Page 114 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

and ‘spears or arrows and incense bags’ in the left hands. It didn’t seem
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to matter that the objects did not in any way resemble atl-atls, spears,
arrows, or incense bags.
Santha Faiia’s photographs will help the reader to form his or her own
impression of these peculiar objects. As I studied the objects themselves I
had the distinct sense that they were meant to represent devices which
had originally been made out of metal. The right-hand device, which
seemed to emerge from a sheath or hand-guard, was lozenge-shaped
with a curved lower edge. The left-hand device could have been an
instrument or weapon of some kind.
I remembered legends which related that the gods of ancient Mexico
had armed themselves with xiuhcoatl, ‘fire serpents’. These apparently
19
emitted burning rays capable of piercing and dismembering human
bodies. Was it ‘fire serpents’ that the Tula idols were holding? What, for
20
that matter, were fire serpents?
Whatever they were, both devices looked like pieces of technology. And
both in certain ways resembled the equally mysterious objects in the
hands of the idols in the Kalasasaya at Tiahuanaco.

Serpent Sanctuary

Santha and I had come to Tula/Tollan because it had been closely
associated both with Quetzalcoatl and with his arch-enemy Tezcatilpoca,
the Smoking Mirror. Ever-young, omnipotent, omnipresent and
21
omniscient, Tezcatilpoca was associated in the legends with night,
darkness and the sacred jaguar. He was ‘invisible and implacable,
22
appearing to men sometimes as a flying shadow, sometimes as a
dreadful monster’. Often depicted as a glaring skull, he was said to have
23
been the owner of a mysterious object, the Smoking Mirror after which he
was named, which he made use of to observe from afar the activities of
men and gods. Scholars quite reasonably suppose that it must have been
a primitive obsidian scrying stone: ‘Obsidian had an especial sanctity for
the Mexicans, as it provided the sacrificial knives employed by the priests
... Bernal Diaz [Spanish chronicler] states that they called this stone
“Tezcat”. From it mirrors were also manufactured as divinatory media to
be used by wizards.’
24
Representing the forces of darkness and rapacious evil, Tezcatilpoca
was said in the legends to have been locked in a conflict with

18 Mexico, pp. 194-5.
19 The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, pp. 185, 188-9.
20 Ibid.
21 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 437.
The Feathered Serpent and the Cross, pp. 52-3.
22
23 New Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, p. 436.
24 The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico, p. 51.

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