Page 245 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

precession and myths of catastrophe), was summarized by Diego De
Landa in the sixteenth century:
Among the multitude of gods worshipped by these people [the Maya] were four
whom they called by the name Bacab. These were, they say, four brothers placed
by God when he created the world at its four corners to sustain the heavens lest
they fall. They also say that these Bacabs escaped when the world was destroyed
by a deluge.
8
It is the opinion of Santillana and von Dechend that the Mayan
astronomer-priests did not subscribe for a moment to the simple-minded
notion that the earth was flat with four corners. Instead, they say, the
image of the four Bacabs is used as a technical allegory intended to shed
light on the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes. The Bacabs
stand, in short, for the system of coordinates of an astrological age. They
represent the equinoctial and solstitial colures, binding together the four
constellations in which the sun continues to rise at the spring and
autumn equinoxes and at the winter and summer solstices for epochs of
just under 2200 years.
Of course it is understood that when the gears of heaven change, the
old age comes crashing down and a new age is born. All this, so far, is
routine precessional imagery. What stands out, however, is the explicit
linkage to an earthly disaster—in this case a flood—which the Bacabs
survive. It may also be relevant that relief carvings at Chichen Itza
unmistakably represent the Bacabs as being bearded and of European
appearance.
9
Be that as it may, the Bacab image (linked to a number of badly
misunderstood references to ‘the four corners of heaven’, ‘the
quadrangular earth’, and so on) is only one among many that seem to
have been designed to serve as thought tools for precession. Archetypal
among these is, of course, the ‘Mill’ of Santillana’s title—Hamlet’s Mill.
It turns out that the Shakespearean character, ‘whom the poet made
one of us, the first unhappy intellectual’, conceals a past as a legendary
being, his features predetermined, preshaped by longstanding myth. In
10
all his many incarnations, this Hamlet remains strangely himself. The
original Amlodhi (or sometimes Amleth) as his name was in Icelandic
legend, ‘shows the same characteristics of melancholy and high intellect.
He, too, is a son dedicated to avenge his father, a speaker of cryptic but
inescapable truths, an elusive carrier of Fate who must yield once his
mission is accomplished ...’
11
In the crude and vivid imagery of the Norse, Amlodhi was identified

8 Yucatan before and after the Conquest, p. 82.
9 See, for example, The God-Kings and the Titans, p. 64. It may also be relevant that
other versions of ‘the Bacabs’ myth tell us that ‘their slightest movement produces an
earth tremor or even an earthquake’ (Maya History and Religion, p. 346).
10 Hamlet’s Mill, p. 2.
11 Ibid.

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