pre-Columbian Native America

June 27, 2020

The Faces of Death

In this dire virus situation, we are all looking death in the face, but we can’t really see what it looks like wearing a mask and standing at a sociable distance. So I tried to get an up-close look at the face of death through the sanitized lens of Aztec art. They were intimate with that inevitable fact of life and drew many detailed pictures of it.

In their calendars, the Aztecs represented the day Death, Miquitzli, the sixth in their 20-day month, as a skull, often fancifully ornamented:

Signs for the Aztec Day Death

While the examples from Codex Cospi are the most varied and almost playful, they’re not exactly “fun” or amenable. Not that they were supposed to be… By the way, notice the tassels fed through the earlobes. Ears on a skull? This could become a new fashion fad!

The Aztecs also personified, or if you will, deified death as Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Land of the Dead (Mictlan). He was portrayed in various styles with many common motifs as a skeleton, often with a sacrificial knife for a nose and a semi-circular headdress, usually with a central spike. (Note two incipient examples of the spike among the Cospi signs above.) In Codex Borgia, he often wears a hand as a tassel through his earlobe. In the display below I skipped the skeletons and show only the skulls. None of them is particularly warm and cuddly, but again I guess Death’s heads simply aren’t.

Heads of Aztec Lord of Death

These gruesome images, which underlie many Day of the Dead graphics, weren’t especially frightening for the Aztecs who had a deep reverence for Mictlantecuhtli, even to the point of ritual cannibalism. I felt a similar, though not so hungry, reverence a few years ago when I drew the icon for the Lord of Death. He’s existentially pretty grand, but his beckoning gesture isn’t very enticing. Note the spiked ornament and the Magliabechiano headdress. Besides a vaguely realistic jaguar pelt, I used my artistic license to hang that spider web across his midriff. Oh, and those are eyeballs hanging from his cape. They do look a bit like googly eyes.

Aztec Lord of Death

These boney specters were the way I saw the Aztec face of Death until quite recently when I decided to re-create the book of days (tonalamatl) in the Codex Rios. I suddenly got glimpses of his real face instead of a fleshless skull.

They say that Codex Rios (one of the zillions of documents held by the Vatican Library) is a 16th-century Italian copy of the more or less pre-conquest codex called Telleriano-Remensis. As a copy it wasn’t terribly faithful, taking many liberties with images—some really worked; some didn’t—and making several mistakes in the numbering of days. But it was good that Rios took liberties because T-R is crude artistically speaking, though at times the copy itself was sloppy.

The T-R tonalamatl was drawn in pieces, each 13-day week (trecena) laid out with the first five days and main patron on one page and the last eight on another with the second patron/symbol. Rios followed that format exactly. In my re-creation, the weeks will be presented whole on their own pages to give an integral view of the time periods and supernatural characteristics.

The T-R and Rios tonalamatls include the nine Lords of the Night in sequence with the days, a cycle taking many years to complete (9 Lords/260 days). These Lords also appear (very sketchily) in Codex Cospi and in the complicated layouts of Codex Borbonicus and Tonalamatl Aubin along with Lords of the Day and totem birds, but in T-R/Rios the Lords of the Night are shown prominently alone in distinctive portrait busts.

The fifth Lord of the Night—and Lord of the fifth (mid-night) hour of the night—is none other than Mictlantecuhtli. He occurs 29 times during most of the 260-day years. In T-R he’s rendered as a full-fleshed “person” with remarkably consistent accoutrements. There are only 22 faces of Lord Death below because I don’t have copies of a few of the T-R pages. I doubt the missing pages will contain any surprises:

Faces of the Lord of Mictlan (Codex Telleriano-Remensis)

Again, the headdress with spiked ornament is standard, as well as a black lower face. Since these are given in order, there seems to be a greater finesse in the first several busts, if only for the green on the scarf “flaps.” The artist probably got tired as the days rolled by.

Note the plus signs on most of the scarves—they’re NOT crosses but a geometric motif possibly having to do with the four directions and center. Most consistent are the profiles of the Lord. The protruding mouth and often pendulous lower lip must have some iconographic significance, but unless it’s meant to convey menace, I haven’t a clue. Note also the almost identical noses—which appear on several other T-R Lords of the Night. This ancient artist had a clear template.

