As the world approaches the 600th anniversaries of Joan of Arc’s historic military campaigns and martyrdom, I’m pleased at last to announce a new definitive, singable English translation of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s grandest opera, The Maid of Orleans.
Historically, the convoluted syntax and complexity of Tchaikovsky’s original libretto have made this titan of Russian grand opera challenging for contemporary audiences and performers alike. My new translation transforms the text into melodic, poetic English, carefully preserving the composer’s musicality while modernizing the narrative’s emotionally fraught core.
In a bold departure from literalist translations, I’ve audaciously reimagined the despairing Act III and Love Duet. Recognizing a stark disconnect between Tchaikovsky’s soaring score and his anguished and guilt-ridden libretto, I completely rewrote the scene to redeem the depressing Russian epic, shifting it from punishment and atonement to ecstatic spiritual enlightenment. This pivotal change replaces her ignominious execution with a glorious apotheosis at the stake, aligning with the transcendent power of Tchaikovsky’s music.
In my translation, the music sounds as if it were written for these English words. I wanted to redeem Joan from the narrative of moral failure and return her to her rightful place as an inspired, triumphant figure.
Utilizing my first literal translation of fifty years ago, this work was performed by the Canadian Opera Company (1978) and Detroit Opera (1979). Many decades later, under the baton of the late Robert Lyall, the New Orleans Opera Association produced my revised version to broad acclaim in 2020, turning a sprawling Russian guilt-trip into an inspiring theatrical event.
With the 600th anniversaries of St. Joan of Arc’s victorious military campaign against the English (1428-30) and her dramatic martyrdom (1431), celebrating the subject is supremely timely. To instigate the widest possible celebrations, I’m waiving licensing fees and royalties for my English libretto for performance—in part or in whole—through 2031.
Opera companies, festivals, conservatories, educational institutions, and performers are cordially invited to download the parts of the vocal score from my OneDrive at the link Joan of Arc parts’ and encouraged to schedule anniversary productions commemorating Joan’s triumphant life.
Kindly circulate this information to any interested parties or organizations. Contact me with questions or comments at rbalthazar@msn.com or call 505-983-9745.
The powerful Aztec God Ehecatl is very close to my heart. I used his epithet Lord Wind aptly as the title of a memoir about my second coming out in 1970 into a new gay world—when I aimlessly wandered in whatever direction the wind blew.
My gallery of distinctive codex images of Ehecatl is entitled The Aztec Lord of Life. I have meticulously re-created his image above from a page in Codex Borgia, pairing him with Mictlantecuhtli, the Lord of the Land of the Dead. It is inarguably a tour de force of Aztec iconography, incorporating the 20 day-signs (tonalli) as they relate to human body parts. The “duplex” composition appears in a number of codices, though none is as exquisite as this.
Though there was no hierarchy amongst the several powerful Aztec goddesses, the oldest and most widely respected female deity was Chalchiuhtlicue, the Jade Skirt. She represented the benefits of flowing water as well as its ruthless power. In other contexts, she embodied the feminine phenomena of child-bearing and motherhood.
The Jade Skirt was frequently depicted in the codices as shown in the latest gallery The Aztec Goddess of Water.
The staple grain crops in the ancient western world were rice, wheat, barley, etc. In the American hemisphere, the staple grain was a domesticated wild grass called maize, which began to be cultivated some 9,000 years ago in Mesoamerica, roughly around the same era that agriculture arose in the western world. While the western staples were merely practical fuels for civilization, maize did that and more, entering the religious lives of the many civilizations it fed as a deified plant. All its types and growth phases were deified and envisioned as gods and goddesses, a veritable platoon of protectors and nurturers.
This corn-cohort is the subject of my next gallery of Aztec deity images from the codices. Again, I’ve refurbished and repaired most of the deteriorated art for optimum appeal and appreciation of the ancient mythological figures.
With this posting, I’m starting a series of blogs on galleries of (variously repaired, refurbished, and redrawn) images of Aztec deities. My purpose is to present an overview of each divinity as envisioned by the original scribe/artists. Collected from the few original manuscripts (codices) that survived the book burnings in the Spanish conquest, I hope these dramatic images will provide the modern viewer with vivid mental pictures of the ancient religion/mythology.
There has been much recent work in reconstructing and reinterpreting the Aztec gods and goddesses, but most of it has been in terms of romanticized, politicized, fantasized, and “psychedelicized” treatments. My repairs, refurbishing, and redrawing attempt to re-vision these deities as originally created by the scribe/artists and illuminate the mysterious ancient rituals and iconographic conventions.
Let me begin with a group of “calendric” deities called the Lords of Five. For the Aztecs, the number five symbolized sufficiency, like the five fingers on a hand, and anything more was excessive. (The numeral five was written by five dots in a row.) Excess was perceived as a danger, and punishment was a natural consequence. The Lords of Five were also called the Ahuiateteo, deities embodying all types of pleasure (physical and mental), who also were charged with punishing excessive indulgence, frequently with illness or bad luck.
