Chronos Apollonios' "Home on Olympus"

Drawing from the Codex Duran

There are of course other possible scenarios. One of the troubles may be that any of them may only make so much sense, but they make far more sense than the verbatim "history" we are left to contend with here.

The myths of Aztec savagery are one of the few means of countering the mass drive for Europeans to flock to the new world in seach of the gold that is necessary to announce in order to gain the cooperation of the necessary personnel to make these sea travels feasible. By secret agreement between explorers such as Cortez and the indigenous peoples, such stories are fed back to the Old World to help serve as a screening mechanism for the numbers and characters of persons arriving. With every claim of moral terpitude that is issued, there is more of an attraction to persons of missionary disposition, bringing forth many persons of gentle and learned character. Indeed, the indigenous peoples seemed enthusiastic about exchanges of information with the arriving Jesuit missionaries, relatively gentle and sincere people with whom the natives might have often shared information that could not be tortured out of them by abusive hypocrites.

Medical information is sent back to the Old World in such a coded guise, to help discourage the temptation for multitudes to colonize "New Spain" in hopes of acquiring gold of a medicinal kind, the mass plundering of Mesoamerica's botanical treasures. Indeed, many documents to issue out of the New World have certain curious features that lend the impression that they are written by and for persons of a certain degree of intellectual initiation; again there are traces of the curious language of alchemists. Likewise, the New World did indeed attract practitioners of the Doctrine of Signatures, whereby for example, it was decided, if somewhat quizically or erroneously, that the floral features of Passionflowers (Passiflora species) depicted through the Doctrine of Signatures the crucifixion and stigmatization of Christ.

Unfortunately, in the end, greed outweighs the intimidating potential of the elaborate rumors of Aztec barbarism, those rumors seeking to offset any information which suggests the indigenous Amerindians are denseless, or easily preyed upon. Eventually, the New World is colonized all too soon. 

This too represents another plausible version... one which better accounts for why the "superior" Spaniards did not at once experience sheer, utter and final defeat at the hands of the native peoples, who could have, for example, made powerful chemical warfare of many indigenous plants, including the notorious narcotic latex which is alledged to have been used to stupify "ritual" victims.

Other cultures also display instances of comical barbarism, often seeming to be taken by modern scholars as, once again, some kind of incontrovertible proof. Egyptian artifacts, for example, depict a certain queen some twenty feet tall and weighing apparently several tons, performing the equally hilarious act of hoisting ten Nubian "slaves" by the neck with a single rope. Such idiosyncratic vignettes are anything but isolated occurrences.

The point is, there are far too many things wrong with the portrait that has been painted for us. While much of the rationale for many of these acts has been alleged to be because of religious beliefs and superstitions, the Aztec can easily be demonstated to have reasonable and even incredible understanding of the true workings of the physical world. It simply does not all fit together sensibly, and yet it has been parroted time and time again to us by schoolteachers.

It as is scholars suffer the same perverse naievety which infects and afflicts Christianity, for there seems to be no set of thoughts to understand why a confession could be anything other than truth… even while there is a hoarde of entertainers who will stop at confessing to nothing in the ever-mounting competition to gain publicity… or children, or criminal minds as well, who will confess to acts they did not commit, simply to gain attention. There are in fact probably endless reasons why someone might produce a false confession, and one of them, lying to protect someone we love, is among those that anyone should be capable of fathoming.

Whether well meaning counter intelligence, or the true "Eurocentric lies" that Russell Means suspects, these oversights in interpretation should not have been made.

If we cannot reliably have people of the necessary sophistication to fathom these possibilities representing both modern religions and academic disciplines alike, we are in serious trouble as a people. Worse, we are thereby increasing risking susceptibility to true predatory elements who rely on our collective gullibility for their own gain, often resulting in our own destruction.

Still, this is by no means the end of arguments that can be made in this area, which, rather than relying on scholarly points which are less available to the general public, can be built on both common sense and common experience.

Any competent mythographer or folklorist should be keenly and acutely aware that the number of times a story is told, or the number of persons telling it, has nothing inherently to do with its plausibility or its factuality. Quite the contrary, it is often the rule that the more a story is told, the more implausible it becomes, leading all the way up to some of our readily identifiable urban legends.

