Ozomatli
The Aztecs revered ten divine animals (divinities), that weren’t quite full-fledged gods (deities). These critters were all “consecrated” as days (tonalli) in the ceremonial calendar. As Part II of The Aztec Animal Divinities, the following galleries display the last five: Itzcuintli, Mazatl, Ocelotl, Ozomatli, and Tochtli.
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See also:
Eagle, Codex Borgia
The Aztecs revered ten divine animals (divinities), that weren’t quite full-fledged gods (deities). These critters were all “consecrated” as days (tonalli) in the ceremonial calendar. As Part I of The Aztec Animal Divinities, the following galleries display the first five: Cipactli, Coatl, Cozcacuauhtli, Cuauhtli, and Cuetzpallin.
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Pictured above is an absolutely surreal Aztec deity of death – a quite literally dead god! He’s just one of several supernatural beings connected with Mictlan, the Land of the Dead.
My sixth gallery of refurbished/repaired/restored/recreated images from the ancient codices features The Aztec Deities of Death including Mictlantecuhtli, Mictlancihuatl, Tlaltecuhtli, Xolotl, Itztlacoliuhqui, and Chalmecatecuhtli. Check it out for some mind-bending visions from the Aztec Underworld.
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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.
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Stone of Coyolxauhqui
In their enormous pantheon, the Aztecs recognized several female deities of the “Dark Side,” most of them with sinister aspects.
This gallery of their often gruesome images is entitled The Aztec Ladies of the Night.
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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…
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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…
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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)
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)
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
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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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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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.
The eighteenth trecena (13-day “week”) of the Aztec Tonalpohualli (ceremonial count of days) is called Wind for its first numbered day, which is the 2nd day of the veintena (20-day “month”). In Nahuatl, Wind is Ehecatl. It was known as Ik’ (Wind, Breath, Spirit) in Yucatec Maya, and Iq’ (Strong Wind) in Quiché Maya. The patron of the day Wind is Quetzalcoatl (See Icon #14), also patron of the Jaguar Trecena, and the eponymous wind deity Ehecatl (See Icon #5), the Breath of Life and spirit of the Tree of Life itself, is his principal nagual (manifestation).
PATRON DEITY RULING THE WIND TRECENA
Chantico, the Lady of the House (See Icon #4), is the goddess of fire (both in the home/hearth and in the earth), representing the feminine side of life (cooking, eating, and domesticity), the waters of birth, the fire of spirit, fertility and self-sacrifice. Her consort is variously seen as Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord of Fire and patron of the Snake Trecena, or as Tepeyollotl, Heart of the Mountain, the god of volcanoes (See Icon #17) and a patron of the Deer Trecena.
AUGURIES OF THE WIND 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: Inspiration, Communication, Necromancy. Traditionally associated with the magical arts, this trecena was used by diviners to select propitious days on which to perform rituals. As Ehecatl represents the divine wind of the spirit, this energy is associated with life, breath, inspiration, and communication, but it can also conjure up storms and bring great change. Under the influence of Chantico, goddess of fire, the Wind trecena can often breathe new life into ideas, and inspire activities aligned with heart-felt communication and the provision of comfort. Use of the magical arts during this period could also help to bring nourishment for the spirit.
Further to how these energies connect with world events, see the Maya Count of Days Horoscope blog at whitepuppress.ca/horoscope/ Look for the Ik’ trecena.
THE 13 NUMBERED DAYS IN THE WIND 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 Wind, it continues the trecena with: 2 House, 3 Lizard, 4 Snake, 5 Death, 6 Deer, 7 Rabbit, 8 Water, 9 Dog, 10 Monkey, 11 Grass, 12 Reed, and 13 Jaguar.
There are two special days in the Wind trecena:
One Wind (in Nahuatl Ce Ehecatl) -traditional day for offerings to be made to Quetzalcoatl. The day appropriately introduces a trecena devoted to sorcery and necromancy.
Nine Dog (in Nahuatl Chicnahui Itzcuintli) – the festival day of magicians, perhaps because the patron of the number Nine was the great Quetzalcoatl himself, and Dog (Xolotl) was a divine magician. Significantly, it is also the birth-day-name of Chantico, the trecena’s patron.
