46. In the Mayan view the month named Pax was evidently represented by a kind of wooden hollowed out tree log drum, and 16 * 20 - 5 * 20 (Tzek was also open at the top) = 11 * 20 = 220 (→ *285 - *65). ... Most of the people in our van took advantage of the interlude to shop at the nearby stalls set up by highland Maya who had come down to Tikal to take advantage of the steady supply of tourists. However, one of our group, Harriet Gillett, a retired physician and an inveterate bird-watcher, had other interests. She noticed a nearby tree heavy with white blossoms and surrounded by a raucous sphere of birds and bees. She climbed out of the van with her binoculars around her neck, and walked over to take advantage of the unexpected opportunity the morning had provided. Our local guide, Francisco Florián, who knew the forest and its creatures in an unusually intimate way, joined her, explaining that the birds came to the tree only early in the morning. The sounds and the odd sight finally drew my attention and I too disembarked from the van and edged closer to the buzzing center of the action. I stared at the screaming birds as they fought for positions among the flowers and the hovering drone of thousands of bees. How beautiful, I thought, and then my gaze happened to settle on the trunk of the tree. It had thorns and it bulged just above the ground. It was a young ceiba tree. I already knew that the ceiba tree was the model for the sacred World Tree of the Maya, but I had never seen one in flower when I knew what I was looking at. I was really excited because normally you can't see the blossoms even if you're there when the tree is in blossom. The fully mature trees are hundreds of feet high. and the blossoms are very small. 'It's a ceiba', I chirped and began looking for a branch low enough to see one of the blossoms up close. Joyce Livingstone, a retired teacher, did the logical thing. She bent over, picked up a fallen branch, and held it out for me to see. I was too excited and full of myself to listen. She tapped my arm more insistently and still I didn't hear her. Finally, in frustration, she grabbed my wrist and raised her voice. 'Will you look at these?' she said, waving the branch, and finally I did. What I saw stunned me, for in her hand lay a perfect replica of the earflares worn by the Classic Maya kings. Suddenly I understood the full symbolism of so many of the things I had been studying for years. The kings dressed themselves as the Wakah-Chan tree, although at the time I didn't know it was also the Milky Way. The tzuk [partition] head on the trunk of the tree covered their loins. The branches with their white flowers bent down along their thighs, the double-headed ecliptic snake rested in their arms, and the great bird Itzam-Yeh stood on their head. I already knew as I stood under the young tree in Tikal that the kings were the human embodiment of the ceiba as the central axis of the world. As I stood there gazing at the flowers in Joyce's hand, I also learned that the kings embodied the ceiba at the moment it flowers to yield the sak-nik-nal, the 'white flowers', that are the souls of human beings. As the trees flowers to reproduce itself, so the kings flowered to reproduce the world ... Perhaps the month named Tzek corresponed to the Tzuk on the Ceiba world tree.
... The tun glyph was identified as a wooden drum by Brinton ... and Marshal H. Saville immediately accepted it ... [the figure below] shows the Aztec drum representation relied on by Brinton to demonstrate his point. It was not then known that an ancestral Mayan word for drum was *tun: Yucatec tunkul 'divine drum' (?); Quiche tun 'hollow log drum'; Chorti tun 'hollow log drum' ...  ... The [tun] glyph is nearly the same as that for the month Pax ... except that the top part of the latter is split or divided by two curving lines. Brinton, without referring to the Pax glyph, identified the tun glyph as the drum called in Yucatec pax che (pax 'musical instrument'; che < *te 'wooden). Yucatec pax means 'broken, disappeared', and Quiche paxih means, among other things, 'split, divide, break, separate'. It would seem that the dividing lines on the Pax glyph may have been used as a semantic/ phonetic determinative indicating that the drum should be read pax, not tun ... Thus, one may expect that this glyph was used elsewhere meaning 'to break' and possibly for 'medicine' (Yuc. pax, Tzel., Tzo. pox) ... It should be added that tun was also the period of 18 months, or 360 days ... 2 * 20 = 40 days before Pax was the Kankin month, representing a kind of Skeleton Tree (→ a tree no longer carrying leaves), and *320 - *40 = *280 → equinox (80) + 280 = day 360.
... The state of the tree loomed large in their thoughts, because it came about at the same time the head of One Hunaphu was put in the fork. The Xibalbans said among themselves: 'No one is to pick the fruit, nor is anyone to go beneath the tree', they said. They restricted themselves, all of Xibalba held back. It isn't clear which is the head of One Hunaphu; now it's exactly the same as the fruit of the tree. Calabash came to be its name, and much was said about it ...
