CHAPTER XXIII.
AZTEC COSMOGONY AND THEOGONY.
“By midnight moons o’er moistening dews,
In vestments for the chase arrayed,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer a shade.”
PHILIP FRENEAU.
FROM the foregoing chapter we see that the ancient Aztec civilization had nothing in common with the red Indian. Buildings, customs and religion linked him to a higher civilization, or else prove that he possessed the germs of self-evolution, enabled him to cope with the great unknown, and single-handed to civilize himself. The latter process will be hard to believe, the former will be hard to prove; but for argument we will take a hasty glance at other nations whose history corresponds most closely with the ancient inhabitants of Mexico.
The Chaldeans, according to Berosus, held that the world is periodically destroyed by deluges and conflagrations. They believed that the deluges were caused by the conjunction of the planets in Capricorn, and the conflagrations by conjunction in Cancer. The Chaldean philosophers had also their Annus Magnus or great year, at the end of which the present terrestrial and cosmical order would terminate by fire and afterwards be renewed.
The ancient Scythians believed that the world undergoes revolution both by fire and by water. The Egyptians believed that the earth would flourish through the interval expressed by the Annus Magnus or great year, a cycle, as with the Chaldeans, composed of revolutions of the sun and moon, and terminating when they returned together to the same sign whence they set out. At the end of each cycle the earth was supposed to be destroyed by fire or water, and to be renovated for the abode of man. The Hindoo cosmogony taught the doctrine of secular catastrophes and renovations. Water is then introduced, over which moves Brahma, the creator. Brahma then causes dry land to appear and vivifies the earth in succession with plants, animals and man, then he sleeps 4320 millions of years—a day for Brahma, and then the earth is destroyed by fire. The fire is finally quenched by rain which falls a hundred years and inundates heaven and earth. The breath of Vishnu next becomes a strong wind by which the clouds are dispersed, and Deity in the form of Brahma awakes from his serpent couch on the deep and renews the world, and sleeps again another day. The power of Brahma is thus outlined by Emerson:
“If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
“Far or forgot, to me is near,
Shadow and sunshine are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
“They reckon ill who leave me out.
When me they fly I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahman sings.
“The strong god pines for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good,
Find me and turn thy back on heaven.”
The Jews also hold a prophecy that the world was to endure 2000 years before the flood, 2000 under the law and 2000 under the Messiah, and then to be destroyed by water, and a large part of the Christian world accepts the same today.
Orpheus and Menander, early Greek poets who lived in the twilight of Greek civilization, reproduce the myth of the Annus Magnus, and teach that the earth is to be destroyed at the completion of the cycle. In the Sybilline books, 1300 years before our era, this faith is shadowed and the world is destined to endure ten ages, the first of which is the Golden Age. After a renovation by fire the Golden Age will return, when, according to Virgil, the serpent will perish; the earth will produce her crops spontaneously; the kid will no longer fear the lion; the grape will be borne upon the thorn-bush, and scarlet and yellow and royal purple will become the native colors of the woolly fleece:
“Ipsæ lacte domum referent distenta capellæ
Ubera; nec magnos netuent armenta leones.
Ipsa tibi blandos fundent cunabula flores;
Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni
Occidet; Assyrium vulgo nascetur amomum.
* * * * *
Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista,
Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva,
Et duræ quercus sudabunt roscida mella.”
According to Winchell, the Stoics got the same doctrine from the Phoenicians, and in speaking of the restoration after the conflagration, use the same term we find in the Scriptures, though written many hundred years earlier. Chrysippus calls it “Apocatastasis”—restitution—as St. Peter does in the Acts. Marcus Antoninus several times calls it “Palingenesia”—regeneration—as our Savior does in Matthew, and Paul in his epistle to Titus. The Pythagoreans, who taught the transmigration of souls, had the same ideas regarding the revolutions as had the Stoics. Plato taught the same, and Aristotle alone of all the ancient philosophers, taught the immortality of the soul and a continuance of the present order of things.
Among the Arabians, the story of the Phœnix is an allegory of the earth. This bird of fable no sooner crumbles to ashes than she rises again in more than pristine beauty. They have a similar story of the eagle which goes to the sun to renew its strength, and David alludes to the myth in the Psalms where he says: “Thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s,”—a passage which in the Chaldee language reads: “Thou shalt renew thy youth like the eagle in the world to come.” The Persians represent their god, Fire, as the final avenger of the earth. The Aztecs, according to Humboldt, felt the curiosity common to man in every stage of civilization, to lift the veil which covers the mysterious past and the awful future. They sought relief like the nations of the old world, from the oppressive idea of eternity, by breaking it up into distinct periods or cycles of time, each of several thousand years. There were four of these cycles, and at the end of each, by the agency of one of the elements, the human family was swept from the earth, and the sun blotted from the heavens, to be rekindled again by sacred fire.
