Queen Victoria Drinks Blood from a Skull in Tibet March 2, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in Ancient, Modern, Uncategorized.Tags: Antichrist, Aztecs, Mexico, Nero, Palden Llamo, Queen Victoria, Quetzalcoatl, Revelations, Tibet, Vespasian
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Leaders who think that they are gods are par for the course: the ancient Egyptians, the Persians, the medieval Japanese, Idi Amin… The insidious eastern idea of divine rulers even leapfrogged the Levant and seeped into Greece and Rome in antiquity. Alexander encountered and enjoyed the privileges of divinity as he pushed his armies east, having his Macedonian warriors bow before him. While the Roman Emperors naturally ran to divinity like a cat to cream: Vespasian’s last words – at least if we are to trust Cassius Dio over Suetonius – even made a jest out of it, ‘Vae, puto deus fio’, ‘hell, I think I’m becoming a god!’ There were various half-hearted Christian efforts to tie the royal families of Europe into ‘God’s bloodline’ (cue Holy Blood and Holy Grail emails) as before these same monarchs had been part of Odin’s family tree. And Arab potentates very often enjoyed direct and genuine descent from the Prophet (peace be upon his name), which while not divinity was the closest that Muslims could come to god as man. However, in the end these various forms of divinity lack the tinge of the bizarre that Beachcombing has come to expect from history. Beachcombing is looking today, instead, for a rather more rarified form of divinity: examples where a ruler has been proclaimed a god or goddess by other lands or other folks.
An antique example is the way in which early Christians seem to have interpreted one of the late first century roman Emperors (Nero? Vespasian?) as the Antichrist: at least if Revelations is to be understood as a prophecy already underway. There is then a long list of hate figures from Diocletian through to Sadam Hussein who were then later interpreted as the Man of Sin of the New Testament. Of course, this is not quite the same as being a god, but it is divinity of sorts (ahem).
Perhaps the canonical example in western culture is the idea that, among the Aztecs, Hernan Cortes was believed to be Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of central America. Indeed, the conquistador was allegedly greeted by the Aztec king with the words* ‘My lord, you have become fatigued, you have become tired: to the land you have arrived. You have come to your city: Mexico, here you have come to sit on your place, on your throne. Oh, it has been reserved to you for a small time; it was conserved by those who have gone, your substitutes’. Then if more was needed: ‘This is what has been told by our rulers, those of whom governed this city, ruled this city. That you would come to ask for your throne, your place, that you would come here. Come to the land, come and rest: take possession of your royal houses, give food to your body.’ These references seem to stand up. Rarely has an invader had such luck…
Beachcombing’s favourite example though is a modern one. Towards the end of the nineteenth-century Queen Victoria was believed, by Tibetans, to be a reincarnation of Palden-Llamo one of the most vicious goddesses to have ever had mortals for elevensees. Palden-Llamo is instantly recognisable in Tibetan Buddhist iconography because she has three eyes, drinks blood from a skull goblet (naturally) and is surrounded by burning fire. One Russian Czar was judged, instead, to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan religious reformer Tsong-ka-pa, which suggests that Russia was seen as less of a threat than the British Empire in the nineteenth century Himalayas. (140 Myth)
Clearly explorers – especially ones from civilisations with a technological edge – are going to be impress those they meet: and there are lots of cases of Europeans and Americans (south and north) being proclaimed ‘special beings’, 1500-2000. But gods? Beachcombing has found disappointingly few cases. The mighty leader interpreted as a god by neighbouring, perhaps militarily inferior peoples, is far more common: but Beachcombing is always on the look out for more examples: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
BTW even by Beachcombing’s sorry standards this title may have gone too far.
