Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition, Revised Edition

Introduction: Mosaics and Centers

Introduction: Mosaics and Centers The Aztec Empire was a mosaic of cities. -Jacques Soustelle Daily Ufe of the Aztecs The story of ancient Mexico is the story of places and symbols of places. The little footprints crossing and looping the ancient maps suggest that archaic Mexicans visited such places as Teotihuacan, "Abode of the Gods," Tollan, "Place of Reeds," Xochicalco, "Place of the House of Flowers," Colhuacan, "Place of the Ancestors," and Teocolhuacan, "Place of the Divine Ancestors." In a sense, ancient Mexican history is the story of people and their symbols moving from place to place. This volume is concerned with a network of places in pre-Hispanic Mexico that conform dramatically to that social order known as the traditional citi and with the role one complex symbolic form, QuetzalcoatI , "Plumed Serpent," played in the organization , legitimation, and subversion of a large segment of the urban tradition. It seeks to present a new understanding of QuetzalcoatI's significance by emphasizing the urban setting of the ancient culture and the ways in which ancient Mexicans regarded their society as a cosmo-magical construct. It strives to do this by focusing on the meaning of QuetzalcoatI's relationship to the great Toltec capital of Tollan, which appears in the primary sources as both a historical capital and a fabulous symbol of a mythical city. Contemporary scholars are aware of the urban character of ancient Mexico, but an old and stubborn Europocentric approach to the New World has deflected scholarship away from a sustained awareness 1 2 Introduction: Mosaics and Centers that the ancient Mexican city-state was the center of life and that this has great significance for the meaning of religious symbols, including the plumed serpent. Working from a comparative analysis of pristine urbanism, Paul Wheatley, an urban geographer, has summarized the significance cities have for an understanding of the ancient world: "It is the city which has been, and to a large extent still is, the style center in the traditional world, disseminating social, political, technical, religious and aesthetic values and functioning as an organizing principle , conditioning the manner and quality of life in the countryside.'" One outstanding characteristic in the history of pre-Columbian cities is the eccentric periodicity of settlement and stability. The urban tradition had an erratic pattern, "marked by political fragmentation, discontinuity in occupation and decline in the crafts between the successive periods of intensified integrations.'" This pattern of discontinuity was accompanied by the persistence of several religious symbols, among them the feathered serpent, which appeared in a number of regional capitals over a long period of time. It is impressive that Quetzalcoatl, acting in the written sources as a creator god, the morning star, the wind god, a culture hero, the emblem of the priesthood , is inlaid not only within the mosaic of cities constituting the Aztec empire, but also within the obscurer mosaic of cities dominating the long history that led up to the empire. The present study attempts to elucidate the manner in which the symbol of Quetzalcoatl contributed to the organization of six capitals-Teotihuacan, Cholollan, Tula, Xochicalco, Chichen Itza, and Tenochtitlan-by symbolizing the legitimation of power and authority in a trembling world. The overall significance of this pattern is that Quetzalcoatl can be understood, along with his myriad other meanings, as the patron of capital cities in a significant part of Mesoamerica. Quetzalcoatl was a symbol of authority, not only in terms of his expression in specific circumstances, but in terms of the origin and sanctification of authority in capital cities. Quetzalcoatl and the city of Tollan present one of the most complex puzzles for the historian of religions to work with. For years scholars have spoken of the Quetzalcoatl "problem" or the Toltec "problem." Some years ago, Henry B. Nicholson, one of the leading experts in Mesoamerican religions, wrote a work entitled "Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl of Tollan: A Problem in Mesoamerican Ethnohistory." There and elsewhere Nicholson has shown that the "tangle and complexity " of the deity Quetzalcoatl is heightened by "his inextricable interdigitation with the life and personality of a figure whose fundamental historicity seems likely but who can be discerned only through a dense screen of mythical, legendary, and folkloristic accretions : Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl."4 In my view, we can untangle some of Introduction: Mosaics and Centers 3 the complex and frustrating lines of meaning by seeing Quetzalcoatl, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, and Tollan as combined to form one...