Land of Sweetness: A Pre-Columbian Timeline

“Honored mother, honored father, do not worship the idols. They are liars with glib tongues; in truth they have no Sweetness, the power of the human heart is the only Sweetness on earth, but they lie and say they do, to rob us of our food, to rob us of our Sweetness.”
Do you based this part on the story of Ibrahim and the Idols?
 
Will Cemānāhuatēpēhuani become canonized as a God in Mayapan legends, similar to how people literally worshipped Julius Caesar.
Now, now, we haven't even got to what Cemānāhuatēpēhuani has actually done yet... ;)

Do you based this part on the story of Ibrahim and the Idols?
Not consciously, no. Though the would-be child sacrifice is influenced by the story of Abraham and Ishmael/Isaac.
 
To be honest, the argument used by the Baccalo follower to the idols are strikingly similar to Ibrahim's: idol can't do shit, not even protecting themselves
 
The same midrash comes up in Jewish tradition about Abraham smashing idols, realizing the unity of god, being cast in a furnace.
(also, yes I know Kuando el Rey Nimrod is hilariously anachronistic here).
 
Not consciously, no. Though the would-be child sacrifice is influenced by the story of Abraham and Ishmael/Isaac.

The Myth of the Parents of the Prophetess almost killing the Prophetess because of their devotion to the " False Gods " AKA Idols is very similar to the story of Ibrahim and the Idols. Though Ibrahim is rather more violent in proving his point relying on a hammer to smash the idols instead of simple arguments.

Ibrahim smashes the Idols of his village, enraging the villagers among them his Father who is an maker of Idols. They take him to the court of the God-King Nimrud to be judged. The King asks Ibrahim if he was the one to smash the idols of the village. Ibrahim replies, " Why do you not ask the chief (of the idols) who is standing safe. Perhaps he has done it, that is if your idol gods can speak, ask them as to who broke them.” This enrages Nimrud who then builds a large fire to throw the Prophet into. Ibrahim is subsequently thrown into the fire but is not burnt as the fire had been ordered by Allah (SWT) to cool itself for the Prophet. Ibrahim is saved.
 
Entry 25: The Taiguano Prophetess in Mayapán
THE TAIGUANO PROPHETESS — Part II
Taiguano hagiographers say that upon her arrival, the Prophetess was immediately purchased by Tēzcatl, mercenary king of Mayapán. She was taken as his concubine at first, but she was so beautiful that Tēzcatl could not help but make her his wife.

In exchange for becoming his queen, the Prophetess asked that all the Yucayan slaves in the king’s entourage be freed. This was granted, and every day she personally trained the new freemen in the arts of war in the palace courtyards, so that they would make good soldiers in some future war.

The Prophetess stayed in Mayapán for four years, until 1362. In time she came to love her husband, and the beautiful frescoes and shaded stuccoed pavilions of this Land of Turkey and Deer. Tēzcatl and she had children, twins, a son and a daughter. They were proclaimed heirs to the kingdom of Mayapán.

The Prophetess's days in Mayapán were idyllic ones. She rose every morning with an embrace with her loving husband who doted on her day by day, even though she was not a virgin and had been despoiled. Every other day he would tell her in a marveling voice, "I am the happiest man in Mayapán, not because I am king but because you are with me. If I was usurped and they blinded and castrated me and threw me out to beg, if you were there in my beggar's hut, I would still be happiest." Sometimes he would whisper in her ears, "Let me blaspheme too. I go to the pyramids, but I don't worship the idols there. You are my only idol." And they laughed together at how un-kingly the king's words were.

And the Prophetess would respond, "When I was sold and thought of death, the god Bacocolon told me to live. And now I know why he told me that: because of you."

Sometimes the two breathed in the scented air of Maya gardens, or bathed in the streams that ran beside the royal aviaries. Or, when her husband was dealing justice, the Prophetess would sit down and giggle as her twins crowded around her, competing to see who could hug her the most. And in these moments the Prophetess would sigh softly and remark on how everything and everyone was lovable here, from the tenderness of venison to the pyramid's coiling shadows to the melody of the Maya tongue.

But from time to time she would feel that something was missing, though she could not say what.

It was 1361 when Bacocolon came to her again. He did not speak, and yet she understood.

She wept again. "You are the cruelest of the gods! You do not allow me a single second of happiness, a single moment of respite—you rejoice in my tears—"

Bacocolon said to her,

"I give you the right to disobey."

