Читать книгу Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky - David Bowles - Страница 18

Convocation

Watch with me as the floodwaters slowly subside, as the great deluge is absorbed into the cosmic sea. We stand on a growing expanse of dry land, contemplating a sunless sky once more.

It is 4-Movement, the first day of the Fifth Age. The present era. Our time.

The gods, having learned from their mistakes, make a better race of people. Humanity. Yet before we can rise to prominence across the sea-ringed world, we must be nurtured, taught, guided.

The gods sacrifice much to ensure our survival, to give us light and sustenance. And then they set wise creatures and demigods over us, agents of order who keep us on the path of sacred fate.

Feathered Serpent is determined that we will succeed and thrive, that we will make ourselves worthy of his love and trust.

Heart of Sky—Hurricane—mocks our attempts, jeers at our failures, ignores our progress. Ever hungry for chaos, he seeks allies and vassals who will destroy the world once more.

We look into this distant past through the tales of the ancients, passed down through the centuries in the cultures of the Mixtec, Cora, Mazatec, Otomi and Huichol. The words of the Aztec elders were themselves written down after the Conquest on the broad leatherbound pages of what we know today as the Florentine Codex and the Codex Chimalpopoca.

Let us turn to those precious books, friends, casting our eyes from time to time as well at the Popol Vuh and that lovely collection of Maya verse from the heart of the Yucatan, the Songs of Dzitbalché.

Once more we raise the chorus of our voices, point and counterpoint, combining melodic lines of old into a new harmony.