***
2 Mar 2011: Beach is rushing out some early answers to this post that have entertained. First, Sloop reminds Beach of the Lyndon Johnson cult in the South Pacific. Sloop is quick to point out that LBJ didn’t become a god precisely, but then, as she points out, neither was the Antichrist. Second, how could Beachcombing have forgotten Haile Selassie’s Rastaffarian destiny in the Carribean: thanks to RE for correcting this? It’s a long way from Ethiopia to Jamaica… Third, Beach was unaware that Prince Philip, the Queen’s consort, has recently been made into a divinity in the New Hebrides: ‘Chief Jack squatted on the ground as he told me how the Prince Philip cult had come about. It seems that it emerged some time in the 1960s, when Vanuatu was an Anglo-French colony known as the New Hebrides. For centuries, perhaps millennia, villagers had believed in an ancient story about the son of a mountain spirit venturing across the seas to look for a powerful woman to marry. They believed that unlike them, this spirit had pale skin. Somehow the legend gradually became associated with Prince Philip, who had indeed married a rich and powerful lady. Villagers would have seen his portrait – and that of the Queen – in government outposts and police stations run by British colonial officials. Their beliefs were bolstered in 1974, when the Queen and Prince Philip made an official visit to the New Hebrides. Here was their ancestral spirit, resplendent in a white naval officer’s uniform, come back to show off his bride. ‘He’s a god, not a man’, the chief told me emphatically, pointing at the portraits.’ Beach has always had a bit of a soft spot for Phil, but still! Good old Ostrich and James Mac for this precious information! Beachcombing is going to have a smile all day thanks to you.
Fourth, Invisible has also brought in another source that surprised Beachcombing, and includes a rather unusual method of becoming a divinity. But then we are speaking of the Vikings… Watch out for Gunnar getting the divine consort pregnant: ‘Norwegian Gunnar Helming was suspected of having committed a murder. For fear of King Olaf he fled to Sweden . There happened to be great sacrifices in the honour of Freyr, and his idol had such a power that the devil spoke through it, and it had been given a young wife. People believed that they could have sexual intercourse. Freyr’s wife was pretty, and she had the dominion over the temple. Gunnar asked her for shelter. She answered: ‘You are not fortunate, for Freyr does not like you. Nevertheless, stay here for three nights, and we may see.’ He said: ‘I like better to be helped by you than by Freyr.’ Gunnar was a very jolly and cheerful person. After three nights he asked whether he might stay there any longer. ‘I do not know exactly’, said she. ‘You are a poor fellow, and still, as it seems, of good extraction, I should like to help you, only I am afraid that Freyr hates you. Still, remain here half a month, and we may again see’. Gunnar pleased the Swedes well because of his cheerfulness and smartness. After some time, he talked again with Freyr’s wife. She said: ‘People like you well, and I think it is better you stay her this winter and accompany us when Freyr makes his annual journey. But I must tell you that he is still angry with you.’ Gunnar thanked her well. . . Now the festival time came, and the procession started. Freyr and his wife were placed in the carriage, whereas their servants and Gunnar had to walk beside. When driving through the mountains, they were surprised by a tempest and all the servants fled. Gunnar remained. At last he got tired of walking, went into the carriage and let the draught cattle go as they liked. Freyr’s wife said: ‘You had better try and walk again, for otherwise Freyr will arise against you.’ Gunnar did so, but when he got too tired, he said: ‘Anyhow, let him come, I will stand against him.’ Now Freyr arises, and they wrestle till Gunnar notices that he is getting weaker. Then he thinks by himself that if he overcomes this load Foe he will return to the right faith and be reconciled with King Olaf. And immediately after Freyr begins to give way, and afterwards to sink. Now this Foe leaps out of the idol, and it lay there empty. Gunnar broke it into pieces and gave Freyr’s wife two alternatives: that he would leave, or that she might declare him publicly to be the god Freyr. She said that she would willingly declare what he liked. Now Gunnar dressed in Freyr’s clothes, the weather improved and they went to the festival. People were very much impressed by the power of Freyr, because he was able to visit the country in such a tempest, allthough all the servants had fled. They wondered how he went about among them and talked like other men. Thus Freyr and his wife spent the winter going to festivals. Freyr was not more eloquent towards people than his wife, and he would not receive living victims, as before, and no offerings except gold, silk, and good clothings. Alter months, people began to notice that Freyr’s wife was gravid [i.e. pregnant]. They thought it splendid, and many expected great wonders of their god Freyr. Also the weather was fine, and it looked like such a harvest as nobody remembered to have seen before. The rumours of Freyr’s power were reported to Norway, and also brought before King Olaf. He had some suspicion of the truth and asked Gunnar’s brother Sigurd what he knew about the exiled Sigurd knew of nothing. The King said: ‘I believe this mighty god of the Swedes, who is so famous in all countries, is no other person than your brother Gunnar. For otherwise, those are the greatest where living men, are slaughtered. . . . . Now I send you to Sweden , for it is terrible to know that a Christian man’s soul should be situated thus. I shall give up my wrath, if he comes voluntarily, for now I know that he has not committed the murder.’. . . . Sigurd immediately went to Sweden and brought his brother these news. Gunnar answered: ‘Certainly might I willingly go back; but if the Swedes discover the truth, they will kill me.’ Sigurd said: ‘We shall secretly carry you away, and be sure that King Olaf’s good fortune God’s mercy is more powerful than the Swedes.’ Now Gunnar and his wife prepare their flight, tsking with them as many goods as they were able to carry. The Swedes went in pursuit of them, but lost the trace and did not find them. So Gunnar and his people arrived in Norway and went to King Olaf, who received them well and made him his wife to be baptized.’ Fifth, several others wrote into note that Christianity was arguably based on a divinity misunderstanding: the point is an interesting one. Thanks again to Invisible, Ostrich, James Mac, RE, Sloop and all the other emailers!