Click HERE to view/download the illustrated .pdf file called The Aztec Ahuiateteo. Envision…
Completing projects, I generally try to take a brief armchair vacation and then switch gears to address others waiting their turn. For instance, when I wrapped up my four-year Tonalamatl recreation last summer, I diddled for a week or so in the garden and then resumed my senile reminiscing for KID STUFF. With that fun analysis of my innocent childhood done, I took a week or so of restorative naps and lazy lying about.
Re-energized, I’ve moved on to a much-needed revision of my illustrated encyclopedia of Aztec deities called YE GODS! The Aztec Pantheon. The first edition from ten years ago is still available and frequently downloaded as a comprehensive reference, but I’m rather abashed by its limited scope and frequent errors and omissions. I pulled it together way back then in the early research for my coloring book YE GODS! Icons of Aztec Deities.
My vast stock of information on and images of the many Aztec gods and goddesses will provide galleries of authentic images of Aztec deities from the several surviving codices (manuscripts) for folks to form meaningful mental images of the strange gods and goddesses. This revision will probably take a considerable period of time, and I’ll be issuing the galleries with encyclopedic comments individually in blog posts. Look for the first posting shortly to be called The Aztec Lords of Five.
Meanwhile, as mental health breaks from these fits of Aztec mythology, I’d once planned more memoirs to fill in some blank periods of my relative youth, but I don’t think I ought to spend my few remaining years in such self-centered attention. Instead, I’ve decided to turn to historical fiction, a project long inspired by a fascinating old book by the notorious Immanuel Velikovsky. The chapters of this future novel, I plan to alternate with Aztec encyclopedic entries.
If and when I finish the Pantheon revision, I’ll start drawing icons for my coloring book again. Several important and dramatic deities remain to be envisioned ceremonially like Tlazolteotl, Xochiquetzal, Xolotl, Xiuhtecuhtli, etc. When I’ve multi-tasked through this aggressive agenda—should I live so long—we’ll see what comes next. Should there indeed be a future…
The twentieth and final trecena (13-day “week”) of the Aztec Tonalpohualli (ceremonial count of days) is called Rabbit for its first numbered day, which is the 8th day of the veintena (20-day “month”). In Nahuatl, Rabbit is Tochtli. It was known as Lamat(Venus, Star) in Yucatec Maya, and K’anil (or Q’anil) (Seed of Life) in Quiché Maya.
The day Rabbit signifies self-sacrifice and service to something greater than oneself. Counter-intuitively, Rabbits were seen as gods of drunkenness, the Centzon Totochtin (400 rabbits) being patrons of all kinds of intoxication or inebriation. The principle rabbit deity was 2 Rabbit (Ome Tochtli or Tepoztecatl). The Aztecs counted “rabbits” for intoxication levels, from 25 rabbits for mild intoxication to 400 rabbits for complete drunkenness. Vessels for the drinking alcoholic pulque often bear rabbit symbolism and/or a crescent moon symbol called the yacametztli—relating to the goddess of the moon Metztli. In fact, Mesoamerican cultures envisioned the figure of a rabbit in the moon, which I’ve surmised was day-named 12 Rabbit.
The patron of the day Rabbit is Mayauel, the goddess of intoxication/pulque and its source, the maguey plant. Seen previously as patron of the Grass Trecena, she’s the purported mother of the Centzon Totochtin, apparently by the deity Patecatl, god of medicine and pharmaceutical intoxication. Other sources suggest that the Cloud Serpent, Mixcoatl, sired some of them, but Aztec paternity wasn’t thoroughly documented, and Mayauel was a hospitable goddess.
PATRON DEITIES RULING THE RABBIT TRECENA
One of the patrons of the Rabbit trecena is Xiuhtecuhtli (Lord of Fire and Time), whom we’ve seen in the Snake trecena. As god of the Center and the Pole Star, he’s an A-list celebrity deity. The other is variously Itztapaltotec, Stone Slab Lord, or Xipe Totec, Lord of Renewal and Liberation. The first is a nagual (manifestation) of the second and deifies the sacrificial knife.
AUGURIES OF THE RABBIT TRECENA
By Marguerite Paquin, author of “Manual for the Soul: A Guide to the Energies of Life: How Sacred Mesoamerican Calendrics Reveal Patterns of Destiny” https://whitepuppress.ca/manual-for-the-soul/
Theme: Leadership and Renewal. During this final trecena in the 260-day cycle, the emphasis is on completion and “cutting away” what is no longer needed, in order to facilitate new growth. This can be an intense period, as combat in some areas could intensify, leading to important conclusions, as the stage is being set for new beginnings to follow in the next trecena. During this period signs or signals may appear that could indicate what lies ahead or new potentialities. This is a good time to watch for signs of change and growth, and a good time to make important decisions in preparation for the new cycle about to begin.