We would be expected to believe as well in Santa Claus, both because the story is told by a formidable number of sources, and because the details are exceedingly well developed. The unearthing of reindeer horns might further lend "irrefutable" credence. This of course, does nothing to inherently establish that such a character exists, any more than these same arguments do anything to inherently establish the occurrence of Aztec, or any other ritual sacrifice.

Aztec "cannibalism" from the Florentine Codex. Although the illustrator of the sacrifice scene from this work seems to possess medical knowledge, he may never have seen either one of these events in his life, and yet they often contain the same curious nuances as versions supposedly hundreds of years older.

The close of a caption for this set of scenes in a National Geographic article on the Aztec reads, "Experts debate Aztec cannibalism: One scholar says it never occured, others that it was a major source of protien..."!

Someone close to me seems to have identified an underlying medical theme that is possible for this scene also, very similar to that possible for hte sacrifice scene, concerning circulation, it's role in the heart problems addressed by the sacrifice scene, and finally gangrene and amputation, written in the very same richly symbolic and even humorous style that seems to be characteristic of all Amerindian lore.

Even more so, putting the shoe on the other foot, the scenario of cultures a thousand years in the future who archaeologically discover our remains, and lacking the necessary contextual qualifiers, make horrendous mistakes in interpretation is both a familiar and eloquent one. Modern persons in all persuasions, including fiction writers, have had much to say about the disasterous consequences of cultural interpretation when the chain of continuity has been broken. Indeed, such themes as archaeologists of a thousand years from now assuming that we literally worshipped such figures as Ronald MacDonald or Barbie, sports athletes or motor vehicles, in some hopelessly irrational way are not uncommon. Even the erroneous supposition by future generations that Christian communion itself once intentionally constituted ritual cannibalism and sympathetic magic is not implausible nor impossible.

An account of "human sacrifice" amongst the Inca, replete with "real, eyewitness" renderings of the demons responsible. Surely no scholar will attempt to attest to the reality of the demonic inspiration, even though there is a "firmly established historical record" of such underlying motivations.

Such vignettes cannot and should not be given partial, and certainly not full, credence by scholars.

If such scenes are anything aside from sheer propoganda, or have any redeeming virtues whatsoever, it may be because of the chance thay they are written in the same travestic style used by Amerindians to convey great messages, and would therefore be magickal, medical or scientific teachings in their own right of equal value to the Codices.

The two "demons" are sphinxes and can also be found in the Tarot, in the Major Arcana on the "Chariot" card, shown at right, whose correspondent sign of Cancer in Astrological Medicine, rules, not coincidentally, the heart.

Whether we are seeing examples of mystical secrets smuggled out with the highest hypocrisy by opportunistic conquistadors, or the sympathetic influences of initiated clergy from religious orders with mystical histories, diguised as pious propoganda, there is little getting around that there is something very wrong with the history that has been fed to us.

On a slightly more scholarly level, archaeological remains are used as evidence of these alleged ritual practices, and again, these are anything but conclusive. The remains of a skull with a spear driven through it, in conjunction with the other "evidence", seems to be automatically accepted as evidence of barbarism, and connected to ritual. Still, of all of the known funerary customs and the underlying rationale, one of the least unlikely is the practice of mutilation of the body, following demise, to prevent the return or perpetual habitation of the body by the soul or spirit.

Indeed, this rationalization seems the clearest underlying reason for the Canopic funerary mutilations of mummified Egyptian corpses, whose internal organs were removed and preserved separately. There is no shortage of cultural parallels between ancient Egyptians and ancient Mesoamericans, in spite of the prevailing attitude that even such an uncanny and unlikely coincidence as the Pyramids of both cultures are somehow a pair of completely isolated and independent developments.

Quite the contrary, the African features of the Mesoamerican Olmec people are quite well known, and outside of the narrow world of dogmatic interpretation, there are those who take this quite seriously. At the same time, while there are those who now assert that the Olmecs somehow constitute the earliest habitation of Middle America, there have been those who made the same assertion of the Nazca civilization. The artifacts recovered from Nazca sites are uncanny, revealing a stunning mix of cultural influences. Artifacts that are unmistakable Oriental in influence are found, as are artifacts with such obvious influences as Egyptian with some hint of other Middle Eastern stylization. Regardless of particular assessment of migrations and influences, the cultural parallels are hardly coincidence, and may indeed be far more reputable evidence in the matter than "confessions" of indigenous Amerindians made under one or another form of obvious duress.