On the other hand, the artist(s) of the Codex Rios copy did not have a standard physiognomy for Mictlantecuhtli. Even standard formats in Rios tend to vary widely in execution and detail. As well, the artist(s) had to squeeze the day- and deity-images to accommodate notes (in Italian) naming the days and good, bad, or indifferent luck. With mostly consistent traditional ornamentation, the faces of Death in Rios are strongly individual:

Faces of the Lord of Mictlan (Codex Rios)

In my re-creation of the Rios tonalamatl, I won’t render all the variant images of the deities but will repeat an established portrait of each one using the modern magic of copying. I cherry-picked among the above 29 images to choose my favorite details and distilled them down to this interpretation of Mictlantecuhtli, the face of Death.

Lord of Mictlan

When I peered through Aztec art and discovered this evocative human face, I fell in love with lovely Death. Now I can look this beautiful Lord in the eye and happily know he awaits. I plan on making him wait for a great long while, but when he beckons, it will be good to fall into his arms.

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May 30, 2020

Aztec Lords of the Night

In Codices Borgia and Vaticanus, the 13-day ceremonial week (trecena) is laid out in a complex day-count (tonalpohualli) with a panel presenting its divine ruler(s) or patron(s). In Codex Borbonicus and Tonalamatl Aubin, both the Lords of the Day (with their totem birds) and Lords of the Night are included but aren’t very easy to differentiate/identify. In its spreadsheet-format calendar, Codex Cospi also inserts the Lords of the Night in equally sketchy heads and symbols.

Meanwhile, Codices Telleriano-Remensis and Rios (an Italian copy of the former) accompany the trecena day-counts with the nine Lords of the Night. They appear in a super-cycle sequence that takes several 260-day ceremonial years (calendar rounds) to complete. In that sequence, each one presides over the whole night, and in the same sequence, one presides over each of the nine hours of the night. (Point of curious information: The Aztecs counted 13 daylight hours and 9 hours of darkness, so the actual length of an hour varied proportionately and by season.)

In the T-R and Rios codices, the Night Lords are sloppily drawn, even slap-dash, though with consistent, if careless, motifs. I’ve chosen to refine their iconographic images, giving them more realistic faces like in Codices Fejervary-Mayer and/or Laud:

1st Lord—Xiuhtecuhtli—Lord of the Turquoise/Fire. The peaked headdress and red ribbon are standard emblems of this deity who represents the center of time and space.

2nd Lord—Itztli—Obsidian (Knife). I don’t know what the standard black markings on his face might signify, but those things in his “hat” are sacrificial knives.

3rd Lord—Pilzintecuhtli—Young Lord, God of the planet Mercury. He’s also a “sun-lord” as shown by the sun in his headdress.

4th Lord—Centeotl—God of Maize. Check out the indicative cobs of maize in his headdress.

5th Lord—Mictlantecuhtli—Lord of the Land of the Dead. This human image is most unusual for a face of death; usually he’s a skull on a skeleton. (See my Icon #10.)

6th Lord—Chalchiuhtlicue—Jade Skirt, Goddess of Flowing Water. (See my Icon #2.) Females could also be Lords since tecuhtli actually means more like “ruler.” (She may be the ancestral Great Goddess from ancient Teotihuacan.)

7th Lord—Tlazolteotl—Goddess of Filth (literally). Her mouth is black from eating people’s filth/sins. In her headdress are spindles of spun cotton and tassels of unspun, showing that she’s also the goddess of weaving.

8th Lord—Tepeyollotl—Heart of the Mountain, God of Caves/Volcanos/Earthquakes and Jaguar of the Night. I can’t explain his tri-color face in these calendars. (See my Icon #17.)

9th Lord—Tlaloc—God of Storms. His goggle-eyed, long-toothed visage is emblematic in most codex contexts. (See my Icon #20.)

For the 2nd Lord of the Night, some sources name Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror (See my Icon #19) in place of Itztli, but that’s based solely on his image on the Night Lord page in Codex Borgia (p. 14) showing them in full figure. In fact, Itztli is a principal nagual (manifestation) of the “Black One,” who’s supposedly invisible. The Borgia figure has a sacrificial knife as one of his feet, so it clearly intends to be Itztli.

