Aztec World Ages and the Calendar Stone

[Michel Oudijk]

This is pure numerology and has nothing to do whatsoever with Mesoamerican culture, history or cosmovision. At least, I don't know of any indigenous sources, present or past, that justify this game of numbers and concepts. This search for encrypted codes, hidden messages, or mystic signs is a 'cosmic dragon' created by pseudo scholars and laymen without any kind of theoretical or methodological framework. Michel R. OudijkSeminario de Lenguas IndígenasInstituto de Investigaciones FilológicasUniversidad Nacional Autónoma de México 


Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:16:01 -0800From: ahchich1 at yahoo.comTo: Nahuatl at lists.famsi.orgSubject: [Nahuat-l] Aztec World Ages and the Calendar StoneDear Friends,I have a question concerning the possible span of a world age as numerically recorded on the Aztec Calendar Stone. Gorden Brotherston in his Book of the Forth World (see his fig. 54 and pages 298-299) believes that the Aztec scribes encoded mathematically the time spans of world ages into the stone  via the  "mixcoa"  or cloud serpents that frame the  outer  rim of the  great stone.  I am not an  Aztec scholar so I can  not  refute or verify his  interpretation.  I hope  those of you who are familiar with  Aztec  signs and iconography can tell me if his reading is at least plausible. Here is what he writes on page 299 of the work:"Just as the Era Four Ollin visually frames the proceeding four world ages at the center of the sunstone, so its length is recorded on the rim as we saw, in ten lots of ten Rounds imaged as cloud-snakes that issue from the squared scales of sky dragons to
 right and left. Now as we noted above, the heads peering from the dragons' maws below belong respectively to Fire Lord (left) and the Sun (right), who are One and Four in the set of thirteen Heroes. Hence, each endows its dragon and the Rounds on its back with number value, a capacity they and others among them display, for example, in the Pinturas transcription of the world-age story. As One, Fire Lord simply confirms the 5,200-year total; as Four, Sun multiples it to 20,800 to the remaining four-fifths of the Great Year [26,000 years]. Hence:1x10x10x52=5,2004x10x10x52=20,800                    26,000In the Cuauhtitlan Annals transcription of the Sunstone cosmogony, the four-fifths of the Great Year is noted as "CCCCC mixcoa," that is, four hundred cloud-snake rounds."My questions are these:Do the Fire Lord and the Sun God have numerical equivalents of 1 and 4?Are the 10
 glyphs bordered by ten dots on the backs of the Serpents glyphs/names for the 52 year period?Where else in Aztec lit. is it mentioned that the so called cloud serpents manifest or are seen as representing a world Era?Finally is Gorden Brotherston still amongst the living so I might ask him directly?IF GB is correct, then I believe there are are interesting parallels that can be  made to the art, numerology and iconography of other MesoAmerican cultures.I look forward to your answers.Carl Callaway 

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