There is of course more; even in this single incidence of alleged evidence of violence, it is questionable whether the alternatives have been adequately investigated through forensic archaeology. It is just as it is questionable whether forensic archaeology at present even possess the tools to distinguish a death from a weapon with a disfigurement of a corpse for religious or metaphysical purposes that occurred shortly after death from another cause.

Likewise, the necessity of self-defense from a single individual, possibly even one moved to violence by serious illness, with a weapon normally intended for self-defense from aggressive animals, seems to have been hardly ruled out.

Such is also the case with ritual burials in greater numbers.

It has not been ruled out, and in fact, no appreciable efforts may even have been made, to determine whether many sacred burials of so-called "ritual sacrifices" occurring at temples have been from other causes. Normally these remains prove far less numerous than the number of bodies that would result from hundreds and thousands of years of routine ritual sacrifice.

Another "sacrifice" from the Florentine Codex. Like other scenes, these are preposterous, showing the heart the coming out of the stomach. Any populace knowing anything of these alleged "rituals" would certainly know better and would likely treat these works which horrendously lack attention and accurate detail as disrespectful, even sacriligeous, were it not likely that such travesty were amusing and attractive teachings to sagacious Aztec children, who we no doubt no less of such a quality than our own.

Such a method as this might explain the absence of the necessary surgical tool, a rib spreader, amongst countless archaelogical finds of artifacts. Such an instrument is required to remove the heart through the chest, which Hales and Robicsek point out in the chapter "Maya Heart Sacrifice", in the book, "Human Ritual Sacrifice in Mesoamerica" (pgs. 49-90).

However, it is Hales and Robicsek themselves who give ample reasons why the method depicted here, the transdiaphrammatic approach (pgs. 84-85), would not have been used.

Ironically, Hales and Robicsek proceed lastly to examination of the "fish in hand" glyph of the Maya, which is in all likelihood a reference to ectoplasm and other aspects of the science of mysticism, one used by many cultures and surviving amongst the Ojibwe until this very century.

What comes to mind is that we may be seeing a number of figuratisms that involve complicated medical treatments using "magickal" tools, of whose number actual depictions of "sacrifices" are relatively rare.

The collective context easily suggest certain concerns about the vulnerability of the heart to certain electromagnetic feilds, which is a common theme in certain works of the ancient Egyptians, where symbols of electricity and magnetism convey concerns about a figurative character, "the thief of hearts".

Any real reason this particular scene has merit most likely yet waits to be re-identified; what appear to be broken flutes may well be used symbolically, perhaps because they are a wind instrument which requires good breathing to play, breathing that may be impaired when the heart in is appreciably poor health.

The flutes may symbolize the aorta of the heart, and symbolize through the Doctrine of Signatures which the Aztec used, that flute-like or tube-like plants, such as certain hollow reeds, may have been part of their repetiore of heart medicines.

Also rarely if ever considered seems the possibility of categorical burials, which could narrow down the forensics necessary.

Examples of categorical burials would include anything from the counterpart of the modern practice of having burial grounds near churches or in church lots thus the small gesture of burial at the temples themselves, to the commorative service of burial of persons specifically at temples whose teachings or themes could have prevented the deaths in question. A modern counterpart might be the parents of a victim of drunken driving who wish their child to be buried in a conspicuous public place, hoping that it will serve as an effective if ghastly reminder to prevent other senseless deaths. The inclusion of a choice of a particular place where a memorial might be most effective or appropriate in this example might be if the victim of drunken driving were buried or memorialized in front of Alcoholics Anonymous.

(This is no different whatsoever that the commemoration of traffic fatalities along Montana highways by the placement of a cross for each person who had been killed. Ironically, driving through Montana and seeing this multitude of stark white crosses for the first time, I mistook them for the work of cultists! Upon learning of their true meaning, I truly was inspired to obey the speed limits flawlessly indeed.)

Likewise, we are no strangers to the desire that motivates those affected to take to the lecture circuit in hopes that their own personal stories and experiences will assist and spare the lives of others. These motivations are all too human, all too common, all too universal, and all too easily understood to ignore when considering the possible explanations for what archaeologists find. Once again, these gestures too could be all too easily understood by future archaeologists and historians who are lacking the necessary full set of contextual qualifiers or the requisite open-mindedness to achieve genuine insight into their purpose.

