Aztec star-gazing

[Leonel Hermida]

Hi,

It looks somewhat amazing to see how a totaly 'innocent' query
about just a few names (I maintain my interest was in names,
leaving to others the difficult task to criticise the sources and
indicating the degree of probability of each proposed identification)
has turned out almost as a 'bomb' in some scholarly circles.
I have received not less than 8 responses, 4 of which on-list
(so to speak)  and as many off-list, mainly suggesting I should
keep asking 'difficult' questions for the benefit of many 'listeros'.

I must confess I always read with the utmost attention Mr. R. Haly's
contributions to the "List", though his posts are oftentimes (though
not always) hard to read by my mail utility.  This is because of the
"MIME" formating characters which are put in probably without his
knowledge what results in a lot of strange characters (= inside words
accompanied by line-break, =FA, =3D and the like).
I say I read with the utmost attention his posts even when I don't agree
nor understand them. Let us examine this one:

>Re. "star-gazing" one must ask what it is and why Mesoamericans
>did it and do it when they do. The reasons are not the same as those
>of us working, say, with Hubble. Nor are they the same as those of the
>16th Spaniards who recorded these Nahua practices. Recall that
>neither Spaniards nor Nahua nor many researchers doubt their own
>cosmology

For me star-gazing is what happens when my wife says to me by a
clear evening: 'please look up in your "planetary" what planet is
"that star" which is shining so brightly to-day the other side of the
house'. My questions were not intended to be different from that:
what were the names the Aztec priests (which were so sophisticated
observers of Venus as everyone knows) gave to the planets:
as simple as that...

And there is something that suggests me the association between
Mercury and Piltzintecuhtli (perhaps more correctly Piltzinteuctli) is
perhaps more than a mischievous invention of some malicious imp,
with the intention of difficulting the pacific life of so erudite and acute
scholars.

Thank you.
Kind regards,
Leonel