose, while moaning a nasalized melodic prayer. I took pity upon him, as he seemed powerless in controlling whatever it was that possessed him, or for that matter what vile essence had possessed me in relation to my broken back. The ordeal was over in about an hour. Miraculously I could walk, though I was still wobbly for hours afterward and needed assistance. The shaman appeared healthy and recovered. Later, as I became more acquainted with this tribe’s mystical healing practices, I learned that he had sucked the evil out of my body, in which he had taken within himself and purged so he would recover as well.
To prove his claim, x-ray pictures of Hornsby’s fractured spine were printed next to the text. He had his back examined upon his return to Cambridge University in England where he held tenure. There were obvious fractures that had healed in three of his lumbar vertebrae, substantiated by expert medical opinion that indeed the vertebrae had been fractured.
Within a year of this return to Cambridge University, Hornsby deviated from the academic norm, alienating himself more and more with radical claims of a pivotal galactic event in the evolution of humankind that was calculated and recorded by Mayan descendents. In the 1972 January issue of The Mesoamerican Review Hornsby spelled out his theory.
Consciousness is a timeless cosmic record that permeates our daily lives. Proof lives in the fact that when the global collective consciousness struck the same hour, various indigenous cultures around the world made a dramatic shift in their consciousness. The same has been true for Western civilization. There is too much scientific documentation to believe that these were coincidental hallucinations. This is proof that there is a cosmic primordial universe maker that accounts for our biological evolution; scripted from out there somewhere in the vastness of space. The Mayan knew this as fact. Science has taught us the alphabet of nature. It is up to our intuition to discover her secrets.
Hornsby came upon the conclusion that the Maya established a sort-of Rosetta stone or mystical code that divulged the secrets of the archetypal nature of consciousness. But stylistic perceptions prevail when the academic norm support one-way of thinking. His colleagues found it difficult to be patient with Hornsby, taking on a vagary opinion.
Aboriginal dreamtime, or tjukurpa, was communing with their spirit ancestors who instructed them on the development of their social structure. This was a ritual that had gone on for over 18,000 generations.
I had read magazine interview articles about his harrowing adventures that took him to the edge of perishing while trekking the outback of Australia’s barren wilderness. In one instance, Hornsby claimed to have been miraculously cured by an Aboriginal shaman after falling off a cliff and breaking his back. The experience was in one of his published diaries covering a two-year span of living with a wide cross section of Aboriginal tribes.
I lay there all alone, paralyzed from the waist down, no hope of rescue. I had resigned myself to becoming a feast for the dingo dogs when an Aboriginal tribesman appeared long enough to observe that I was injured. He quickly disappeared back into the bush. Moments later he returned with their tribal medicine man. The frail aged man made two small slits in my lower back and then put his mouth about the bleeding wound. I could feel an extraordinary sensation as he sucked for what seemed an eternity. Fiery warmth radiated from the site of my injury down my legs. The shaman kept on sucking harder till the sensation of a cool rushing surge ran though my blood. I suddenly felt a warm tingling in my legs and feet. I could flex my leg muscles and wiggle my toes where moments before I had no sense of them at all. The shaman then got up and staggered a few feet before collapsing on the ground in a prostrate position convulsing in what resembled an epileptic fit. He spewed out a grotesque reddish-brown mucus substance from his mouth and nose, while moaning a nasalized melodic prayer. I took pity upon him, as he seemed powerless in controlling whatever it was that possessed him, or for that matter what vile essence had possessed me in relation to my broken back. The ordeal was over in about an hour. Miraculously I could walk, though I was still wobbly for hours afterward and needed assistance. The shaman appeared healthy and recovered. Later, as I became more acquainted with this tribe’s mystical healing practices, I learned that he had sucked the evil out of my body, in which he had taken within himself and purged so he would recover as well.
To prove his claim, x-ray pictures of Hornsby’s fractured spine were printed next to the text. He had his back examined upon his return to Cambridge University in England where he held tenure. There were obvious fractures that had healed in three of his lumbar vertebrae, substantiated by expert medical opinion that indeed the vertebrae had been fractured.
Within a year of this return to Cambridge University, Hornsby deviated from the academic norm, alienating himself more and more with radical claims of a pivotal galactic event in the evolution of humankind that was calculated and recorded by Mayan descendents. In the 1972 January issue of The Mesoamerican Review Hornsby spelled out his theory.
