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omers, architects, and mathematicians, ever published from manuscripts written by me, is the protraction of a gnomon which I discovered in the ruined city of Mayapan, situated on the lands of the hacienda X-Canchakan, distant thirty miles from Merida, the capital of Yucatan. This protraction forms part of one of my reports to the "American Antiquarian Society," of Worcester, Mass. (See illustration, p. 212.)

It is not the result of intricate calculations wherein errors may creep. It is a simple drawing constructed from measurements made by me in situ. These must, by force, have been very accurate, or the various parts of the drawing would not fit exactly in their proper places. Such protraction should therefore settle all doubts regarding the true standard of lineal measures used by the Mayas, in very remote times, and even after the destruction of the Land of Mu by earthquakes and submergence.

This report was published in the proceedings of said society under the title of "Mayapan and Maya Inscriptions." It contains various typographical errors. The proof-sheets were not submitted to me before being sent to press (I was then in the forests of Yucatan). Therefore I could not correct them. There is, however, one mistake which is due to a lapsus calami on my part. How did it occur? It was one of those inexplicable oversights that frequently take place in making computations; perhaps a temporary systematic anæsthesia produced by the concentration of the mind on a single point when passing over a number of figures in calculation. At any rate, there is no mistake in the drawing, which is perfect, and in accordance with the measurements made of the gnomon itself.

The diameter of the columns is 0.45 metre. The distance between their centres is 1.90 metres. In my manuscript, it

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seems, I wrote 1.70 metres, or I made the 9 and 7 so as to mislead the printer; and therein consists the grave error that has given ground for Dr. Brinton's criticism of all my measurements. Had he not been looking for an excuse to impugn the conscientious work of an original explorer, thereby seeking his own aggrandizement, he could have seen that the error was merely typographical; and that my statement "that the Mayas, like the Chaldees, did certainly use the metre as a standard of lineal measures," was not eccentricity, but positive knowledge.

NOTE XIII. (Page 111.)

(1) It may be asked, How is it that the Mayas came to adopt the one ten-millionth part of the quadrant of the great circle that passes through the poles of the earth, as standard of lineal measures?

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To him who is acquainted with the "Sacred Mysteries the ancient Maya adepts, the motive is indeed very evident. Like the ancient Egyptians, the Mayas of old were, as their descendants are to-day, an eminently religious people. With them, as, in fact, with every civilized nation, their cosmogonic notions formed the base of their religious conceptions, and both were embodied in their sacred edifices, particularly in their pyramids, symbols of God in the universe.

They conceived this universe to be an infinite boundless darkness, in which dwelt the unknowable, the inscrutable WILL, Uol. Having come to the knowledge that, by first concentrating their thoughts, and then sending them forth in every direction to the utmost limits of space, these formed, as it were, radii of equal length, that terminated at the vault of a sphere whose limitation was a great circle; having, besides, discovered that the circle is, in nature, the ultimatum in extension, they figured that WILL, that ETERNAL ONE BEING, as a circle, O, which they also called Uol, whose centre was everywhere and circumference nowhere. They imagined this WILL as being both male and female-Androgynus-two in one and one in two. In it life pulsated uncon

scious. At the awakening of consciousness, when the Infinite Sexless ceased to be sexless, the male principle, remaining still distinct, fructified the immaculate virgin womb of nature, that cosmic egg that we see pictured in the tableau of creation at Chichen.1

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and called

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This new manifestation of the Boundless figured as a circle with its vertical diameter, it Lahun, the "all-pervading one," from who is everywhere," and hun, "one." It became the Decade, image of the universe evolving from the boundless darkness, the number 10, the most mystic among the initiates of all nations, formed of the triad and the septenary; the most binding oath of the Pythagoreans. From this vertical diameter, symbol of the male principle impregnating the virgin womb of nature, originated the idea of the Phallus as emblem of the Creator, whose worship under this image we find among all civilized nations of antiquity from the remotest ages.

The circle divided into four parts, by its vertical and horizontal diameters crossing each other, formed the tetraktis,2 "the sacred four," the "builders," that is, the Canob of the Mayas, or the Tian-chihans of the initiates among them, the "heavenly giants," the same called by the Hindoo occultists Dhyan-Chohans. The universe, now under the regency of these Four powerful intelligences, they figured as a circle with its vertical and horizontal diameters crossing thus forming the mundane cross, and to intrusted the building of the physical world and the guardianship of the cardinal points. To distinguish 1Ubi supra, Plate XXIII.

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This sacred square, that Pythagoras taught his followers was Four and their oath, was a sacred number with the initiates in India, Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, and other countries, as well as with the Naacals of Mayach.

them, the genii of the north and of the south—that is, the keepers of the male principle of nature, of the active and fecundating forces were figured by the same circle with its crossed diameters, to which wings were added. This we learn from the inscriptions that adorn the façade of the sanctuary at Uxmal (Plate LXXI.) and from the Troano and other Maya MSS.

These genii of the cardinal points, these four creators, are known to the Hindoo occultists as the "Four Maharajahs," or "great kings" of the Dhyan Chohans.1 In Ocosingo, Guate

WINGED CIRCLE FROM OCOSINGO.

mala, as also in Egypt, we see them portrayed as circles with

WINGED CIRCLE FROM EGYPT.

wings; in Assyria, as ferouhers. They became the amshaspands of the Mazdeans; the Elohim and the seraphs of the Hebrews; the archangels of the Christians and Mohammedans; the kabiri and Titans of Hesiod's theogony; the four gods whose golden.

'H. P. Blavatsky, The Sacred Doctrine.

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