Further to how these energies connect with world events, see the Maya Count of Days Horoscope blog at whitepuppress.ca/horoscope/ Look for the Lamat trecena.
THE 13 NUMBERED DAYS IN THE RABBIT TRECENA
The Aztec Tonalpohualli, like the ancestral Maya calendar, is counted through the sequence of 20 named days of the agricultural “month” (veintena), of which there are 18 in the solar year. Starting with 1 Rabbit, it continues with: 2 Water, 3 Dog, 4 Monkey, 5 Grass, 6 Reed, 7 Jaguar, 8 Eagle, 9 Vulture, 10 Earthquake, 11 Flint, 12 Rain, and ultimately 13 Flower.
There are a few special days in the Rabbit trecena:
One Rabbit (in Nahuatl Ce Tochtli) – a date in the mythic Aztec past when the cosmos was created by gods; also, one of Xiuhtecuhtli’s calendric names.
Five Grass (in Nahuatl Macuil Malinalli) – one of the five male Ahuiateteo/Macuiltonaleque (Lords of the Number 5), usually paired with the female Cihuateotl One Eagle.
Thirteen Flower (in Nahuatl Mahtlactli ihuan yeyi) – a ritually significant day of completion for the 260-day cycle; also associated with period endings, often marking the completion of significant “bundles” of time.
THE TONALAMATL (BOOK OF DAYS)
Several of the surviving so-called Aztec codices (some originating from other cultures like the Mixtec) have Tonalamatl sections laying out the trecenas of the Tonalpohualli on separate pages. In Codex Borbonicus and Tonalamatl Aubin, the first two pages are missing; Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Rios are each lacking various pages (fortunately not the same ones); and in Codex Borgia and Codex Vaticanus all 20 pages are extant. (The Tonalpohualli is also presented in a spread-sheet fashion in Codex Borgia, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Cospi, but that format apparently serves other purposes.)
TONALAMATL BALTHAZAR
As described in my earlier blog The Aztec Calendar – My Obsession, some thirty-five years ago—on the basis of very limited ethnographic information and iconographic models —I created my own version of a Tonalamatl, publishing it in 1993 as Celebrate Native America!
When I started drawing my tonalamatl, I did the pages in colored pencil, often producing several versions in different color schemes in a palette of four chromatic colors (with some black and white as well): gold—for gods, red—for blood, green—for jade, and blue for turquoise. Each deity had a primary color with a secondary and highlights of the others. For the last trecena, I used models and motifs from Codex Nutall and tried to make it an even balance of all four colors. Maybe I succeeded because everyone admired this image especially.
On the first nineteen trecenas, I followed the limited information available about their patrons (not knowing all of them). Many I created from scratch from Nutall images and sketchy clues on iconography. A few were based on images from Codex Borbonicus found in old books. When I got to the last one, Rabbit, the scholarship said only that its patron was the sacrificial knife, and I found only one gruesome image, probably the monster from Tonalamatl Aubin. (See below.) As an artist, I was aesthetically and philosophically offended and decided to turn heretic.
I installed my own choice of a god as patron of the last trecena, someone considerably more appetizing. Xochipilli, the Flower Prince, is god of art, dance, beauty, ecstasy, sleep, and dreams/hallucinations. In addition, he’s variously patron of homosexuals and male prostitutes; god of fertility (agricultural produce and gardens); patron of writing, painting, and song; and god of games (including the sacred ball-game tlachtli), feasting, and frivolity. His twin sister/wife is Xochiquetzal, patron of the preceding Eagle trecena.
So much for authenticity. The neglected Flower Prince is an eminently worthy “calendar prince.” (You can see the true trecena patrons in the tonalamatls of the historical codices that follow.)
The page for the Rabbit trecena from Codex Borgia, which I hadn’t seen thirty-five years ago, portrays its orthodox patrons in typically ornate style. Xiuhtecuhtli on the left is loaded down with divine regalia, some of it the same as in his image with the Snake trecena, and in similar coloration. The only truly emblematic piece is his square pectoral, apparently a heavily stylized war-butterfly motif inherited from the ancient Maya. I find his headdress curious in reflecting that of Ixtlilton in the preceding Eagle trecena. Maybe the artist enjoyed drawing those motifs.
On the right side, we have one of the more spectacular images of Xipe Totec illustrating his traditional red and white ornaments and staff. It’s in a much different style than his image as patron of the Dog trecena, sharing only the unique nose-clamp. In this Borgia portrait, he’s definitely the “flayed god,” like a priest in the skin of a sacrificial victim.
If I’d known about this panel, I might have avoided heresy by making Xipe Totec the patron of my Rabbit trecena, but I’d already used him for Dog and wouldn’t have wanted to repeat patrons anyway. The same argument holds for Xiuhtecuhtli already having appeared in Snake. In any case, while perhaps not as eye-catching as Chalchiuhtotolin in the Water trecena, Borgia’s two lords for the final Rabbit trecena are about as stylistically exquisite as its deities get.
