Empire unusual suggested

62 PASSPORT TO MACONIA
that ik means air or wind, and ikal means a spirit, while ek means
black. The Kekchi Maya, in the Alta Vera Paz region of Guatemala,
talk of a kek. The kek (meaning black in the Kekchi dialect of Maya)
is said to be a centaur-like being that guards his patron's house at
night, and frightens people at dusk. Black, ugly, hairy, he is halfhuman,
with human hands but the hooves of a horse. 9
We shall return to the ikals, or wendis, as they are called in
British Honduras, in a later chapter, in connection with another
feature of their behavior. For the time being, however, the Mexican
legends show, quite conclusively, that many, perhaps every,
region of the world has its own traditions about such creatures
and associates them very definitely with the idea of aerial, or even
cosmic, origin.
In the Tzeltal cosmology, the earth is flat and supported on
four columns. At the base of these columns lives a race of black
dwarfs, and Creighton points out that their blackness is due—so
runs the Indian theory—to the fact that they are scorched by the
sun when he passes close to them every night as he travels through
the underworld. 10
According to the Paiute Indians, California was once populated
by a superior civilization, the Hav-Musuvs. Among other
interesting devices, they used "flying canoes," which were silvery
and had wings. They flew in the manner of eagles and made a
whirring noise. They were also using a very strange weapon: a
small tube that could be held in one hand and would stun their
enemies, producing lasting paralysis and a feeling similar to a
shower of cactus needles." . . . How could primitive tribes better
describe electrocution?
It is interesting to gather such tales in America, but Europeans
hardly have to go as far as that to find similarly interesting and
forgotten episodes. The archives of the Roman Catholic Church
are full of such incidents, and it cannot be doubted that many an
accusation of witchcraft stemmed from the belief in strange
beings who could fly through the air and approached humans at
dusk or at night. Occasionally, these "demons" were seen in full
daylight by many people. And in this context, I am not referring
to the vague confessions obtained under torture from the poor
men and women who fell into the clutches of the Inquisition
THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH 63
(although this material would be quite worthy of a parallel
study). I am quoting official records of the time, gathered from
witnesses by clerics and policemen, of which sort of report the
following account is fairly typical.
In the early seventeenth century, the cathedral at Quimper-
Corentin, France, bad on its roof a pyramid covered with lead.
On February 1, 1620, between 7:00 and 8:00 P.M., thunder fell
on that pyramid, and it caught fire, exploded, and fell down with
a stupendous noise. People rushed to the cathedral from all parts
of the town and saw, in the midst of the lightning and smoke, a
demon, of a green color, with a long green tail, doing his best to
keep the fire going!
This account, which was published in Paris, is supplemented
by a more complete version printed in Rennes. This latter version
adds that the demon "was seen clearly by all, inside the fire, sometimes
green, sometimes blue and yellow." 11
What were the authorities to do? They threw into the roaring
fire a quantity of Agni Dei, close to one hundred and fifty buckets
of water, and forty or fifty cartloads of manure—to no avail. The
demon was still there, and the fire kept happily burning. Something
drastic had to be done: a consecrated host was placed inside
a loaf of bread and thrown into the flames, and then blessed water
was mixed with milk given by a nurse of above-reproach conduct
and spread over the demon and the burning pyramid. This the
visitor could not stand; he whistled in a most horrible fashion
and flew away.
I can only recommend the recipe to the U.S. Air Force.
Eight hundred years earlier (that is, about 830) in the days of
Emperor Lothaire, creatures similar to the Elementals were seen
very often in the northern parts of the Netherlands. According to
Corneil Van Kempen, they were called "Dames Blanches"
(White Ladies). He compares them to the nymphs of antiquity.
They lived in caves, and they would attack people who traveled
at night. The shepherds would also be harassed. And the women
who had newly born babies had to be very careful, for they were
quick in stealing the children away. In their lair, one could hear
all sorts of strange noises, indistinct words that no one could
understand, and musical sounds. 12