Twilight of the Gods: The Mayan Calendar and the Return of the Extraterrestrials (19 page)

So, you can see that we're not going to get any further by simply applying the old methods and old thinking. It seems to me that the real opponents of insight can be found within the ranks of science.

Stone Age man created his godly images all over the world. The faithful followers of the established religions call these images idols if they don't fit in with their own religious preconceptions. These picturesgrotesque faces, unimaginable beings with tongues of fire, beasts, and monsters-have been created by every culture from the depths of their own imaginations. Different and yet all the same-much like the language-but where is the origin of these artistically portrayed gods?

Many centuries ago, Amr ibn Luhai, a traveler throughout Arabia, told of men who produced or worshipped graven images. He asked them what was the source of this worship. This was the answer he received: "The pictures are the lords which we have prepared in accordance with their heavenly forms and persons."14

The "father of history-writing," the Greek Herodotus (ca. 490-425 BC) himself, said much the same. In the second book of his Histories, he told about his visit to Thebes (chapters 141 and 142) and how the priests explained 341 statues to him:

They demonstrated then that all the people portrayed by these statues were mortal beings, bearing no relation to gods. They claimed, however, that before these men, gods had been kings of Egypt-that they had lived alongside human beings.... The Egyptians claim to have precise knowledge of all this, because they have always kept count of and continuously chronicled the passing years .... 11

Originally, the Earth was home to cavemen, then gods and then crossbreeds (in other words, the sons and daughters of gods), then came mankind, as we know it today, and finally the gods disappeared-but not before promising to return one day in the far future. Men fashioned pictures, statues, or-depending on the level of their developmentcave paintings of these gods, but they all had the same thought in the back of their minds: the Maya, the Egyptians, the Indians, and all the others. What they depicted were the inexplicable, grandiose-seeming, and transfigured beings from another world. But they were once real: They really were active among the Stone Age peoples.

The same applies to the temples! Originally, these "heavenly forms" served as the inspiration for the temples. Mankind has always imitated that which it admired, but also that which it didn't understand. These shrines were attractively built because the primitives hoped that the real gods would approve and come down and protect the human community from its enemies. That, of course, was often the spark that prompted the building of settlements in the surrounding areas. The priesthood did its work to ensure that faith in the gods-as well as fear of divine retribution-did not wane. The rest is history.

This claim is easy enough to prove and anyone can understand it, as long as the links to other cultures are made. Without these links, without the comparative mythology we will probably continue to flounder around in the dark. In the 25 nonfiction books I've written so far, I have provided hundreds of attestable items of evidence. Here are some examples:

Wall paintings in the Sahara (Tassili), Brazil (Ceta Cidades at Piripiri), the United States (Hopi lands), Australia (Arnhem Land at Nourlangie and the Kimberley Ranges), Canada (Vancouver Island), and many more show a particularly international consistency when it comes to representing the gods.

Dogu figures from Japan look very much the same as statues of gods from Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.

The straw suits worn by the Brazilian Kayapo tribesmen reflect their tribal memory of the their heavenly teachers, as do the kachina dolls of the Hopi people in Arizona.

All this and much more, and none of this has any weight? We can't view this as proof?

"If you examine the theories propounded by Erich von Daniken with an open and impartial mind, then you'll see that nothing in these hypotheses really contradicts the strictest rules of science or our understanding of the universe."

-Professor Luis Navia, Professor of Philosophy at the New York Institute of Technology

Those extraterrestrials-the misunderstood gods of ancient timespromised that they would return to Earth. This promised return was immortalized in the Maya mythology and in the Maya calendar. But the Mayans weren't the only ones waiting for a second coming. There is a "Judgment Day" coming.

4.1. The inscription on Monument No. 6 in Tortuguero. Author's own image.

This picture shows a Mayan inscription on Monument No. 6 in Tortuguero. It's a small place in the Mexican state of Tabasco, around 50 miles northwest of Palenque. Any Maya specialist can read the inscription. You start at the top left with the first glyph, then move right to the second, then down to the second line from left to right. The Maya experts read:

"tzuhtzajoom / u yuxlajuun bak'tun chan ajaw / ux uniiw..."