3 Mar 2011: More god material this morning. Sixth, Ricardo R. remembers Kipling’s excellent ‘The Man Who Would be King’, (supposedly based on true ‘Raj’ facts): note that Ricardo also quotes a source claiming that Cook was believed to be a god (before he was killed) on big island.KMH has also intervened: ‘Perhaps the situation might be clearer if we were to distinguish those claiming to be a real god from those claiming to be a ‘son of god’. Alexander actually claimed to be a son of Zeus, based on what the priests told him, I believe. Caesar claimed to be a son of Mars. Hercules was also a son of Zeus, as I remember. These sons were certainly given a preferential destiny and the abilities to go with it, but were actually only flesh and blood with perhaps an exceptional soul or spirit. All that can be said is that perhaps there was a ‘divine intervention’ in the birth process by these men to produce the kind of individual wanted for that time and place.’ Beachcombing wonders if Alexander especially didn’t believe that he was rather more than flesh and blood, certainly some of the later Roman Emperors seem to have been under this illusion. In any case, KMH continues: ‘For the Hindus and Lamaists the situation goes a little further than divine intevention. A god like Vishnu will incarnate to produce a man like Kishna (or Kalkin, the next in line) but only a portion of the god which can fit into a human frame will incarnate, not the complete god. Humans are too small to hold a real god. Even Christ had to ‘void himself’ to incarnate.’ This is all very interesting and leads Beach to a question: can two contemporaries be reincarnations of the same being? He’s found a couple of worrying examples where this seems to have happened in early twentieth century Mongolia (naturally). Thanks Ricardo and KMH!
Bierce’s Second Act February 18, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in Contemporary, Modern, Uncategorized.Tags: Ambrose Bierce, Cobblers, Mexico
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Poor F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed, in a novel that he could not finish, that there are no second acts in American lives. However, Beachcombing has always wondered about a possible exception in Ambrose ‘Bitter’ Bierce ‘the Devil’s lexographer’, short-story writer, journalist, poet, sceptic and general stand-up guy.
Bierce had, by any standards, an undeservedly crappy life. Of his three children, two died while their father was in his prime: one in a brawl, the other through pneumonia aggravated by alcoholism. His wife and he divorced after Bierce learnt that she had betrayed him: then she committed suicide (just to round off matters).
With this kind of past no wonder that Bierce, aged 71 (1913), decided that he needed something new and headed towards the Mexican civil war that was then heating up. The last that anyone in the States heard of him was in a letter dated 16 Dec 1913. Then came merciful silence.
Beachcombing has long fantasised about that silence. Bierce, who spoke no Spanish, had met a lovely señorita and had set up a shack on a beach on the Mexican coast. He then spent his declining years eating watermelon and engaging in acrobatic sex acts.
Bierce certainly had the guts to grasp at the unconventional solution. He also perhaps had the desire: ‘Pretty soon I am going away – o very far away. I have in mind a little valley in the heart of the Andes, just wide enough for one.’ In this scenario the Incan princess arrives a little afterwards, but there would still be a sunset at the end of Bierce’s life and, Beachcombing repeats, watermelon et alia.
However, back in the real world Bierce was not going to the snowy peaks of the Andes, but ‘under the volcano’ into one of the most dangerous countries in the western hemisphere in the midst of a horrific war no less. Bierce may, like Beachcombing, have fantasised, but he also had his old mordant sense of reality and a philosophy to match: ‘Good-bye – if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico, ah, that is euthanasia!’
Now one thing is certain, whether in the Andes, on the veranda of his beach shack or up against a ‘Mexican stone wall’ Bierce, sooner or later, popped his clogs. The question is when and why and how?
