Page 112 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

masonry and architecture. He was the father of mathematics, metallurgy,
and astronomy and was said to have ‘measured the earth’. He also
founded productive agriculture, and was reported to have discovered and
introduced corn—literally the staff of life in these ancient lands. A great
doctor and master of medicines, he was the patron of healers and
diviners ‘and disclosed to the people the mysteries of the properties of
plants’. In addition, he was revered as a lawgiver, as a protector of
craftsmen, and as a patron of all the arts.
As might be expected of such a refined and cultured individual he
forbade the grisly practice of human sacrifice during the period of his
ascendancy in Mexico. After his departure the blood-spattered rituals
were reintroduced with a vengeance. Nevertheless, even the Aztecs, the
most vehement sacrificers ever to have existed in the long history of
Central America, remembered ‘the time of Quetzalcoatl’ with a kind of
nostalgia. ‘He was a teacher,’ recalled one legend, ‘who taught that no
living thing was to be harmed and that sacrifices were to be made not of
human beings but of birds and butterflies.
17

Cosmic struggle

Why did Quetzalcoatl go away? What went wrong?
Mexican legends provided answers to these questions. They said that
the enlightened and benevolent rule of the Plumed Serpent had been
brought to an end by Tezcatilpoca, a malevolent god whose name meant
‘Smoking Mirror’ and whose cult demanded human sacrifice. It seemed
that a near-cosmic struggle between the forces of light and darkness had
taken place in Ancient Mexico, and that the forces of darkness had
triumphed ...
The supposed stage for these events, now known as Tula, was not
believed to be particularly old—not much more than 1000 years anyway—
but the legends surrounding it linked it to an infinitely more distant
epoch. In those times, outside history, it had been known as Tollan. All
the traditions agreed that it had been at Tollan that Tezcatilpoca had
vanquished Quetzalcoatl and forced him to quit Mexico.

17 The God-Kings and the Titans, p. 57.

110