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The Legend of Quetzalcoatl: Man or Myth

From the beginning of the Toltec reign in Central Mexico, the deity Quetzalcoatl has been a central figure in the religion and culture of Mexico. This is undisputed. What can be disputed, however, is Quetzalcoatls legitimacy as an historical figure. The deity Quetzalcoatl, or the plumed serpent is inseparable from the man Ce Acatl Topitlzin Quetzalcoatl, known to be a famous leader in pre-historical Mexican myth.

The dissection becomes more difficult still as the Spanish friars introduced Christianity and in an attempt to assimilate the Indians, created a parallel between Indian deity Quetzalcoatl and the Catholic figure St. Thomas. In doing so, the priests hoped to incorporate Indian culture and religion into Christianity. In the process, however, they changed and damaged the pre-Christian notions of the god. What information we have now of Quetzalcoatl must be recognized as flawed over the centuries, and we must take this into account when trying to examine the historical origins of one of the three figures.

However, with cautious examination, we can separate these three figures and determine each ones traits independent of the others. To understand the mythical figure Quetzalcoatl, the first of the trinity to emerge, one must look further in to the religious belief of the pre-Columbian peoples. In the Classical period, Quetzalcoatl represented a sort of binary opposition between earth and heaven, visible in his name, quetzalli, or precious green feather, and coatl, the serpent.

Precious green feather, according to Enrique Florescano, referred to a bird, which in the Classical period symbolized the heavens. Coatl, the serpent, symbolized earth, and so the mythical creature Quetzalcoatl was a link between the two, present before the Toltec civilization began, and gave birth to the image of twins, one of life, fertility and order (the bird) and the other representing the fatality of death (the serpent) .

Yet the link between the immortal and the mortal was further construed by the Classical Period Indians than even the symbolism of the bird and serpent. The binary oppositions within day and night, also the Morning Star and the Evening Star became entangled within the earliest surviving myths of Quetzalcoatl. There is a fine line between the religious and the mythological in Pre-Columbian Mexico.

While Quetzalcoatl began as a symbolic interpretation to link life and death, or the gods and humans, his purpose soon extended to an intercessor between the two, symbolic in the ball court game which he is attributed with founding . The game was played by the young, able-bodied men, and while the year of the games origins can only be speculated, MacLachlan and Rodriguez speculate the game came only a few generations after the establishment of agriculture by the Olmecs, since it was at this point that the Indians would rely on the deities for ample rain and fertility to survive.

However, Florescano disagrees, stating the first use of the ball court as designed by the Mayans that the loser might be decapitated, his spurting blood to water the netherworld with precious human blood to bring fertility in crops . While this tradition of human sacrifice did not begin until many years after Quetzalcoatl had been recognized as a deity, it will become relevant later on to the Aztecs must choose whether their worship of Quetzalcoatl will be violent, as Huitztelapochtli requests, or peaceful as Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl requested of his followers.

While Quetzalcoatl the deitys roots can be traced with ease to the ideology of the Toltecs, whose high priest and ruler Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was a follower of the mythological god, the ideological origins of Quetzalcoatl are ambiguous. We know that he did not exist around 1200 B. C. , when the Olmecs are conjectured to have become an independent civilization. However, it seems apparent that he had emerged by the year 100 A. D. when Teotihuacan began its reign as the most powerful city in MesoAmerica .

According to Laurette Sejourne, Quetzalcoatl the man emerged approximately the time of Christ, nearly 100 years before the establishment of Teotihuacan . According to David Carrasco, Quetzalcoatl the man was even responsible for the establishment of Teotihuacan . This makes it difficult to know whether Carrasco was referring to Quetzalcoatl the man or the god, since it would have been possible for either to have been adapted and misconstrued over the past 2,000 years.

While these numbers conflict in their establishment of a chronological order to the birth of Quetzalcoatl, they do convey importance in that when considering the rise of Quetzalcoatl as a deity, we must take into account that the historical figure Quetzalcoatl was also influencing the legends associated with his deity . According to most sources, Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl is born in the religiously significant year of 1 Acatl, the beginning of a new cycle of the Meso-American calendar passed down from the Olmecs.

To understand the calendar, we must backtrack just a few years to the Olmecs amazing ability to trace the solar and lunar calendars. The solar calendar, of 365 days per year, had a symbol or animal with specific characteristics assigned to it for each day. The lunar calendar, only 260 days, had the same sort of principle, with an animal or symbol assigned to each day. Each day would be recorded by both its solar and lunar symbols, and when the calendars each reached the final day of their year simultaneously, the solar-lunar cycle would begin again.

For all Mexican cultures, this had a profound impact on the way they believed the universe worked. According to Adela Fernandez, the Toltecs and later peoples believed that the gods, like the rest of the universe they could observe, was cyclical . Day and night, the seasons, and life itself was cyclical. The gods, who had little care for humans, would determine whether or not the cycle would begin again, and if it did, then the cycle of life would not be interrupted for another 52 years.

Therefore, it is significant that Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was born at the beginning of a new 52-year cycle because if there were to be any changes to Mexican religion and culture, it would most likely correspond with this date. It was also believed by some followers of the cult of the Plumed Serpent that Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was the incarnate of the god himself. As Sejourne says, the historical reality [of Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl] seems to be established without a doubt, since his qualities as a leader are many times mentioned.

While some aspects of his biography are not credible as historical data (such as his mother being a member of the immaculate conception) and his father being the god Mixcoatl (Serpent of the Clouds), we can use this biography to imply how Ce Acatl was revered by his followers. According to Nigel Davies, Mixcoatl is similar to Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, cine he too was most likely a human figure as well as a god. Davies claims that Mixcoatl may have been a victim of divination after his death, and this would explain the contradiction of Quetzalcoatl being born from an immaculate conception.

What information we have of Quetzalcoatl is most likely that passed on through oral tradition, with some gleaned from hieroglyphics, and the archaeological excavation of Tula. Yet most of this information must have been passed down by the followers of Quetzalcoatl, who it is likely believed that Chimalman (Quetzalcoatls mother) conceived immaculately. This is not so much of a stretch for a people who see Quetzalcoatl as a champion of the people and great religious leader.

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