A Visit to Tamoanchan and Tlalocan
Amanda torrey
rel. 360
May 1, 2008
In a linear worldview, like that of Western civilization, sex, death and magic are taboo, so the Mesoamerican cosmovision might be difficult to understand. For the Mexica, time and space exists as a cosmic tree where the two opposing forces of creation and destruction move up and down the trunk in an eternal gyrating motion. Dr. Alfredo Lopez Austin, a historian of religion, explores this concept in his book, Tamoanchan, Tlalocan, Places of Mist (“Tamoanchan, Tlalocan”). By applying comparative approaches on the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of Mexico’s High Central Plateau, he focuses on the eve of the Spanish conquest, and explores Mexica concepts of Tamoanchan and Tlalocan. Here he addresses some fundamental aspects of human existence such as birth, reciprocation, death and rebirth by identifying three goals:
a) to continue strengthening the idea of the existence of a Mesoamerican tradition that has survived vigorously up to now;
b) develop new methodological sources;
c) and fully utilize ethnographic knowledge to understand ancient cosmovision, in which the understanding of some segments has been impeded by the inadequacies of the sixteenth-century sources. (8)
The process begins as he asks the following:
Was there more than one religion? [i]
What is the persistence of Mesoamerican beliefs and practices up to the present? [ii]
How much of the ancient Mesoamerican worldview remains today?[iii]
Here, Austin contrasts two methods for his study that develops workable theories regarding the mythical nature of Tamoanchan and Tlalocan as they “explained natural, social, and divine movements.” (12). Beginning with Tamoanchan, through mostly post-colonial and non-indigenous sources, he extracts an oddly Christian sounding myth:
Tamoanchan was the axis of the universe and the group of the cosmic trees. Sin took place there. The gods united the contrary substances, creating sex, and with that produced another space, other beings and another time: the world of humans. Because of their transgression, the sinful gods were punished, expelled to the world of death and the surface of the earth. The gods created another type of existence. Transformed, they created the beings of this world, but now they were contaminated with death as a consequence of sex. Their life was limited in time, in space, and their perceptions were curtailed. In exchange, they would have the possibility of procreation.
Then for his research of Tlalocan, he tries to find a nucleus within the belief systems of the three targeted communities of the Tzotzil, the Sierra People (defined as Nahua, Otomi, Tepehua, Totonac), and the Huichol that he hopes will be useful for interpreting other religious realities. By separating his findings into the categories of: The Nature of Things, The Replications, The Dominions of the Earth (or Dominion of Water in the case of the Huichol) , The Seasonal Cycle, and The Human Being, he answers his three questions and finds enough in common between the tree categories of populations to create a new model that he believes to be useful for investigating other religious beliefs.
By combining the two studies together, Austin concludes that Tamoanchan’s cosmic tree embodies the marriage of Tlalocan, whose roots reach down into the wet dark fertilized earth, and Tonatiuh Ichan,, whose leaves and flowers spread eternally up into the skies. (269) This is what manifests the dynamic exchanges of intertwining gyrations up and down the trunk connecting Tlalocan and Tonatiuh Ichan that become the “break down” replacing the old reality where the two were not suppose to interact. In spite of what should or should not have happened, the exchange resulted with the dawn of a Creation of a new beginning where mankind became a part of the cosmic order. Austin says:
Tamoanchan as being where “the supreme couple, Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, sent the animistic seed of the child to the mother’s womb;” and “where in primordial time, the gods gave maize to humans, after having ground the grain with their own teeth.” Tlalocan then, is a hollow mountain filled with fruit. This was where people went who died by drowning, being struck by lightning, afflicted with dropsy or pustules – or any other means that would appear was affected by the watery realm. (267)
One of the sources contributing to my understanding of the Nahuatl, before coming to this class was Kay Read’s “Burning and Binding Fires,” the 6th chapter of the book Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos.[1] Here, Dr. Read tells us “that the cosmic house, with its constant transformation flow of powers, shaped four concepts pertinent to sacrificial logic:”
1) the sacred equaled the profane, creating a “profane sacrality;”
2) history was eternal because history was all there was;
3) death gave life; and
4) the cosmic community operated on a sense of limited reciprocity.
A few of her key concepts were: The supernatural was judged to be material, visible, tangible and audible, so supernatural beings were as immediate a “present” as anything else functioning in their lives. Man was actually completely immersed in the supernatural so it was only remote to him because of his limitations. -- The suffix “teo” meant sacred and the “teoyome” were forces that changed various beings and circumstances in all domains of existence and caused existence to mix and blend. The reality of continual transformation makes neither the danger of stasis or extreme disorder a concern, for such oppositions have no meaning. The “teo” was more a matter of degree, nature, and function than of something out of the ordinary. -- There was a necessity to endure change and accept its absolute reality for there was no concept of a motionless eternity. The only everlasting thing is change itself and history is eternal. Endings, not Beginnings of Things were marked because the completion of something automatically pushed the process forward to a new beginning. --Historical change was not contrasted to its opposite – eternity—instead for them numerous non-human and human beings (both great and humble), spun their power in and out of each other. -- Chaos’s order, not its disorder, was the reason people sought sacrificial participation. We then have to separate the ritualistic sacrifice from murder because a murder’s intent was not for promoting the cosmic order and did not create life. In fact murderers became slaves to the deceased family. Inappropriate actions were differentiated from appropriate actions based on context...and inappropriate actions could be made appropriate life giving death.