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TONALAMATL YOAL (compiled and re-created by Richard Balthazar on the basis of Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Rios)
Aztec Calendar – Rabbit Trecena – Tonalamatl Yoal
Here we see on the left the ominously named Itztapaltotec, Stone Slab Lord, himself, the sacrificial knife that grossed me out. This one looks like a guy in a flint knife (tecpatl) costume with flayed arms hanging from his own like an appropriately nagual hybrid of Xipe Totec. He holds an emblematic red and white staff, but I can’t fathom the conch shell in his other left hand.
On the right side sits Xiuhtecuhtli more or less enthroned, which is the first remarkable detail. Almost all the Yoal deities are either standing (like Itztapaltotec) or in what I call the “dancing” pose with bent knees. Only the Cihuateotl in the Flower trecena and Xochiquetzal in the Eagle trecena sit back on their feet, standard female posture, (especially in Codex Nutall where males sit cross-legged.) Adding to this iconographic weirdness, note that Xiuhtecuhtli’s right leg and foot are hidden by the left—an absolutely ideoplastic device.
Above and beyond that odd detail, the Lord of Fire is decked out in opulent finery. Check out that wild serpent/crocodile head by his ear, possibly a plug ornament. His extravagant array of Quetzal plumes splays more feathers than even Xochiquetzal in the Eagle trecena, and between him and Stone Slab they wear more than in any other Yoal patron panel. The artist may have overdone the plumage because in his tailpiece and bustle the feathers had to overlap—a definite problem for Aztec iconography. One of the plumes in the back-fan even droops behind another!
Passing by his war-butterfly pendant, we see in his lower right hand what looks surreally like a rattlesnake with an animal head. It’s in fact a ritual “shaman stick.” More usually it’s called a “deer stick,” though many don’t look at all like a deer’s head. Plain ones were often used for digging, but the rattles on this one were probably there to make magical noises.
In the original, the scepter in the god’s other right hand was terribly drawn and unrecognizable, and I substituted the finer Xiuhcoatl (fire-serpent) he holds in the Snake trecena. The strange position of his fingers—as though holding on to a ring—is an exact duplication of that detail in his Borgia icon. There I simply wondered about it, but seeing it again here, I begin to suspect that there’s some symbolic importance attached to it. I guess we’ll never know.
Moving on to the divine face, I confess to doing radical plastic surgery on the original which looked insanely like the cartoon character Homer Simpson. That simply wouldn’t do! Then I borrowed the face-painting pattern again from his image in Snake. The result was a respectable deity worthy of his portentous headdress (like that worn by him and Mictlantecuhtli in the upper row as lords of the night). According to Gordon Whittaker in “Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs,” that turquoise diadem with curved point in front is literally a hieroglyph for “Lord” or “ruler.” Whittaker adds that the Nahuatl word is teykw-tli pronounced in two syllables if you can wrap your tongue around that. Colloquially, that’s te-cuh-tli, as in Xiuhtecuhtli (fire/turquoise-lord).
As with Tonalamatl Borgia, Tonalamatl Yoal went all out on the patrons of the Rabbit trecena, lavishing them with divine detail. The tonalamatl presents many elegant figures, but in my opinion, only the panel for the Vulture trecena (Evening Star and Setting Sun) can compare to this ornate, many-plumed pair. The inspirations behind the Yoal trecena pages are superbly artistic visions of glorious mythological beings.
The twenty striking patron pairs in the Yoal tonalamatl encapsulate the traditional iconography of those Aztec deities. Having worked closely with the original codex images to re-create their conceptual inspirations, I can say that the later images in the series became progressively more awkward and crude, their construction often downright ramshackle. This suggests to me that other artists may have taken over some panels—or maybe the artist simply slacked off in his work—or equally probable, the artist got drunk or stoned.
In my careful estimation however, the Yoal artist(s)’s concept and vision of the trecena patrons were nevertheless sublime. Sadly, they just lacked the means, skill, medium, and (possibly) the reverence needed to manifest their deities magnificently. I’m thrilled to have turned those flawed visions into the Tonalamatl Yoal, a new treasure in the canon of Aztec art.
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OTHER TONALAMATLS
Tonalamatl Aubin patron panel for Rabbit Trecena
The only thing that identifies Xiuhtecuhtli in the Tonalamatl Aubin patron panel is his black face-paint. The generic circular pendant could belong to many deities. On the other hand, the figure on the left is clearly Itztapaltotec, a frighteningly personified sacrificial knife with a surreal face on his shoulder. The item at top center is a hearth-vessel with smoke, fire and possibly incense, but I won’t attempt to identify the other elements.
This patron panel and that for the Water trecena (with Chalchiuhtotolin) are the two most disappointing instances in the Tonalamatl Aubin. Most of the other panels are passingly ornate, while often awkward and distorted. In my humble opinion, this tonalamatl is the least impressive of the several we have seen. It was painted pre-Conquest in the neighboring state of Tlaxcala and as such may represent a crude, provincial document. Its value for scholarship is that it represents the shared themes and motifs across the “religious” territory of central Mexico.
