HEAVEN BORN MERIDA AND ITS DESTINY - Histomesoamericana

36 INTRODUCTION
there are seven other names of God scattered through the text, and there
are at least two cycles of seven names for Christ.
I and II. The 7 Creations and the 7 Angels. We begin with the first age,
"the first katun," the first creation. Each creation is enumerated and provided
with an angel: (1) Dominus, (2) Woman Born Baby, (3) Dawn of the
Four Changers, (4) Child Two Knowing, (5) the Egyptian, (6) Child of a
Thousand, and (7) Sustaining Grace.
III. The 7 Winds: (1) 'Rolling Moon, (2) Thomas Doubted, (3) Archangel,
(4) Herodias, (5) Stained Wrap in Front, (6) Virtue, and (7) Jeremiah.
IV. The 7 Graces: (1) Jerome, (2) Bol Ay, (3) Jesus. The name Jesus does
not occur in this text. In this cycle he is called by seven other names:
Man [xib), Complete the Sky, Great Deeds, Hebron, Medicine Water, Brilliance
of Heaven, and Child of Fruit Offering. The cycle of the Graces is
then completed by the addition of the four winds, who are equated with
the direction's, the yearbearers, and the rain giants, thus covering three of
the five manifestations of the Ba Cabs. There is also a somewhat confused
effort to name them: (4) Corpinus, (5) Orale, (6) ?Trinity; and (7) ?Unity.
This 3 plus 4 approach to making 7 is repeated in cycle VII.
V. The 7 Layers of Heaven: (1) Sirius, (2) Thou Wast Buried, (3) Praise Be
to God, (4) Bol Ay, (5) Jaguar Cacao, (6) Exhale, and (7) Inhale.
VI. The 7 Saints: (1) Spirit [Espíritu], (2) Saint Edendeus, (3) Saint
Elisha, (4) Enos, (5) Joseph, (6) Infinite, and (7) Thrice Tripled.
VII. The 7 Names of God: (1) Holy God (Dios citbil), (2) Joshua, (3)
Jesus. This time he is called Master, Dei, Messiah, Christ, Immanuel, and
Jeremiah, and he may also be called Jupiter (perhaps in confusion with
Lucifer, whose fall is alluded to). Again the four winds are added. Their
associations are (4) red, Saturn, (5) white, Jupiter, (6) black, Mars, and (7)
yellow, Venus, Moses.
Running through the whole text is another set of seven names of God.
In the order in which they appear, they are (1) Lord [dominus], (2) God
[ku], (3) Sustaining Grace [sustinal gracia], (4) Holy God [Dios citbil], (5)
Unity [unidad], [6] God Made Son [Dios mehenbil], and (7) God the Holy
Ghost [Dios Espíritu Santo]. He is also referred to as a father [yum], but
he is not named that in this text, as in God the Father [Dios yumbil].
The author has achieved a quite remarkable synthesis of Mayan and
Christian religion, incorporating the Trinity and the yearbearers, cosmological
space and time, saints, angels, and Mayan (wind) spirits into a
single numerologically elegant scheme, focusing on the number that symbolizes
the highest level of the Mayan heaven. If his command of Latin
and Spanish leaves much to be desired, there is nothing wrong with his
mathematics. And you cannot avoid thinking that he had been exposed to
Saint John's dream of the seven angels and seven plagues that end the
world (Revelation 15).
Between the composition of the myths "The Birth of the Uinal" in
1559 and "The Sevenfold Creation" in 1776, there is a gradual accretion of
Christian imagery and mythology: the Virgin of Izamal, patron saint of
Yucatan, the concepts of the catechism, the commandments of God and
the church. To some extent these new elements were numerologically as-
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