| When the Inquisition began operating in Mexico in 1571, it immediately banned consumption of the peyote, claiming that its seemingly supernatural effects were actually the work of the Devil. (16) An edict which the Inquisition issued on June 29, 1620, which Irving Leonard has reproduced and translated, announces: “Inasmuch as the use of the herb or root called Peyote has been introduced into these Provinces for the purpose of detecting thefts, of divining other happenings, and of foretelling future events, it is an act of superstition condemned as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic Faith.” (17) Tupac Amaru Tupac Amaru was the last tribal leader of the Incas. Tupac means “royal” and amaru means “serpent.” (18) Tupac was murdered by the Spanish conquistadores in Peru in 1572 in a months-long pursuit following the Spanish Roman conquest of the civilization. From wiki we learn: “In 1780, José Gabriel Condorcanqui (Túpac Amaru II), who claimed to be a direct descendant of Túpac Amaru, led an indigenous uprising against continued Spanish presence in Peru alongside his wife Micaela Bastidas.” (19) The word “America” does not come to us from Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, despite what we have been told throughout history. The word comes from the Amaru tradition of peoples in South America. American is literally the “Land of the Plumed Serpent.” Here is what Manly P. Hall, author of The Secret Teachings of All Ages, has to say concerning Amaruka: “The Red ‘Children of the Sun,’ writes James Morgan Pryse, ‘do not worship the One God. For them that One God is absolutely impersonal, and all the Forces emanated from that One God are personal. This is the exact reverse of the popular western conception of a personal God and impersonal working forces in nature. Decide for yourself which of these beliefs is the more philosophical. These Children of the Sun adore the Plumèd Serpent, who is the messenger of the Sun. He was the God Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Gucumatz in Quiché; and in Peru he was called Amaru. From the latter name comes our word America. Amaruca is, literally translated, ‘Land of the Plumèd Serpent.’ The priests of this God of Peace, from their chief centre in the Cordilleras, once ruled both Americas. All the Red men who have remained true to the ancient religion are still under their sway. One of their strong centres was in Guatemala, and of their Order was the author of the book called Popol Vuh. In the Quiché tongue Gucumatz is the exact equivalent of Quetzalcoatl in the Nahuatl language; quetzal, the bird of Paradise; coatl, serpent, ‘the Serpent veiled in plumes of the paradise-bird!’” (20) |
In Mexico Mystique, Frank Waters writes that, in 1552, the Spanish Friar Diego de Landa, speaking of the great intellectual books that they conquistadors destroyed, stated that they, “contained nothing in which there was not to be seen superstitions and lies of the Devil” and so “we burned them all.” (21) The Popol Vuh, the book of the ancient Quiche Mayan people was created by the Mayans from memory as soon as the destruction of their sacred books occurred. The book that had been burned had to be replaced and the native people went right to work doing just that. Therefore, no history was ever lost by the Mayan people. In the commentary for the Popul Vuh translation by Dennis Tedlock, we learn about the early reconstruction of the Mayan Codex: “There was no little justice in the fact that it was the missionaries themselves, the burners of the ancient books, who worked out the problems of adapting the alphabet to the sounds of Mayan languages, and while they were at it, they charted grammars and compiled dictionaries. Their official purpose in doing this linguistic work was to facilitate the writing and publishing of Christian prayers, sermons, and catechisms in the native languages. But very little time passed before some of their native pupils found political and religious applications for alphabetic writing that were quite independent of those of Rome. These independent writers have left a literary legacy that is both more extensive than the surviving hieroglyphic corpus and more open to understanding. Their most notable works, created as alphabetic substitutes for hieroglyphic books, are the Chilam Balam or “Jaguar Priest” books of Yucatan and the Popol Vuh of Guatemala.” (22) (16) Richard Rudgley, Essential Substances: A Cultural History of Intoxicants in Society (New York: Kodansha International, 1993), p. 85 (17) Irving Leonard, “Peyote and the Mexican Inquisition, 1620,” American Anthropologist, New Series 44:2 (1942): 326) (The Devil and the Irish King: Don Guillen Lombardo, The Inquisition and the Politics of Dissent in Colonial Mexico City By Andrew Philip Konove, 2004, p. 17-31) (https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/bitstream/ handle/10066/1192/2004KonoveA.pdf (18) Valer, Nonato Rufino Chuquimamani; Morales, Carmen Gladis Alosilla; Valer, Victoria Choque (2014). Qullaw Qichwapa Simi Qullqan (PDF). Lima: Ministry of Education, Peru (19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BApac_Amaru (20) Secret Teachings of All Ages, Page 574 (21) Great Cosmic Mother, p. 209; Frank Waters, Mexico Mystique (Santa Barbara; Black Sparrow Press, 1975), 37 (22) POPOL VUH: THE MAYAN BOOK OF THE DAWN OF LIFE translated by Dennis Tedlock with commentary based on the ancient knowledge of the modern Quiche Maya, 1985 |