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Recently my knowledgeable Mayanist friend mentioned that the unusual 52-count of solar years (“Aztec Century”) in Codex Borbonicus accompanies each year with a Night Lord, though in a strange sequence/cycle unlike that for the day-count, and he explained the basis for it. I’d never paid that year-count much attention, and his explanation was an eye-opener. The 52- count of solar years (not of 260-day ceremonial years!) in that codex appears on two pages (pp. 21 & 22), each with 26 years in their ritual count in a system related to the day-count.

Four of the days in the 20-day month of the solar calendar are (for very complicated, but comprehensible reasons) are chosen as “year-bearers:” Rabbit, Reed, Flint, and House. In that order, they’re counted in cycles of 13, i.e. One Rabbit, Two Reed, Three Flint, Four House, Five Rabbit, Six Reed, etc. Like the trecena process in the ceremonial day-count, this produces four trecenas of years, which I call “trecades.”

Curiously, the century cycle is structured just like a cross-counted deck of playing cards with Rabbit = Clubs, Reed = Diamonds, Flint = Hearts (appropriately), and House = Spades. In this correspondence, the numbers work as well: 1 = Ace, 11 = Jack, 12 = Queen, and 13=King. By the way, in the following image of the first half of the cycle, the central panel portrays the goddess of the night Oxomoco (on the left, strewing stars like seeds) and the god of the day Cipactonal (on the right, burning incense).

First Half of the Aztec “Century” Count, Codex Borbonicus, p. 21

This first page of the count lays out the One Rabbit and One Reed sequences, each with a Night Lord as principle divine patron of that year:

Clockwise from lower left
One Rabbit—Mictlantecuhtli
Two Reed—Piltzintecuhtli
Three Flint—Tlaloc
Four House—Tlazolteotl
Five Rabbit—Centeotl
Six Reed—Xiuhtecuhtli
Seven Flint—Tepeyollotl
Eight House—Mictlantecuhtli
Nine Rabbit—Piltzintecuhtli
Ten Reed—Tlaloc
Eleven Flint—Chalchiuhtlicue
Twelve House—Centeotl
Thirteen Rabbit—Xiuhtecuhtli

Clockwise from upper right
One Reed—Tepeyollotl
Two Flint—Mictlantecuhtli
Three House—Piltzintecuhtli
Four Rabbit—Tlaloc
Five Reed—Chalchiuhtlicue
Six Flint—Centeotl
Seven House—Piltzintecuhtli
Eight Rabbit—Tepeyollotl
Nine Reed—Mictlantecuhtli
Ten Flint—Itztli
Eleven House—Tlaloc
Twelve Rabbit—Chalchiuhtlicue
Thirteen Reed—Centeotl

The little glyphs of these Night Lords are fairly consistent, though sometimes hard to recognize. Note the three stylized place symbols (for Seven Flint, One Reed, and Eight Rabbit), which represent a mountain with a heart emblem (i.e., Tepeyollotl, Heart of the Mountain). Also note that 10 Flint is accompanied by a stylized sacrificial knife (i.e., Itztli).

The busts of the other Lords are mostly recognizable by their regalia, except for confusing variations in the four differing instances of Pilzintecuhtli (Two Reed, Nine Rabbit, Three House, and Seven House) and the two of Xiuhtecuhtli (Six Reed and Thirteen Rabbit). Further confusion is caused by the fact that Xiuhtecuhtli in Six Reed and Pilzintecuhtli in Seven House are both singing/speaking. We just have to learn to live with these inconsistencies.

The second half of the count occurs on p. 22, presenting the One Flint and One House sequences, each year again with its patron Night Lord in an entirely different selection. You can make your own list of patrons. The system for assigning annual Night Lord patrons is another tie-in with the ceremonial day-count. Each year (like One Rabbit, Two Reed, etc.) is paired with the Night Lord for the corresponding numbered day in its trecena (Mictlantecuhtli, Pilzintecuhtli, etc.)