The great feast of the “renewal of fire” began on the last day of the Sothic period of fifty-two years, when the last fragment of time lost by leap year had been made up. In the evening the fire was extinguished throughout the valley, and all the earthen vessels were broken in preparation for the end of the world. At this time every one was in terrible suspense, fearing he had seen the sun for the last time. The whole empire was a prey to anxiety, and the people stood on the temples watching the mountain tops, where bonfires would be lighted if the gods showed themselves merciful. Then processions of priests marched to the mountain so as to arrive at midnight, when they solemnly awaited the turn of the night which would assure them that the sun would rise once more and continue fifty-two years to the end of the next cycle. When the critical hour had passed, a priest with two sticks and a rotary motion of the hands produced the sacred fire. Then a funeral pyre was raised and the victims sacrificed. Then an extraordinary activity followed the despondency, and every one lighted his torch from the funeral pile and hastened to his dwelling, and couriers with the sacred fire spread through all the empire and the new blaze was kindled in every hearth and on every temple top, and they were happy for they had fifty-two years more to live. The thirteen days complementary to the cycle—intended to make the solar and civil years agree—were spent in whitewashing and renewing their furniture for the new cycle.
The Aztecs believed in the periodical destruction of the world and had a tradition of the flood, and their idea of the re-peopling of the earth very nearly coincides with Jewish scriptures. The following is a translation of the Popol Vuh, or National Book of the Quiches of Guatemala; “There was not yet a single man; not an animal; neither birds, nor fishes, nor crabs, nor wood, nor stones, nor ravines, nor forests; only the sky existed. The face of the land was not seen; there was only the silent sea and the sky. There was not yet a body, naught to attach itself to another; naught that balanced itself; naught that made a sound in the sky. There was nothing that stood upright; naught there was but the peaceful sea—the sea, silent and solitary in its limits; for there was nothing that was. * * * Those who fecundated, those who give life, are upon the waters like a growing light. * * * While they consulted, the day broke, and at the moment of dawn, man appeared. While they consulted, the earth grew. Thus verily, took place the creation as the earth came into being.$1‘Earth’ said they; and the earth existed. Like a fog, like a cloud, was the formation; as huge fishes rise in the water, so rose the mountains; and in a moment the high mountains existed.”
This is the account of the first creation, and what follows, refers to the fourth and last creation.—“Hear, now, when it was first thought of man, and of what man should be formed. At that time spake he who gives life, and he who gives form, the Maker and Moulder, named Tepen, Gucumatz;$1‘The day draws near; the work is done; the supporter, the servant is ennobled; he is the sun of light, the child of whiteness; man is honored; the race of man is upon the earth.’ So they spake.” * * * Immediately they began to speak of making our first mother and our father. Only of yellow corn and white corn were they flesh, and the substance of the arms end legs of man. They were called simply beings, formed and fashioned; they had neither mother nor father; we call them simply men.
Woman did not bring them forth, nor were they born of the Builder and Moulder, by Him who fecundates, and Him who gives being. “Thought was in them; they saw; they looked around; their vision took in all things; they perceived the world; they cast their eye from the sky to the earth.” “Then they were asked by the Builder and Moulder$1‘What think you of your being? See ye not? Understand ye not? Your language, your limbs, are they not good? Look around, beneath the heavens; see ye not the mountains and the plains?’
“Then they looked and saw all there was beneath the heavens. And they gave thanks to the Maker and the Moulder, saying;$1‘Truly, twice, and three times thanks! We have being; we have been given a mouth, a face; we speak, we understand, we think, we walk, we feel, and we know that which is far and that which is near. All great things and small on the earth and in the sky do we see. Thanks to thee, O Maker, O Moulder, that we have been created, that we have our being, O our Grandmother, O our Grandfather!’”[A]
Is there anything more noble in any language than these sentiments of untutored beings, striving to lift the veil and peer into the beyond? No philosopher in any land ever gave tongue to more lofty sentiments, nor approached nearer the real truth of divination, and we must remember, these sentiments were not borrowed from the Spaniards, but were recorded in the native writing of Guatemala, ages before the coming of Los Conquestadors. The Aztec worshipped many gods, but he also believed in one Great God, the “Causer of Causes.” To him was never an image made. He was reverenced under the name of Teotl, but being invisible and infinite, they never attempted to make a likeness of him, either in idols or in painting. They made sacrifice of human beings, but not to Teotl.
I herewith present a prayer, translated from the Aztec language by Lucien Biart, and addressed to the Unseen God:—“Mighty God, thou who givest me life, and whose slave I am, grant me the supreme grace of giving me meat and drink; grant me the enjoyment of thy clemency, that it may support me in my labors and in my wants. Have pity on me who live sad, poor and abandoned, and since I serve thee by sweeping thy temple, open to me the hand of thy mercy.”
What this lacks of being the Lord’s Prayer, is hardly worth mentioning.
All the other ancient nations we have mentioned, had intercourse with one another. The Greeks studied in Egypt, and had dealings with the Phœnicians. The Jews were taken captives to the east and the Hindoos spread to the west, so it is not strange that they should all have an almost identical cosmogony, but here is a people separated by an ocean, having the same belief, a knowledge of the art of building, of sculpture and of writing. Then how shall we account for all this unless we suppose that they had known contact with each other in some past age? Alfred Wallace, the great English scientist, says that none but the unscientific ever resurrect the Atlantis theory, but with the risk of being declared unscientific, I wish to present some facts of scientific value, and leave the verdict with the reader.