Consciousness is a timeless cosmic record that permeates our daily lives. Proof lives in the fact that when the global collective consciousness struck the same hour, various indigenous cultures around the world made a dramatic shift in their consciousness. The same has been true for Western civilization. There is too much scientific documentation to believe that these were coincidental hallucinations. This is proof that there is a cosmic primordial universe maker that accounts for our biological evolution; scripted from out there somewhere in the vastness of space. The Mayan knew this as fact. Science has taught us the alphabet of nature. It is up to our intuition to discover her secrets.
Hornsby came upon the conclusion that the Maya established a sort-of Rosetta stone or mystical code that divulged the secrets of the archetypal nature of consciousness. But stylistic perceptions prevail when the academic norm support one-way of thinking. His colleagues found it difficult to be patient with Hornsby, taking on a vagary opinion.
In a rebuff, Hornsby voluntarily resigned from teaching to devote his remaining days to Maya research. Financially strapped, he came to America to raise money for his next expedition by giving talks about the Maya Mystery at various universities and simultaneously recruiting a small group of assistants to accompany him into the Mayab Forest of Central America. Because of interest that paralleled my own, I was anxious with excitement about meeting Dr. Hornsby. But what was masked and I was too naïve to recognize, was the Maya’s atavistic beckoning for my soul to come to Central America and be awakened.
Even though I arrived early, the university lecture hall was already filled to overflowing capacity. Students, teachers and the general public packed the 500-seat lecture theater. There was a great curiosity about Hornsby because his Mayan interpretations paralleled Eastern philosophies and spiritual mysticism that captured our Western imaginations at the time.
It was no wonder that Hornsby fit right into the current milieu of new age truth seekers. Youthful university students perceived his sage-like persona as resembling a spiritual artisan for a new era based upon mystical indigenous awareness of the occult. But for Hornsby, it was entirely a different matter.
When he entered the lecture hall, several people rose in their seats to applaud him. He responded humbly as he approached the podium. The anthropologist scholar was of average height. His neck held a handsome face. His athletic symmetry projected a commanding mien. A ruddy tan complexion endowed him with an unbending stature.
Though he was balding with little gray hair cut short on the sides, Dr. Hornsby appeared youthful and vibrant with a straightforward persona that always rewarded one with success of their endeavors. In his opening statement, Hornsby addressed what he called an underlying issue that the current “cosmic time” was running out for Western civilization.
“There has to be a source for the wisdom needed to keep a peaceful order on the planet for humanity to remain intact,” he said in a incongruous appearance. “And the solution lies in the Maya secret.”
Hornsby adjusted his notes in front of him to make a dramatic pause. Then he peered out at the audience looking at the faces of youth, university professors, alumni and just about every diversified entity that was woven into our diverse social fabric of the early seventies.
“How can archeologists discount the Maya civilization as if they were a blissful enigmatic anomaly of the Stone Age? The Maya managed to create a science of astronomical comprehension and architecture of a proportional harmonic beauty equal to none on the face of the earth,” he said from the podium.
“Think about it, the Maya possessed a brilliantly simple and sophisticated enigmatic know-how of reality. They had defined the mysterious elements of consciousness to make us aware of the order of the universe and the natural law of existence. This is the period that archeologists call the Stone Age. I think my opponents are a bit ‘stoned’ themselves.”
Hornsby’s comment brought the audience to laughter. Without missing a beat he continued.
“My critics say that this extraordinary Neolithic civilization of Mesoamerica involved pedantries and warfare cruelties. It is alleged that the Mayan high priests disposed of their surplus population with sacrificial slaughter unparalleled in history of human atrocities. Perhaps solving the mystery is just too abstruse for them or my colleagues have blinded themselves in Gestalt European Paleolithic cognition.”
Hornsby was referring to the same shortsightedness inflicted upon Don Marcelion Sanz de Sautuola in the 19th Century. He re-discovered the Paleolithic Altamira cave art, of stampeding horse pictures, located in Spain. The cave had been sealed off under force in 1458 by Pope Calixtus III to put an end to pagan religious ceremonies held in the cave. Because the knowledge of these ancient cave iconographies had been forgotten, archeologists initially rejected that they existed.
“Scholars have been so heavily influenced by the anthropogenic rock art that they unconsciously project these as visual templates upon Mayan hieroglyphics. But, I ask myself, if the Maya were so murderously barbaric, how could they be so advanced intellectually? From what source did their understanding come from? Is there a genetic blueprint imbedded in all of us that taps into the archetypal consciousness of the Maya?”
Hornsby held everyone’s attention with his roaming gaze, daring anyone to rebuke him. None did. Content to move on, Hornsby stood back from the podium taking a pointer stick in hand.
“Let me show you some startling evidence so that you may decide for yourself. Lights, please.”
“Let me show you some startling evidence so that you may decide for yourself. Lights, please.”