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Codex Borbonicus patron panel for Rabbit Trecena
The panel for this last trecena in Codex Borbonicus is artfully done, supplying the figure of Xiuhtecuhtli that I used as a model in the earlier Snake Trecena in my old tonalamatl. Oddly, I don’t believe I saw this decorative image of Itztapaltotec way back then. I was so taken my Xochipilli apostasy that I probably would’ve ignored the fancy fellow anyway. Though some of the surviving panels in Borbonicus present stunning figures (like Itztlacoliuhqui in the Lizard Trecena), this beautiful pairing of patrons has to be the most impactful composition of the lot.
The patrons’ emblematic paraphernalia is easily recognizable, as are many of the items in the neatly organized conglom. I’m intrigued by the bottom center item resembling a hill or mountain place-symbol with tooth-like appendages (which Whittaker has identified as hieroglyphs meaning “at”) and part of its vegetative detail in utter disarray. Most notable is the curved “deer-stick” hovering over Itztapaltotec’s flint knife, simpler than that in the Yoal panel, but scarcely more deer-like. This one is probably a common digging stick but might still be magical.
Combining these patron panels with a crowded matrix of delicately drawn days, 9 night-lords, and 13 day-lords with their totem-birds, the tonalamatl in Codex Borbonicus stands in my modest opinion as a consummate masterpiece of Aztec art and culture.
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Codex Vaticanus patron panel for Rabbit Trecena
In Codex Vaticanus, the patron pair for the Rabbit Trecena again is well balanced, as in the other tonalamatls, to formally wrap up the last of the trecenas. In its characteristic rough caricature style, Vaticanus again closely follows the images and themes of Tonalamatl Borgia, Xipe Totec and Xiuhtecuhtli simply having switched sides. In its series of trecena panels, Vaticanus faithfully reflects the calendrical “dogma” in the more ornamental Borgia panels. The codices share certain other sections, but each also presents a lot of its own mythological material. Perhaps the calendrical orthodoxy can be explained by both codices having come from Puebla, possibly from the same priestly school (calmecac).
But the tonalamatl in Codex Vaticanus does more than simply restate the Borgia images. In particular, it created that uniquely surreal vision of Itzpapalotl for the House Trecena and produced its own exquisite versions of deities like Chalchiuhtotolin and Xolotl for the Water and Vulture trecenas. In addition, in its other sections, Vaticanus presents incomparably elegant artwork on deities like Tlaloc and Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. The codex is a veritable goldmine of mythological and ethnological details. One just has to get used to its stylistic strangeness, like the blue finger- and toe-nails.
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Tonalamatl Borgia is my proudest achievement in this series of re-created Aztec art. Like the Vaticanus version of the trecenas, it’s set amongst several other ritual and religious sections of the codex, many of stupendous artistry. Though several other historical codices are also iconographically superlative, like Fejervary-Mayer and Laud, to my mind, Codex Borgia is the premiere artistic relic of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
Unfortunately, over five centuries the document has seriously deteriorated with whole sections of images worn away, the colors of its inks fading and failing, and some pages torn or even burned. Mostly, what we can see nowadays of Codex Borgia (and many other codices) is from the incredible facsimile editions of Joseph Florimond Loubat (1837-1921), an American bibliophile. He faithfully reproduced the Aztec documents in their exact conditions at the end of the nineteenth century, which meant that any earlier deterioration was also reproduced. In 1993 a full-color restoration of the Codex Borgia was published by Giselle Díaz & Alan Rodgers, restoring most dilapidated areas and repairing lost coloration in facsimile fashion.
My re-creations of Tonalamatl Borgia have played somewhat more freely with its colors. I’ve interpreted various shades of greys, browns, and golds in the Loubat facsimiles as deteriorated original blues and greens and in a few instances introduced colors not available to the Aztec artists (like the purples with Chalchiuhtotolin in the Water Trecena). My purpose was to present the deities in authentic but new, vibrant images untouched by the passing centuries.
A curious feature of the Tonalamatl Borgia is that some of its decorative patron panels seem to suggest an underlying narrative, in particular that for the Snake Trecena. Other panels include mysterious and beautiful symbolic items (though not as many as in Codex Borbonicus), and a number of the Borgia deities, like Chalchiuhtlicue in the Reed Trecena and Tlaloc in the Rain Trecena, are perfectly monumental. In summation, I believe that this Tonalamatl Borgia deserves a place of honor amongst the world’s very best religious art.
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AFTERWORD by Marguerite Paquin, PhD.
I would like to express my deepest thanks to Richard for his extremely valuable contributions to my Maya Count of Days Horoscope blog. This began in early December of 2019, when he allowed me to use his Tonalamatl Balthazar image for the Chikchan trecena as an illustration for the blog. (https://whitepuppress.ca/the-chikchan-lifeforce-trecena-dec-10-22-2019/) The evolution of imagery continued from there as he developed and refined his work.
