Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes

12. Reflection on the Miraculous Waters of Tenochtitlan

12 Reflections on the Miraculous Waters of Tenochtitlan Lawrence E. Sullivan Yesterdaywe ascended Tepeyac and were asked to look and to see. Like so many great seers throughout history, we have been taken up onto a high mountaintop byJohanna Broda (see Chapter 7, above). One thinks ofthe scene that was witnessed by fellow visionary pilgrims: Elijah, Moses, Zarathushtra, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed. Like them we were shown the glories of the world below. And David Carrasco, with a presiding sweep, said, "Behold." And Johanna Broda exhorted, "Look over there." And Tony Aveni pointed south-southwest and asked, "What's your take on that angle?" And Nick Nicholson responded, "It's surely Ixtacalco, Nextipan, Arlazolpa, and Ixtapalapan." In response to which several others wondeted out loud, "Isn't one ofthose names also a species ofplant, Bob [Bye]?" and "Isn't there a day-name connected with that?" or hypothesized that "the Maya equivalent for that name may be 'suq,' which means eithet a 'necklace of mandibles' or a (small dog.' » All this high-level talk was in service of berter sight. And we hit the heights at Tepeyac - ifnot of Cuautepec - on what Johanna Broda has described in her paper as "one of those rare occasions when, due to propitious winds, the smog suddenly clears up and reveals a magnificent view." She pointed out that it was a view that also deeply impressed Cortes and Bernal del Castillo in 1519. And, like a good seer herself, she described for us "lakes. distant mountain ranges, the high volcanoes to the southeast, and the towns ... with their imposing ceremonial architecture." I suggest that for the Aztecs it was not only a spectacular view, as it is for us, but Professor Sullivan's response toJohanna Broda's paper was given the day after our fidd trip to Tepeyac. 206 Lawrence E. Sullivan also a specular view, in a way that we must tty to imagine. Fot the Aztecs, but not for us, the city of Tenochtitlan and its surrounding mountains, especially the stunning mountainous natural features marked by the special shrines for pilgrimage and sacrifice - these lofty signs, could be seen reflected in the water below as in a dark mirror. From the mountaintops, the mirror ofLake Texcoco and LakeXochimilco would re/double and re/flect reality, giving the sky, the city, and each mountain, each sight line, and each heliacal rising, a curiously double aspect, a speculative existence. In the mirror of the waters, all realities appear together in one material substance, join on one plane or moving, flowing place. And this terrible symmetty of water-the water of this especular world ofsky, mountains, and land-converges toward the world center ofTenochtidan, the theatrical state in which all reality is mirrored in rite and drama. This is the world wherein Tezcadipoca, the "dark mirror," is everywhere. The ritual sequences ofpilgrimages to a rotation ofshrines is mapped out by Johanna Broda in Chapter 7. The ritual rotation assured that this speculative view was appreciated from many angles, in the festivals ofAd Caualo, Huey Tozozdi, Etzalcualizdi, and Tecuilhuitondi, which took place, regulated by the rhythm of the rains, on the various mountains surrounding the lake. But nowhere was it more spectacular and specular than from the Cerro de la Estrella, which takes its peculiarlysttategic place "at the divisoty line among Lake Texcoco, Lake of Mexico, and the southern lakes ofChalco and Xochimilco." It dominates all sections ofthe lake, the sweet and the salty. It is not surprising that Broda desctibes it for us as "one ofthe most imporrant sacred places" in the Valley. And from Zacateped, the four-thousand-meter "sacted hill to the south" and the highest peak of the western tange, one speculates on reflections of the Yoaltecad-Tepeyac-Sierta de Cuautepec, which, even as they strain toward the highest heights of the sky, point downward, in watety reflection, to the central shrines ofTenochtidan. Zacateped is the sacred mountain par excellence. Ironically - and curiously - the sacred place is associated with barbarous "others," the Chichimec hunters whose emblem is the zacapan, the spread-out grass of the mountains. From this petipheral place of the other, the outsider, one "sees" with that seeting glance that speculates on the centet and with that specular, troubling vision, that reflective revision, that constitutes a cosmos . These mountains were not only reflected on waters, and not only The Miraculous w"tm ofTenochtitlan 207 climbed as sacred places...