Because of the nine-cycle of Night Lords in the tonalpohualli and the 52 years in the century, the year patrons don’t work out evenly or in a logical pattern. Some appear 6 times, some 5. Of course, the nine-cycle also doesn’t quite fit in the tonalpohualli itself (260 / 9 = 28.89), and it can only accomplish a full cycle in 9 years (28.89 X 9 = 260). That means that the first ceremonial year ends with Tepeyollotl on Thirteen Flower, and the second year starts with Tlaloc on one Crocodile. The ninth year will finally end with Tlaloc on Thirteen Flower.

Consequently, the sequence of Night Lords from which the annual patrons are selected exists only in the first calendar round of the standard tonalpohualli. In the next eight rounds, the days all have different Lords of the Night as patrons. Does this mean that the years in the next eight centuries had different patrons too? Then the tenth century returns to the first distribution. This odd cycle means that the Aztecs may have counted a “nonennium” of 468 years (9 X 52 = 468), or perhaps the repeating tenth century constituted a true millennium of 520 years.

Perhaps they did—I’ve seen somewhere that they considered the previous four Suns/eras (Four Jaguar, Four Wind, Four Rain, and Four Water) to have lasted 520 years. In that case, since we don’t know exactly when the Fifth Sun (Four Earthquake) began, it probably ended officially at some point in the 16th or 17th Gregorian century.

I have no difficulty personally in construing the Fifth Sun as starting on or around 1000 CE during the Toltec dominance and ending in 1519 CE when the invaders obliterated the Aztec empire. If so, a Sixth Sun (which for obvious symbolic reasons I would choose to call Four Death) may have begun in 1520—to end in or around 2040 CE. In another 16 years, we may move into a Seventh Sun (which I would hopefully call Four Flower). Once again, we could be looking at a Mesoamerican cycle ending, this time as an Aztec prophecy.

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May 24, 2020

Totems of the Aztec Lords of the Day

In Aztec culture, notions of time are central and perhaps inordinately important in terms of fate. Life was embedded in and permeated by strict divisions of divinatory time, starting with the agricultural and ceremonial calendars, in which respectively the 20 named days of the “month” (vientena) were counted in 13 numbered days of the “week” (trecena). The basic division of the day was, of course, between day and night (with Cipactonal as god of the daytime and Oxomoco as goddess of the nighttime). This is where things get strange from our modern perspective.

Having no clocks per se to measure passing time, the Aztecs decided there were 13 “hours” in the daytime and 9 in the night. (No doubt, this reflects their 13 heavens and 9 levels of the Underworld.) With only an amorphous measure for a “minute,” they probably never even thought about an Aztec “second.” Their 22-hour diurnal cycle meant their hour in our terms averaged 65½ minutes long, the day lasting 14.18 and night 9.82 of our hours. In any case, their hours must have been only approximate and varied in actual length.

Anyway, a deity was in charge of each day of the trecena, 13 gods or goddesses called Lords of the Day, a list about which, in scholarly fact, there’s some disagreement. The 13 numerals themselves are also ruled by deities, but apparently in a different list. There are also deities in charge of each numbered heaven, but again that list seems to differ substantially. I’ve only seen confused references to various heavens and suspect that the 9 Night Lords might correspond to the 9 levels of the Underworld. But probably not since Mictlantecuhtli is the ruler of not the 5th, but the 9th (lowest) level of Mictlan. Nobody ever said that mythology has to be consistent, and I don’t care to sort out so many lists.

Figuring out the Lords of the Day is work enough. The sequence of full-figured Lords in Codex Borbonicus seems the same as the sketchy heads in Tonalamatl Aubin (with some odd problems there). Looking at an ostensibly authoritative list on Wikipedia, I found a problem in Borbonicus itself: #11 (identified there as Mictlancihuatl, Lady of Mictlan), is evidently not a female and wears a pointy headdress like the one usually associated with Mictlantecuhtli, her consort already listed earlier. Another problem there is with #13 (identified as Citlalicue, Star Skirt), who looks a lot like Mictlancihuatl in Codex Magliabechiano, though I believe Citlalicue is sometimes shown as an Underworld goddess too.

With those questions, I checked the online Mexicolore.co.uk, which complicates the list even further. Instead of #5, Tlazolteotl, they list some deity I’d never heard of: Tonaleque. Instead of #7, Centeotl, they cite Tonacatecuhtli, Lord of Sustenance; for #11, Mictlancihuatl, they insert Yoaltecuhtli, God of Darkness (an odd sort of deity for Day Lord); and for #13, Citlalicue, they propose Ometecuhtli, Lord of Two and the same deity as Tonacatecuhtli–a male. I’m left still wondering about the masculine Mictlancihuatl.

