Pausing to review the foregoing conclusions, which I have shown to be the natural and inevitable result of simple but prolonged astronomical studies, observation and plain reasoning, we see that they led to a conception of the Cosmos as divided into seven parts, _i. e._, the fixed Centre, the pivot, primarily suggested by Polaris who was regarded as the creative, generative and ruling power of the universe; the Four Quarters, seemingly ruled by the central force and associated with the elements; the Above and the Below, suggested by the rising and setting of celestial bodies and associated with light and darkness, sky and earth, etc., etc.
Many of my readers will doubtless recognize at once that the above organization of the Cosmos into the Centre or Middle, the Above and the Below, and the Four Quarters, is precisely that which the Zuñi priests taught Mr. Frank Cushing, when they initiated him into their secret beliefs. Other explorers have recorded the same conception amongst different native American tribes and with these proofs that this set of ideas is still held on our Continent at the present time, I point out the fact that the Maya figures (fig. 18, VII and VIII, from the Dresden Codex) become perfectly intelligible only when interpreted as representing the Centre, the Four Quarters, the Above and the Below, the latter figured by the dark and light halves of the dual sign. Furthermore, I can demonstrate that this fundamental set of elementary, abstract ideas, furnishing the first principles of organization, is plainly visible under the surface of the ancient Mexican civilization and can be traced not only in Yucatan and Central America, but also in Peru. In these countries, as I shall show, it assumed an absolute dominion over the minds of the native sages, directly suggesting the forms of government and social organization existing at the time of the Conquest and faintly surviving to the present day. It entirely controlled the development of aboriginal religious cult and philosophical speculations and pervaded not only the native architecture and decorative art, but also all superstitious rites and ceremonies, and entered into the very games and pastimes of the people.