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How did the jaguar get his spots? What happened to the four suns that came before our own? Where was Aztlan, mythical homeland of the Aztecs?For decades, the popular image of the Mexica people better known today as the Aztecs has been defined by the Spaniards who conquered them. Their salacious stories of pet snakes, human sacrifice and towering skull racks have masked a complex world of religious belief.To reveal the rich mythic tapestry of the Aztecs, Camilla Townsend returns to the original tales, told at the fireside by generations of Indigenous Nahuatl-speakers. Through their voices we learn the contested histories of the Mexica and their neighbours in the Valley of Mexico the foundations of great cities, the making and breaking of political alliances, the meddling of sometimes bloodthirsty gods and understand more clearly how they saw their world and their place in it. The divine principle of Ipalnemoani connected humans with all of nature and spiritual beliefs were woven through the fabric of Aztec life, from the sacred ministrations of the ticitl, midwives whose rituals saw women through childbirth, to the inevitable passage to Mictlan, our place of disappearing together the land of the dead.

Exploring the meanings in the intricate symbolism of a rare Precolumbian manuscript This book explores the rich symbolism of the Codex Borgia, a masterpiece of Precolumbian art dating to the fifteenth century, one of the few surviving books from before the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Susan Milbrath uses information from the fields of art history, anthropology, ethnohistory, natural history, and cultural astronomy to show how the manuscript's intricate and colorful imagery conveys complex ideas related to Mesoamerican myths and religion. Milbrath sets the work in historical context, establishing its provenance in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley of Central Mexico and pinpointing the date it was painted based on rain almanacs found in its pages. She offers a new interpretation of a unique narrative section that has long intrigued scholars, arguing that the ceremonial variations depicted in it are related to the solar cycle. Overall, this book opens new doors in the study of the Codex Borgia by identifying seasonal imagery in the narrative and associated astronomical events, especially those that involve the three brightest objects in the sky: the sun, the moon, and Venus. Decoding the Codex Borgia is an illuminating journey into the culture and cosmology of the Aztecs and their neighboring communities.

Enrique Florescano ha preparado esta nueva edición de una obra esencial en la que permite descubrir los mitos fundadores de Mesoamérica. Quetzalcóatl encierra muchos personajes, símbolos y significados. Es el dios creador del cosmos, de los seres humanos y de la planta del maíz; el fundador de la agricultura y de la vida civilizada; símbolo de la realeza y de la legitimidad política; prototipo del gobernante sabio, el fundador de reinos legendarios; un mito polisémico extendido por toda Mesoamérica. Este libro nos ofrece una revisión de las más recientes interpretaciones sobre Quetzalcóatl, así como un análisis que deja ver que los mitos fundadores de Mesoamérica, a la vez que cambian de apariencia en los diferentes momentos históricos, mantienen un combate contra el trascurrir del tiempo y la amenaza de disolución que conlleva La crítica ha opinado:'Florescano nos ofrece un relato apasionante que revela cómo los mitos describen y dan sentido a las prácticas cotidianas, adaptándose siempre al devenir histórico.'-Osvaldo Pardo, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos-

During the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the idea of Aztlán, homeland of the ancient Aztecs, served as a unifying force in an emerging cultural renaissance. Does the term remain useful? This expanded new edition of the classic 1989 collection of essays about Aztlán weighs its value. To encompass new developments in the discourse the editors have added six new essays.

Eduardo Matos Moctezuma nos lleva por los intrincados caminos de la muerte, a través de la arqueología y de las fuentes históricas. Estudio en donde el mito cobra su ancestral presencia; recurre a los viejos cantos para introducirnos ante el rostro de la muerte expresado en el canto y la poesía.

La presente obra es producto de años de investigación que Elizabeth Hill Boone ha dedicado al estudio del arte y la iconografía Mesoamericana, particularmente de los libros pintados de la región central de México. Hill Boone ofrece en este análisis una mirada al pasado de las culturas mesoamericanas a través de los códices adivinatorios y el sistema religioso que marcaba las pautas cotidianas de las culturas que los producían; asimismo propone un estudio que aspira a establecer parámetros básicos para una interpretación actualizada sobre los códices.

The Myth of Quetzalcoatl is a translation of Alfredo López Austin's 1973 book Hombre-Dios: Religión y politica en el mundo náhuatl. Despite its pervasive and lasting influence on the study of Mesoamerican history, religion in general, and the Quetzalcoatl myth in particular, this work has not been available in English until now. The importance of Hombre-Dios and its status as a classic arise from its interdisciplinary approach, creative use of a wide range of source material, and unsurpassed treatment of its subject—the nature and content of religious beliefs and rituals among the native populations of Mesoamerica and the manner in which they fused with and helped sanctify political authority and rulership in both the pre- and post-conquest periods. Working from a wide variety of previously neglected documentary sources, incorporating myth, archaeology, and the ethnography of contemporary Native Americans including non-Nahua peoples, López Austin traces the figure of Quetzalcoatl as a “Man-God” from pre-conquest times, while Russ Davidson's translator's note, Davíd Carrasco's foreword, and López Austin's introduction place the work within the context of modern scholarship. López Austin's original work on Quetzalcoatl is a pivotal work in the field of anthropology, and this long-overdue English translation will be of significance to historians, anthropologists, linguists, and serious readers interested in Mesoamerica.

Libro que explora de manera exhaustiva la compleja personalidad del'Señor del espejo humeante'. El autor analiza los diferentes nombres y representaciones de esta deidad, su relación con la transgresión y el destino; sus orígenes, su eterna rivalidad con Quetzalcóatl, su intervención en la conquista española; los lugares consagrados a su culto.

Hermoso recorrido de los senderos de la creación de dioses, mitos y hombres a través de los textos antiguos, que corrobora ese acto creador comparándolo, paso a paso, con la arqueología de Templo Mayor de México-Tenochtitlán, donde Tláloc y Huitzilopochtli incorporan la presencia de un mundo dual marcado por la vida y la muerte.

Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity brings archaeological evidence into the body of scholarship on “the lord of the smoking mirror,” one of the most important Aztec deities. While iconographic and textual resources from sixteenth-century chroniclers and codices have contributed greatly to the understanding of Aztec religious beliefs and practices, contributors to this volume demonstrate the diverse ways material evidence expands on these traditional sources. The interlocking complexities of Tezcatlipoca's nature, multiple roles, and metaphorical attributes illustrate the extent to which his influence penetrated Aztec belief and social action across all levels of late Postclassic central Mexican culture. Tezcatlipoca examines the results of archaeological investigations—objects like obsidian mirrors, gold, bells, public stone monuments, and even a mosaic skull—and reveals new insights into the supreme deity of the Aztec pantheon and his role in Aztec culture.

Long before the Spanish colonizers established it in 1598, the “Kingdom of Nuevo México” had existed as an imaginary world—and not the one based on European medieval legend so often said to have driven the Spaniards'ambitions in the New World. What the conquistadors sought in the 1500s, it seems, was what the native Mesoamerican Indians who took part in north-going conquest expeditions also sought: a return to the Aztecs'mythic land of origin, Aztlan. Employing long-overlooked historical and anthropological evidence, Danna A. Levin Rojo reveals how ideas these natives held about their own past helped determine where Spanish explorers would go and what they would conquer in the northwest frontier of New Spain—present-day New Mexico and Arizona. Return to Aztlan thus remaps an extraordinary century during which, for the first time, Western minds were seduced by Native American historical memories. Levin Rojo recounts a transformation—of an abstract geographic space, the imaginary world of Aztlan, into a concrete sociopolitical place. Drawing on a wide variety of early maps, colonial chronicles, soldier reports, letters, and native codices, she charts the gradual redefinition of native and Spanish cultural identity—and shows that the Spanish saw in Nahua, or Aztec, civilization an equivalence to their own. A deviation in European colonial naming practices provides the first clue that a transformation of Aztlan from imaginary to concrete world was taking place: Nuevo México is the only place-name from the early colonial period in which Europeans combined the adjective “new” with an American Indian name. With this toponym, Spaniards referenced both Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the indigenous metropolis whose destruction made possible the birth of New Spain itself, and Aztlan, the ancient Mexicans'place of origin. Levin Rojo collects additional clues as she systematically documents why and how Spaniards would take up native origin stories and make a return to Aztlan their own goal—and in doing so, overturns the traditional understanding of Nuevo México as a concept and as a territory. A book in the Latin American and Caribbean Arts and Culture initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Además de la trascripción del texto, León-Portilla nos ofrece un estudio minucioso del'Nican mopohua', una de las vastas composiciones indígenas que con mayor detalle y belleza refiere la aparición, mensaje y milagros de Tonantzin,'Madre de todos los dioses'en el cerro del Tepeyac hacia el siglo XVI.

According to the Toltec/Aztec calendar, which describes larger cycles of time or “Suns” than the Mayan calendar, humanity has been in a transition that started in 1991, moving from the 5th to the 6th Sun. During this shift from one Sun to the other—from one cosmic configuration to another—the influence of both Suns is equally present, as is the case when the seasons change. The 5th Sun maintained its prevalence until December 21st, 2012, when the two energies were in perfect balance. The old Sun will gradually lose its strength, and from 2021 its successor shall reign for thousands of years. This shift is also a shift in human consciousness, in our understanding of how we relate to the whole of existence. In the last era (Sun) humans attempted to dominate nature and other beings, but under the new Sun we will have to comply with the wisdom and ways of nature, bringing respect and balance back into all of our relationships. Sacred instructions on how to support and live these changes are now being made available, at the precise time stipulated by the Aztec prophecy of Cuauhtemoc in 1521, (great Aztec ruler after Montezuma). The custodians of this 1,460 old uninterrupted oral tradition now reveal this ancient wisdom to the world, in written form, for the very first time. This book contains breathing exercises, poses and other ancient practices that are based on cosmic mathematics which show us how to realign ourselves with the universe, Earth and the elements, and with our highest nature so that we can take responsibility for the sacredness of life and move successfully through this transition from one Sun to the next. These teachings show us how to work with our shadow—our unconscious—and from the dreaming state.

De mujeres y diosas aztecas es un recorrido por las distintas etapas de la vida de la mujer mexica. Miriam López analiza la mitología, los descubrimientos arqueológicos, los códices y las crónicas del siglo XVI con una naturalidad intrínseca para dar a conocer los posibles destinos y el comportamiento esperado de una mujer de acuerdo con las normas e ideales mexicas. Este perspicaz trabajo rescata las contribuciones femeninas que, si bien no fueron meritorias de reconocimiento y prestigio en su época, sí jugaron un papel fundamental en la conformación y consolidación de las estructuras sociales del Imperio mexica.

Este título abarca todo lo referente a Tláloc, dios de la lluvia: la iconografía, los ritos que se hacían en su honor, las fiestas que le eran dedicadas, las tradiciones que lo vinculaban con el sacrificio de niños y los lugares sagrados que se construyeron para su adoración.

In communities throughout precontact Mesoamerica, calendar priests and diviners relied on pictographic almanacs to predict the fate of newborns, to guide people in choosing marriage partners and auspicious wedding dates, to know when to plant and harvest crops, and to be successful in many of life's activities. As the Spanish colonized Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century, they made a determined effort to destroy these books, in which the Aztec and neighboring peoples recorded their understanding of the invisible world of the sacred calendar and the cosmic forces and supernaturals that adhered to time. Today, only a few of these divinatory codices survive. Visually complex, esoteric, and strikingly beautiful, painted books such as the famous Codex Borgia and Codex Borbonicus still serve as portals into the ancient Mexican calendrical systems and the cycles of time and meaning they encode. In this comprehensive study, Elizabeth Hill Boone analyzes the entire extant corpus of Mexican divinatory codices and offers a masterful explanation of the genre as a whole. She introduces the sacred, divinatory calendar and the calendar priests and diviners who owned and used the books. Boone then explains the graphic vocabulary of the calendar and its prophetic forces and describes the organizing principles that structure the codices. She shows how they form almanacs that either offer general purpose guidance or focus topically on specific aspects of life, such as birth, marriage, agriculture and rain, travel, and the forces of the planet Venus. Boone also tackles two major areas of controversy—the great narrative passage in the Codex Borgia, which she freshly interprets as a cosmic narrative of creation, and the disputed origins of the codices, which, she argues, grew out of a single religious and divinatory system.

Mesoamerica provides menacing serpents, superhuman gods, and heroic twins for this spellbinding title that covers myths from Aztec and Mayan cultures. These mesmerizing stories are bookended by front and back matter that introduce characters, explain Mesoamerican mythology, and provide information on other mythical figures whose stories are not told.

Exposición de motivos del autor sobre el mundo espiritual azteca, el cual resulta indispensable para los estudiosos en emprender a fondo la visión del mundo de esa cultura, así como el modo de reaccionar frente a la naturaleza y frente al hombre