The lecture hall lights dimmed. We were cast into pitch darkness for a moment. Then projected upon the screen behind Hornsby appeared two graphic figures. The one image was wall etchings in black and white. The other was the photograph of the same form sculpted on the face of a stone slab.
“I present the drawings from two institutionalized mental patients,” Hornsby continued. “One patient was in England and the other in America. You will see an extraordinarily parallel in their designs and quality with the Maya inscriptions I discovered on Monte Alban, a mountaintop ceremonial center located near Oaxaca, in southern Mexico.
“A mental patient made the drawing on the right in his room at a mental institution during a manic episode. The Mayan hieroglyphic on the left is one of four from the Danzante sculptures that existed on Monte Alban. These were the ancestors of the Zapotecs or Cloud People that inhabited Monte Alban around 900 A.D.”
I was startled to see that the images were nearly identical. Both the figures were of a naked woman in an anatomical stance. Her face was profiled from the left side and had the simple outline of ovaries drawn in her pelvis region. Next to the figure on the left side were a series of dots, lines and half moon shapes in a vertical progression.
“Notice these symbols here.” Hornsby pointed to the row of dots and lines. “This is the earliest example of the Maya numerical system. We know that a dot equals one unit, a bar is five units, and the stylized seashell is zero. From these units of numbers the Maya developed the most sophisticated mathematical concept of a ceaseless permutation of thirteen and twenty directional positions that make up the three cyclic wheels for the counting of days.”
“A continuous stream of calculations that creates a prophetic interest,” I thought to myself while peering down from the lecture hall balcony.
“This ladies and gentlemen was the means to recorded time, at the peak of the high civilization of the Olmec’s or rubber people who invented the ritual ball game later adapted by the Maya, and worshiped the Jaguar called Nama, which the Maya later called Balam, or high priest.”
Hornsby deciphered the symbols as a calibration of cosmic cycles recorded by the civilizations of Mesoamerica. He emphasized that we must understand the concept of time as being independent of the movement of physical bodies.
“The Maya had no implicit word for time. Instead they spoke of things in kinetic movement, such as Uchmal ‘from here to there’ or Alcabil ‘velocity’,” Hornsby pointed out.
Going back to his example of the rows of bars and dots he said, “Here we have the number six that relates to the Baktun solar year period measuring the six to four hundred year cycles that have transpired since the beginning date of the Julian calendar 3113 B.C., the same time that Stonehenge was constructed by the Druids.
“Second, these two straight lines that parallel each other signify the position known as the Katun or the number ten. Katun is approximately nineteen solar years in our Gregorian calendar. In the third position we have a shell drawing that signifies zero relating to the tun period signifying one solar year, and in the forth position another zero relating to the Uinal period or twenty day cycle and finally in the fifth position that is the day count called kin with another zero.
“This recorded date 6.10.0.0.0 translates to our Gregorian calendar year of 550 B.C. The means employed at arriving at this date conversion is used by the astronomical Julian date of five hundred eighty four thousand, two hundred and eighty-three as our coefficient. The Great Solar Cycle began on about August 11th, 3114 B.C. with an ending date of 13.0.0.0.0, some five thousand one hundred and twenty five years later, at about December 21st, 2012 A.D.”
I looked about me to see faces with glazed over eyes, some furiously scribbling notes, and others scratching their heads, furrowing eyebrows or whispering to their neighbor to clarify what Hornsby just said.
All of what Hornsby related had taken over a hundred years to decipher, yet the audience got the pleasure of a one-minute explanation. Hornsby continued, ignoring the fact that he had lost half of his audience already in comprehending the Mayan’s mathematical formula for the count of days.
“The hieroglyphics I’ve shown you were sculpted at the ‘coming of the Nine Lords of Time’ that symbolically represent a pivotal point of the evolution of our ancestor’s consciousness in regards to numerical measurement and philosophical teachings on earth. If one can recall ancient world history, the date I just gave, 3114 B.C., correlated to the historical period of Pythagoras, Plato, Confucius, and Aristotle.
“Buddha emerged along with the wisdom writings of Lao Tzu. All of them accepted a doctrine of harmonic existence as diviners of harmony,” Hornsby said.
Hornsby’s words, “diviners of harmony” shot through me like an electrical charge. That was it! That was what was seeping into my thoughts, my perceptions of life, and the reoccurring nagging urge to unravel something within my own state of mind about life on this earth.
Hornsby presented the next slide of another drawing by an English mental patient that was nearly identical to another Mayan hieroglyphic from the same Danzante period, located on Monte Alban on southern Mexico. This was of a standing naked figure, with similar facial features with exposed testicles and penis. His headdress was ornamental with hair cut at the shoulders. Another mysterious like drawing was placed just in front of his mouth.
