Three Civilizations for Consideration

Quetzalcoatl

I have been thinking a great deal about my supernatural themed novel that I started many, many years ago and haven't worked on in a while.  My main character drinks blood but is not a vampire.  A long time ago, Hannah and I wrote an RP wherein I developed a different look at the vampire myth and I reckon it's about time I revisit that idea and see if I can't mold and shape the myth to serve my novel's purpose.  I love strange creatures and urban fantasy set-ups and I also, like Hannah said in her blog recently, love research.  The gradual devouring of knowledge, the stirring of facts until you end up with a strange broth that may or may taste good.  I love that.  So to start me off on some research I found a few sites that detailed three very important and intriguing civilizations of the Americas: the Incas, the Aztecs, and the Maya.  Click here for all three compared in a nutshell and click here to see a neat timeline detailing the development of the measuring of time and the recording of info.  I'm going to read over the religious beliefs (Aztec, Maya, Inca), creation myths, and pretty much anything macabre and strange that I can find about these cultures.  I'm at the beginning of my studies but right off I think it's interesting how the oldest one (the Mayan) is the only one that really survived.  The civilization disappeared but was not destroyed and there are over 6 Million Mayan descendants still alive today.  These descendants keep many of the old rituals and traditions alive including sacrifice (usually of turkeys).

I was always very interested in these civilizations when we learned about them in school.  I loved the names of the Aztec cities and I loved that idea of the floating city.  As for the Maya; I fell in love with the movie Apocalypto when I was in college.  There was much groaning surrounding this film because it painted a dark and ritualistically inaccurate picture of the Mayan culture.  Fair enough.  It did.  But aside from it's faults I found that the movie A) shows that people, no matter the time period, no matter the culture, all have the same needs and desires and fears, and B) does a great job depicting Aztec sacrifice and feeding my artistic gore side.  But it's not just for the blood that I love the movie, it's for the desire to survive, the desire to protect, and it's for the ending, which, yes, we all know is completely and utterly historically wrong.  In the end, the Spanish arrive on the coast and the main character and his family just slip away.  (The Spanish did not actually encounter the Maya, this movie sort of mixes Aztec and Mayan histories for, what I hope to be, the sake of storytelling).

The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Anyway, in the end, the Spanish show up and Jaguar Paw and his family slip away rather than confronting them or attacking them.  They just sort of disappear into the mist which is, essentially, what the entire civilization did.  It just sort of disappeared. (The reason for their disappearance is ambiguous but we do know it wasn't the Spanish as the movie might suggest).  The ends of the Aztecs and the Incans was not nearly so mysterious:  they were discovered and summarily destroyed by famous Spanish explorers (Cortes and Pizarro respectively).

While I will be investigating all of these cultures, I have a feeling the Aztec's mythology will most likely win out in helping to form my vampire-like creature.  Another little bias I have for the Aztec's is my camp name: Quetzal.  I chose it because the quetzal bird is just damn adorable, but also because it is the first word of the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.  Click here for a lovely print by Jasmine Becket-Griffith. Yep, you know how you learn some random ancient word or name and then it becomes your go to phrase when you want to sound smart or want to scream something out in euphemistic glory?  Yeah, Quetzalcoatl was one of those for me.  That and 'Zaphenath Paneah,' which is what the Egyptian's renamed Joseph and his coat and his many colors.  I named a fish that... funnily enough today is the very first time I've ever seen the name written.  I've been saying it since grade school (it just felt fun in my mouth) and now, thanks to Google, I finally know how to spell it, haha!  I digress.  I'm looking forward to studying these ancient civilizations and continuing to work on my re-envisioned vampire creature in the future.  As part of my studies, I will also be revisiting Dr. Bob Curran's Vampires, which covers, to some degree, the myriad of vampiric lore from around the world, including South and Central America.

The Temptation of Quetzalcoatl
Because I couldn't resist posting this delicious piece that I stumbled upon... XD