And for a year she disobeyed. But the fact that men in her homeland were still being enslaved and sold weighed down her heart, and the image of the sacrifice she had observed in childhood shimmered like a mirage in her eyes. She understood why she had trained the freemen, and Tēzcatl saw that his queen was no longer happy as she once had been.

In 1362, the Prophetess left Mayapán. She took her Yucayan freemen militia with her, and she liberated all the other Yucayan slaves in the city as she left.

What did the Prophetess say to her husband the day of her departure? Did she feign love and normalcy, did she say “Good night, my beloved” and kiss him to bed, or did she give a sign of what was to come, some sign that Tēzcatl could not understand? The sources are silent, each and every one.

Her two children remained behind in the mainland. She did not have the heart to take them away from the only life they had ever known.

* * *

From the Prophetic Sayings of Chichen, anachronistically claimed to be the Prophetess's teachings to the Yucayan freemen when at Mayapán:

Know that there is no God but Bacocolon. There are spirits in this world, but God is one.

Who is Bacocolon? The Beautiful Lord, the Quetzal Lord. Here in Mayapán they call him Kukulcan, there in Oaxaca he is known as Coo Dzahui, and over there in Cholula he is Quetzalcōhuātl.

Who is Bacocolon? The Creator, the Instructor. He created humans from an unknown material and placed them on a bountiful earth; he came to the earth in the guise of Deminán Caracaracol [Yucayan culture hero], and he instructed us in fire and irrigation, in tobacco and medicine, in manioc and maize, in kingship and architecture.

Who is Bacocolon? The Master of Sweetness, the Master of Hearts. Know that the greatest Sweetness is the Sweetness of human hearts. There is no action outside the human will. Do idols have mouths to eat? No – how then could they have the Sweetness to feed us? Do idols have hands to receive? No – how then could they have the Sweetness to give to us? Do idols have hearts to be loved? No – how then could they have the Sweetness to love us? Humans alone have the Sweetness to eat and feed, to receive and give, to be loved and love. And this human Sweetness originates from the Supreme Sweetness of Lord Bacocolon, as embers and sparks originate from a mighty burning bonfire. Every man and woman is a shadow of the Quetzal Lord.

Why do people worship the idols? The idols have glib tongues they use to fool the people, to feed on the people, to tricking the people into offering themselves as meat and tomato juice. The idols make the people think that they themselves are the source of Sweetness, when in reality they are mere reflections of the Sweetness of the men and women who feed them. Who frees the idol from its prison of stone and wood? Should not the idols be grateful to men for their very existence? Why do the idols lead their creators astray? How little they understand!

Who is Bacocolon? The Lord of Taiguan. What is taiguan? It is the Great Enterprise. When humans come together to expand the frontiers of what is known, when humans come together to build pyramids and temple grounds, when humans come together to raise butterflies and songs, that all is taiguan. Humans are mortal, but taiguan is immortal. The pyramids will stand, day onto day and year onto year and age onto age, dazzling visitors from near and far, even when nobody is there to remember who built it or when and the builders’ bones are already bleached and gone. And Lord Bacocolon is the spirit of taiguan. He is the fire that inspires the king to the war and the musician to the flute; he leads men to ever greater things. When humans die they go to the west and turn into owls, but a shard of their self remains in the taiguan they have contributed to – every pyramid is a pyramid of human souls – and the shard is happy in the embrace of Bacocolon.​

* * *

OCC:

The Mesoamerican cult of the Feathered Serpent is extremely interesting from a historical perspective. In all likelihood, it is the closest thing Mesoamerica had to a “world religion,” even spreading north of what is now the US-Mexico border as the horned serpent god Awanyu. The cult of the Feathered Serpent god – worshipped as Quetzalcōhuātl by the Aztecs, Lord Nine Wind by the Mixtecs, and Kukulcan and Q’uq’umaj by the Maya – had been present in Mesoamerica since the beginning of civilization there, but its explosive rise into popularity came in the social turbulence of the Classic-Postclassic transition. It appears that the new commercial and military elites of the new era found much to favor in the Serpent God.

