U: Ualuvu levu to Uxmal 279
Ushnu
The central plaza, today’s Plaza de Armas, of Cuzco, Peru, the Incas’ capital
and “Navel of the World,” where ceremonies were held to commemorate the
Great Flood. A variety of offerings—water, milk, fermented cactus juice, beer,
etc.—was poured into the Ushnu at the center of a ceremonial area known as
theHaucaypata. Ushnu was a poetic metaphor signifying the ability to consume
prodigious amounts of liquid, and referred to someone drinking copious amounts
of alcohol without getting drunk. It was into this ritual hole in the ground that the
waters of the Deluge were said to have drained after the arrival of the Ayar-aucca,
who brought civilization to the Andes in the ancient past. The Ushnu was believed
to be the entrance to the sacred underworld.
Precisely the same significance was attached by the Etruscans to holes dug
into ground at the precise midpoints of their cities, such as Tarquinia or Populonia.
Each hole was referred to as a mundus, a feature for the ritual deposit of holy
water commemorating the Deluge. Identical offerings to a shared purpose were
made at the Greek Hydrophoria and by the Phoenicians at Hierapolis, in Syria.
Among the Anasasi, Hopi, and other native peoples of the American Southwest,
ritual players in an ancestral ceremony were doused with water, as they tried to
climb up out of an underground chamber known as a kiva. They symbolized the
“emergence” of survivors from the Great Flood.
The vast cultural and geographical differences separating the Inca, North
American Indian, Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician participants in these sacred
dramas contrasts with their close similarity, which may only be explained in terms
of an actual experience shared independently, but in common by them all.
There may be more than a phonetic relationship between the Inca Ushnu and
the uniquely oval Maya pyramid Uxmal (pronounced ush-mal), even though these
languages have nothing else in common. Perhaps both shared an Atlantean word
describing the Deluge that destroyed Atlantis.
(See Ayar-aucca, Etruscans, Hydrophoria, Navel of the World, Uxmal)Urashima-Taro
According to Japanese folklore, a boy whose compassion for an afflicted turtle
saved its life. In gratitude, the creature took him to the bottom of the sea, where
he was the guest of friendly spirits in a magnificent palace, the center of a once-
powerful kingdom, before its tragic demise beneath the waves. As a parting gift,
he is given the Peach of Immortality.
Plants or fruits (particularly peaches) are common elements in Asian, as
well as Western myths about sunken, antediluvian civilizations. The very old
legend of Urashima-Taro is today widely regarded as a reference to the lost
kingdom of Lemuria.
(See Mu)