After the inclusion of one full cycle of his Tonalamatl Balthazar, I began including his early renditions of the Codex Borgia in the blog. At first the images were somewhat sketchy (but valuable nonetheless) but over the years he kept refining them, and the full set is now gorgeously complete. I am blessed to have them available for my blog, as they allow my readers to see at a glance the nature of the energies that I discuss every 13 days.
When Richard began adding descriptions of his work (regarding the evolution of the images, and the detailing that was included) in his own site, this added yet another layer of interest. I am extremely appreciative of Richard’s talent, research, formidable attention to detail, and generosity in this regard, and have no doubt that the ancients who devised these images in the first place would be proud. Muchas gracias, Richard!
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You can view all the calendar pages from the Balthazar, Borgia, and Yoal Tonalamatls in the Tonalamatl gallery.
A couple of weeks ago, with my mind disengaged from those weighty matters, I happened to notice something discarded in the bathroom waste basket, a wad of my hair, part of my COVID coiffure probably grown in 2022 and 23, for what that’s worth archivally. A friend at the gym had kindly trimmed the shaggy back of my neck and accidentally clipped too much off.
Recognizing the dramatic ambiguity of the word “snarl,” I scanned it at a high resolution:
The Snarl
Feel free to see this image as homage to Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.” Look very closely and you’ll see an occasional strand of silver, not bad for coming off the head of an 83-year-old man. The subtlety and grace of this image impress the heck out of me.
The Snarl might well be a milestone in a new genre of contemporary art maybe called Spontaneous or Impromptu Art. It’s closely related to my sculptures from some decades ago (found-object assemblages), amongst which were some provocatively shaped stones:
Creeping Creature and Calf
Also, on my tramps across the New Mexico hills, I frequently found flattened coils or tangles of wires in intriguing, impromptu designs:
This Mortal Coil
Like with The Snarl, my artistry is simply in recognizing their spontaneous artistic essence.
The nineteenth trecena (13-day “week”) of the Aztec Tonalpohualli (ceremonial count of days) is called Eagle for its first numbered day, which is the 15th day of the veintena (20-day “month”). In Nahuatl, Eagle is Cuauhtli. It was known as Men(Eagle, Sage or Wise One) in Yucatec Maya and Tz’ikin (Eagle) in Quiché Maya.
Ever since the Maya, the day Eagle has signified bravery, lofty ideals, acuity of vision and mind. The Eagle was seen as an avatar of the sun and emblematic of high authority. The elite order of Eagle Knights was prominent in Aztec society. The day-sign was anatomically connected to various parts of the body, including the right ear and right foot. The patron of the day Eagle is Xipe Totec, the god of Spring and renewal, who was seen as patron of the Dog Trecena.
PATRON DEITY RULING THE EAGLE TRECENA
Xochiquetzal (Flower Feather) is the ever-young goddess of love, beauty, sexuality, and fertility. She protects young mothers in pregnancy and childbirth and is patron of weaving, embroidery, artisans, artists, and prostitutes. Her day-name is Ce Mazatl (One Deer). Reflecting her intense sexuality, among her several reputed husbands/lovers were her twin brother Xochipilli, Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca, Centeotl, and Xiuhtecuhtli. However, despite her patronage of fertility, I’ve not seen any reports of progeny. Very recently, I was advised that Tezcatlipoca is a possibly secondary/minor patron of the trecena in one of his many nagual disguises.
AUGURIES OF THE EAGLE TRECENA
By Marguerite Paquin, author of “Manual for the Soul: A Guide to the Energies of Life: How Sacred Mesoamerican Calendrics Reveal Patterns of Destiny” https://whitepuppress.ca/manual-for-the-soul/
Theme: Supremacy/War, Lofty Vision. The juxtaposition of the “supremacy” oriented energies of the Eagle with a patron energy of a goddess aligned with artistry and creativity, brings to mind the idea that women who died in childbirth were seen as “warriors” and, like warriors who died in battle, were esteemed for their bravery. The “creativity” component may refer to the valor and creativity involved in bringing forth new life. This combination of energies places emphasis on the courage needed to overcome obstacles and move life forward despite enormous challenges. Power, military strength, and transformative action are often highlighted during this period.
Further to how these energies connect with world events, see the Maya Count of Days Horoscope blog at whitepuppress.ca/horoscope/ Look for the Men (Eagle) trecena.
THE 13 NUMBERED DAYS IN THE EAGLE TRECENA
The Aztec Tonalpohualli, like the ancestral Maya calendar, is counted through the sequence of 20 named days of the agricultural “month” (veintena), of which there are 18 in the solar year. Starting with 1 Eagle, it continues with: 2 Vulture, 3 Earthquake, 4 Flint, 5 Rain, 6 Flower, 7 Crocodile, 8 Wind, 9 House, 10 Lizard, 11 Snake, 12 Death, and 13 Deer.