In most of Mesoamerica, the Feathered Serpent is considered, first and foremost, a creator god. The Aztecs believed that Quetzalcōhuātl created the Fifth Sun (the current world we live in) and stole the bones of the humans who had perished when the Fourth Sun (the previous world) was destroyed from Mictlantēuctli, the Lord of the Underworld. When these bones were used to recreate humanity, it was Quetzalcōhuātl who spilt his own blood as the necessary offering. When the Sun was created but did not move, it was Quetzalcōhuātl who sacrificed the hearts of the other gods to set it in motion and allow the Fifth Sun to reign. Similarly, in the Maya holy text the Popol Vuh, it is said:

Then the earth was created by them [the Feathered Serpent and the other gods]. Merely their word brought about the creation of it. In order to create the earth, they said, “Earth,” and immediately it was created. Just like a cloud, like a mist, was the creation and formation of it.​

The Feathered Serpent was also a culture hero and a patron of humanity. The Aztecs believed that the deity had discovered maize, created the calendar, and set human history in motion. Quetzalcōhuātl was also connected to intellectual and artistic achievement; he was the patron of schools and education, and had stolen music from the Sun for humans. More concretely, he was very closely associated with the human king Topiltzin Quetzalcōhuātl, during whose reign it was thought that corn ears were as long as human arms, cotton grew naturally dark blue and fine yellow without dying, gold and jade were cheap, and (according to some sources) human heart extraction was rejected for self-bleeding and the sacrifice of butterflies, snakes, and hummingbirds. Lord Nine Wind, the Mixtec variant of the Feathered Serpent god, is depicted in surviving codices as a writer, singer, and poet, and as a wanderer who presents the Mixtec dynastic founders with the symbols of kingship. Throughout Mesoamerica, the Feathered Serpent is an establisher of cities and royal lines.

The Serpent may have been associated with social mobility. The Spanish priest Diego Durán mentions the three means of Mesoamerican social mobility – success in war, mercantile success, and the priesthood – when he discusses the god. Indeed, the Feathered Serpent was in many places a war god, the Aztec merchant deity Yacatēuctli was seen as an avatar of Quetzalcōhuātl, and the high priests of the Aztecs were titled “Quetzalcōhuātl”.

Some historians have taken the Feathered Serpent to “stand for a highly abstract notion of spirit standing behind the many more specific manifestations of deity and behind the phenomena of the world… Behind the multiplicity of gods, men, and the things of this earth lay… fundamental unity. Quetzalcoatl was both that ultimate aspect and the vehicle by which it was attained.”

And though his importance has been somewhat obscured by Aztec ideology’s focus on the bloodthirsty war god Huītzilōpōchtli (to the point that Aztec religion as discovered by the Spaniards may have appropriated many of Quetzalcōhuātl’s roles and assigned them to the war god), he remains the best-known of all Mesoamerican gods.

As with many things ITTL, this TL takes an existing tendency in the OTL Americas further along, and so the Feathered Serpent becomes yet more prominent throughout the American world under an even more bewildering array of names. But the Yucayans of the Taiguano state might take it to an extreme…

(A good, if rather opaque, analysis is the paper “The Return of Quetzalcoatl” in Ancient Mesoamerica by Ringle, Negrón, and Bey. It’s also the source of the quote.)
 
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Really love this TL. I've always loved Pre-Columbian TLs but they aren't that many and yours is perhaps one of the most well-researched ones with only @DValdron The Lands of Ice and Mice surpassing it but then his TL is more than a hundred pages long. This latest chapter is really giving me a theological-boner, I've always loved reading about theology and religions (AH Religions included)
 
Entry 26-1: The Taiguano Prophetess in Haiti, 1362-1363
THE TAIGUANO PROPHETESS — Part III
Xaragua

The Taiguano Prophetess returned to Haiti on June 4, 1362, marking the beginning of the Anno Taivanico (AT), the Taiguano calendar.

She and her two thousand followers landed in the major port of Xaragua, what would later become the Taiguano capital of Bacocolon. The Cacique of Xaragua was the most powerful of the five rulers of Haiti, ruling its southwestern quarter the closest to the Mesoamerican mainland. Undaunted, the Prophetess said to him, “O cacique, cast aside your idols and worship Bacocolon alone, the god of men, the only uncreated god, the only uncarved god, the only unsculpted god.”

The Cacique refused. Taiguano sources say he said, “Your new god has shown no miracles, no feats of magic. How could we know if this Bacocolon will give us rain and life? Better the gods we know.”