Puzzled, I consulted the premiere authoritative source, “Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate” by Elizabeth Hill Boone, and she helped clarify. For #11, she lists Chalmecatl, He of Chalma, a god of some level of the Underworld indeed related to Mictlantecuhtli. For the feminine #13, Boone’s suggested Ilamatecuhtli should actually be Ilamacihuatl, which is simply another name for Omecihuatl/Tonacacihuatl. As half of Ometeotl, the Deity of Two, the creative pair who birthed the principal gods, co-patron of the Crocodile trecena, and co-ruler of the 13th heaven, she well deserves a slot as a Lord of the Day, especially as #13. I’ve not seen her depicted before as a skeletal deity of the Underworld, but I suppose it could well be she.

I’m happy to include Boone’s #11 and #13 (adjusted) in my roster of the Lords of the Day.

    1. Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord of Fire/Turquoise
    2. Tlaltecuhtli, Lord of the Earth
    3. Chalchiuhtlicue, the Jade Skirt, Goddess of Flowing Water
    4. Tonatiuh, God of the Fifth Sun
    5. Tlazolteotl, Goddess of Filth
    6. Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Land of the Dead (Mictlan)
    7. Centeotl, God of Maize
    8. Tlaloc, God of Storms
    9. Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent
    10. Tezcatlipoca, The Smoking Mirror
    11. Chalmecatl, He of Chalma, an Underworld deity
    12. Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Lord of the House of the Dawn (Morning Star)
    13. Omecihuatl, Lady of Two

Here below is my rogues’ gallery of Day Lords as seen in Codex Borbonicus:

Lords of the Day from Codex Borbonicus

Whoever they are for real, I suggest that these same Day Lords rule the respective 13 daytime hours. Striving for elusive mythological consistency, I’ve also proposed that the 9 nighttime hours are ruled by the 9 Lords of the Night. Maybe, maybe not… The Aztecs tended to complicate their paradigms, some might say unnecessarily.

However, we do know for sure the numerical sequence of totems for the Lords of the Day. These totems are called in the jargon “volatiles” because they’re things that fly: birds and a butterfly. (Apparently other deities also have volatiles, like the bat or vulture of Itzpapalotl, but I’m not all that up on the finer details of Aztec ornithology.) Here are my versions of the volatile totems for the 13 Lords of the Day (whoever they really are), the 13 days of the trecena, and (possibly) the 13 daytime hours. They are drawn on models from Codex Borgia, plate 71.

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May 14, 2020

Icon #19 – TEZCATLIPOCA, the Smoking Mirror

I’m happy to announce the completion of Icon #19 – Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror. Once again, the designs and motifs in this icon are drawn from images in the surviving pre-Conquest Aztec codices. It and the preceding 18 icons can be downloaded as .pdf files with captions from the YE GODS! coloring book page.

Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror

First, I should offer some tips for coloring if you’re so inclined:

1) The black stripes on the faces of the upper left and right figures should be paired with yellow, which is the emblematic color-scheme for this deity; in the original, the upper central figure is mostly white with a few color highlights—at your discretion.

2) All those sacrificial knives (flints) in the borders are supposed to be half white and half red, in whatever pattern you choose.

3) The patterns on the limbs and face of the main figure are supposed to be red tattoos; I should also note that in the original he has brown hair.

4) The hair-like figure flowing from the head of the monster should be red blood as well as the apparent stream from the deity’s severed leg. The rest of the colors are up to you.

The horned owl at top center is Tezcatlipoca’s personal “volatile” symbol (many deities have one). The upper figures are some of his various manifestations. The main scene is the story of the god’s battle with the Earth Monster (Cipactli) in which he lost a foot and then created the First Sun (or world), Four Jaguar, on her back. The day-signs along the bottom are those representing the direction North, with Jaguar numbered as four to name the Sun being created just above. The dots along the side are the numeral 10, of which Tezcatlipoca is patron, and they also indicate that he is the 10th lord of the Day.