There are a few special days in the Eagle trecena: One Eagle (in Nahuatl Ce Cuauhtli) – Day-name of one of the Cihuateteo, spirits of women who died in childbirth. It’s also associated with Cihuacoatl (Snake Woman), a goddess of fertility, motherhood, midwives, and sweat baths.
Three Earthquake (in Nahuatl Yeyi Ollin) and Seven Crocodile (in Nahuatl Chicome Cipactli) – Noted in the Florentine Codex as special days for bathing newborns and celebrating births.
THE TONALAMATL (BOOK OF DAYS)
Several of the surviving so-called Aztec codices (some originating from other cultures like the Mixtec) have Tonalamatl sections laying out the trecenas of the Tonalpohualli on separate pages. In Codex Borbonicus and Tonalamatl Aubin, the first two pages are missing; Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Rios are each lacking various pages (fortunately not the same ones); and in Codex Borgia and Codex Vaticanus all 20 pages are extant. (The Tonalpohualli is also presented in a spread-sheet fashion in Codex Borgia, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Cospi, but that format apparently serves other purposes.)
TONALAMATL BALTHAZAR
As described in my earlier blog The Aztec Calendar – My Obsession, some thirty years ago—on the basis of very limited ethnographic information and iconographic models —I presumed to create my own version of a Tonalamatl, publishing it in 1993 as Celebrate Native America!
When I drew Xochiquetzal so long ago, I knew only her many-plumed image from Codex Borbonicus (see below) and simplified that model, omitting her lascivious snake. I replaced the flower stalks sticking out of her mouth with one of the few iconographic conventions I knew of, the song-symbol cuciatl. However, I mistakenly turned the front stalk from under her throne into a flower when it was in fact a centipede representing the Underworld.
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TONALAMATL BORGIA (re-created by Richard Balthazar from Codex Borgia)
Aztec Calendar – Eagle Trecena -Tonalamatl Borgia
The Codex Borgia version of Xochiquetzal on the left is downright punk with her intricate facial tattoos, but she displays no specific emblems of her divine identity. In fact, her Earth Monster headdress would be more appropriate for Chalchiuhtlicue. The matrix in the lower center could suggest her patronage of weaving, but I think it’s in fact a game-board for patolli because she’s also patron of gaming. The four hemispheres may be playing pieces for the game.
At first, I was confused by the lack of emblems specific to Tezcatlipoca on the figure on the right—other than the black body and smoky curls around his eye. Then a knowledgeable friend advised that this was in fact a nagual of the otherwise invisible Tezcatlipoca, Ixtlilton (Small Black Face), also known as Tlaltetecuin (Lord of the Black Water Tlilatl). The symbolic item at top center is his scrying bowl or jar of dark water used for hydromancy, diagnosing ailments and prescribing cures. A gentle god of medicine and healing specifically in relation to children, Ixtlilton brought them peaceful sleep at night. Like Tezcatlipoca, Ixtlilton was a deity of divination, Tezcatlipoca consulting his obsidian mirror, and Ixtlilton studying reflections in dark water. He was also a god of dance and music sometimes called the brother of Five Flower (a nagual of Xochipilli)
The divinatory relationship between Xochiquetzal and Tezcatlipoca isn’t clear to me, other than in their being erstwhile consorts. I may not have my mythological wires straight, but I gather Xochiquetzal was once upon a time the wife of the Storm God Tlaloc (see the Rain trecena) who ruled in the Third Sun (Four Rain), a happy era perhaps set historically in ancient Teotihuacan. However, the nefarious Tezcatlipoca abducted her, and Tlaloc flew into an inordinate rage, destroying his idyllic world with a rain of fire (volcano). Its poor people became butterflies, dogs, or birds, some say turkeys. Afterwards, Tlaloc apparently married Chalchiuhtlicue (see the Reed trecena), who became the ruler of the Fourth Sun (Four Water). Meanwhile, the philandering Tezcatlipoca apparently moved on to an affair with Tlazolteotl (see Deer and Earthquake trecenas). Quite a family saga…
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TONALAMATL YOAL (compiled and re-created by Richard Balthazar on the basis of Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Rios)
Aztec Calendar – Eagle Trecena – Tonalamatl Yoal
The Yoal version of Xochiquetzal (on the left), like most deities in this tonalamatl, is loaded down with identifying motifs, including the facial tattoos. Here, she’s accompanied by an Underworld centipede under her throne, a libidinous snake looking out from between her thighs, a weirdly colored jaguar in her bustle, an eagle in her headdress, and an exorbitant display of quetzal plumes.
Xochiquetzal’s skirt is a beautiful example of her weaving prowess, and that blue thing in one of her left hands may well be a loom comb, a tool used to move weft yarns into place. That still doesn’t explain a similar (banded) object held by Chalchiuhtlicue in the Yoal Reed trecena, but it’s my best guess. In any event, this goddess is even grander than the Borbonicus image (see below) that inspired my own version.
