Page 504 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

watched by the astronomer-priests, especially tion after death was Mictlan, land of the dead. vertically through these cosmic layers: at the
during its heliacal rising as morning star every The exceptions were warriors who had died on nadir, the male-female ruler of the dead, in the
584 days; ritual codices like the Borgia and the battlefield or under the sacrificial knife and center, the male-female old fire god, and at the
Cospi (cat. 359) record this as a baneful event, women who had perished during childbirth, zenith, residing in the ultimate heaven, Ome-
the planet taking on aspects of the death god as losing a battle with the warrior inside them, all teotl, the androgynous dual divinity, the alpha
it hurled its rays at various victims. Every 8 of whom went to the paradise of the sun god; and omega of Aztec religious thought. In his
years, the Venusian and solar calendars coin- and those who had died by drowning, by light- magisterial study of Aztec philosophy, Miguel
13
cided (8 x 365 = 5 x 584, the basis of the Venus ning, or by water-connected diseases, who went Leon-Portilla has demonstrated that to the
tables in those books), and every 104 years to the delightful Tlalocan, the paradise of Tlaloc, Aztec wise men the entire universe with its
(2 x 52) saw the meeting of the Venus count the rain god. multitudinous gods, lesser beings, and forces
with the calendar round, a great and awesome The underground road to Mictlan was could be reduced to one ultimate reality: Ome-
event. Venus had strong associations with entered through the gaping jaws of Tlaltecuhtli, teotl, embodying the ancient principle of the
Quetzalcoatl, for the god, following his expul- the earth monster. As the soul descended unity of opposites. All else was mere illusion.
sion from Tula, the Toltec capital, was said to through each successive layer, it had to endure Ometeotl was both male and female and
have thrown himself on his own funerary pyre terrible tests and perils such as a place of bitter existed before the creation of the universe.
to be apotheosized as the morning star. cold where there were winds as piercing as flint Out of the sexual opposition contained within
Between the thirteen heavens and the nine knives. At last it reached the bottommost hell, his/her body came conception and the world's
underworlds was Tlalticpac, the earth's surface, "where all the streets are on the left," presided beginning: creation was thus equated with
with the world-direction trees at its four cor- over by the death god Mictlantecuhtli and his procreation. From this union there were born
ners and the old fire god at its center, as seen dread consort Mictlancihuatl. Four years after not one but four Tezcatlipocas, each assigned to
on the first page of the Codex ^ejerv dry-Mayer the death of the body, the soul ceased to exist. a world-direction and color. To the north was
(cat. 356). For most earth dwellers the destina- One can think of an axis mundi passing the black Tezcatlipoca, the god of war and sor-
cery and the night sky; to the west the white
one, Quetzalcoatl; to the south the blue Tezcat-
lipoca, Huitzilopochtli; and to the east the red
one, Xipe Totec. A cosmic struggle for hegem-
ony then ensued between Quetzalcoatl and the
black Tezcatlipoca, and time began.
In Aztec thought the perpetual conflict
between these two supernaturals — a kind of
repeating Cain and Abel story—produced the
world ages or "suns," each sun being dominated
by one god or the other. In effect this was a
mythic enactment of the structural opposition
between the warriors, presided over by Tezcatli-
poca, and the priests, for whom Quetzalcoatl
was patron and beau ideal. The myth of the five
suns was basic to the Aztec state religion, and it
is exemplified by the greatest of the preserved
Aztec monuments, the huge Calendar Stone.
Ever since its rediscovery in the eighteenth cen-
tury it has astonished visitors to Mexico City. It
is in fact a view of the universe in space and
through time. At the center of the disk is a face
that is now generally thought to be that of the
night sun, the dead sun in the underworld.
Framing it is the sign 4 Motion, the day name
of the present age or sun, someday to be
destroyed by earthquakes; within the sign's four
arms are the day-signs of the four previous ages,
and the sign itself is encircled by the twenty
named days of the tonalpohualli. Surrounding
the disk are two gigantic fire serpents bearing
the sun on its diurnal journey. And what is the
message? That the sun itself, along with all of
us, is to face certain destruction on some evil
day.
The focal point of the cult of the sun and the
fig. 6. Aztec Calendar Stone. At the center is a representation of our own era, 4 Motion. Museo Nacional de conceptual heart of the empire was the Great
Antropologia, Mexico City Temple (huei teocalli) on the eastern side of the

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