The different explanations of how Bierce died could, in fact, fill a small notebook – there are about twenty doing the rounds. They are, themselves, a lesson in how history distorts itself particularly when copy-hungry, lazy Anglo-Saxon investigators from the first half of the last century found themselves face to face with Latin braggarts who wanted another round of tequila.
The vast majority involve bullets: fired by Bierce or some ‘euthanising’ Mexicans.
But how to pick the correct story from this mélange of mongrels and strays? The best principle is, of course, to find a story that can be verified by two sources and only one makes the grade.
The winning tale appears in an autobiographical sketch of Tex O’Reilly (‘the Irish cowboy’) and relates to the town of Sierra Mojada. It was a story that Tex had been told.
One afternoon [an unnamed American] was drinking in a cantina with three Federal volunteers, and they decided to kill him then. They borrowed his pistol, and when he left they walked out with him to the edge of town. I talked with two eye-witnesses who had seen the whole thing. Apparently he suspected nothing until the three men turned on him and began shooting. The first shot must have struck him in the leg or belly, because he dropped down, squatting on his heels. And the two Mexicans were impressed by the strange way in which he died. He squatted there in the dust of the road and began to laugh heartily. The three men kept shooting him, hitting him, but they could not kill him, and he did not stop laughing. He sat there and laughed till finally they shot him in the heart. The Mexicans were amazed because he was laughing as though it were a tremendous joke that he was being killed. The Mexicans in Sierra Mojada described Bierce exactly. He was then an old man, past seventy, but he looked younger than that and was vigorous and very strong for his age. They said he was a dictatorial old fellow who wanted to be left alone and who insulted everybody who bothered him.
Now this is written by a man who seems generally to have been reliable as a witness (though remember here he was relying on other witnesses…) and it was written within twenty years (1933) of Bierce’s supposed death.
Luckily, there is also a second source for this death. An aged priest, Don Chuy from Sierra Mojada recalled in 1989 seeing, as a child, a gringo being shot in his home town. The narrator is James Lienert: an American priest who worked for many years in Mexico.
‘Several weeks [after asking Don Chuy about Bierce] when I was passing in front of Don Chuy’s house, he waved me down and wanted to talk to me. He said that he had been thinking about [the Bierce mystery], and, yes, he was remembering something. Don Chuy went on to relate: ‘One morning when I was just a boy, a close pal of mine, Crysostomo, the son of Marcelo de Anda, the Comandante, came running up to me saying to come along because they were going to put someone to the firing squad (fusilamiento). So we went to the corral of the soldiers’ quarters, and while we were there a soldier came up to the captain and said:’ ‘We have him, and everything is ready’. With that the captain dispatched several other soldiers, and everyone headed down toward the cemetery. There were a lot of other people following too, and when we got to the cemetery the soldiers made everyone stand back as far as the stone wall. (A low field-stone retaining wall about a hundred yards away, and front of the cemetery.) Then they stood the man against the wall and shot him’. (Don Chuy remembers that the man was an American, and was called El Ruso). Don Chuy went on to say that he stayed for the burial. He mentioned the name of one of the men who buried the body, and the name of a lady who said some prayers at the graveside.
It should be noted that Don Chuy was not able to remember this event when first asked about it: but there is no reason to doubt the essential truth of what is told here. And Beachcombing, despite all his recent bad mouthing of childhood memory, would trust this over Tex’s second-hand account. In fact, he would suggest that the inconsistencies between them are almost all on Tex’s side of the balance. An American was killed in Sierra Mojada in 1913/1914 and some of the facts are suggestive of Bierce: dying laughing (!) and El Ruso (the Russian because blond like Bierce?).
The only point that disturbs in Don Chuy’s account is that the Mexican had no memory that the victim was old. A child thinking that all adults are pensioners? Or is it just that Bierce was quite youthful as Tex and other sources suggest?
This small objection aside Don Chuy’s friend and amanuensis James Lienert was likely right to have put a stone up to Ambrose Bierce in the cemetery of the town. No acrobatic sex, no Incan princess, no second acts, only a final burst of hilarity at the expense of death: and so one of those rare existentialists before the fact shuffles off this mortal coil.
drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com for other opinions on Bierce’s fate.