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!
At the time, I didn’t know about Chantico’s importance as a volcano goddess, and my version of her is a quintessentially Codex Nuttall matron tending a stylized hearth-fire. I acknowledged her domestic role by including the weaving spindle—a detail far more appropriate for the goddess Tlazolteotl. The golden bird in her headdress is probably completely out of place, but her jaguar-pelt throne is perfectly appropriate for a goddess. In my Icon #4, I posed Chantico in an ornamental house (temple), which must have been aesthetically successful because that was the one icon banner stolen from the last venue of my YE GODS! show.
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TONALAMATL BORGIA (re-created by Richard Balthazar from Codex Borgia)
The Wind Trecena page in Codex Borgia shows Chantico, sometimes called the Lady of Jewels (Lady of Wealth) as ornately adorned with what may be numerous pearls, but there is little else to identify her. Her nose ornament is a little too generic to serve that purpose, and the enigmatic item (inverted pot?) under her throne doesn’t help either.
More to the point, the three ornate symbols in the center of the panel are glyphs illustrating Chantico’s realms of power. At the top center is a burning temple, metaphorical for fire in the earth (volcano), and in the center is the fire in a hearth/container, both with orangish and gray curlicues of flame and smoke. The large conch at bottom center is probably a reverent gesture or reference to Quetzalcoatl on his special day One Wind.
Much more puzzling than the upside-down pot is the emphatic image on the right side of the panel: an inverted person seemingly falling across a mat or piece of fabric, most definitely not dead—which falling headfirst usually signified—and holding bouquets of vegetation and brightly flowering penitential thorns. Not much to go on here for what this apparently important third of the patron panel might mean. The commentary by Bruce Byland in the Diaz & Rodgers restoration of Codex Borgia doesn’t devote even one syllable to this intriguing detail.
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TONALAMATL YOAL (compiled and re-created by Richard Balthazar on the basis of
Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Rios)
As usual, in its images of deities for the Wind Trecena, Codex Telleriano-Remensis (and consequently Codex Rios) didn’t skimp on displaying emblems, symbols, and traditional regalia, though the codex-artists didn’t always agree on details. The figures recreated here are based mostly on T/R images with occasional minutiae from Rios. Both figures, of course, had to undergo radical orthopedic surgery for iconographic anatomical awkwardness.
In any case, the paired images make a striking combination. Let’s come back later to the guy on the right and scope out the divine Chantico on the left. Would you look at that headdress! A dark-feathered and be-sea-shelled crest of quetzal plumes pours forth streams of fire and water, creating an elegant atl-tlachinolli (water-fire) glyph—as discussed in the Snake Trecena—usually a symbol of war, but here I think it represents the waters of birth and fire of spirit, attributes of the goddess. Her facial markings and matching ear- and nose-pieces are unusual, but the most disturbing (and unique) detail is her set of Tlaloc-like fangs. How does one fit that sinister motif into Chantico’s official hagiography?
Now we can check out the guy on the right, a figure most unusually in a decorative frame. The little day-sign attached to the back of his head is One Reed—which was used in the Snake Trecena to identify Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, a nagual of Quetzalcoatl. However, this seems to be Quetzalcoatl himself, probably in honor of his One Wind Festival. Strong evidence is the circular pendant, serpent accessories, black body, and tri-colored face. In fact, Quetzalcoatl was known as One Reed in central Mexico from the ancient Toltec tradition (and in more southerly areas with even older Maya traditions as Nine Wind).
The notations on the T/R and Rios pages (in Spanish and Italian) clearly name the guy Quetzalcoatl but only comment on the frame as his casa de oro. But there’s no way the little falling guy in Borgia can be construed as the great god Quetzalcoatl nor can that decorative mat compare to this deity’s golden house. Whatever Borgia meant by that strange scene may have been used by the T/R artist as an excuse to celebrate Quetzalcoatl as a star of the trecena.