That should be enough to get you going. As soon as I can, I’ll post the icon on the coloring book page in vectors so it can be sized freely with no change in line quality. Now, when I’ve caught my breath, I’ll move on to Icon #20 – Tlaloc, the Storm God.

April 29, 2020

Visions of Tezcatlipoca

In the couple months since my last posting about the Maid in New Orleans, my self-incarceration for the Corona virus has made it easy to focus on the last chapters of my second memoir “Lord Wind” (soon to be posted for free download), and drawing on Icon #19: Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, for the coloring book YE GODS!

Like the 18 previous deities in the series, this icon is modelled on images from the few surviving Aztec codices and reflects the mythology summarized in my illustrated encyclopedia of the Aztec pantheon. The icon will present several visions of Tezcatlipoca, who is sometimes called The Black One. I offer here two of the vignettes as “teasers.”

The first is Tezcatlipoca as an eagle, which is based on an image from a calendar week in Codex Rios. I’ve re-created this unusual manifestation of the deity using the stylistics of Codex Nuttall and certain motifs from Codex Borgia. (The eagle is a symbol of power and dominance.)

Tezcatlipoca as eagle

The second is Tezcatlipoca manifesting as Itztlacoliuhqui (Curved Obsidian Blade), who is the god of stone, cold, sin, punishment, objectivity, and blind justice. This surreal image is a re-working of one from Codex Borbonicus, though similar, sometimes even more surreal, details can be found in other codices as well. It presents some striking innovations in the stylebook of Aztec iconography and raises questions about certain motifs. Your guess about what they mean is as good as mine.

Tezcatlipoca as Itztlacoliuhqui

One of these solitary days I’ll finish this icon. I’m still waiting for some final tweaks on the vectors for Icon #18: Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers. Meanwhile, like everything else, my show of larger icons at the Ohkay Casino and Conference Center has been locked down… In this “unprecedented” viral situation, the show of smaller icons lies in storage with no prospective venues.

I have no options but to keep on with the drawing—next will be Tlaloc, the Storm God—and like Candide, work in my garden. My 35 varieties of iris are just now coming into bloom to bring joy to this best of all possible worlds.

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January 1, 2020

Icon #18 – Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers

I’m proud to announce finishing my latest Aztec icon, #18: Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers—by the end of 2019.  Working in and around other projects, I spent 6 months on drawing it, rather longer than it took on any of the preceding 17 for the coloring book Ye Gods!  Small wonder…

Now that the basic drawing is done, I can at least offer a small version here for your wonder and amazement. To post it on the coloring book page, I’ll have to do a caption page with model images from the codices and get it turned into vectors for sizable printing.  All in good time…

Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers

No doubt you notice immediately that this icon is a lot different than the others. As a matter of fact, it’s seriously iconoclastic, breaking several of the canons of Aztec-codex iconography.  But first let me explain the elements.

As detailed in the Aztec Pantheon, XOCHIPILLI (Prince of Flowers) {sho-chee-peel-lee}, is a very appealing deity: the god of art, dance, laughter, happiness, beauty and peace, flowers, ecstasy, sleep, and dreams/hallucinations, as well as a god of fertility (agricultural produce and gardens).  Hence all the blossoms and vegetation which are far more intense and decorative than you’ll find in any of the codices.  That’s my first departure from the Aztec style, but I couldn’t pass up the perfect opportunity to indulge in floral display.

The Prince is also the patron of the sacred ballgame tlachtli (seen in the structure behind him), of the day Monkey (which cavorts by his left foot), and of homosexuals and male prostitutes.  In the cameos above and below the deity are his various lovers, a fairly polyamorous assortment.

Upper left is Opochtli, left-handed god of hunters; upper center is the Old Coyote, Huehuecoyotl (see also Icon #6), god of music, dance, and sex; and upper right is the god of writing, painting and song Chicome Xochitl, Seven Flower.

Lower right is the god of music, games, and feasting Macuil Xochitl, Five Flower; lower center is Pilzintecuhtli, the Young Lord, god of the planet Mercury; and lower left is the Prince’s twin sister-wife Xochiquetzal, the Flower Feather, goddess of love and female sexuality. As a note, I’m going use this cameo sketch of Xochiquetzal when I get to doing her icon.

