Hero Twins
I was in Arizona in April and asked the nephew of Oswald White Bear Fredericks, the co-author of the Book of the Hopi with Frank Waters, to make Kachina dolls for my two sons. My wife Sandra knew White Bear when she was a girl, and his Kachinas are prized possessions. May came, and June and July, and I remembered what they say on the reservation about ‘indian time’. But when I called to ask about the dolls, I received a note back saying “I completed them but they seemed wrong, and I have two more started for your boys.”
What I received were Kachina carvings of the Hopi hero twins. The artist had no knowledge of my book, ‘2012: Under the Witz Mountain’, or that I had written a book about Hero Twins, although Mayan ones. What a special package that was, and with my family seated around the dinner table we read the story of the Hopi twins that John Fredericks had put in the box.
Twins have represented our duality in many ways, these people who are individuals yet form with the same blood flowing in their veins. The apostle who doubted the resurrection, having both faith and doubt, was Thomas Didymus, the twin. The Gemini twins of mythology, Castor and Pollux, were earth deities, like the corn goddess Ceres from which we get the word ‘cereal’, but spent half their time on earth and half in heaven. In some stories, one twin is mortal and the other divine, the ultimate duality.
The Hopi twins, Pöqánghoya and Palöngawhoya, prepared the earth to be a home for its creatures, including us. God, an infinite being, needed an agent to help form a material universe. This agent, Sótuknang, was the first manifestation of divine power in a person. He in turn created Spider Woman to remain and be his helper on earth, and she sang a creation song to create life. The twins were given the task of keeping the world in order. Pöqánghoya put his hands on the physical planet to make solid ground, forming mountains and valleys. Palöngawhoya tuned the spiritual earth, sending sounds throughout the planet and through the planet’s vibratory (resonating) centers, making the planet an instrument for both worshiping God and for sending messages long distances. After the creation, Pöqánghoya was sent to the North Pole and Palöngawhoya was sent to the South Pole, where they keep the earth solid and spinning in balance and the air moving in an orderly way. They still resist the efforts of people to unbalance nature, and send their warnings through the vibratory centers.
In their own way, the Mayan Hero Twins, inhabitants of the prior, third age, prepared the world for the arrival of our present fourth age with its inhabitants. In the previous age, a flashy and arrogant bird, 7-Macaw, with shining metallic teeth and eyes, pretended to be God, and flew through the sky calling himself the sun and demanding that people worship him. People also lived at the whim of the scheming Lords of the underworld, who could torment people for their amusement. The twins’ father One-Hunahpu was summoned to the underworld and decapitated, his head hung in a tree.
The twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanke, were determined to rid the world of the power of the arrogant 7-Macaw, and through a series of steps they humbled the arrogant bird and revealed him as a fraud, breaking his power. The twins then went to the underworld where they outwitted the scheming underworld Lords and ultimately defeated them. They were then agents in the resurrection of their father, One-Hunahpu, also known as One-Maize-Revealed, who raised up the sky of this present age and peopled it with humans made of maize, the corn from a cleft in the Witz Mountain. In this way, arrogance and treachery were defeated to create a new world based on self sacrifice (literally) and service.
In the book 2012: Under the Witz Mountain, there are two sets of twins. Ahpu and Celio, like their more famous forebears Hunahpu and and Xbalanke, must defeat an arrogant and malevolent leader who would dominate the new age following 2012. The power of twins is to be more than the sum of their parts, and Celio, raised in Guatemala, and Ahpu, adopted as an infant and called Hunter in his Pennsylvanian home, must be reunited before being capable of anything approaching greatness. The other twins, the girls Ixquel and Alom, also known as the one who lived, reflect the Gemini twins, one in the mortal world and one in the world of the Ancestors below the mountain. Like the Hopi twins, they use their unique connection as a conduit for communication.