After absorbing Dr. Read’s reflections regarding the Nahuatl mindset, I felt I had at least a foundation for understanding Professor Austin’s intent of Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. For example, I saw in his study, an amazing reciprocity between targeted communities and their gods whose process forms a continuous cycle of existence. Through his description of Tomoanchan, Dr. Austin might have taught me more about magic than I learned in a lifetime from my own personal cosmology. I felt his weakest moments, however, might have been in his translations of “sin” with regard to the sexual exchanges between the gods of the underworld and sky; and of “filth” that he associated with midwives after a birth.
The word “Sin” word is a Mesoamerican context since the closest word to “sin” is a description of a creative or “break apart” process, not a moral one. In this case, the “Creation myth” tells the story of the god, Tezcatlipuca who entered the mouth of the goddess, Tlalteutl, while his companion Ehecatl entered her navel. They joined in her heart that was the center of the earth, and, “after having united, they made a very low sky.” Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipuca bring down another goddess, Tlaltecutli, to complete the creation of the earth.
Afterwards [the gods] made the earth from the fish, Cipactli. ... The gods traveled inside the hollow posts, coming from the sky and from the depths of the earth. Their encounter was sinful. The two parts of parts of Cipactli’s body were not to be united again. The gods from above and below were fragments of the goddess’ divided body, and their marriage was a violation of the original separation. ... However, the sin was productive because from the union of the sky gods and those of the underworld the process of time was born. After the primary division of the goddess into heaven and earth, time did not elapse. The body of the goddess was a constant present with all the possibilities of existence. Thus, the constant present remained on the celestial levels and in the depths of the earth. On the other hand, the movement of their fragments produced the course of time in the intermediate levels in tlaltipac, the world inhabited by humans. Time born of the feminine and the masculine, came out from those four posts and extended over the space formed by the separation of the sky from t he earth.
If, as Dr. Read professes, there truly is “profane sacrality,” and if history is eternal then we would have to see these two circumstances rather as a couple of imbalances rectified by sacrifice. I would agree, for instance, that a great debt is owed Cipactli and Tlalteutl -- but this isn’t a sin as much as history defining the eternal reality of the present.
Again perhaps there might be a cultural misunderstanding in translating a Nahuatl word to “filth.” As I understand it, the word “filth” would be the antithesis of “death giving life” (as shown on p. 3 above). Additionally, I envision gore covering the midwife after a birth the same as mixing sacrificial blood from an altar (death) with the dirt that covers maize seed in fields (life). For instance, could we as easily interpret the vagina’s opening at the time of the child’s birth as being the eastern portal from the underworld bringing forth the sprouted seed of life? This would seem more congruent with the idea that women who die in childbirth share the warriors’ afterlife. But then maybe that’s what happens when we mix together two paradigms as disparate as Christianity and Mexica. Perhaps it’s possible that a Nahuatl might see the constant conflicts south of the United States border as new forces evolving out from the eternal gyrations of two dynamic opposites mixing and remixing themselves? Many would say The Lady of Guadalupe[2] would be a good example for one of these mixtures. If this is true, could we then apply Professor Austin’s new model of the Mexica archetype to aid us in discovering useful paradigms for interpreting other religious beliefs? Or, perhaps this model could work toward resolving Christian notions of good and evil dualisms as well as sin, filth, damnation, salvation through suffering, etc. which would bring us closer to a Mesoamerican version of order and a mutuality which might give us a deeper understanding of their world.
It’s tempting to think that if we can use Professor Austin’s model to resolve differences of vision between modern United States and post-classical Mexica, then perhaps it can also be used to answer some of the more extreme issues facing us in our own urban neighborhoods. On the other hand, looking for a model to equate such extreme worldviews could be as realistic as clicking our heels together and saying three times...“There’s no place like home ,” only to find ourselves not in a school room, but in our own bed waking up from a really strange dream...
[1] Read, K. (1998). Burning and binding fires. Time and sacrifice in the Aztec cosmos. (pp. 156-197) Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
[2] Burkhart, L. (1997). The cult of the virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. South and Meso-American native Spirituality. Vol. 4 of World Spirituality: an Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest. New York:The Crossroad Publishing Company.
[i] Current native religions are clearly not simply versions of pre-Hispanic thought and practices, but rather, despite strong Christian influence, they are part of ancient Mesoamerican traditions. ... In trying to understand the Mesoamerican religious complex, it is necessary to recognize its nature as a HISTORICAL FACT and to see that in its heterogeneous composition the rhythms of change in its different elements were quite different. Indeed, this historical fact had a hard nucleus with components that were very resistant to historical change (5).
[ii] ... it is necessary to point out that current religions are not expressions, and certainly not decayed expressions, of the ancient Mesoamerican religion. They are new, different, colonial religions, composed of both the ancient Mesoamerican religion and of Christianity. ... They are the product of five hundred years of intense, harsh colonial condition...Stating this fact does not negate the tradition...A historian of religions should take into account the different degrees of resistance to change of components of the same historical event...in focusing upon Mesoamerican religion (and, generally, Mesoamerican religious tradition), the general aspects are as important as the particular ones, and it is as necessary to emphasize the common religious elements as it is the differences. Methodologically we should start from what they have in common, the similarities, the things that persisted, because only by starting with a knowledge of those nuclear aspects most resist to change can we see and evaluate the differences. (7)
[iii] (... [“world view”] exists as a cultural unit produced primarily through the logic of communication, and thanks to that logic, it attains high levels of congruency and rationality, despite the fact that its producers may or may not have been conscious of their participation in its creation....[The Mesoamerican] cosmovision, and with it, its religion and mythology, was one of the most important means of communication in interrelations between the Mesoamerican societies, as well as in the internal mechanisms of those societies. Because of this, religion was a system that went beyond the boundaries of the different political units which belonged to that extensive historical and cultural tradition, and it was one of the principal factors of Mesoamerican unity. (10))
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