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OTHER TONALAMATLS
The patron panel in Tonalamatl Aubin merely complicates the situation, presenting an upright little guy with bouquets and without any emblems of Quetzalcoatl—though now in a casa de oro. That motif may bode a deeper significance than even Borgia’s fancy mat. Thinking at first that Yoal’s One Reed glyph might in fact identify Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, I wondered if maybe the casa de oro could represent the House of the Dawn. That motif also has a connection to Quetzalcoatl as the planet Venus, but I know of no connection between Chantico and dawn. The matter of the little guy remains mysterious.
The hearth fire at the top center is of course symbolic of Chantico, whose plumed headdress is similar to that worn by both figures in the Yoal panel. Her atl-tlachinolli glyph and skull-bustle are repeated here, but the conch over her head seems damaged. The big serpent under her throne must symbolize emphatic sexuality, but I can’t explain the pile of something or other pierced by penitential thorns. The central offering bowl seems rather pitiful, as do the grotesque hands and feet on both figures. Overall, this patron panel isn’t particularly inspiring.
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On the other hand, the patron panel from Codex Borbonicus is enchantingly ornate. It presents another casa de oro on the left with a common mortal who carries a standard bouquet/weapon and incense bag but again wears the Yoal-style plumed headdress. He does nothing to clarify the mystery. On the right, Chantico sports great bunches of quetzal plumes, another dramatic atl-tlachinolli glyph, and under her throne familiar plumed tassels with seashells. Her unusual sitting posture (hovering above instead of in front of the throne) may be intended to add to her ethereal/divine presence. That nose-clamp looks painful.
The scattered conglom of ritual items raises several questions. Starting in the upper left, what’s the significance of the day-sign One Crocodile (first day of the tonalpohualli)? Or of the standard-design rock/stone. No idea… Top center may be a glyphic hearth-fire. On the lower left seems to be an incense burner, but the leafy swatches beside it are inscrutable. The mounded item just above may be a metaphor for fire in the earth (volcano) and could relate to Aubin’s pile of something or other. But most iconic is the little frilled circle in the center with a star or divine eye in the middle. A traditional symbol of magic or sorcery, it’s the only reference in these patron panels to this trecena’s theme of necromancy.
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The patron panel from Codex Vaticanus again repeats the inventory of motifs from Borgia, including burning temple, hearth-fire, and conch. But it deepens the mystery of what the little guy represents. Here, he’s a blue figure (possibly a corpse?) in what looks like a box rather than on a mat or in a casa de oro. Still no answers… Apart from her fancy skirt, cape, and body-tattoos, Chantico is pretty plain. Her sitting with feet forward is most unusual, and the confusion of her arms detracts from any divine magnificence.
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My ancient intuition about Chantico was apparently right on making her a normal, stylish woman. Appropriately, some patron panels give her dramatic emblems I didn’t know about like plumed headdress, fire-water glyph, and power symbols of hearth-fires and volcanoes. While her Borgia portrait is glamorous, her image in Yoal is more ornamental than most calendrical deities in that tonalamatl. Her pairing with the cameo of Quetzalcoatl makes one of the more exquisite Yoal panels, but we can’t take that to mean that he’s also a patron of the trecena. This guy One Reed seems more like a Master of Ceremonies for the magicians’ fiesta week. Maybe the strange little guys in the other tonalamatls are sorcerer-performers.
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You can view all the calendar pages I’ve completed up to this point in the Tonalamatl gallery.
After wrapping up my little piece about Morning Star mythology in Pre-Columbian America, I turned back to re-creating Aztec codex pages from the calendar and my work on the Vulture trecena (13-day ‘week’), its patron being the god of the Evening Star. The detailed process of pixelating is fairly time-consuming and lends itself to much cogitation and curiosity about the deity at hand. But first some Maya stuff on the Evening Star.
Lady Evening Star of Yaxchilan
No surprise, but my internet search provided precious few hits for Maya Evening Star, the only one being for a Maya queen of Yaxchilan named Great Skull and known as Lady Evening Star. Here’s some fancy ancient royalty gossip: A princess from the formidable city-state Calakmul, she married the ruler of Yaxchilan, Itzamnaaj B’alam III (Shield Jaguar the Great), was the mother of Yaxun B’alam IV (Bird Jaguar) and ruled 742-751 CE until her son’s maturity.