... And then the bone spoke; it was there in the fork of the tree: Why do you want a mere bone, a round thing in the branches of a tree? said the head of One Hunaphu when it spoke to the maiden. You don't want it, she was told. I do want it, said the maiden. Very well. Stretch out your right hand here, so I can see it, said the bone. Yes, said the maiden. She stretched out her right hand, up there in front of the bone. And then the bone spit out its saliva, which landed squarely in the hand of the maiden ... The black new moon up in the fork of the tree probably indicated Hiro (Mercury in hiding): Hiro. 1. A deity invoked when praying for rain (meaning uncertain). 2. To twine tree fibres (hauhau, mahute) into strings or ropes. Ohirohiro, waterspout (more exactly pú ohirohiro), a column of water which rises spinning on itself. Vanaga. To spin, to twist. P Mgv.: hiro, iro, to make a cord or line in the native manner by twisting on the thigh. Mq.: fió, hió, to spin, to twist, to twine. Ta.: hiro, to twist. This differs essentially from the in-and-out movement involved in hiri 2, for here the movement is that of rolling on the axis of length, the result is that of spinning. Starting with the coir fiber, the first operation is to roll (hiro) by the palm of the hand upon the thigh, which lies coveniently exposed in the crosslegged sedentary posture, two or three threads into a cord; next to plait (hiri) three or other odd number of such cords into sennit. Hirohiro, to mix, to blend, to dissolve, to infuse, to inject, to season, to streak with several colors; hirohiro ei paatai, to salt. Hirohiroa, to mingle; hirohiroa ei vai, diluted with water. Churchill. Ta.: Hiro, to exaggerate. Ha.: hilohilo, to lengthen a speech by mentioning little circumstances, to make nice oratorial language. Churchill. Whiro 'Steals-off-and-hides'; also [in addition to the name of Mercury] the universal name for the 'dark of the Moon' or the first day of the lunar month; also the deity of sneak thieves and rascals. Makemson. ... Robur Carolinum, Charles' Oak, the Quercia of Italy and the Karlseiche of Germany, was formally published by Halley in 1679 in commemoration of the Royal Oak of his patron, Charles II, in which the king had lain hidden for twenty-four hours after his defeat by Cromwell in the battle of Worcester, on the 3rd of September 1651 ... And when he (→ the Golden Bough) spat out his saliva it should mean he passed on the gift of life to Blood Moon waiting below. ... He carries an oak-club, because the oak provides his beasts and his people with mast and because it attracts lightning more than any other tree. His symbols are the acorn; the rock-dove, which nests in oaks as well as in clefts of rocks; the mistletoe, or Loranthus; and the serpent. All these are sexual emblems. The dove was sacred to the Love-goddess of Greece and Syria; the serpent was the most ancient of phallic totem-beasts; the cupped acorn stood for the glans penis in both Greek and Latin; the mistletoe was an all-heal and its names viscus (Latin) and ixias (Greek) are connected with vis and ischus (strength) - probably because of the spermal viscosity of its berries, sperm being the vehicle of life ... ... In the upper part of the façade, as a pendant to the calabash on the right which represents the sun, it is a drawing of the moon, either full or as a crescent. This is a reminder, on the left-hand side, of the celestial regions. In the remaining space on the wall there are various ritual objects and animals in no particular order: the priest's forked staff, which is a symbol of both masculinity and femininity; the shaft itself, which is breast-high, is male, the female part is the fork in which the priest rests his forefinger, itself a symbol of the male ... ... And then she looked in her hand, she inspected it right away, but the bone's saliva wasn't in her hand. It is just a sign I have given you, my saliva, my spittle. This, my head, has nothing on it - just bone, nothing of meat. It's just the same with the head of a great lord: it's just the flesh that makes his face look good. And when he dies, people get frightened by his bones. After that, his son is like his saliva, his spittle, in his being, whether it be the son of a lord or the son of a craftsman, an orator. The father does not disappear, but goes on being fulfilled. Neither dimmed nor destroyed is the face of a lord, a warrior, craftsman, an orator. Rather, he will leave his daughters and sons. So it is that I have done likewise through you. Now go up there on the face of the earth; you will not die. Keep the word. So be it, said the head of One and Seven Hunaphu - they were of one mind when they did it ...
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