Aztec World Ages and the Calendar Stone

Carl callaway ahchich1 at yahoo.com
Sat Jan 19 17:16:01 UTC 2008


Dear 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=5,200
4x10x10x52=20,800

                    26,000


In 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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