Apart from being the title of a regal queen, other Maya concepts of the Evening Star, if there were any, have been lost to the fires of history. Unless they were carved in stone like this portrait of Lady Evening Star on Stela 35 from Yaxchilan. References on Venus, a hugely important theme in Maya astronomy and culture, rarely even mention the Evening Star, though the Maya well knew it was related to the Morning Star as another phase of that planet.
I have no doubt that the famous Dresden Codex probably discusses the Evening Star, but I can’t read through those boggling glyphs looking for mentions and have no idea what it was called in either the Yucatec or Quiché Maya languages. But I really wanted to find out something of the history and mythology of my Vulture trecena patron.
That’s why I went back to my program from the Getty Museum show of the Maya Codex of Mexico (the Grolier Codex), a Maya-Toltec document dating 1021-1154 CE, where in the fragmentary pages on the cycles of Venus, I’d found the Morning Star image that inspired my earlier blog. In fact, for the Evening Star phases, the Maya Codex contains three gruesome images that show a deity with a death’s-head/skull-face. The best preserved presents a deity holding up a victim/prisoner’s bleeding head, apparently having recently decapitated the poor fellow with a large flint knife in his other hand. The skull-faces no doubt mean that the Maya identified the Evening Star is an entity of the Underworld (Xibalba), which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. They considered life and death a mystical continuum.
The Underworld connection could well belong to an original Maya notion of the Evening Star. In later traditions, it was considered the guide/companion of the sun on its nightly journey through the Underworld. The earlier Maya may well have had a similar myth for the bright star that followed the setting sun. I hesitate to speculate on the Maya meaning of the victim in this scene, but it bears witness to the long-standing tradition of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica. Natural phenomena (like the movement of the sun, the rain, etc.) always came at a price in human blood.
Though the Maya Codex shows the Morning and Evening phases of Venus as different types of figures (including a being with a mask suggestive of a storm-deity), they understood well that it was all the same planet. Maybe Chak Ek’ was actually the deity of Venus itself, making no distinction between its phases: 236 days as Morning Star, 90 days in superior conjunction (behind the Sun), 250 days as Evening Star, and 8 days in inferior conjunction (passing between Earth and Sun). That would explain finding no evidence of separate deities, but of course finding no evidence of something doesn’t prove the absence of that something.
Similarly, I’ve found nothing on what the Venus-phases meant to the culture of Teotihuacan, which certainly revered the planet as the god Quetzalcoatl. That central Mexican metropolis possibly also didn’t separately deify the Morning and Evening Stars. However, the Maya Codex indicates that by Toltec times the concepts of the two phases were diverging, at least in their visualizations. At some time in succeeding centuries, later Nahua cultures evidently completed the separation, generating the new deity Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli (Lord of the House of the Dawn) for the Morning Star and another called Xolotl for the Evening Star.
Oddly, they deified the dog as the Evening Star—literally the apotheosis of dog! In two of the surviving “Aztec” codices, the new god appears in strikingly similar poses vividly recalling the decapitation motif in the Maya Codex. The earlier Underworld connection of the Evening Star is suggested by the night-capes both of these Xolotls wear.
Since so little is known about the Maya Evening Star, most authorities like to extrapolate the later mythology of Xolotl back into that period, but I wonder if such lore was in fact inherited. The Maya indeed revered the dog as a guide, companion, protector and bringer of light to darkness, which may have involved escorting the sun through the night. However, Xolotl’s role as psychopomp for souls through the Land of the Dead (Mictlan), eerily paralleling the Hellenic concept of Cerberus in Hades and the Egyptian god Anubis, may well be a later elaboration.
A specific Maya reference to the dog is four images on pp. 25, 26, 27 & 28 of the Dresden Codex shown in relation to rituals for celebrating new years, but I don’t know how that might fit into the ancestry of Xolotl. In any case, they underline the cultural importance of the dog.
