The first is called Caculhá Huracán. The second is Chipi-Caculhá. The third is Raxa-Caculhá. And these three are the Heart of Heaven.[16]
Then Tepeu and Gucumatz came together; then they conferred about life and light, what they would do so that there would be light and dawn,[17] who it would be who would provide food and sustenance.
Thus let it be done! Let the emptiness be filled![18] Let the water recede and make a void, let the earth appear and become solid; let it be done. Thus they spoke. Let there be light, let there be dawn in the sky and on the earth! There shall be neither glory nor grandeur in our creation and formation until the human being is made, man is formed. So they spoke.
Then the earth was created by them. So it was, in truth, that they created the earth. Earth! they said, and instantly it was made.
Like the mist, like a cloud, and like a cloud of dust was the creation, when the mountains appeared from the water;[19] and instantly the mountains grew.
Only by a miracle, only by magic art were the mountains and valleys formed; and instantly the groves of cypresses and pines put forth shoots together on the surface of the earth.[20]
And thus Gucumatz was filled with joy, and exclaimed: "Your coming has been fruitful, Heart of Heaven; and you, Huracán, and you, Chipi-Caculhá, Raxa-Caculhá!"
"Our work, our creation shall be finished," they answered.
First the earth was formed, the mountains and the valleys; the currents of water were divided, the rivulets were running freely between the hills, and the water was separated when the high mountains appeared.
Thus was the earth created, when it was formed by the Heart of Heaven, the Heart of Earth, as they are called who first made it fruitful, when the sky was in suspense, and the earth was submerged in the water.
So it was that they made perfect the work, when they did it after thinking and meditating upon it.
[16] Huracán, a leg; Caculhá Huracán, flash of a leg or the lightning; Chipi-Caculhá, small flash. This is Ximénez' interpretation. The third, Raxa-Caculhá, is the green flash, according to the same author; and, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg, it is the lightning or thunder. The adjective rax has, among other meanings, that of "sudden" or "instantly." In Cakchiquel Rax-haná-hih is lightning. Nevertheless, despite all this, in both Quiché and Cakchiquel, racan means "large" or "long. "According to Father Coto, it means a long thing, rope, etc. And also giant (hu racán),"a name which applies to every animal which is larger than others of its species," Father Coto adds. These ideas agree with the form of the flash and the lightning as it is drawn in the sky. The Caribs of the West Indies adopted the name huracán to designate other natural phenomena equally destructive, and the word was later incorporated into modern languages. See Brinton, Essays of an Americanist.
[17] Hupachá ta ch'auax-oc, ta zaquiró puch. Here and in other places in this book, Ximénez and Brasseur de Bourbourg confuse the form of the Quiché verb auax, auaxic, which corresponds to the verb and substantive "dawn," with auan, "plant," and auix, the "cornfield." The Maya language has the word ahalcab which means "dawn," "break of day," and ahan cab, "it has already dawned," from ahal, "awaken." In olden times the two verbs "to sow" and "to dawn" were also very similar in Maya. According to the Diccionario de la lengua maya by José Pío Pérez, oc cah is to sow grain or seed, and ah cah cab, to dawn, to make light. It is curious to observe that the Maya cognate was preserved in the ancient Quiché; and it seems probable that these analogous forms in the Maya and the Quiché had a common root.
[18] Qu'yx nohin-tah.
[19] X-ta pe pa ha ri huyub, the mountains came, or emerged from the water. The similarity of the words x-ta pe with tap, "crab," suggested to Ximénez the comparison of the mountains with the crab. Brasseur de Bourbourg followed him in this. Nevertheless, the sentence could not be clearer.
[20] Xaqui naual, xaqui puz x-banatah vi. The expression puz naual is used to indicate the magic power to create or transform one thing into another. Puz naual haleb, says Father Barela, was the sorcery used by the Indians to transform themselves into balls of fire, eagles, and animals.
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