The Prophetess said, “The idols’ miracles are mere tricks of the eye and fancies of the mind, snares on unsuspecting men. Lord Bacocolon acts through greater things; he speaks through the human mouth, and performs his miracles through the human heart.”

The Cacique said, “This is blasphemy. Repent, or know that I will kill your family cruelly.”

The Prophetess was struck silent, remembering her mother and her father and her brother Guaiqui, and the Cacique smiled, knowing that he had prevailed. Then she said, in a broken voice,

“I cannot repent. My god is Bacocolon alone.”

The Cacique consulted his witch-priests for the appropriate punishment, and they all said, “These people bring a wicked foreign god. They should all be executed and thrown into the sea like dead rats; they do not even deserve to be sacrificed, the idols deserve better than such rotten hearts.” So the Cacique ordered that the Prophetess and her followers all be arrested and thrown into the sea.

The Prophetess had already surmised that the Cacique would betray her, and she fled in advance with her troops. On the way, they set fire to the Temple of Xaragua. The idols burnt well, and the crackling of the wood seemed as music to the ears.

The Cacique ordered the Prophetess's family to be brought in chains before him. Guaiqui managed to escape, but her parents were too old. They were dragged before the Cacique through a rope that the idolaters had sewn into the palms of their hands.

“Your daughter has committed blasphemy and treason. What do you have to say?”

But the parents were silent.

“See if fire will make them speak.”

They brought fire and burned crisp the soles of their feet, but the parents were silent.

“See if water will make them speak.”

They poured salt water into their eyes, but the parents were silent.

“See if earth will make them speak.”

The parents were buried alive under earth, with only a small hole where their mouths were. The Cacique said, "Speak."

“We love our daughter. And even though it has all passed as the gods said it would—with fire and water and earth—our love has not changed.”

The Cacique shook his head and ordered that their mouths be sealed, and they were covered up in earth and died.

The Prophetess heard the news as she retreated, and she wept, and wept again, and pain rolled all over her, but it was a pain that steeled her resolve.


Huihozemi

The army retreated to the rugged lands of the east. At last they reached a mountain that soared high into the clouds, and there they constructed a fortress. Such a thing, the Taiguano sources assure us (and in contradiction to the archaeology), had never before been seen on the island. They built ditches, rammed-earth walls, ramparts and terraces, rows and rows of wooden palisades, water wells and food storage pits. They called this castle Huihozemi, Mountain Sweetness.

The Cacique rallied his own army of ten thousand troops and besieged Huihozemi. They tried to storm the walls, but all their attempts failed before the stout walls and spirited defense. Not a single ditch and rampart were lost, while the bodies of the dead piled up by the walls. On the first day of the attack, 117 of the Cacique’s men were killed, only six of the Prophetess’s; on the second day, 137 to a mere twelve; on the third day, 82 to eight.

Every night the Prophetess saw the bodies and wept and prayed. She shooed away the vultures, even from the bodies of the Cacique's men, and gave every body the most honorable cremations. Most of her people could not understand why.

The third night, the Prophetess saw her men mutilate the enemy corpses and raise their heads over the battlements to intimidate the enemy. She cried,

"You are as bad as they!"

The soldiers were chastised, while she personally took down the heads, prayed, and cremated them with dignity.

Then the Cacique decided to starve them out. The idolaters, of course, had access to far more resources than the defenders of Huihozemi. But there were water wells and pits of food in the fortress, and it was not easy to supply ten thousand people in one place. When the people of Huihozemi had depleted their storages and there was nothing left but the fish in the wells, and the Prophetess was urged on to surrender, she knew that the besiegers must be hungry too.

“Bring out the ten fattest fish from the water wells,” she said, “and do not eat them.”

The Prophetess had the fish sent to the Cacique on a large sling stone, with the following letter:

We have seen how your men thin day by day; sometimes we fear that the skin will sink right into their bones. With your men so famished, and with you such a righteous king, you too must be hungry; what general would eat while his soldiers starve?

We give you ten fish: an act of mercy.
The Cacique despaired when he read the letter, for he realized that the stores of Huihozemi must still be far from depletion. The soldiers, too, had seen the fish. There were whispers that they would starve to death before Huihozemi did, mutterings of mutiny. And the rainy season was coming.

The Cacique withdrew on March 31, 1363.

The troops of Huihozemi acclaimed the Prophetess as a conqueror, and she said:

“I am no conqueror; there is no conqueror but Bacocolon.”
 
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