how they interact with the Divine. Finally, I will study the similar references
to an “Ancient Word” which appear in both the Mayan Popol Vuh, and the
Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
When viewed as a whole, I hope that the commonalities between these
disparate texts serve as compelling evidence of a deep connection. Specific
claims concerning the nature of this connection – whether it is religious,
anthropological, archetypal – would require further study, and may prove
unverifiable.
In the introduction to his award-winning 1996 translation, Dennis Tedlock
attempts to trace the Popol Vuh back to its murky origins. He contends that the
narrative existed first in a hieroglyphic form, but this offers little precision.
Mayan hieroglyphics are believed to have been in continuous use from roughly
the third century BCE until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century.
It was in the early conquest period, however, that the Mayans were first
introduced to alphabetic writing. Tedlock notes that there is “no little justice”
in the fact that it was the Christian missionaries who – after enforcing the
destruction of all ancient texts – taught the locals to write in Spanish. The
Christian oppressors clearly did this so that the Bible might be translated for
the Mayan people, but translation is a two-way street.
There is little consensus and no overt evidence of this 16th-century text, and
it is not until 1701 that the origins become more clear. In this year, a Dominican
friar by the name of Francisco Ximénez made the oldest surviving copy of the
Popol Vuh. Whatever, or whomever, his source was, the Ximénez text remained
in obscurity within the Dominican monastery until after Guatemala declared
independence in 1821. Even then, it was not “rediscovered” and published
until 1857.
These years of obscurity – after the Popol Vuh was recorded in its
alphabetic form, but before its rediscovery – entirely eclipse the enigmatic
career of Emanuel Swedenborg. In 1688, literally half a world away from the
origins of the Mayan Popol Vuh, Swedenborg was born in Stockholm, Sweden.
Throughout the first half of his adult life, he gained fame as an inventor,
scientist and thinker. He met with the King of Sweden and was later elevated to
nobility. He is credited with anticipating the biological concept of the neuron;
the philosopher Wilson Van Dusen even credits Swedenborg as an early father
of psychology and phenomenology: “[His approach] gathers the raw data
of experience itself. It attempts to observe, understand and describe human
experience itself. As in many other things he was ahead of his time.” (Wilson
xxxii)
But in 1745, in his mid-50s, Swedenborg had a spiritual awakening
that dramatically changed the trajectory of his career, and his life. At first
in the form of dreams, and later in waking visions, he began an existential
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