Hornsby presented the next slide of another drawing by an English mental patient that was nearly identical to another Mayan hieroglyphic from the same Danzante period, located on Monte Alban on southern Mexico. This was of a standing naked figure, with similar facial features with exposed testicles and penis. His headdress was ornamental with hair cut at the shoulders. Another mysterious like drawing was placed just in front of his mouth.
“The smaller figure here to the left of this figure is a radiant energy source. The Maya inscribed these symbols as spirit beings or guides, which the Olmec, a predecessor civilization of the Maya, believed these to be sacred entities,” the anthropologist explained.
The figure looked like the head of a thunderbird. The interpretation that Hornsby made from these images is that energy and information are one of the same. In its real meaning, this was the Mayan mysticism that was draped about the remains of their ruins like a gauze-like veil. What was concealed as a code was a competent design for understanding our direct relationship with the earth and the universe. With academic reassurance, we could gaze upon their secrets with impunity.
I pondered his statement, ‘gaze upon their secrets with impunity’ to mean that there would be no apparitional retribution for disturbing the Mayan graves, the sacred temples, unlike the reports of such fatalistic curses to befall academic scientists unearthing the great tombs of Egypt. Hornsby pontificated about his knowledge in an elegant manner, captivating and engrossing.
“Is it a coincidence that these two mental patients could have known about the significance of their drawings? Are they lunatics? Or were the Mayan lunatics to chisel these glyphs into stone thousands of years ago? How could two people separated not only by the neurological fragmentation of a mental disorder, but geographically in time and space by an ocean, could have known about the esoteric Danzante hieroglyphics on Monte Alban? Does it mean their coexistence in the archetypal dimensional world of the Mayan consciousness could be perceived by modern psychology as providing a vital link to our archetypal origins?”
“Is it a coincidence that these two mental patients could have known about the significance of their drawings? Are they lunatics? Or were the Mayan lunatics to chisel these glyphs into stone thousands of years ago? How could two people separated not only by the neurological fragmentation of a mental disorder, but geographically in time and space by an ocean, could have known about the esoteric Danzante hieroglyphics on Monte Alban? Does it mean their coexistence in the archetypal dimensional world of the Mayan consciousness could be perceived by modern psychology as providing a vital link to our archetypal origins?”
This man who stood before us, in all his vulnerability, pierced the air with revelations, unheard of at the time. No doubt, Carl Jung, the founder of symbolic psychoanalysis, would have loved to hear Dr. Hornsby’s evidence of the universal consciousness, and the fact that people lived their lives ignorant of the deeper symbolic natures of their motivations. The visually symbolic power of the Mayan, as presented by Hornsby, was becoming a transforming experience in the darken lecture hall.
“What we have here is the simple evidence of our origin of a collective consciousness, the same type of link that Darwin discovered in the origin of species from his life long investigations of nature. The Maya origin of consciousness is the construct of a mathematical equation combined with glyph symbolism that defines our purpose on earth. It would seem reasonable that two people activated their subconscious awareness of an atavistic blueprint that is imbedded in our chromosomes.”
Finished with that thought, Hornsby requested the next slide to be shown. It was a human hand, palm facing out.
“The Mayan devised the greatest common measure -- twenty -- with the smallest common multiple two. Mathematical counting systems started with the fingers of the hand. This is why the decimal system goes by tens with a possible ten digits for each placeholder, as shown here in this graphic of a posterior hand position. The Mayan’s vigesimal system goes by twenties giving each placeholder a possible twenty digits. This established an infinitesimal binary harmonic that recapitulates in universal binary progression. Similar to the Fibonacci summation series that relates to the segments of the fingers, the Mayan vigesimal system exponentially moves forward. This is the same as Benjamin Franklin’s Magic Square of 8.”
Having said that, Hornsby requested the next slide.
“Here is an example of the vigesimal counting system written in Mayan with the positional alignment values as they appear in the codices and stele.
Vigesimal System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VigesimalWhat the Maya were not recording is time on earth, but terrestrial cycles of the earth moving through the galaxy. Considering this fact, their mathematical precision of interpreting the galactic world far exceeds our modern day understandings. How was this possible? Simple.”
Hornsby went on to elucidate that the Mayans devised a calculator from three different calendar rounds centuries before we devised a complexity theory in mathematics. The first is the Tzolk’in or Sacred Calendar, initially used by the Olmec civilization that predated the Mayans. This was a “short count” matrix in design utilizing the numbers thirteen and twenty to establish two hundred and sixty days; the haab almanac or Vague Year with its cycle of three hundred and sixty days plus five more.
