The Martian Maize God

The Martian Maize God
("Is This Corn Hand Shucked?")

Part 2

George J. Haas

After reviewing the idea presented in the book "The Cydonia Codex, Reflections From Mars, that some of these Martian geoglyphs are placed in a totemic form that may run the length of an entire the strip, Anomaly Hunter Jim Miller decided to extend the demarcation line (Figure1) far above and below the Martian Corn god geoglyph (See Full Strip above).

Figure 1
Martian Corn God Geoglyph with extended demarcation line.
Crop of M0807345.

Miller then mirrored each side of the strip to see if any images could be created. As a result of this little experiment he found a set of totemic images that appeared to be created more by an intentional design rather than by chance. The first image he noticed was a perfectly bifurcated face of what he thought looked like a rodent-like tiger located directly below the Martian Corn god (Figure 2). Notice the small squinting eyes, the boxed ears, the nose, muzzle and whiskers.

Figure 2
Tiger (encircled)
Note squinting eyes, ears, and muzzle.

When the Tiger head is inverted, a perfect example of "contour rivalry" is revealed. The face of the Tiger transforms into the face of a Cheshire cat, set between two large orbs that flank his head (Figure 3a). Notice the serpentine horn of parted hair on the top of his head, the furry ears, the round eyes, large nose, and the extended grin with fangs. The grinning feline face resembles the likeness of a self-consuming creature known throughout Indonesia as a Boma Face, or The Face of Glory (Figure 3b). This self-consuming legend of a monstrous feline known as The Face of Glory begins in India. According to the Hindu myth the Shiva of India suggests to a ravenous half lion-half man creature, who had nothing to eat, that he could satisfy his insatiable hunger by eating himself. The creature proceeds to eat his entire body, starting with his feet, leaving only his smiling face.1 This self-consuming myth is related to the idea of the self-devouring serpent, known as the Ouroboros, that eats its tail and as we will see, The Face of Glory is the Hindu counterpart to a well known Greek god who in turn eats his own children.

a.
b.

Figure 3
Cheshire Cat and The Face of Glory.
a.) Martian Cheshire Cat
b.) The Face of Glory (Boma Face).
Note the horned serpentine parted hair line, the furry ears, round eyes,
broad nose, and extended grin in both faces.

When Miller presented the mirrored portion of the strip, that included the Cheshire cat head to me for my reaction, I immediately notice the Cheshire cat had a furry body attached to it. I then noticed that the full figured Cheshire cat appeared to be holding an inverted decapitated human body (Figure 4). The overall image looked like the Greek god Cronos eating one of his children.

Figure 4
The Martian Cronos (with analytical drawing)
Note the human figure being eaten.

When most people think of the Greek god Cronos they envision the horrifying image created by the artist Francisco Goya, who painted an image of a crazed cannibalistic giant eating a decapitated human figure (Figure 5). In Greek mythology the god Cronos was the youngest of the Titans and is believed to be the son of Uranus and Ge (Heaven and Earth). As a desperate act to release his fellow Titans from capture Cronos dethrones his father by castrating him with a sickle. As a safeguard against his children dethroning him in a similar manner, he devours his own offspring as soon as they are born. Because of his association with the sickle, Cronos is also considered an agricultural god. The sickle is seen as a tool of destruction that denotes the act of cutting or devouring the crops that one plants. Like his Roman counterpart, Saturn, Cronos is also portrayed as the god of time. His personification of time is seen as a force that has such a ravenous appetite for life it devours all it creates.2

Figure 5
Cronos: Francisco Goya (1624)
Note Cronos eating one of his children.

So, you may be asking yourself, why is the Martian version of Cronos depicted as a feline? Well, according to the Mithraic version of Cronos, 3 which was derived from the Persian representation of Zervan (Time), he was seen as a bi-somatic figure with a human body and the head of a lion (Figure 6).

Figure 6
Zervan (Persian Cronos)
Cronos in his lion form.
Note he stands on a globe (World Egg).

