Serpent heads as we know, were totems of the Cans. The tongue protruding from the mouth was the symbol of wisdom among the MAYAS. it is also found thus in portraits of priests, kings, and other exalted personages supposed to be endowed with great wisdom. It may also have been a token of respect, as it is even today in Thibet.

Kan in Maya is both the Number Four and Serpent.

Can also forms part of Canzah, meaning teacher and Canbah, meaning student.Additionally, it is used when referring to the initiates "Luk'Uben Tunben Can" meaning 'Those absorbed by the knowledge".

Can "Four" and "Serpent" alludes to the highest esoteric knowledge of our Mayan Ancestors.

The Egyptian hierogrammists represented their country as a SERPENT with inflated breast, standing on a figure 8, under which is a sieve, called MAYAB, in maya. They likewise symbolised Egypt as a Persea Tree (ibid, p.200), sacred to the Goddess Athor, whose fruit in the sculptures resembles a human heart (Ibid, p.119), which vividly recalls the one of the Mayas that bear the Alligator pear - the Laurus persea of Linnaeus, so abundant in tropical America.

Kan is but a variation of CAAN "heaven", "that which is above", Caanal, and also of CAN "Serpent", which was the emblem of the Maya Empire.

But "Can" is also the numerical four, the Tretraktis, that most solemn and binding oath of the initiates into the mysteries. According to Pythagoras, who had learned from the Egyptians the meaning of numbers, "Can" represents the mystic name of the creative Power. "Can", again is a copulative particle, that united to verbs, indicates that the action is verified frequently with violence. Hence the name Kancab for yellow or red clay, the dry land, upheaved from the bottom of the deep by Volcanic fires, anthropomorphized in Homer.

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