Hornsby went on to elucidate that the Mayans devised a calculator from three different calendar rounds centuries before we devised a complexity theory in mathematics. The first is the Tzolk’in or Sacred Calendar, initially used by the Olmec civilization that predated the Mayans. This was a “short count” matrix in design utilizing the numbers thirteen and twenty to establish two hundred and sixty days; the haab almanac or Vague Year with its cycle of three hundred and sixty days plus five more.
The haab almanac consists of eighteen months with twenty days each and is counted from zero to nineteen and then repeated. The Tzolk’in and haab almanacs are combined to produce a cycle of eighteen thousand, nine hundred and eighty days that takes a little less than fifty-two solar years to complete one cycle.
Because there would be repetitions of similar dates within this formula the Mayan perfected their counting of days with a third calculating system by incorporating the vigesimal place-value method that allowed them to identify a day uniquely within a period of one million eight hundred seventy-two thousand days or the Great Cycle that equals five thousand, two hundred solar years. This was the Long Count that made up one hundred forty-four thousand days or approximately four hundred years called a Baktun.
After taking a sip of water, Hornsby requested that the next slide be shown. On the left were the twenty emblem glyphs of the Tzolk’in calendar and on the right were the nineteen emblem glyphs of the haab calendar.
Tzolk’in Glyphs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzolk
Tzolk’in Glyphs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzolk
Haab Glyphs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haab
“As I mentioned earlier, the Tzolk’in calendar calculated with the numbers thirteen and twenty when multiplied equals two hundred sixty. Shown here are the twenty emblem glyphs or ‘faces of creation’ and their relationship to the count of days. The baseline of the Tzolk’in was astronomically determined by the sun’s zenith during the first passage, verified by the position of Pleiades in the Constellation Taurus, which was fabled as the four hundred youth in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel.
“The cycle of Pleiades takes twenty-six thousand years. Consequently, the Maya reduced this to two hundred sixty days. The Tzolk’in is combined into a lunisolar computation the baseline formula, representing the thirteen moon phases in a solar year.”
I recalled reading about one story of the invention of the number twenty described in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. The four Regents “went to the middle of the sky and took each other’s hands…” the days said, “thirteen and seven in a group.”
Hornsby’s thorough astronomical research surpassed my expectations.
Hornsby’s thorough astronomical research surpassed my expectations.
“Consequently, the Mayan’s broke down a solar year into twenty and thirteen day periods that could be connected to the configuration of the Mars; eclipse of the seasons and most importantly the appearance of Venus. The lunar calendar called the Tun-Uc or Moon Calendar consists of twenty-eight days multiplied by the thirteen moon cycles. This was a minor calendar that was later abandoned. With the installation of the Tzolk’in, the Mayan had a complete exactitude to perform the necessary agrarian operations of cultivating their milpa.”
The reference to agrarian ritual, the planting of corn, was a slight deviation, though valid in respect to anthropological thinking and the corner stone to Maya cultural heritage.
“Initially this time-recording device was conceived as closed cycles that would have apocalyptic endings. The Mayan priests freed themselves from this fear by establishing an infinite cycle with the Long Count that was used in 355 B.C. All three calendars have been internally consistent with unbroken sequence since their conceptions.”
Hornsby was thoroughly engrossed in his subject matter.
In the next slide Hornsby showed the combination of the three calendars. He explained that the inside wheel was the haab calendar. The Tzolk’in was the second largest wheel and the Long Count was the largest.
Mayan Calendar Rounds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_calendar"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_calendar"
Even though it is a commonly held belief that the Mayan calendars are astronomically based, human beings have anatomical correlations with these numeric sequences as I demonstrated earlier with the fingers of the hand. We have thirteen major joints in the body and twenty digits. There is also the 260-day gestation period for humans. Next slide please.”
Tzolk’in Matrix
http://landscapetemples.tribe.net/photos/b1632bdf-3d58-41fa-ba35-5f64e2be7133
“Here is the Tzolk’in matrix. Along the bottom are the twenty emblem glyphs. You can count thirteen squares up the side. The whole of it makes for a system of divination. Each of the units signifies a resonant function in relationship to a frequency of cosmic magnitude. The Tzolk’in matrix is the spiritual link to Oxlahuntiku, the thirteen gods of the Upper World. Any use of the Tzolk’in is an invocation for assistance from these thirteen gods just as one would use the I Ching to evoke Confucianism or the Catholic mass that induces Christ’s spirit.” Hornsby adjusted his notes on the podium then spoke directly to the audience.
