Jerking the Ring Off the Finger (20)

In the Winter the Sun Takes Three Mornings Rising.

© Eso A. B., 2012

At this point of our long story, we ought to remember that the human sacrifices in Mesoamerica, the Near East, and no doubt elsewhere, began with the killing and sacrifice of women.


Continuing to take advantage of our pareidolia method of deconstructing a story that has, by now, become orthodoxy, we may deduce that one reason why men may have chosen women as their first human sacrificial victims, was the woman’s menstrual period. Blood (“chalchiuh-atl” or precious water)  and the color red had and continue to possess sacral meaning.


One other possible reason may have been that men did not find women to be the mirror image of themselves that they expected them to be the first time they saw a woman. The disappointment led to an attempt to do the Creator God one better by killing one’s own, then stealing one’s neighbor’s wife or daughter.


Once men had learned to live with their guilt of killing women, the practice spread to include children and prisoners, and these slaughters all proved disappointing, the practice spread to self-sacrifice. Even so, though the self-immolation of Nanauatzin was thought of in highest terms, high enough to assure that the Sun rose, even this was not sufficient to send the sun travelling across the entire “sky-mountain”.


After the Sun rose to the eastern rim of the Bosphorus mountain range (the Hippodrome is on the western side of the straight), it rose no more, but stayed where it was and wobbled in place. The Gods of the Aztecs came to the conclusion that in order for them to see the sun move up in the sky, all four hundred of them would have to offer themselves as sacrifices. In effect, the ritual of self-sacrifice would not be sufficient with the crucifixion or auto-da-feing of one man, but would have to include all of human society.


Writes DavidCarrasco: “The cosmic pattern (see blog 15) of massive sacrifices to energize the sun is repeated in …  terrestrial warfare and human sacrifice is created by the Gods to ensure their nourishment. In one version, the god Mixcoatl (Cloud Serpent) creates five human beings and four hundred Chichimec warriors to stir up discord and warfare…. When the masses of warriors pass their time hunting and drinking, the gods send the five individuals to slaughter them…. war among human beings is created to ensure sacrificial victims for the gods.”


We have met the five priests who preside over the slaughter of the sacrifice(s) before (Blog 19). We also have met the four hundred warriors as the 400 children of Coatlicue, Earth Mother (blog 9), who come to kill  their mother, and unloose the God of War, the warrior Huitzilopotchtli. This writer assumes that the significance of the number 400 (children, warriors, and gods) is associated with the four orientations: East, West, North, and South.

After the 400 gods have been sacrificed (by the wind god Ecatl), and after Ecatl has released a mighty blast of air against the sun, the Fifts Sun is started on its way. We, who live today, are part of the 5^th sun, which, we may note, is an artificial or virtual entity; therefore, a human creation.

There are even more distant echoes to the story of sacrifice. I have already mentioned the Balts of northeastern Europe. One Latvian folk-song speaks of

Dieva dēli bēdājās,
Asiņaina Saule lec.
Kam vakar novilkāt
Saules meitai gredzeniņu?126

The sons of god sorrowed,

The sun rose bloody.

Why did you yesterday

Jerk the ring off the finger

Of the Sun’s daughter?

126

The poem clearly has sexual overtones and points an accusatory finger at the sons of God, meaning the male of the human species. However, in our own time, the Latvian name for whore is “mauka” or ‘the one who jerks off.’ In other words, male chauvinism in our day has none of the delicate imagery surrounding rape given it by proto-Latvians of yore. Whichever way the sons of God transgressed against the Daughers of the Sun, they did it bloodily.

Trīs rītiņi Saule lēca
Sarkanā kociņā;
Aiziet jauni, aiziet vaci,
To kociņu meklēdami.

For three mornings the sun rose

In the red tree;

Pass away the young and old,

Looking for that tree.

Here the proto-Latvians associate the Tree of Life with the color red, which, in turn, is associated with the rising sun and blood. While there is no direct mention of human sacrifice in Latvian folk-songs, it is implicit in the symbolism of words used. I find it remarkable, that the sun takes three mornings rising, not to mention, that in spite of many generations looking for the blood tree, i.e., sacrifice, it is never (allowed to be) found.