The most iconoclastic feature of this icon is the figure of Xochipilli himself. In the codices, almost without exception, human figures are presented in profile, but my Prince is seen here full-frontal with only his face in profile.  His intentionally sensual posture is an echo of much earlier Maya iconography.  The angle of his chair/seat and new perspectives on his limbs, feet, and etc. forced me be fairly realistic in drawing the physical details.  (See that right hand and his un-Aztec eye!)

The most subtle element of this icon is that Xochipilli is also the patron of the number seven. With the god in his circular wreath of flowers as a central “dot,” the six cameos around him comprise that numeral.  My only regret is that I couldn’t find a way to include a procession (as shown in Codex Magliabechiano) with a little guy blowing on a conch-shell trumpet:

Conch-shell Trumpeter

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December 28, 2019

Aztecs Go Big

Five Flower – Aztec God of Games

The above image of Five Flower, Macuil Xochitl (God of games, feasting, merry-making, music and dance) is simply click-bait.  He’s shown here in a cameo included in Icon #18–which is really, really close to being done.  Hope to post it for you in the next week or so.  Meanwhile…

All this fall my Aztec icon show Ye Gods! has on display again, first occupying our local Las Vegas for a month (hosted by Highlands University) and then hanging out at Santa Fe’s public library branch on the south side for six weeks.  Not sure how many folks really viewed them in either place, but at least that got their banners out of my garage and up on some walls, which is of course the point of it all.

Last week I arranged for the bunch to make a return appearance in early January to nearby Española, where last fall they’d made considerable noise at Northern NM College. Now they’ll be partying at the Ohkay Casino—Ohkay Owingeh used to be San Juan Pueblo—where the conference center is being redesigned with a huge lobby/hallway.  My proud deities will each have a vast wall from which to lord it over the conferring crowds.

In general, I’m thrilled silly to display my icons to multitudes of people, like the 2-3,000 expected for a conference on January 18. In particular, I’m totally pumped that these crowds will be what one might call “normal” folks who aren’t necessarily museum- or gallery-goers.  My weird gods and goddesses are bound catch their innocent eyes, and the fascinating captions might even get read.  I might well hit the visitation jackpot!

Even more specifically, I’m overjoyed that the casino folks want the show to be up for a long time—at least through the coming summer! Ye gods!  Imagine having one’s show up for nine months…  I’ve told them it can just hang there until they get tired of it.  It makes great décor.

Considering those vast walls, I plan to increase the size of the icons so they don’t get lost in all that space. They’ll bump up from 3’ X 4’ to 4’ X 5’, i.e. 1/3 larger, and will no doubt be at least that much more imposing.  I’m also inspired to add QR code-blocks to the captions for folks to scan and download the vector drawings.  Might as well get with the technology…

That will leave me with the smaller, original show to hang in less spacious spaces, and my first target will be our local Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). I’d approached them back when first planning the show and basically got ignored.  Now that they actually have a gallery director, maybe there’s a chance, especially considering the show’s history of venues.

When Ohkay does eventually get tired of my rowdy crew, there are several other casinos and conference centers around where this deep Native American history might be appreciated. But in the meantime, I’m dreaming even bigger for the Big Show—the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.  Wish me luck.

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September 11, 2019

More Aztec Whoopee

Here we go again! My informational art exhibit YE GODS! ICONS OF AZTEC DEITIES will show for the fourth time at NEW MEXICO HIGHLANDS UNIVERSITY in beautiful Las Vegas NM from September 30 to November 2, 2019 at BURRIS HALL GALLERY, 903 National Avenue.

In 2018 the first 15 icons showed at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe and at Northern New Mexico College in Española, and in 2019, with the addition of #16 (TECCIZTECATL & METZTLI, Deities of the Moon), they were displayed at Santa Fe Community College. This iteration at NMHU will include another new icon, #17:  TEPEYOLLOTL, Heart of the Mountain, the god of caves, volcanoes, and a bunch of other neat stuff.

Currently working on the next icon for the coloring book, #18: XOCHIPILLI, Prince of Flowers, I’ve broken out of my alphabetical sequence to manifest the splendid deity that I consider my personal patron (appearing above in my website banner).  I’m also breaking several Aztec iconographic conventions for this one, not the least of which is running wild with floral motifs.  One of my favorite details is a tiny Aztec bee:

Aztec Bee

You’ll just have to wait a while to see the rest of this literally iconoclastic icon.