Tzolk’in Matrix
http://landscapetemples.tribe.net/photos/b1632bdf-3d58-41fa-ba35-5f64e2be7133
“Here is the Tzolk’in matrix. Along the bottom are the twenty emblem glyphs. You can count thirteen squares up the side. The whole of it makes for a system of divination. Each of the units signifies a resonant function in relationship to a frequency of cosmic magnitude. The Tzolk’in matrix is the spiritual link to Oxlahuntiku, the thirteen gods of the Upper World. Any use of the Tzolk’in is an invocation for assistance from these thirteen gods just as one would use the I Ching to evoke Confucianism or the Catholic mass that induces Christ’s spirit.” Hornsby adjusted his notes on the podium then spoke directly to the audience.
“Based upon my deciphering of the Australian Aborigine’s dreamtime mysticism, the Tzolk’in was meant to keep the Mayan’s consciousness coherent and in line with a collective harmonic progression teleologically intune with our celestial environment. You see, the Mayan have a holistic perception of our relationship to each other. They say, ‘In Lake’ch’ – which means, ‘I am another yourself.’ What is conceptualized here is something beyond the four-dimensional space-time continuum. It is the Maya’s explicit understanding of the universal archetype of the Self.”
The audience stirred. Hornsby was unrelenting.
“It seems self evident from the comparison of these drawings I’ve presented here today,” Hornsby continued in a manner of profundity, “that the ouroboros Carl Jung described in his research of symbolic psychology and Nietzsche wrote about as the eternal return, shows that buried in the primal genetic code of all of us is the remembrances of an underlying archetypal infrastructure or what philosopher Immanuel Kant called, a priori. We live in a closed cyclic system of galactic proportions based on a preset formula.” Hornsby’s analogical ingenuity was stunning.
“Could it be?” I wondered.
I had read through over a hundred and fifty years of published transcripts produced by the pioneers of Mayan glyph decipherment. There was Abbe Charles Etienne Brasseur who found Friar Diego de Landa’s four hundred year old A,B,C, Mayan alphabet that was discarded by the Catholic Church as insufficient in learning the Mayan language; Alfred Percival Maudslay who published the first Mayan inscriptions, and Sylvanus Griswold Morley’s The Ancient Maya.
But interpretations had not been without scandal and controversy over the decades. Such was a critical argument between Sir J. Eric S. Thompson and Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov about the significance of the glyph’s linguistic symbolism.
Knorosov, shut away behind the Iron Curtain in his native country of socialist Russia, had never set foot in the jungles of Central America to have seen first hand the ruins of temples, pyramids and ball courts. But as a Russian soldier, who participated in the siege of Berlin in 1945, fate fell into his hands.
When searching for Nazis in a vacated government building, Knorosov stumbled upon parchments similar to Friar Diego de Landa’s A, B, C Mayan alphabet. Taking his small treasure back to Russia, Knorosov had a template to work from in deciphering the symbolic glyphs.
Knorosov believed as a scholar of Egyptian, Chinese and Japanese writings that the Mayan hieroglyphics were phonetically an idea-based language. Thompson, who wrote Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, A Catalog of Mayan Hieroglyphs and The Rise and Fall of Mayan Civilization, was convinced that the Mayan hieroglyphics was something entirely different.
Unlike Knorosov, Thompson’s paradigm was based on European perceptions of the Paleocene interpretations of cave drawings.
Thompson did perceive the Mayan’s record of time “as something without beginning or end” and the passage of time was recorded on erected stele to register dates significant to them, but he still projected his own modern thoughts on the interpretation of the Mayan hieroglyphics by discounting Knorosov’s theory. Like so many misguided theories, this argument stunted the process of deciphering the glyphs until another Russian came along to prove Thompson’s misperceptions.
Tatiana Proskouriakoff was a Russian born emigrant to the United States. Unable to find work in her profession as an architect, Proskouriakoff signed with an expedition into the Chiapas region of southern Mexico to make surveys and restoration drawings of the Mayan ruin Piedras Negras along the Rio Usumacinta, commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania in 1936.
From her notes she hypothesized three clues: each group of contemporary dates began with a specific glyph that she nicknamed the “upended frog” followed by another glyph nicknamed, “toothache grin”. These two glyphs were always the same within any given group of monuments and sets of dates and varied from one group to the next. In her third clue the initial “upended frog” referred to birth and the “toothache grin” referred to a rite of passage into adult maturity.
Inspired, Proskouriakoff traveled up the Rio Usumacinta to the Maya city ruins of the island ruin of Yaxchilan where she identified a “Shield Jaguar” and “Bird Jaguar” glyph in addition to identifying the emblem glyph “capture” of enemy warriors and the emblem glyphs for a ruler’s age and death. Her groundwork proved Knorosov’s theory correct and opened the door for further interpretations of the densely symbolic glyphs.
