Aztec gods

April 26, 2015

FREE COLORING BOOK

YE GODS!  THE AZTEC ICONS

­An Outrageous Coloring Book

Icons of Aztec Deities and Commentary

By Richard Balthazar

ICON #1:    ATL – GOD OF WATER

For free download as a pdf file, right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.”

ATL, Aztec God of Water

ATL, Aztec God of Water

ATL {atł} is the deified element of water, and is a nagual (manifestation or bodhisattva) of TLALOC, the ancient God of Storms (Rain).  In the tonalpohualli or ceremonial count of days, also called the Turquoise Year, Atl is 9th of the 20 named days in the month, a lucky day.  As above, Nahui Atl (Four Water), the 4th of the 13 numbered days in one of the weeks, is the day-name of the Fourth Sun, a previous world ruled by CHALCHIUHTLICUE and destroyed by Water.  Its humans were turned into fish.  The four dots are the Aztec numeral 4.  The extended upper lip (harelip?) has been traditional for Mesoamerican water deities ever since the Olmec.

###

 Rather long ago for my book CELEBRATE NATIVE AMERICA, I originally drew the Aztec deities for the ceremonial calendar.  Now I’m redrawing in the digital medium and expanding them into full-scale icons.  And believe it or not, the YE GODS!  THE AZTEC ICONS coloring book is offering you these amazing neo-Aztec icons for FREE.  That’s right—at no risk—not even any postage.

Color them in as you wish with my compliments.  The wrinkle is that this coloring book will be posted serially as each icon is completed.  That could well take the next couple years—a good reason to keep checking back with me.  At the moment only one is available, but there are four more almost ready for posting, and a sixth is well on the way.

The Aztec deities are a fascinating crowd of inter-related personalities involved in a soap-opera mythology of creation/destruction, love/strife, and life/death that makes the gods of Olympus look like wimps.  Perhaps the confusing dramas, frequent aliases, and surreal images are due to the fact that the Aztecs and their deities indulged in psychoactive drugs like alcoholic pulque, peyote, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and other psychedelic herbs.  So hold on to your hats for some challenging images to color, such as the current posting above.

Using only a bit of my artistic license, I’m basing YE GODS!  THE AZTEC ICONS on extant Aztec artifacts and their surviving picture-books.  You can use these almost authentic Aztec icons as cartoons for large-scale murals, smaller-scale tattoos, needlepoint patterns, and other design or illustration needs.

YE GODS!  THE AZTEC ICONS should also be seen as a free and unique teaching tool for classes not only in art, but also in cultural and historical studies.  In addition, YE GODS!  THE AZTEC PANTHEON is an illustrated encyclopedia of Aztec deities that comprises a crash course in Aztec cosmology, mythology, ritual, society, and history.

Don’t be shy.  Make lots of copies to experiment on.  You’ll need to.

###

April 16, 2015

Free Book on AZTEC CALENDAR

CELEBRATE NATIVE AMERICA!

An Aztec Book of Days

By Richard Balthazar (Five Flower Press, 1993, out of print)

CNA cover

For free download as a pdf file, right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.” 

I recently announced  that I’ve put my old out-of-print book on the Aztec ritual or ceremonial calendar up for free download.  Anyone with interest in art, mythology, history, or horoscopy will find it an unusual experience.  You’ll learn some weird stuff you never ever imagined, money-back guarantee.

The book presents the 260-day sacred Turquoise Year, which was used for divination and prophesy, in color plates of their 13 ‘months’ of 20 days spread over 20 ‘weeks’ of 13 days.  My weekly illustrations also include their patron gods or goddesses in images based on surviving Aztec books, primarily the Codices Borbonicus, Borgia, Nuttall, Fejervary-Mayer, Kingsborough, and Vindobensis.

For free download as a pdf file, right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.” 

If you don’t want the book itself, all its illustrations are up for individual free download from my galleries of gods, days, and weeks on this site.  Do whatever with them with my blessing.

The Turquoise Year was an evolution of the earlier Mayan calendar of similar structure with roots among the even earlier Olmec.  It was the ancient Mesoamerican horoscope.  The birth day-name was a person’s ceremonial and official name, and the deities who ruled the numbers, days, weeks, and months, each with light and dark sides, controlled individual and societal fates.

By the way, you can quickly find out your Aztec name by going to azteccalendar.com, and while there, you can even pick up your Aztec horoscope, which I admit will be much more detailed than what you’ll find in my old book.

For free download as a pdf file, right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.” 

READERS: Please disregard the final chapter and its mind-boggling concordance.  My hubristic attempt to start up a new Sixth Sun at the fall of Tenochtitlan was at best poetic, but that calendar has now run out anyway.  Forget about it.

Another note:  I exercised my artist’s license on the 20th week, One Rabbit, naming as its patron a far more appetizing deity, Xochipilli, the Prince of Flowers.  The actual patron was a quasi-deity called Tecpatl (Flint—the sacrificial knife).  Feeling like a nagual (or bodhisattva) of Xochipilli, I’ve dared to use his image in the banner on this website.

December 4, 2014

THE AZTECS ARE BACK!

In case you guys wonder why I let several months go by after my first posting, it was because I was working on both the next instalment of memoir and on drawing.  I decided that my Aztec deity images  and book on the ceremonial calendar  weren’t of much use to anyone in those formats.  People should have some way to get involved in the images and learn about the Aztec gods and goddesses, I figured, and what better way than to work with them the way I did (with such fun) coloring them for the book.

So I’m doing a coloring book.  It’s a rather intensive project to rework the images into full-scale icons in the barbaric splendor of the historical codices.  (In a weird way, I feel like a “santero,” the traditional New Mexico painter of saints.)  I’m calling it rather appropriately YE GODS!  THE AZTEC ICONS and also planning an illustrated encyclopedia of the Aztec deities to be called YE GODS!  THE AZTEC PANTHEON.

Shooting for a total of 26, I have most of the basic images, but turning them into the icons is taking a while.  The project could easily take another year—or more.  And it gives me something to do in my dotage.  Presently I’m in the middle of the third in alphabetical order, so at least I can give you the first as an example:  ATL, the deified element of Water.

ATL, Aztec God of Water

ATL, Aztec God of Water

Click here to download the icon with a caption page and model images from the Aztec Codices.

It is also available in freely sizable vector drawings on the coloring book page. 

§§