Kukulkan

The city includes a series of monuments, temples, and observatories.

The most celebrated is El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulkan.

It's a huge step pyramid at the centre of the city, which was built as a devotional temple to the god Kukulkan.

In total, the entire temple features 365 steps, one for each day of the year.

Even more impressive is the intricate design of the structure, which during the spring and autumn equinoxes forms a triangular shadow on the temple's north stairway, creating the illusion of a huge serpent slithering down its surface, heading towards a stone snake head at the base.

Oh, I love the retcon they did.

Yeah, and I mean, and they call him Kukulkan.

I love that line.

And they call him Kukulkan.

Just fantastic, man.

I think the portrayal of this version of Atlantis, of Talokan, was awesome.

Um, but I got this brilliant idea.

The brilliant idea was, what if occasionally I read a chapter or two from The Secret Wisdom of Kukulcan on my podcast, and then, uh, I'm killing two birds with one stone because people listening to the podcast, they get to hear a little bit of the book, and then in, like, a year I'll have read the whole book and I can just put it together, and voila, I've recorded my audiobook, which I can give out there to the world.

See? Isn't that smart? My mama always called me special.

And so what I'm gonna do here is read, I don't know, uh, some of the book.

But, uh, if you wait for everything to be perfect, well, you know how it goes.

It's never gonna be.

Uh, one of the things about this book that I think I should point out here is, uh, the, the subtitle, because it's called The Secret Wisdom of Kukulcan, and Kukulcan refers to a Mayan deity.

Uh, and in the book I get into who Kukulcan is and, uh, these comparisons to other figures that come down from the sky, the feathered serpent and s- and such.

He doesn't say, I'm going to make a delay.

No, he says, think of, okay, the Kukulkan.

Love saying that.

That pedal, by the way, is, oh, it's so good.

i wonder if i'll ever see joanna mccoy probably not probably not

um okay how sharper than a serpent's tooth this is kind of a weird interesting one Where basically we come across this winged serpent who claims to be Kukulkan, a god of ancient Maya and Aztec peoples.

And we have a guy on the ship, Ensign Walking Bear, which...

I don't know about that.

Who's, like, an indigenous person, has expertise on indigenous cultures and mythology and stuff to, like, consult with them and help them figure out what to do with Kukulkan.

So, you know, it's kind of interesting.

One of the writers is... indigenous uh russell bates um is a friend of dc fontana's and was a kiowa uh which is um one of the indigenous societies of the great plains so that's nice that there's actually like an contributed the things about this that are like this is kind of intriguing that we that we did this um but it's just sort of

... that were, you know, served different purposes, and they had this long count calendar that was more for predictions.

And, you know, on that calendar, separate from the one about, like, cycles of time, but on this prediction calendar, they said, oh, you know, at a certain time, our god, Kukulcan, is going to return.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, there were, there were signs.

Uh, you know, a comet showed up, and the advisors were like, "Look," you know.

"Kuku- dude, it's his sign.

Kukulcan's coming."

Yeah.