I watched Hornsby standing with a straight back, speaking with the presentation of a polished academic lecturer, but an adventurous character contrasted his presence. He resumed in his characteristic vein to drive his point home to us.
“I have hypothesized that the Nine Lords of Time were like extraterrestrial envoys who integrated into the ancient Olmec culture, whose sanctified foundation had grown out of the Neolithic shaman culture centered on the nagual or spirit of the Jaguar. From Monte Alban, where we have the Danzante glyphs, the Mesoamerican culture spread out as thirteen tribes, seven of which settled in Guatemala, the lowland jungle and basin plains reaching into Honduras. At this point in time, the great city center of Teotihuacan was built in Mexico and of course, many more later, such as Tikal and Palenque in Guatemala.
“Teotihuacan means, ‘Place Where the Gods Touched The Earth’ and commemorates the primal origin of the Mayan birthplace known as Tulan, the place of entry into this world, unrelated to the actual ruin site of the same name in Mexico. At the core of Teotihuacan’s civilization was the Pyramid of the Sun, the foundation measurement is exactly the same as the Great Cheops Pyramid in Egypt, built between 2718 B.C. and 2324 B.C.
“Like the Egyptians, Teotihuacan blossomed into an intensely spiritualized and artistically inclined heliocentric civilization of abundance and beauty. These were the Toltecs, lead by the great ruler, Quetzalcoatl. The Maya named him Kukulkan.”
A slide of the Feathered Serpent ruler appeared behind Hornsby on the projection screen.
Quetzalcoatl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl
Hornsby paused to reflect for a moment. The lecture hall was silent. I could see all eyes were glued on the charismatic balding gray haired man. No doubt Hornsby held the audience in a spell. His piercing blue eyes seemed to sparkle in the darken room as he searched the individual faces of hundreds of captivated listeners.
“It is now 1973. We entered the final four hundred-year Baktun cycle in 1618, otherwise known as the adjustment of material essence into its final expertise by Mayan calculations. Not only has America put a man on the moon, but NASA has completed six lunar landings since that historic event in July of 1969. As we continue with our fascination of space travel and UFO sightings, the author Erich Von Daniken has recently published his belief that the Mayan’s were in contact with extraterrestrials.”
Behind Hornsby another slide was projected. This was the funerary crypt sarcophagus lid of the Mayan priest Pacal Votan, which was found in Palenque by archeologist Albert Lluillier in 1952.
Pacal Votan Sarcophagus Lid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacal_the_Great
Pacal Votan Sarcophagus Lid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacal_the_Great
“Daniken thinks the same way Soviet scientist Alexander Kazantev hypothesized that the portal to our connection lies in Pacal Votan’s tomb hieroglyphic as pictorial evidence that ancient gods were actually astronauts coming to earth from distant galaxies. Is he a charlatan? Who’s to say? Our understanding of the cosmos is just beginning. We are naïve compared to the Maya who were steeped in cosmology aptitude and their ability to transcend the subjectivity of verbal experience. Pacal Votan, proves this for according to the Telektonon, mathematics is Hunab Ku or the essence of God and God is all.”
The lecture hall lights gradually illuminated the room to half-light.
“As I have shown with these brief examples, the celestial, anatomical and psychological structures of our existence are inseparable from a cosmic mechanism. This is profoundly evidenced in the foundations of the Maya calendar round and emblem hieroglyphics.
Mesoamerican culture knew that cosmic harmony reigns within our consciousness. To remain connected they had to maintain a coherent perception of their metaphysical position in relation with a galactic code, just as the children of Israel did with the Arc of the Covenant. The Maya concept of the natural world and of celestial existence made it possible for a consummating stewardship that benefited all people. This was the era of Quetzalcoatl.”
I knew this to be true. The organization of their understanding of cosmogony, in which the forces of the earth are directly linked, was achieved through their techniques of spiritual craftsmanship combined with methods for a natural progressive evolution of culture. All of this is given to us in an allegorical form that culminates when we have gained full knowledge of the archetypal configuration or what I hypothesize as the origin of consciousness.
“According to the sacred Mayan calendar round we are entering a phase of dramatic change, the final stage of a materialistic age that will end in the year 2012, baring any unforeseen discoveries of anomalies in our deciphering of the Mayan code. If this is true, and I believe it is, then we have thirty-nine years left to transform our global civilization from one of an ecocide economy to one of a harmonic co-existence.”
Behind Hornsby the final slide appeared.