While perhaps we must consider whether historians have any right to feel forced to deliberately misinterpret history as unnecessarily barbaric in order to compete with the excitement of the blood and gore that prove so effective as a movie attraction, it would be so difficult to justify this. There is such a real and obvious threat that such an approach would quickly become a permanent trap, a lie that takes more and more lies to cover. Further, should be obvious that part of this danger lies in the fact that vicarious blood-thirst is difficult to satisfy, and that it has all too often been transformed into real and deadly violence by those less self-disciplined and sophisticated.

Indeed, the other end of the spectrum, the description of an idyllic paradise, is itself so compelling that it constantly serves as an attraction to moviegoers, churchgoers, and many people who seek spiritual peace and an escape from the images and rumors of bloodshed. It is astonishing that it too could not be considered as an attraction of attention to the field and the efforts of historians. Likewise, the allure of treasures such as rediscovering priceless medical breakthroughs, and the potential to finally give credit where credit is due for them, make real and enduring attractions.

What we are left with for explaining this collective error on the part of historians regrettably seems indistinguishable from the worst kinds of senseless propaganda, bigotry and prejudice, of snobbery, elitism, placation of financiers, and the projection of underlying discontent with the idiosyncrasies of modern society onto peoples past.

Can we honestly distinguish, or do so fairly, between the bodies that are found in the sacred Cenote well, and the bodies of voluntary suicides?

American Soldiers during the Korean War were forbidden to swim in certain rivers; the oldest of families of a single household would commemorate the arrival of a new birth in the family household, because of scarce and limited resources, voluntarily sat on the bank of the river waiting to die, to eventually expire and fall into the river and be carried out to sea, rather than pose a burden or compete with a newborn child for food and resources.

Voluntary suicides due to painful or communicable incurable diseases should not elude us as possibilities. They are no strangers to us in times of seemingly limitless attention paid to the topic of physician-assisted suicides.

Simply add a practice such as corpse mutilation, whereby damaging the physical form would prevent the spirit from returning to, and being trapped in it, and all violence that is evident in human remains from the Aztec may already be accounted for.

Lastly, perhaps we should consider what should lie at the fundaments of the motivations of historical research, and the responsibilities that should perhaps accompany them. Amid the colorful cloud of phrases like "cultural enrichment" stand these islands of questionable but rarely questioned prejudice… and perhaps the question is, whether such a view of history, factual or not, is in fact culturally enriching in any way whatsoever.

Perhaps the only "cultural enrichment" we should expect from labeling ancient Aztecs as perpetrators of ritual sacrifice, is that the less fortunate of modern Middle American peoples may experience their connection to continuity of culture, ethnic identity, and the past, comes in the form of replacing the obsidian "ritual" daggers with switchblade knives, and placing a far lower premium on non-violence and the sanctity of human life. Contrarily, they have been told incessantly that this is where that have come from, what they have been for thousands of years, and that this is somehow characteristic of the very pinnacle of their culture. There is only so much that can be expected of any human being in resisting the influence of being bombarded with stereotypes.

While historians exist in the neo-paternal position of "uplifting" and "enriching" the descendants of these cultures, if the same approach were taken to "uplifting" and "enriching" children and their self-image, these practices might be immediately identified as counterproductive, inappropriate, and unacceptable. The ethics of relentlessly indoctrinating any persons or persons with such a horrendously negative stereotype from every angle, however "accurate" or inaccurate, should perhaps be considered.

Still, it is one thing to simply wish that there were alternative positive possibilities to put forth is one thing; wishing does not however intrinsically have the power to create not only these opportunities, let alone in addition the premises and evidence on which they may be firmly based.

That is another thing entirely.

We may have missed a tremendously valuable lifesaving science, and have little to say to the genuine victims of the heart diseases so ironically characteristic of our own "civilization".

We have many more stones to turn before we begin throwing stones.

We are presumed innocent until proven guilty. That is the very least fundamental expection placed on the methods of the human beings who comprise our criminal justice system.

The consequences of the failure to uphold this basic principle ourselves will be reaped by all of us.

Additional Material:

A Powerful Essay Disputing Aztec Sacrifice

Additional Material at this Site:

Star Way (Compelling evidence of advanced Aztec science)
Snake Mother Medicine pt. III (forthcoming)(Unravelling and disputing the accounts of Aztec flayed sacrifices)

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