Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate

5 The Almanacs

5 The Almanacs The divinatorycodices are not characterized by the narrative unity found in the historical codices, where one (or, at most, a few) long flowing set of ideas and events carries the reader along. Instead, their prophetic messages are parceled into many discrete and relatively independent units, the almanacs. Although it is convenient for us to number the almanacs sequentially, as I do in the Appendix, they were not meant to be read strictly in sequence, from one to the next, but were sought and consulted according to their pertinence to the divinatory situation.1 The diviner might begin with the first almanac, then read the second, skip to the seventh, and end with the thirteenth, for example. Most of the extant divinatory codices that are complete do have definite beginnings, however, and usually end with emphasis. Generally the beginning almanacs treat the entire 260-day cycle with some elaboration. The ending almanacs, for their part, serve to wrap things up succinctly. Usually the beginning and ending almanacs, being thematically neutral, are broadly applicable to many situations. Some codices, like the Borgia, have only one starting point; but others, like the Vaticanus B, have an obverse beginning and a reverse beginning, and it may not matter which is sought first. The Laud stands out because, although it physically appears to be complete, it lacks an emphatic, neutral beginning and a neutral ending.2 The longest surviving manuscripts, the Borgia and Vaticanus B, and to some extent the Fejérváry-Mayer and Cospi, establish the pattern of distinctive beginnings and endings. Within the books, each almanac is fully selfcontained as an independent presentation. Each has its own particular graphic structure, internal organization , reading order, scale, calendrical count, and content ; adjacent almanacs do not often parallel each other in terms of structure or content (see the Appendix diagrams ). Each almanac almost always stands as a complete , autonomous entity. Usually they begin at a page break and end on one. They often run for several pages along only one register or span upper and lower registers , beginning and ending according to their internal requirements. An association or a relational tension, however, does exist between many adjacent almanacs, which varies in character. Although it may initially appear that almanacs in a codex are haphazardly arranged, this is probably an illusion born of our ignorance of the canons governing the divinatory codices. Several factors work together to determine almanac placement: complementarity , thematic emphasis, and physical fit. Some adjacent almanacs go well together because they offer complementary information that a diviner might need 84 t h e a l m a n a c s to assemble a prognostication. For example, the Borgia opens with the in extenso almanac then follows with the twenty patrons of the day signs (pp. 9–13) and the nine Lords of the Night (p. 14). These are all general-purpose almanacs. Their grouping allows the diviner first to locate a day within the full 260-day count (noting its register and the auguries of its column ), next to read the divine forces of its individual day sign, and then to note the Night Lord who also governed . The diviner would use these combined factors to construct the fate. Occasionally almanacs cluster thematically. Two adjacent almanacs in the Borgia (27–28; Figs. 87, 88, Plate 8), for example, share the same graphic structure and both pertain to the rain gods and the growth of corn, although they differ calendrically. Several contiguous almanacs (twenty-daycounts) in the FejérváryMayer (30a–32a, 35a–40a) pertain to travelers (Fig. 85). In many cases, however, there is no clear contextual or associative reason for an almanac’s placement. Location may then be merely a question of fit.The almanacs are side by side because one happens to fit in the space left over by the others.The one-panel deerskin almanac in the Borgia (Fig. 44), forexample, neatlyoccupies the awkward left-over space created by the five-cell Venus almanac (see Fig. 89 and Appendix diagram). Some almanacs are more likely than others to fall at the beginning or end of a codex. Three of the books open with the great in extenso almanac (discussed in Chapter 4), which presents all 260 days over an eightpage span (Borgia, Cospi,Vaticanus B). The canonical location of these almanacs is clearly at the beginning of a divinatory book, and theyall read from the outside in. The Borgia then follows this with...