Six Sky Smoke from Tonina
Six Sky Smoke from Tonina
http://www.angelfire.com/folk/sunflowerfarm/soultube.html
“This graphic was uncovered by archeologists while clearing vegetation at the ball court at the Tonina pyramid ruin, in the Chiapas region of southern Mexico. It depicts Six Sky Smoke, who died on September 5, 775 A.D. having reined over the highest Classic Mayan pyramids ever built. He was reputed to have passed through this soul tube, he holds in his arms, to the upper world.
“This graphic was uncovered by archeologists while clearing vegetation at the ball court at the Tonina pyramid ruin, in the Chiapas region of southern Mexico. It depicts Six Sky Smoke, who died on September 5, 775 A.D. having reined over the highest Classic Mayan pyramids ever built. He was reputed to have passed through this soul tube, he holds in his arms, to the upper world.
“This scepter is of great interest to me. It evolved as a symbol of one’s soul flight into the next world, the origin of which symbolizes Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. Six Sky Smoke’s serpent bar or soul tube has lily-white flowers on either end. The lily flowers are interpreted as ideograms for rebirth in the upper world. In short, the soul tube was the portal to travel between the underworld and upperworld.
“As an anthropologist, I am not content to be a spectator, essayist or to be in awe of the Pre-Columbian legacy. I prefer further investigation between the Mayan form and function that is neither obvious nor familiar, as an open-ended process of discovery, forcing us to shrug off our own Eurocentric’s ignorance. Up till now Western science has been happenstance in their expeditions, stumbling upon ruins shrouded in the jungle overgrowth without knowing why or what they are looking for.
“I feel that we must search for this vehicle, the spiritual rite of passage, the initiator of the Divine Spirit, the Tulan, the equivalent of the Holy of Holies, the footstool of God’s throne, the Star Chambers of Ireland and Europe, the place between Mankind and God or what is known as the Soul Chamber. Why?
“Because the secret to the mystery, ladies and gentlemen, is always the deepest at the gateway of its origin… where in this case, the Maya, the cosmic navigators who used this mystical portal to travel through the galaxy. I hypothesize that there is a lost temple waiting to be discovered in the jungles of Central America, which contains the secret of Quetzalcoatl and our, I mean humankinds, salvation.”
Hornsby punctuated his speech.
“Know this; Stonehenge was constructed at the beginning of the zero date in the beginning of the Maya thirteen Baktun cycle in the year 3113 B.C. At the same time, Gilgamesh was king of Babylonia, the earliest form of writing, cuneiform, was created by the Sumerians.
“All were recording their lives, their relationship to the heavens and earth and most importantly, an evolving consciousness at the same time but geographically cut off from each other. Therefore, there must be a record inscribed or sculpted in stone by the Mayan ancestors who knew of this phenomenon through the proper means of harmonic navigation that goes till the end of this cycle and into the next five thousand two hundred-tun cycle.
“Everywhere among the early Mesoamerica cultures the importance of correct living and thinking was held up as an indispensable requisite to all true expansion of consciousness or initiation. It is the remembrance of this intrinsically accepted wisdom that will get our occidental society back on track. To prove my theory, I will venture my life and academic credibility upon it. Thank you for your time and attention.”
The audience rose in a thunderous applause. He had won over their hearts and minds, as well as my own. I, too, agreed with Hornsby that something was amiss in the seemingly shortsighted patent scientific interpretations of the Maya. There had to be a crusader, a visionary to pull back the veil of mystery to this complex civilization.
Had not Columbus sailed across a waste of water in what was perceived as a hopeless cause to find a short cut to India? I contemplated. Wasn’t Columbus a seeker for a solution to the great questions of his time? Wasn’t the ocean a vastness of space similar in our perception of the frontier of the universe? To prove the earth was not flat?
Inspired by my own longing to immerse myself in the adventure to know if this mythical Soul Chamber truly existed, I plunged perhaps too romantically, head long when Hornsby mentioned he had a few openings left for his expedition team during the brief question and answer period following his lecture.
Anyone interested in joining the expedition was required to write a letter of intent and available time commitment to be seriously considered. The opportunity to flesh out and expand my own comprehension of the Prehispanic epoch in Mesoamerica had presented itself. I wrote to Hornsby explaining my reasons to be considered to join his expedition, primarily for research on my Masters thesis in archetypal psychology of indigenous cultures.
I added that I had studied linguistics, Spanish as a second language, and could provide my own travel and living expenses for half a year if need be. Hornsby immediately replied with a letter of acceptance. Posted with the acceptance letter was an itinerary, a four-page bibliography of required reading, a Spartan provision’s list of camping gear and jungle clothing, and requesting me to come to San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico in two months.
Copyright 2005
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