M: Macusis to Mu-yu-Moqo 177
on Tenerife, and featured an inscription at its base. Leading Latin scholars for
four centuries struggled and failed to translate it, concluding that the words
belonged to a wholly unknown written language. The statue portrayed a nude
female, so Catholic priests draped the figure with specially sewn garments.
Interpreted as a representation of the Catholic Blessed Virgin, it stood 3 1/2 feet
tall and was carved in light red wood, the hair arranged in plaits of beaten gold
hanging down to the shoulders.
To the female figure’s right, holding a little bird of gold, was seated a small,
naked boy, identified by Church officials as the Infant Jesus. He might just as
well have been Herupkhart, “Horus the Child,” the sun-god usually appearing
as a naked youth. His Egyptian myth told how he first crossed the sky from east
to west in the company of Maia, the goddess of truth and embodiment of the
eternal order of the universe. The golden bird, a common solar symbol, held by
the boy of the Candalaria statue was probably a falcon, the avatar of Herupkhart.
In any case, the statue’s close resemblance to Maia and Horus the Child
rendered it more Egyptian than Christian, especially in view of the Guanches’
name for the image: Maia.
In November, 1826, a monstrous tidal wave crashed over Tenerife, and swept
the Lady of the Candalaria and her boy into the sea, never to be seen again. The
statue may have been a local Guanche creation, or perhaps it had been preserved
as a holy image from lost Atlantis. The boy accompanying her was an appropriate
addition, considering the function of each one of the Pleiades as the ancestors of
post-deluge founders of new kingdoms.
It is tempting to see in Maia the eponymous ancestress of the Mayas specifi-
cally and Mesoamerican civilization generally. The female progenitor of the
Aztecs was Coatlicue, “Our Grandmother,” the same title given to the eldest
Pleiade, Maia. The Ge-speaking Indians of Brazil’s northern coasts worshiped Maira,
their ancestress. In the ancient past, she was said to have set fire to a beautiful city
on an island far out at sea, then sank it to punish its sinful inhabitants. Interestingly,
“Maira” is the European gnostic name for the Star of Isis, later used as a title for
the Virgin Mary. The Greeks knew Maia similarly as “The Grandmother of Magic.”
In Hindu tradition, Maya is the mother of Buddha, in keeping with the role of the
Atlantean Pleiades as the mothers or grandmothers of great men.
The goddess of the Canary Islands, Egypt, Greece, India, and the Americas
was one and the same deity: the Atlantis, Maia. In the Atlantean Empire, Maia
was the name of an allied kingdom or colony including Lowland Yucatan and
Guatemala. It is here, at the Maya city of Tikal, that the Austrian archaeologist,
Teobert Mahler, discovered a sculpted frieze representing the destruction of
Atlantis on the front facade of the Acropolis.
(See Maler, Pleiades)Maidu
A California Indian tribe, whose deluge story tells of Talvolte and Peheipe,
the only survivors of a natural catastrophe that destroyed their earthly paradise