"Zervan, after having undergone all kinds of foreign influences,
was admitted into the Mithraic pantheon and that the figure with
the lion's head is none other than Zervan who, by means of a put
on Chronos (Time), was identified in the Greek texts with Kronos
and, in the Roman world, with Saturn. "4

The lion headded figure of Zervan has four wings, two pointed upword and two lowered. This is an allusion to the dulism of time, which includes the passage of time and the transport beyond time.5 Notice that Zervan is standing on a globe of the world, this is a metaphor for the cosmic World Egg. The two bands encircle the globe forming an "X" where they interserct, signafinig the center of the universe and the equinoxes.6 If you recall in the Mars image Cronos stands on a globe formation (note the feet) while he eats a human.
In the cycle of nature, the lion is seen as an extention of the earth, which devours its victims. This relationship is seen as a metaphor for time that devours itself. This is where the idea of Cronos eating his children comes from. In a sense by eating his young Cronos is eating himself. He is like The Face of Glory, which like time devoures its own creation. You are all probably familiar with the Father Time images associated with the New Year, which is actually the celebration of the passing of time. Modern icons depict an old man (Father Time as Uranus), who is replaced by a new young child who users in the new year. The little baby is presented here as the equivilant to the youthful Cronos who replaces his father as the new ruler of the gods.
As might be expected, the Maya also depicted a Cronos-like creature of a giant jaguar devouring a human (Figure 7). Like the Zervan, the jaguar is also seen as an extension of the earth and therefore by eating man he completes the cycle of nature. Remarkably, in many examples of Maya and Peruvian art works where jaguars prepare to eat a sacrificial human, the victims usually appear to be pleased with what is occurring.

Figure 7
Jaguar Devouring A Man - Maya ceramic (700 AD).
Note the calm accepting demeanor of the victim.

The Maya and the Olmec believed that the jaguar was a mystical beast that symbolized the earth.7 The Olmec went so far to embrace this idea that they produced a sarcophagus in the shape of a were-jaguar in which a dead human body was to be interned (Figure 8).

Figure 8
Olmec were-Jaguar coffin (La Venta, Mexico).
Note the snarling jaguar face on the front and the
body of the jaguar carved on the side of the coffin.

The Olmec believed that with the image of the jaguar carved on the coffin, the body would be consumed and return to mother earth, just as the eaten body would return to the earth when consumed by a live jaguar. Interestingly, the word sarcophagus is from the Greek work, sarkos, which means "flesh, " plus the word phagein, which means "to eat."8 When one considers that the Maya saw the cultivation of corn as an analogy of human creation, it could be said, like Cronos eating his own offspring, when the Maya eat corn they are really eating themselves.

Part Three still in progress

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............................... Footnotes:
1. Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image, (1974), p.118.
2. J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, (1971), p. 278.
3. Catholic Encyclopedia @ - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10402a.htm.
    The first principle or highest God was according to Mithraism "Infinite Time"; this was called Aion or Saeculum, Kronos
    or Saturnus. This Kronos is none other than Zervan, an ancient Iranian conception, which survived the sharp dualism of
    Zoroaster; for Zervan was father of both Ormuzd and Ahriman and connected the two opposites in a higher unity and was
   still worshipped a thousand years later by the Manichees. This personified Time, ineffable, sexless, passionless, was
   represented by a human monster, with the head of a lion and a serpent coiled about his body. He carried a sceptre and
   lightning as sovereign god and held in each hand a key as master of the heavens. He had two pair of wings to symbolize the
   swiftness of time. His body was covered with zodiacal signs and the emblems of the seasons (i.e. Chaldean astrology
   combined with Zervanism).
4. Mithraism, Ch. 6 - The God of Infinite Time, @ http://www.farvardyn.com/mithras5.htm
5. J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, (1971), p.67.
6. David Ulansey, Solving the Mitheraic Mysteries, Biblical Archaeology Review, Sep/Oct, 1994, p.50. Ulansey states that
    statues of many lion headed gods have been found that represent an iconographic connection between the Zervan and
    Mithera.
7. Personal conversation with archaeologest Karl Taube. See Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image,
    1974), p.126.
8. Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image, p.126. The Greeks believed that certain stones had the mystic property
     of consuming the flesh of dead bodies and therefore used coffins of stone, wherein the bodies of the
     dead were returned to Mother Earth, just as the Olmec believed.

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