"It will be ended / the 13th bak'tun 4 ajaw / 3 uniww / it will happen (next glyph is broken off) / Bolon Yokte will descend to..." (next glyph missing).

So some god called "Solon Yokte" will come down to Earth on a certain day. If we convert this date to our calendar, it's December 23, 2012. What can we expect then on this date? And who is this "Solon Yokte"?

The very same Bolon Yokte appears on the so-called "Vase of the Seven Gods." Here he is praised repeatedly as a "holy one," a "divine being" who was involved in the creation of the world. Bolon Yokte was even involved at the very beginning of the Mayan calendar, on August 13, 3114 BC. And in Temple No. XIV in Palenque, Bolon Yokte also appears in connection with an event that unfortunately cannot be deciphered from the glyphs. Either way, this unknown event happened on the incredible date of July 29, 931,449 Bc-the date is clearly readable. In other words, it happened long before there were any Mayans around. Bolon Yokte also appears on page 60 of the Dresden Codex, one of the very few handwritten Mayan documents to survive the Spanish destruction, and yet again in the "Chilam Balam books." These were manuscripts written by priests, but not until after the Spanish conquest.

Bolon Yokte is always mentioned in connection with great power. He must have been one of these mighty, awe-inspiring unknown beings that men could not otherwise explain. Bolon Yokte is not the only one who features in tales of second comings of the so-called gods; one can also infer the return of the gods from the Mayan calendar. How does that work then?

Several of the glyphs on the Tortuguero monument feature squiggles and vertical strokes. These are Mayan numbers. They are as everpresent in the Mayan world as the winged sun disk in Egypt. To at least understand the main track-that is, the one concerned with the return of the gods-you ought to know a little bit about the downfall of the Mayan culture and also how the Mayan calendar works. (I dealt exhaustively with this subject in one of my earlier books, Der Tag, an dem die G(5tter kamen.)

rutal Conquerors

On Saturday, November 15, 1519, Spanish conquistador Her-nando Cortes (1485-1547) waited with his forces a short distance away from Tenochtitlan. Set in the middle of a glittering silver lagoon, the city towered proudly with its mysterious and arcane temples, palaces, columns, and sparkling pyramid towers. Clothed in the magnificent uniform of an admiral, Cortes strode to the front of his small company. Crossbowmen and horses rode at the flanks-colorful streamers and flags fluttering from their lances-an honor guard for the future conqueror as he drew into the broad avenida in Tenochtitlan.

The Aztec leader, Moctezuma, came down to greet the stranger, carried on a jewel-laden, gold-plated sedan by slaves who had lain out a long cotton carpet along the route. Cortes swung down from his steed, never taking his eyes off the Aztec leader for a second. C.W. Ceram wrote about this meeting in his world famous book on archeology, Gods, Graves and Scholars:

For the first time during the great history of discovery, it so happened that someone from the Christian occident no longer needed to reconstruct a rich, foreign culture from the rubble of its remains, but rather was able to encounter it in the flesh. Cortes stood before Moctezuma-it was as if Brugsch-Bey suddenly bumped into Ramses, or Koldewey met Nebuchadnezzar during a stroll through the hanging gardens of Babylon, and they had been able, like Cortes and Moctezuma, to speak freely with each other)

Moctezuma was, at that time, lord over 200,000 warriors. Despite the Spanish cannons, they could have destroyed the interlopers with ease. Why didn't Moctezuma choose to fight? Why did he rather choose the route of subservience?

The answer lies perhaps in the Aztec religion-the same one, by the way, practiced by the Maya. The difference between the Aztecs and Maya is predominantly a geographical one: The Aztecs lived in the highlands; the Maya in the lowlands. And just as the Jews await the return of the Messiah, the Moslems for their Mahdi, and the Inca their god Viracocha, the son of the sun, like the South Sea islanders yearned for the return of their god of reward, or the Egyptians for the return of Osiris (from the constellation of Orion), so too waited the Aztecs and Maya for the return of their bringer of salvation, the "Quetzal Serpent."