The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations: A Comparative Research Based on a Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious, Sociological, and Calendrical SystemsNuttall, Zelia
Religion
The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations: A Comparative Research Based on a Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious, Sociological, and Calendrical Systems
With regard to the connection of the Pleiades with the beginning of the
Mexican cycle, it is interesting to note Herr Andree’s statements that the
most intimate connection of the star-group with the thoughts of primitive
people, would naturally take place in such localities where its periodical
movements coincided with the changes of season, wind and weather which
affected agriculture. A survey of the data presented by Herr Andree shows
that the cult of the Pleiades attained its greatest development amongst
tribes inhabiting a southerly latitude. It was in South America, indeed,
that the Peruvians, alongside of their highly developed sun-cult, rendered
homage and offered sacrifices to the Pleiades. In Mexico, the cult of the
Pleiades appears as intimately associated with that of the sun and to have
assumed importance only in historical and comparatively recent times,
probably when the periodicity of the sun’s movements had been taught or
recognized and the sign _ollin_, which is an exact presentation of the
annual course of the sun, had been invented and adopted as a symbol. I
have already pointed out that this sign occurs on the calendar-stone, for
instance, which has a human face in its centre, bearing two numerals on
the forehead and obviously symbolizing the union of two in one. In other
instances the centre displays the eye, or star symbol and conveys the
suggestion that the “four movements” of the circumpolar constellations
were thereby symbolized. It may be that, in ancient Mexico, the two
symbols, respectively referring to the movements of the sun and of the
circumpolar star-groups, were emblematic of the two different cults or
religions which existed alongside of each other. The first, the cult of
the Above, of the Blue Sky, was directed towards the sun and the planets
and stars intimately associated with sunrise and sunset, amongst them the
Pleiades. The cult of the Below, of the Nocturnal Heaven, was directed
towards the moon, Polaris and the circumpolar constellations—also to the
stars and planets during the period of their disappearance and possibly in
the same way to the enigmatical “Black Sun,” figured in the B. N. MS.
which may have been the sun during its nightly stay in the House of the
Underworld, whose door was in the west. In order to obtain an idea of the
immense proportions ultimately assumed by these two diverging cults and
the enormous influence they exerted upon the entire native civilization,
it will be necessary to examine the form of the social organization in
Montezuma’s time.
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