Grid of the Gods Read Online Free PDF Page B

from chapter three now looks like this:

     
    So now, we may add to what we stated about this topological metaphor of the medium in chapter three, for now we encounter yet more imagery — sky, sea, and the implied surface between the two — all saying the same thing: that we are dealing with a differentiated Nothing, whose first differentiation must always be triadic or trinitarian in nature:
1) the “bracketed” region of Nothing, or, Hermes’ “Kosmos”, the Padama Purana’s Shiva, and now, the Popol Vuh’s “sky”;
     
2) the rest of the Nothing, or, Hermes’ “God,” the Padama Purana’s Vishnu, and now, the Popol Vuh’s “sea”; and,
     
3) the “surface” Nothing that the two regions share, or, Hermes’ “Space,” the Padama Purana’s Brahma, and now, the Popol Vuh’s implied common surface between “sea” and “sky”.
     
    However, the Popol Vuh goes on to make an even more interesting and suggestive set of statements that would seem to associate the creation of mankind itself with this process of emerging differentiation from some sort of materia prima or “primordial nothing.”
    2. The Engineering of Man
     
    Very quickly after this account of the initial “trifurcation” of creation, the Popol Vuh moves to the creation of mankind himself, after the creation of land and animals, 9 and it does so once again, in equally evocative, elegant, and powerful poetic imagery:
Again there comes an experiment with the human work, the human design, by the Maker, Modeler, Bearer, Begetter:
    “It must simply be tried again. The time for the planting and dawning is nearing. For this we must made a provider and nurturer. How else can we be invoked and remembered on the face of the earth? We have already made our first try at our work and design, but it turned out that they didn’t keep our days, nor did they glorify us.
     
    “So now let’s try to make a giver of praise, giver of respect, provider, nurturer,” they said.
     
    “So then comes the building and working with earth and mud. They made a body, but it didn’t look good to them. It was just separating, just crumbling, just loosening, just softening, just disintegrating, and just dissolving. Its head wouldn’t turn, either. Its face was just lopsided, its face was just twisted. It couldn’t lookaround. It talked at first, but senselessly. It was quickly dissolving in the water.
     
    “It won’t last,” the mason and sculptor said then. “It seems to be dwindling away, so let it just dwindle. It can’t walk and it can’t multiply, so let it be merely a thought,” they said.
     
    So then they dismantled, again they brought down their work and design. 10
     
    Note that the rough order of creation in the Mayan mythology is that of the biblical Genesis: land forms, then animals of various types, and then finally this first “protohuman.”
    But what is very different about the Mayan version is the clear indication that mankind is the result of an experiment , one that was for the express purpose of creating intelligent servants to “the gods.” In other words, the Mayans are reproducing, centuries later, and half a world and an ocean away, and what was first suggested in the texts of Mesopotamia: mankind was an engineered creation, created for the express purpose of servitude to the gods. He was property. 11 Life, on this view, was less a gift , than a debt to be paid in endless service.
    The Popol Vuh gives a further hint of this concept of mankind as an experiment, and with it, the Flood is introduced:
    This was the peopling of the face of the earth:
They came into being, they multiplied, they had daughters, they had sons, these manikins, woodcarvings. But there was nothing in their hearts and nothing in their minds, no memory of their mason and builder. They just went and walked wherever they wanted. Now they did not remember the Heart of Sky.
And so they fell, just an experiment and just a cutout for humankind. They were