Pagan Cross - A Romance Of Pre-conquest Yucatan

PAGAN CROSS FRONTISPIECE BY LOUISE BRANN Princess Cheeuah yearned to be enfolded in Galloe embrace. Page 57. PAGAN CROSS A Romance ofPre-ConquestYucatan BY DR. BEN HELPRIN Cortex was amazed by the sight of a cross, of stone and lime, about ten palms high. It was the emblem of the Mayan god of rain. Its appearance suggested the wildest conjec tures . . PRESCOTT, CONQUEST OP MEXICO. RAIBEN PUBLICATIONS ROSLYN, NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1938 RAIBEN PUBLICATIONS All Rights Reserved BENJAMIN E. HELPRIN, M. D., PLD. 1880-1937 PROLOGUE WHERE, ALMOST five centuries ago, once flourished populous and thriving centers, glamorous, if barbaric, cultures and civilizations today, the Sacred Isle of Cuzmil, off the eastern coast of Yucatan, has long ere this been debauched into the decadence of primeval, impenetrable forest and jungle. The history of Sacred Cuzmil is thus both a pan egyric and an elegy. The panegyric is, that in the heyday of its prime, it shared its glory with but one other Mayan shrine, Chichen-Itza, on the peninsula proper, and leagues away. To both flocked the faithful, if gullible, vota ries from throughout Yucatan to the native sanctu aries, or teocallis They also crowded the great mar kets and fairs displaying everything from the every day necessities to the most luxuriant indulgences They lived their many centuries of existence, steeped in barbarism, subjugated by a priestly caste, unher alded, unknown to the World beyond. Then Cuzmil and Chichen-Itza, like Sodom and Gomorrah, Baby lon, Carthage, of remote antiquity, had risen to exalted heights. In the elegy to Cuzmil may be depicted all the glamorous pagan splendor that had lived its day only to be effaced from the earth by thefell iniquity of the worship of the prototype of the Canaanile Moloch, the Mexican war-god-patron, Huitzilopochtli. Cuzmil, once the land of mute, impotent, yet cormorant idols, is now of the dim past, yet never were the pilgrim ages to Benares and the Ganges, to Mecca, or even to the pagan Rome of antiquity the more devout. Despite the passing of the portentous, epoch-mak ing centuries, there still exists a sad admixture of superstition and atavism, and this reversion to ancient type is more emphatically stressed by curious tales filtering through various and divers channels, of strange pagan ceremonials to the tutelary idol-gods of their ancestors, especially when the irate elements un leash forces of destruction. The lowly nomads then shake their heads ominously, they cross themselves lest the anathema of the Church befall them, yet turn their thoughts to the deities of their Mayan forebears the god of war, Huitzilopochtli, the god of the winds, Thatchel, and the god of rain, Tlaloc to whom are ascribed the visitations of tempests and devastation in retributive justice against the progeny of the Toltec-Mayans who deserted the deities of Andkuac for the worship of Christianity. When the rumble of distant thunder is heard, when the gentle zephyrs and patter of rain warn of tempestuous storm in the offing, the elders of the tribe are apprehensive that their ancient gods are again