The story of a
living Aztec city hidden in a lost valley illustrates one of Gertrude Bennett’s
common themes: the ruins that revive.
Revive not just
physically, but the fires of feudal battle between Quetzalcoatl and Nacoc-Yaotl.
Midway through the book there is an intermission, as giant Irish adventurer
Colin O’Hara is expelled from the MesoAmerican stronghold and returns to his
sister’s east American bungalow.
Colin’s height
missed the seven-foot mark by a mere four inches, while Cliona O’Hara Rhodes..
measured no more than five feet five. Her raven’s wing hair shadowed eyes that
were wonderfully blue; from beneath straight, fine brows the lashes curved
thick and long.. Yet a resemblance to her brother might have been traced in the
girl’s generous forehead..(page
94)
Not alone,
though. He carries a certain clay figurine of the feathered serpent. When he
and Rhodes leave her in the isolated bungalow, there is an overnight visitation.
..this thing
of the midnight that thrashed and snarled and ripped clean through a door with
its pale, enormous claw – it had robbed her of the capacity to think or
reason.. A deep swoon is the anaesthetic that Mother Nature offers her children
when horror and pain becomes too great for bearing.. when she at last opened her
eyes the goblin-be-friendly moon had been ousted by the honest sun.. (page 105)
The deep swoon
that revives from the ruins of reverie. It transpires that the clay ornament also
fell and broke off a piece of serpent crook. Whatever was on the other side of
the door gave up, but its retreat was marked by ghastly upwellings of blood
that stopped only at the boundary brook. Could be another case of psychometry?
(see Claimed).
The
matter-of-fact acceptance of the gory supernatural truth by Rhodes and O’Hara
contrasts with the police, who he
Had taken an
instinctive dislike to.. and his cocksure way of speaking. By the very look of
him he was a man of no imagination, and the type had no appeal for Colin. (page 113)
Deviating somewhat,
the pyramid of the feathered serpent in Teatihicuan is covered in ornate relief
carvings of the zoomorphic Quetzalcoatl, as well as tenon heads tethered with
pegs
It would have
been painted, complete with jewels for eyes, making a fair comparison with the
naturalistic statues and friezes of the Parthenon (Hyborian Bridge 66)
in terms of dramatic effect, if not ritual.
The animated
effects of carved ornaments would have inspired awe amongst the credible Aztecs
– or were they credible? The cosmology was probably adopted around the four
cardinal points, with Quetzalcoatl representing west, identified with the
vortex of wind, wisdom, light and Venus (morning, rain and maize). East (Xipe
Totec) representing farming and spring; north (Teozcatlipoca) representing
night, deceit, sorcery, Earth; south (Huitzilopachlo) representing war.
As I’ve been
saying for awhile, we live in an illusory system that is only convincing
because of its perspective realism (sun). If one travels in a perspective
illusion, one travels towards the vanishing point of technique (see “speed” prev.) Apollo
astronaut Schweickart is quoted a saying,
I was
suddenly looking at this incredibly beautiful planet, which contains everything
you know and love, and you could cover it all up with your thumbnail.. (DT)
While Harrison
Schmitt of Apollo 17 is quoted,
I think 50
years from now at the 100th anniversary of Apollo there will be
settlements on the moon.. Helium 3 is an ideal fuel for electric power generation..
and demands for electrical power are not going to decrease, civilization depends
on it.. (DT)
So, you could
have an electrification process and thereby create a perspective system – an illusion
of the human head.
All illusions
are convincing, so they could be real. The only problem is they’re not
cosmologies that contain the overlap of opposites. With this come festivities
of thanksgiving of human tribes to their gods of plenty.
Dance and ritual
are expressions of the contradictory nature of reality that is strong, bloody
and sacrificial. This is the lost world that modernity is striving to
extinguish forever. The one the old writers like Bennet strive to bring back
with gay abandon.