Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Spanish Inquisition

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Monty Python was right!

Here's the story.....

I identified some of the artifacts as "Bloodletting Stones". Not hard to do really, if you know what to look for. It took me so long because I was looking for the answer to the question of "why was this made?", and the answer turned out to be so foreign to my upbringing that it was difficult to comprehend. (not actually foreign I guess....George Washington, the father of our country, was "curred" to death by it.). Turns out to be a thread that I can pull to try to unravel the mystery that I've been presented with.

So, I look up "bloodletting stones" and "tattoo" on the Internet to try and come up with some info and images for comparison. Google spit out a bunch of stuff, and high on the list was a page posted by a bible-thumper, meant to persuade folks from getting tattoos and engaging in bloodletting. It turns out that the bible is filled with references about folks who use stones for bloodletting. Not just in one or two passages, but a whole bunch. Strange that something is mentioned so much, yet in Museums there are no examples of the "stones" that were preached so fervently about. My interest was piqued. (Looks like Mohammad used to pay for bloodletting..)

I found that Mayans were into bloodletting, as well as other Meso-American cultures. So I looked at what written history was available. The Popol Vuh (national book, from Guatemala) was written down after the Spanish came. Most of it was a typical creation myth, why it's okay to hunt animals, why rabbits have short tails, which Deity begot whom, that sort of stuff. A large part deals with the warrior twins defeating the lords of the underworld. But the last third or so references the war they had with the "Bloodletters, Sacrificers", who were their relatives (they had the same ancestors). Three Nations mustered together 24,000 troops to wipe-out folks who were causing them grief. They sent "Lady Lust" and "Lady Weeping" to get naked at the river mouth where the dudes hung-out, and get friendly. Guys brought the chicks to the Citadel to party, showing the army where to go, to do what they do. End of Bloodletting Sacrificers story.

Here's where the Spanish Inquisition part of the story comes in. Every group of folks has their own history. People come from somewhere, stay and breed for a while, then descendants go off to somewhere else. The Spanish were interested in this stuff, always looking for the "seven cities of gold" or the "spring of immortality", what have you. They wrote down the clan travelings of the Toltec, who trace their beginnings in this land to their emergence from "seven caves" (as a side note, I read interesting speculation that the "caves" were actually the holds of large sea going vessels, supporting the claim that they came from a place covered with water....but back to the story...). The story of the travels is quite detailed, staying in a place for a while, then travelling two days north, then so-many days east, that sort of stuff. The implication is they left descendants in all these locations. Scholars who attempted to map the travelings became frustrated because of missing details (what direction? it says they went four days, but it doesn't say where...). The person who wrote these (incomplete) directions down was none other then the grand inquisitor himself, Torquemada.

I think my site, which I call the "Terrapin Station Hunting Grounds" could be the old Citadel of Iqui Balam. This site was lost to history by folks who wanted to wipe-out their competition.

Here is the Bloodletting Artifacts Video: