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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