Along with the NMHU show, I’ll give a slide lecture on the Aztec Codices for their Art in the Americas class and a gallery talk for their Día de los Muertos celebration on November 1, just ahead of a concert to be directed by my music prof friend Andre Garcia-Nuthmann. Of course, Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Land of the Dead, will be featured, as will Tepeyollotl, Heart of the Mountain, who guards the entrance to Mictlan.  That dire place is always shown as the mouth of the monstrous, hermaphroditic Lord of the Earth, Tlaltecuhtli:

Entrance to Mictlan

Meanwhile efforts continue to line up more venues for the show, including other educational institutions around New Mexico. If anybody out there has hot ideas for presenters anywhere else, sic them on me!  I’ve been trying to interest places in surrounding states but so far have struck out.  (Read that as:  My approaches have been roundly ignored.)  I’d really love to hang the show at Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology, but I expect the materials should be translated into Spanish, actually not such a bad idea…

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August 22, 2019

Exultate Jubilate

I’m totally exultant! Yesterday I discovered that in July wonderful WordPress has started registering downloads.  This is a ginormous deal since for the past five years all I could do was hope (pray and wish) that you folks out there were taking the fabulous stuff I’ve been trying to give away on this website.  Now I’m jubilant that you apparently are indeed and may actually have been accepting my gifts in the past.  Not to be greedy, but I’d love to get some comments back about my artwork and writing—appreciation, criticism, gratitude, or whatever.

There were some splendid surprises in the first six weeks of download data. I’d been pleased with getting an enormous number of hits (from literally all over the world) on my Aztec materials, and now I find that they’re being downloaded like hotcakes.  To my joy, the treatise The Aztec Codices and encyclopedia The Aztec Pantheon seem hugely popular, but even better, the YE GODS! coloring book is flying out the door, both as the collection, The Aztec Icons, and as individual black and white images.

Through Google Image searches, I’d already observed that my earlier four-color images of Aztec deities were being used for various purposes like T-shirt designs and other graphics, and now I see that they’re still being downloaded frequently. As hoped, my art is now truly taking on a life of its own in the wide world—beyond the several exhibitions of icons I’ve managed to organize.  The next show will be at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas NM this October.

The other thrill is that folks are also taking my books. No longer do I feel like a writer scribbling invisibly in the wilderness.  Folks are downloading my first novel Bat in a Whirlwind, my first memoir There Was a Ship, and the nonfiction books: Remember Native America, Celebrate Native America, and Getting Get.  My second novel Divine Debauch is only available through an online publisher, but some have linked to that too.  Weirdly, my most popular book seems to be the biography Ms. Yvonne, The Secret Life of My Mother.  Go figure.

Now I can even look forward to reports of folks accessing my Pre-Columbian artifact drawings and related Indian Mounds photos, as well as images of my sculptures, photographic art, shorter writings, and my long, fascinating, and sometimes sordid life.  Of course, you can also feel free to download my shorter, but still fascinating and sometimes sordid blog posts—like this one.

Now back to work on my next memoir titled “Lord Wind, My Second Coming Out” and on Aztec Icon #18, Xochipilli, Prince of Flowers.

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July 13, 2019

Jaguar of the Night

I really must devote a word or two to a favorite detail from my Aztec Icon #17, Tepeyollotl—just in case it slipped your notice. It’s my rendition of the Jaguar of the Night, one of the various manifestations of the Heart of the Mountain.  The divine Jaguar leaps at the rising sun, greeting it with its roars (those odd wavy sound symbols).

Jaguar of the Night

                             From Icon #17                                          Model from Codex Nuttall

One reason I’m showing you this drawing is to sing the praises of my sweet graphics program, GIMP.  (You can Google it for free download!)  It really makes me feel like a magician.  I took the splendid image of a jaguar from Codex Nuttall and with a few adjustments in proportions and position turned the rampant figure into a leaping one.  Of course there were many pixels to wrestle with, but that’s the name of the digital drawing game.

Also: I’m quite pleased with this drawing of my totem animal and rather proud of it.  Hope you like it too.

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