The search for Fusang December 21, 2010
Posted by Beachcombing in Ancient, Medieval, Uncategorized.Tags: China, Fusang, Japan, Ma Duanlin, Mexico, WtH
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The snow is melting rapidly outside and just in time. Mrs B is suffering in the room above from what look like real contractions – Beachcombing conspicuously absent. Beachcombing then is going to let his source do all the talking today. If he hasn’t written much of a conclusion then the chances are that the balloon has gone up and the new world order has begun. Think Iran with the bomb, neo cons with aircraft carriers – the works in short.
The following appears in the encyolopedia of Ma Duanlin (obit 1322), a medieval Chinese scholar who had access to many ancient sources now lost to us. In his great tomes he describes the land of Fusang – the Fusang, incidentally, was the Chinese solar tree pictured here.
During the reign of the dynasty Tsi, in the first year of the year-naming, Everlasting Origin [499 AD], came a Buddhist priest from [the kingdom of Fusang], who bore the cloister-name of Hoei-schiu, i.e. Universal Compassion, to the present district of Hukuang, and those surrounding it, who narrated that Fusang is about twenty thousand Chinese miles in an easterly direction from Tahan, and east of the Middle Kingdom.
This would put the mysterious Fusang somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean. Its name seems to have been inspired by the monk’s observation of certain trees there.
Many Fusang trees grow there, whose leaves resemble the dryanda cordifolia [much debated translation of course!] the sprouts, on the contrary, resemble those of the bamboo tree and are eaten by the inhabitants of the land. The fruit is like a pear in form, but is red. From the bark they prepare a sort of linen which they use for clothing, and also a sort of ornamented stuff. The houses are built of wooden beams; fortified and walled places are there unknown. They have written characters in this land, and prepare paper from the bark of the Fusang.
The people have no weapons, and make no wars; but in the arrangements for the kingdom they have a northern and a southern prison. Trifling offenders were lodged in the southern prison, but those confined for greater offences in the northern; so that those who were about to receive grace could be placed in the southern prison, and those who were not, in the northern. Those men and women who were imprisoned for life were allowed to marry. The boys resulting from these marriages were, at the age of eight years, sold as slaves; the girls not until their ninth year. If a man of any note was found guilty of crimes, an assembly was held; it must be in an excavated place. There they strewed ashes over him [in a pit?], and bade him farewell. If the offender was one of a lower class, he alone was punished; but when of rank, the degradation was extended to his children and grandchildren. With those of the highest rank it attained to the seventh generation.
The name of the king is pronounced Ichi. The nobles of the first-class are termed Tuilu; of the second, Little Tuilu; and of the third, Na-to-scha, When the prince goes forth, he is accompanied by horns and trumpets. The colour of his clothes changes with the different years. In the two first of the ten-year cycles they are blue; in the two next, red; in the two following, yellow; in the two next, red; and in the last two, black. The horns of the oxen are so large that they hold ten bushels. They use them to contain all manner of things. Horses, oxen, and stags are harnessed to their wagons. Stags are used here as cattle are used in the Middle Kingdom, and from the milk of the hind they make butter. The red pears of the Fusang-tree keep good throughout the year. Moreover, they have apples and reeds. From the latter they prepare mats. No iron is found in this land; but copper, gold, and silver are not prized, and do not serve as a medium of exchange in the market.
Marriage is determined upon in the following manner. The suitor builds himself a hut before the door of the house where the one longed for dwells, and waters and cleans the ground every morning and evening. When a year has passed by, if the maiden is not inclined to marry him, he departs; should she be willing, it is completed. When the parents die, they fast seven days. For the death of the paternal or maternal grandfather they lament five days; at the death of elder or younger sisters or brothers, uncles or aunts, three days. They then sit from morning to evening before an image of the ghost, absorbed in prayer, but wear no mourning clothes. When the king dies, the son who succeeds him does not busy himself for three years with state affairs. In earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha. But it happened that in the second year-naming Great Light of Song [AD 458], five beggar-monks from the kingdom of Kipin [approx Pakistan] went to this land, extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his holy writings and images. They instructed the people in the principles of monastic life, and so changed their manners.
There have been numerous attempts over the years to connect this description to North America and particularly to Mexico. Here Beachcombing has to demure – at least slightly. Not that he doesn’t like the idea of Mexico being converted to Buddhism in the fifth century AD, by monks from Pakistan no less! He is not even put off by a pre-Columbian reference to horses. It takes all sorts and, besides, how easy it is to confuse some other beast of burden with an Arabian stallion. It is not even the vast spaces of the Pacific that worries Beachcombing – a distance so much greater than that across the Atlantic to North America. Beachcombing’s problem is, instead, with the other lands described by this same Buddhist monk who had perhaps quaffed overly on rice wine.
