Nothing was
but stillness, and rest, and darkness, and the night; nothing but the
Maker and Moulder, the Hurler, the Bird-Serpent. In the waters, in a
limpid twilight, covered with green feathers, slept the mothers and the
fathers."[196-2]
Over this passed Hurakan, the mighty wind, and called out Earth! and
straightway the solid land was there.
The picture writings of the Mixtecs preserved a similar cosmogony: "In
the year and in the day of clouds, before ever were either years or
days, the world lay in darkness; all things were orderless, and a water
covered the slime and the ooze that the earth then was." By the efforts
of two winds, called, from astrological associations, that of Nine
Serpents and that of Nine Caverns, personified one as a bird and one as
a winged serpent, the waters subsided and the land dried.[197-1]
In the birds that here play such conspicuous parts, we cannot fail to
recognize the winds and the clouds; but more especially the dark thunder
cloud, soaring in space at the beginning of things, most forcible emblem
of the aerial powers.
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