[Aztlan] EK and CHAY glyphs related?

[Gary Daniels]

Karen,

Is the Milky Way crocodile the same as the Aztec Cipactli? If so, would
everything you said below also apply to Cipactli? (Also, are either of these
related to the Cosmic Caiman from the Mayan Flood Myth?)

I guess I should reveal how my whole line of questioning started. I'm
studying a petroglyph and on it I found what appears to be the Cipactli
glyph. Yet the glyph is drawn upside down.

Because the petroglyph is a huge boulder, I assumed it was drawn upside down
simply because the artist would have had to walk around the boulder thus
changing his own orientation which led, perhaps unintentionally, to Cipactli
being upside down when compared to the other symbols.

Then in a book I saw a group of Mayan Venus glyphs which included a symbol
which looked amazingly like Cipactli...a crocodile missing its lower jaw. At
this point I realized that Cipactli had an association with stars.

So I began studying Mayan star glyphs. This is when I found EK' on page 73
of the workbook. Coincidentally on the same page I noticed CH'AY?? and saw
that it appeared to be an upside down EK' with "dots" (as I called them
then.) I noticed that the meaning of this glyph had something to do with
destruction which made me think of the English word "disaster" which also
has a stellar association and means destruction. I reasoned: since
'dis-aster' literally means the opposite of star or maybe "bad star" and
means "destruction" perhaps when you turn a Mayan star symbol upside down
(as in the case of CH'AY??) it also gives it a negative meaning thus it's
association with destruction.

So I reasoned, if Cipactli is also a star symbol and an upside down star
symbol (CH'AY??) is associated with destruction then perhaps carving
Cipactli upside down was intentional and not accidental. Perhaps it also
suggested destruction.

But, of course, I've now learned that STAR-with-WATER DROPS (previously
known as CH'AY??) isn't an inverted star glyph...it's just a truncated form
of a larger glyph (LAMAT). So no inversion occurred thus my whole line of
reasoning was incorrect.

But now I've learned that LAMAT has an association with disaster... and
floods in particular. And LAMAT is associated with the Milky Way crocodile
which seems to be identical to Cipactli....thus bringing me back to the idea
that Cipactli on my petroglyph is associated with destruction...especially
by flooding. Which coincidentally strengthens my argument that this
petroglyph represents the Mayan Flood Myth.

Just as one door closed, another one opened leading to the same conclusion.
Wow.
 

-gary




On 1/24/10 1:03 PM, "Karen Bassie" <rick.bassie at nucleus.com> wrote:

> I am not an epigrapher but I would like to say something about the
> iconography associated with the eighth day name which was called Lamat
> in Postclassic Yucatec, but Kanil in some of the highland calendars. If
> you look at the illustrations in Thompson's Hieroglyphic Writing for the
> Lamat sign (T510) (fig. 7:59-61) and for the patron for the month Yax
> which is also T510 (fig. 22:50-59), it is obvious that most of the full
> figure forms are the Milky Way crocodile (aka the Cosmic Monster). The
> "star" sign is found in the eye of the beast.
> If you download Dave Stuart's paper at
> http://www.mesoweb.com/stuart/notes/Throne.pdf, you will see an example
> of the crocodile's eye and lid on a Palenque throne. There is a lovely
> picture of a crocodile's eye at
> http://rodgab.groups.vox.com/library/photo/6a00c2251d8df0604a00d4144279cc6a47.
> html 
> that shows that the "fringed" lid of the Lamat sign (Thompson fig. 7:61)
> actually looks a lot like the upper edge of the crocodile's eyelid. This
> fringed lid also has a form similar to the edge of the stylized
> waterlily sign (T501). The mouth of the Milky Way crocodile is the black
> rift of the Milky Way as illustrated in Maya Cosmos. So if you compare
> the Milky Way crocodile to the Milky Way, the bright star Deneb marks
> where the eye of the monster would be. Even on a bright night when the
> Milky Way is not readily visible, you can still find the rift by zeroing
> in on this prominent star.
> The Maya associate the black rift section of the Milky Way with the
> rains, and this section of the Milky Way dominates the night sky at the
> beginning of the rainy season. Classic Period imagery frequently shows
> water pouring from the mouth of the Milky Way crocodile. In the flood
> scene on Dresden Codex page 74, the water that destroys the world is
> pouring from the mouth of the Milky Way crocodile (as well as the water
> jug of the creator grandmother Chak Chel). So the Milky Way crocodile
> can bring both beneficial rain for growing crops and destructive rain
> that floods everything. In the Maya area, the big destruction is the
> wind and flooding from tropical storms. During the next dry season, the
> damaged and flattened vegetation dries out and can turn into a raging
> wild fire by a single thunderbolt. It is a double whammy of destruction.
> The use of the star sign in the haykab' sign may be based on a
> completely different value for the sign, but certainly the star eye of
> the Milky Way crocodile had a destructive association.
> 
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