[The Kingdom of Women] is a thousand li to the east of Fusang. The bearing and manners of the people are very sedate and formal; their colour is exceedingly clear and white; their bodies are hairy and the hair of the head trails of the ground. In the spring they emulously rush into the water and become pregnant; the children are born in the autumn. These female-men have no paps on their bosoms, but hair-roots grow on the back of their necks; a juice is found on the white ones. The children are suckled a hundred days, when they can walk; they are fully grown by the fourth year. Whenever they see a man the flee and hide from him in terror, for they are afraid of having husbands. They eat pickled greens, whose leaves are like wild celery; the odour is agreeable and the taste saltish.
What we seem to have here are the eastern equivalents of the Irish Brendan legends: fantastic islands out in the ocean where the Chinese could let their imaginative hair down. Other opinions on Fusang exist, including attempts to identify it with Japan. Views on an e-postcard please. drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Hot Chocolate at High Mass November 6, 2010
Posted by Beachcombing in Modern, Uncategorized.Tags: Bernardino de Salazar, Chocolate, Food, Mass, Mexico, Thomas Gage, Wrong Time
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Beachcombing was doing some research, trying to catch up with a student’s reading on the origins of chocolate and came across this gem. It is the story of a bishop, Bernardino de Salazar, who was poisoned because he tried to stop the women in his congregation from taking chocolate drinks during high mass. Our narrator is the English Dominican, Thomas Gage (obit 1656) who traveled to the New World in the first quarter of the seventeenth century.
The Bishop [of Chiapa] was (as all the rest are there) somewhat covetous; but otherwise a man of temperate life and conversation, very zealous to reforme whatsoever abuses committed in the Church, which cost him his life before I departed from Chiapa to Guatemala. The woman of that City it seems pretend [i.e. claim] much weaknesse and squeamishnesse of stomack, which they say is so great, that they are not able to continue in the Church while a Masse is briefly hudled over, much lesse while a solemn high Masse (as they call it) is sung, and a Sermon preached, unlesse they drink a cup of hot Chocolatte, and eat a bit of sweet-meats to strengthen their stomacke. For this purpose it was much used by them to make their maids bring to them to the Church in the middle of Masse or Sermon a cup of Chocolatte, which could not be done to all, or most of them without a great confusion and interrupting both Masse and Sermon. The Bishop perceiving this abuse and having given faire warning for the omitting of it, but all without amendment, thought fit to fixe in writing upon the Churches dores an excommunication against all such as should presume at the time of service to eat or drinke within the Church.
The woman left the cathedral in disgust and Gage alleges that the episcopus was then poisoned by one of his servants on the command of a spurned lady. Certainly, Bernardino died in 1626 just three years after he had been ordained. Gage was in Chiapa at this time.
Beachcombing’s first thought on reading this was just how glad he is to not have lived in the seventeenth century. The Middle Ages did bigotry with style, whereas modernity manages tolerance tolerably well. The early moderns though fall between two stools – even the likeable Gage converted to Catholicism and back again to Anglicanism and then worked with that monster Oliver Cromwell towards the end of his life.
But Beachcombing must also confess to enjoying the thought of Bernardino’s expression when, at his first mass, a series of creole servants walk in with steaming cups of hot cocoa just as the blessing is made: veni sanctificator…
Beachcombing does not know if any academic has made the obvious connection between hot cocoa at mass and the claims sometimes made that chocolate was used by the Aztecs in blood rituals. Bernardino Sahagún (obit 1590) wrote that a beverage made of cacao and bloody water was given to sacrificial victims in their last dance.
Of course, an ‘obvious’ connection does not mean a correct connection, still it makes you think…
Beachcombing has also found reference to an article by Martha Few, ‘Chocolate, Sex and Disorderly Women in Late-Seventeenth Century Guatemala’, Ethnohistory 52 (2005) 673-687. Perhaps chocolate will be a fruitful field of research for bizarrists? Beachcombing, in any case, can’t wait to get his hands on those fifteen promising pages. He will also take this opportunity to recommend a new site he recently stumbled on for Mesoamerica…
Any other chocolate stories? Beachcombing will unwrap them – drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
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