Xolotl appears relatively often in the surviving codices, in all but one instance in the guise of a dog. In Codex Borgia the dog-god occurs three times in its typically ornamented style, one too damaged to make out any details. The figure on the left below appears in the “magical journey” sequence, and the central image is from a “heaven temple.” The Sun symbol on its back refers to escorting the Sun through the Underworld at night. Earlier in the codex, as patron of the day Earthquake, Xolotl appears uniquely as a deformed human—which is no doubt why scholars have called him the deity of monstrosities, including twins. (The twin theme obviously refers to the close relationship between the Evening and Morning Stars.)
In two other codices, Xolotl is depicted as a fairly naturalistic dog, unfortunately not naturalistic enough to discern its breed. In the Nahuatl language, “dog” is Itzcuintli, but that’s also a generic term. These images only indicate some sort of a shaggy dog, not at all like the hairless canine Xoloitzcuintli (named for the god) which has been designated the national dog of Mexico. These dogs also look nothing like the small chihuahua which was apparently raised for eating. The spiked collar on the left example I expect is an abstracted “night-sun” symbol, and the explicit anatomy of the central figure is hard to overlook.
Said to have come from the area of Veracruz, Codex Fejervary-Mayer conversely presents Xolotl as a full-fledged, anthropomorphic canine deity ensconced in an elegant temple. In addition, the codex contains several pages with this Xolotl in various aggressive postures, (including eating someone’s head!), which recall panels of Morning Star violence. In one, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli mysteriously wears a dog’s head. These Codex F-M scenes may indicate a lingering conceptual overlap between the two phases of Venus in a distant conservative area of Mexico.
The scene on the right surely relates to the earlier images with victim, but here blood issues from his body like from a heart sacrifice. Another conservative aspect of Codex F-M iconography is that, except for the first one holding the victim and heart, its Xolotl dog-gods all have the same head—basically that of those anthropomorphic New-Year dogs in the Dresden Codex. Here we see examples of mythological evolution in action.
In codices with tonalamatls (books of the Aztec Calendar), Xolotl is celebrated as the patron of the Vulture trecena and formally consecrated as the god-dog, often enthroned.
Besides their masses of divine regalia, all three wear the conch-shell pendant (‘wind-jewel’) symbolizing their connection to Quetzalcoatl/Venus, but none is breed-specific. Curiously, the Vaticanus example is swaddled in a traditional corpse-bundle, perhaps a veiled reference to the Evening Star’s Underworld connection. Now that’s a trio of indisputably alpha dogs!
In its Vulture trecena patron panel, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, an early post-Conquest text painted on European paper, takes the dog to a yet higher level of glory, presenting a fantastic, iconic, metaphorical scene of Xolotl as the brilliant Evening Star with a gleaming Sun (Tonatiuh) setting into the gaping maw of Tlaltecuhtli, Lord of the Earth.
Personally, as an opinionated artist, I think this eye-boggling panel is an absolute epitome of Aztec iconography. You’re welcome to your own opinion. Meanwhile, I’ll note that here Xolotl looks absurdly like a Pekinese, but that makes no difference to the spectacular metaphor.
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Unlike the myths of the Morning Star, it’s surprising that with the celebrity of Xolotl in Mesoamerica, the Evening Star cult didn’t spread into North America. However, the dog’s traditional loyalty, companionship, guidance and protection was generally appreciated by tribes across the whole continent, and sometimes it was included in rituals and ceremonies. I’ve only found a few legendary references from the Ojibwe and Pawnee (usually about wife or daughter of the Evening Star) and one from the Algonquin about an Osseo, Son of the Evening Star, but there’s no connection to a dog. It seems that Xolotl’s godhead was only valid in Mexico.
But that hasn’t mattered much. All across North America, dogs domesticated humans beings and became de facto gods in their own right, ruling their mortal owners’ Morning (days) and Evening (nights) and living (for the most part) idle lives of divine luxury. Their worshipful care consumes an enormous sector of the economy, I’d bet grossly larger even than that for religious institutions—an apotheosis without even needing an Evening Star mystique or human sacrifice.
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