And in what are termed the modern Hermetic books, the origin of things is thus explained: "The principle of all things existing is God, and the intellect, and nature, and matter, and energy, and fate, and _conclusion_, and _renovation_. For there were boundless darkness in the abyss, and water, and a subtile spirit, intellectual in power, existing in chaos. But the holy light broke forth, and the elements were produced from among the sand of a watery essence."
In the _Popol-Vuh_, the sacred book of the Quiches, we read: "This is the recital of how everything was without life, calm and silent, all was motionless and quiet; void was the immensity of the heavens; the face of the Earth did not manifest itself yet; only the tranquil sea was, and the space of the heavens. All was immobility and silence in the darkness, in the night; only the Creator, the Maker, the Dominator, the Serpent covered with feathers, they who engender, they who create, were on the waters as an ever increasing light. They are surrounded by green and blue, their name is Gucumatz."
We have already said how the Maya sages have taken care to perpetuate their cosmogonical conceptions, by causing the narrative of the creation to be carved, in high relief, over the doorway of the east façade of the palace at Chichen-Itza, and that these conceptions were identical with those of the Hindoos and the Egyptians. It cannot be argued that this identity of ideas about the origin of things, arrived at by the wise men of India, Egypt, and Mayax, and expressed in as nearly the same words as the genius of the vernacular of these various countries admits, is purely accidental; or, that they have arrived separately at the same conclusions on the subject, without communicating one with the other. The notion and its explanation must have originated with one, and been taught to the others just as our modern scientific discoveries, or religious beliefs, are carried from country to country, even the most remote, and made known to their inhabitants. What should we think of the man who would pretend that the railway, electric telegraph, and many other of the latest inventions, instead of having originated in one particular country, nay, more, in the brain of a particular man, have sprung simultaneously among all the various nations which make use of them? Would not that man be regarded as a born idiot or a fit subject for a lunatic asylum? We can easily understand how these cosmogonical notions have passed from the Egyptians to the Chaldees or to the Hindoos or _vice versa_; but who brought them to the "Lands of the West" and when? Who can say they did not arise among the inhabitants of the "Western continent;" and were not conveyed by them to the other nations?