The surreal deity on the right is not named in Codex Telleriano-Remensis, but in Codex Rios it’s labelled generically as Tezcatlipoca, its obvious nagual status indicated by a smoking mirror in the headdress. The anomalous creature in which the deity is disguised bears no relation to Borgia’s Ixtlilton or to any other known nagual of the Invisible One.
Some scholars suggest that this is a coyote—reflecting Tezcatlipoca’s talent for shape-shifting—like his walk-on appearance as a vulture in the Earthquake trecena. However, while this head might be canine, the ears are totally wrong, as are its eagle talons/claws and feline tail. Then there are those blue things stuck all over it (chips of turquoise or lapis?) which turn it into some mythical jeweled creature. Of course, such scholarly suggestions (like most scholarship) are simply authoritative guesswork, and I don’t require final answers to mysteries.
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OTHER TONALAMATLS
Tonalamatl Aubin patron panel for Eagle trecena
As a mythical jeweled creature, that in Tonalamatl Aubin sports red, gold, and blue jewels. It’s clearly no coyote, looking more like a jaguar with anatomically proper claws though with too short a tail. Note also the contrast with the true jaguar pelt it sits on. Its sketchy headdress resembles in form that of Borgia’s Ixtlilton, but nothing about it suggests Tezcatlipoca. Just a regular old jeweled critter?
On the right side, an understated Xochiquetzal at least has a fat centipede under her throne and an eagle in her headdress but is sorely lacking in quetzal plumes and imagination in her facial tattoo. Oddly, I think that thing she holds with both hands is an animal-headed digging stick, which doesn’t seem to relate to any of her themes.
The square would seem to be another patolli board, and the ballcourt design in the upper left is a new emblem, reflecting Xochiquetzal’s additional patronage (along with Xochipilli’s) of the sacred ballgame tlachtli. The decapitated individual may indicate the traditional fate of losers at tlachtli. (I’m not aware of her predilection for that style of sacrifice otherwise. However, somewhere long ago I read of a ritual sacrifice to her of a female, the victim’s flayed skin being donned by her priestess. Oh, my, the wild and crazy things goddesses do in the privacy of their temples…)
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Codex Borbonicus patron panel for Eagle trecena
The image of Xochiquetzal in Codex Borbonicus is one of the most famous in Aztec iconography, obviously a bit more subtle than my old one and not as exuberant as that in Tonalamatl Yoal. But she does have a rather sexy snake. The major item to note is that most of her feathers are red. Deities usually wear green quetzal plumes like those in the topknots here, and the quetzal apparently only has little red feathers on its breast. These big red feathers probably come from the scarlet macaw, a bird sacred to her brother/spouse Xochipilli.
Almost lost among the twenty ritual items, the de-emphasized jeweled beast is still anomalous: coyote-like ears but a jaguar tail and avian claws. Whatever it’s supposed to mean, I guess it does so minimally. The three symbolic motifs we saw in the Aubin panel, the patolli gameboard, beheaded ballgame loser, and schematic ballcourt, are grouped at the top of this panel. In the upper right corner is a reference to Xochiquetzal’s importance as a patron of sex. The couple modestly hidden behind a blanket is the standard symbol of marriage (or intercourse). Seen in the Yoal panel for the Crocodile trecena, it also appears in several other codices.
The other items of the conglom don’t bear discussion, except to note the Borbonicus fondness for scorpions which appear in many of its patron panels.
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Codex Vaticanus patron panel for Eagle trecena
Once again, Codex Vaticanus closely reflects the elements of Tonalamatl Borgia. This Xochiquetzal again has complex tattoos and an Earth Monster headdress. However, now she clearly dominates the secondary figure of Ixtlilton, that nagual of Tezcatlipoca identified by the Black Water Tlilatl above. The position of his arms akimbo (very like his posture in the Borgia panel) reminds me of the dancing figure in the Borgia Flower trecena whom I took to be his purported brother Five Flower (Macuil Xochitl). That deity, this one, and the Borgia Ixtlilton all have unusual face-paint patterns around their mouths that suggest a brotherly relationship—or at least more identity confusion among the minor-deity crowd.
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As far as patrons of the Eagle trecena go, these various naguals of Tezcatlipoca don’t seem to contribute much to the trecena’s themes of Supremacy/War and Lofty Vision. Maybe Ixtlilton and the jeweled beast really were included merely to reflect Xochiquetzal’s romantic history with Tezcatlipoca. After all, that would tie in well with her divine sexuality and beauty. Dr. Paquin also suggests that Ixtlilton/Tlaltetecuin (and the jeweled beasts) are acting as cheerleaders for Xochiquetzal, dancing to ward off harmful influences and maintain her high position of supreme strategist in oversight of the game of life-death-resurrection.
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You can view all the calendar pages I’ve completed up to this point in the Tonalamatl gallery.
Richard Balthazar 