If Brasseur de Bourbourg and the Chevalier des
Mousseaux, had so much at heart to trace the identity of the Mexicans with the
Canaanites, they might have found far better and weightier proofs than by
showing both the "accursed" descendants of Ham. For instance, they
might have pointed to the Nargal, the Chaldean and Assyrian chief of the Magi
(Rab-Mag) and the Nagal, the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians. Both derive
their names from Nergal-Sarezer, the Assyrian god, and both have the same
faculties, or powers to have an attendant daemon with whom they identify
themselves completely. The Chaldean and Assyrian Nargal kept his daemon, in the
shape of some animal considered sacred, inside the temple; the Indian Nagal
keeps his wherever he can — in the neighboring lake, or wood, or in the house,
under the shape of a house-hold animal.**
We find the Catholic World, newspaper, in a
recent number, bitterly complaining that the old Pagan element of the
aboriginal inhabitants of America does not seem to be utterly dead in the
United States. Even where tribes have been for long years under the care of
Christian teachers, heathen rites are practiced in secret, and crypto-paganism,
or nagualism, flourishes now, as in the days of Montezuma. It says:
"Nagualism and voodoo-worship" — as it calls these two strange sects
— "are direct devil-worship. A report addressed to the Cortes in
1812, by Don Pedro Baptista Pino, says: 'All the pueblos have their artufas
— so the natives call subterranean rooms with only a single door, where
they assemble to perform their feasts, and hold meetings. These are
impenetrable temples . . . and the doors are always closed on the Spaniards.
" 'All these pueblos, in spite of the sway
which religion has had over them, cannot forget a part of the beliefs which
have been transmitted to them, and which they are careful to transmit to their
descendants. Hence come the adoration they render the sun and moon, and other
heavenly bodies, the respect they entertain for fire, etc.
" 'The pueblo chiefs seem to be at the same
time priests; they perform various simple rites, by which the power of the sun
and of Montezuma is recognized, as well as the power (according to some
accounts) of the Great Snake, to whom, by order of Montezuma, they are to look
for life. They also officiate in certain ceremonies with which they pray for
rain. There are painted representations of the Great Snake, together with that
of a misshapen, red-haired man, declared to stand for Montezuma. Of this last
there was also, in the year 1845, in the pueblo of Laguna, a rude effigy or
idol, intended, apparently, to represent only the head of the deity…' "*
The perfect identity of the rites, ceremonies,
traditions, and even the names of the deities, among the Mexicans and ancient
Babylonians and Egyptians, are a sufficient proof of South America being
peopled by a colony which mysteriously found its way across the Atlantic. When?
at what period? History is silent on that point; but those who consider that
there is no tradition, sanctified by ages, without a certain sediment of truth
at the bottom of it, believe in the Atlantis-legend. There are,
scattered throughout the world, a handful of thoughtful and solitary students,
who pass their lives in obscurity, far from the rumors of the world, studying
the great problems of the physical and spiritual universes. They have their
secret records in which are preserved the fruits of the scholastic labors of
the long line of recluses whose successors they are. The knowledge of their
early ancestors, the sages of India, Babylonia, Nineveh, and the imperial
Thebes; the legends and traditions commented upon by the masters of Solon,
Pythagoras, and Plato, in the marble halls of Heliopolis and Sais; traditions
which, in their days, already seemed to hardly glimmer from behind the foggy
curtain of the past; — all this, and much more, is recorded on indestructible
parchment, and passed with jealous care from one adept to another. These men
believe the story of the Atlantis to be no fable, but maintain that at
different epochs of the past huge islands, and even continents, existed where
now there is but a wild waste of waters. In those submerged temples and
libraries the archaeologist would find, could he but explore them, the
materials for filling all the gaps that now exist in what we imagine is history.
They say that at a remote epoch a traveller could traverse what is now the
Atlantic Ocean, almost the entire distance by land, crossing in boats from one
island to another, where narrow straits then existed.
Our
suspicion as to the relationship of the cis-Atlantic and trans-Atlantic races
is strengthened upon reading about the wonders wrought by Quetzo-Cohuatl, the
Mexican magician. His wand must be closely-related to the traditional
sapphire-stick of Moses, the stick which bloomed in the garden of
Raguel-Jethro, his father-in-law, and upon which was engraved the ineffable
name. The "four men" described as the real four ancestors of the human
race, "who were neither begotten by the gods, nor born of woman," but
whose "creation was a wonder wrought by the Creator," and who were
made after three attempts at manufacturing men had failed, equally present some
striking points of similarity with the esoteric explanations of the
Hermetists;* they also undeniably recall the four sons of God of the Egyptian
theogony. Moreover, as any one may infer, the resemblance of this myth to the
narrative related in Genesis, will be apparent to even a superficial
observer. These four ancestors "could reason and speak, their sight was
unlimited, and they knew all things at once."** When "they had
rendered thanks to their Creator for their existence, the gods were
frightened, and they breathed a cloud over the eyes of men that they might
see a certain distance only, and not be like the gods themselves."
This bears directly upon the sentence in Genesis, "Behold, the
man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put
forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life," etc. Then, again,
"While they were asleep God gave them wives," etc.
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