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We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.
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(An excerpt from "Shadows and Echoes" a collection of interpreted Mayan legends)
The creation story of the Popol Vuh
This is the beginning, yet time had not been given meaning.
All was still and cloaked in the darkness of an eternal night. There were no stars to pierce the sky, no land to anchor life, only an immense, silent sea that lay beyond the edges of vision. Beneath these waters, the great spirits, led by Hurakan, pondered their solitude. In the vastness where light dared not reach, they gathered, the council of ancients, with the Sovereign Plumed Serpent by their side. As they spoke, their voices stirred the abyss, for it troubled them greatly to wield such power yet remain uncelebrated. Their divine essence, they resolved, must be acknowledged through the voices of new beings, capable of wonder and worship.
With a mere whisper, they commanded the waters to part. Mountains thrust upwards, leaving the water far below, and fertile lands spread in every direction. The earth bloomed to life, sprouting towering trees and delicate flowers. Soon, the beasts wandered amidst this bounty—the jaguar’s stealthy tread, the quetzal’s vibrant flash—all magnificent, yet silent to the spirits' yearning for praise. These creatures, bound to the earth and their animal instincts, wandered away from the great spirits, their calls mere echoes to one another in the vast solitude.
Driven by a desire for true communion, the ancients then turned to the shore's damp clay. They sculpted forms, rough and earnest in their creation, yet as these clay figures stumbled across the land, they faltered, crumbling under the weight of their imperfections, dissolving back into the water from which they sprang.
Undeterred, the ancients crafted again, this time from wood. These creations could move and multiply as the spirits intended, yet their essence remained hollow, devoid of the spark of true life and incapable of worship. Frustrated, the ancients unleashed a great flood upon the land, washing away many of the wooden men. Some clung to boughs and became the ancestors of monkeys, taking refuge high in the trees, chattering throughout eternity.
In the valley nestled between lush mountains, the great spirits roamed, observing all they had created. It was here they discovered maize. Tall, abundant stalks flourished spontaneously, marking it as the most special plant in all the lands. They prepared many meals from it and found that, when ground, the maize yielded a fine dough. Using this new material, the ancients crafted four men and four women from maize.
These first humans pleased the great spirits, with voices rising to exalt and praise them.
Therefore, the ancients charged these first humans to sustain their sacred communion, for without their constant reverence, the delicate harmony of creation might collapse into chaos.
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Music
Im garten der ruhe (Piano Session Version) - Popol Vuh
This Must Be the Place (Naive Medley) – The Talking Heads
Interesting how this identification of human flesh with maize would live on into Aztec belief - so often the sacrificial figures were made of corn dough as a substitute for flesh-and-blood human sacrifices. Sometimes they would be mixed.
Fascinating, such a cool creation story