Teotihuacán IV: Temple of Quetzalcóatl

Introduction: This post is fourth in our series on Teotihuacán: I. 'City Where the Gods are Made', II. The Shape of Space and Time, III. Seat of Political-Religious Power and V. Palace Murals. 

I confess. To the delight of some readers and the consternation of others, I've been immersed in Mesoamerican mythic and spiritual traditions for some weeks now. Coming up for air, I'm tempted to observe, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” 

The assumptions underlying the Mesoamerican worldview are radically different from those of Western Europe. To try to understand them requires more or less a leap of faith into the unknown. Is it worth it? 

The renowned myth scholar Joseph Campbell thought so. Reflecting on Mesoamerican spiritual thought, he wrote: “For myths, by their very nature, function to reveal the inner in terms of the outer.” Campbell then quotes Novalis, “The seat of the soul is there, where the outer and inner worlds meet.” 

This post is heavily indebted to the beautifully written, insightful analysis of Roberta H. and Peter T. Markman in their seminal work, “Masks of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica.” 

Previous posts discuss how Teotihuacán was laid out to replicate on the earthly plane the culture’s vision of the cosmos symbolized by the quincunx—an arrangement of five points in a square or rectangle with one point at each corner and one at the center.

By locating the Citadel at the intersection of Teotihuacán’s two major thoroughfares—the Avenue of the Dead, representing the realm of the spirit, and the East-West Avenue, representing the world of humans—the city’s planners established the symbolic center of the universe. By this act, they defined the Citadel as the “sacralized political center” of the vast Teotihuacán Empire.

Temple of Quetzalcóatl

With the pyramid-temple placed at the back of the plaza of the Citadel, the city’s planners faced the challenge of consecrating this edifice where spirit and matter were to meet in the person of the priest-king who manifested the divine on the earthly plane.  The physical arrangement represented this sacred meeting place, or threshold.

Facing the Citadel's plaza, the positive upward thrust of the pyramid-temple balances the negative "sunken" space of the plaza itself—a repeat of the earlier design of the Pyramid of the Moon and its sunken plaza. These arrangements are surely the symbolic equivalent of the combination of cave and pyramid seen at the Pyramid of the Sun located between the Pyramid of the Moon and the Citadel.  

In each case, the emphasis on penetration of the upper (Heavens) and lower (Underworld) realms of the spirit defines man's place in the world of nature.

The architectural masks that adorn this pyramid-temple serve to designate it as sacred. Masks symbolize the point of priestly passage between states of being—Underworld, Earthly Plane, Celestial World.  

Sculptured facade of the Temple of Quetzalcóatl

Originally, the Temple of Quetzalcóatl was literally covered with masks. The reconstruction (below), housed in the National Museum of Archaeology and History in Mexico City, shows the undulating bodies of serpents on the narrow bands between each row of masks.

Reconstruction of the west facade of the Temple of Quetzalcóatl at the Museum of Anthropology and History, Mexico City. The paint that originally covered the facade is long gone. The reconstruction hints at how the pyramid once appeared to Teotihuacanos. Notice the undulating serpent bodies on two levels: between the masks, but also as wavy lines on the level that separates the masks.  (Click image to enlarge)

Transformations Natural and Divine

Central to the Mesoamerican cosmovision was the process of transformation, by which the world of spirit entered into the contingent world of man, creating and sustaining life as we know it. The solar path provides the impetus by which the natural world moves through the annual agricultural cycles of generation, life and death. Over a longer timeframe, humans are born, live and die. Observation of these natural phenomena led Mesoamerican spiritual thinkers to conclude that life itself is cyclic.

As we consider the masks that adorned the Temple of Quetzalcóatl, it is essential to keep in mind that Mesoamerican gods are not like the pantheon of Greek gods. They are more like Hindu gods, who can exist simultaneously in more than one state.

Given the multidimensionalality of these gods, it’s helpful to keep in mind these concepts:

·         Duality—light/dark, life/death, creation/destruction, fire/water, order/disorder;

·         Reciprocity—mutual obligation.

Temple Masks: Tlaloc and Quetzalcóatl

The masks covering the Temple of Quetzalcóatl alternate in their representation of two gods: Tlaloc and Quetzalcóatl. Tlaloc is the god of rain. Quetzalcóatl is the plumed serpent, miraculous synthesis of serpent and bird. The Markmans suggest that these separate gods are best thought of as part of a continuum.

On the temple frieze, naturalistic masks of the feathered serpent (Quetzalcóatl) with ruffed collars alternate with abstract, geometric, “flat” masks of the rain god (Tlaloc). Dominance of the feathered serpent is evidenced by his masks that line the staircase ascending to the temple atop the pyramid.

Mythic Transformations

As the Markmans explain, the masks on this temple represent the story of the relationship between man/matter and nature/spirit. In sum, the gods transform spirit, that is, themselves, into matter (rain). In turn, man reciprocates by transforming matter into spirit.

The ritual burning of incense sends clouds of smoke into the air, thus reenacting the coming of the rain clouds needed to begin another cycle of the endless process in which life [or the life-force, symbolized by ollín] was constantly poised between creation and destruction. Incensarios found at Teotihuacán depict Huehuetéotl, the old fire god who was also prominent at Cuiculco.

Heuheutéotl, Old Fire God.
His hat is a brazier for burning incense.

These two seemingly separate gods—Tlaloc and Quetzalcóatl—are best seen as parts of a continuum, a union of opposites that points to a larger spiritual reality.

Union of Opposed Elemental Forces

At one level, the temple’s theme appears to be fertility. The unusual texture of the Tlaloc mask may suggest corn. The circular mouth on the feathered serpent suggests an aspect of Quetzalcóatl—Ehécatle, who blew winds to clear the way for the coming rains. Tlaloc (rain) and Ehécatle (wind) hence work together to provide man’s sustenance, corn.

But the temple masks may also suggest another unity born of the merging of opposites. The Markmans note that the serpent is the “quintessential symbol for sacrificial blood,” which leads them to conclude that Tlaloc as metaphor for rain and the plumed serpent as metaphor in this instance for sacrificial blood suggest the cyclical process by which life itself is maintained: in return for rain provided by the gods, man is called upon to provide the sacrificial blood that metaphorically nourishes the gods.

Tlaloc

Both the Olmec culture, the ‘mother’ Mesoamerican culture (that is, a community organized at political/religious levels) and the Zapotec culture (Monte Albán in Oaxaca was roughly contemporaneous with Teotihuacán) related Tlaloc to rulership. 

These cultures recognized in this deity the ability to provide the divine force from which earthly rulers drew their mandate. For these early cultures, Tlaloc provided not only man’s sustenance but the community’s divinely ordained rulers.

In sum, agricultural fertility (abundant crops and the resulting surplus) gave rise to civilized life—that is, to civil order. This order was by and inherent in the ruler as priest-king. 

Tlaloc. His goggle-eyed face is combined with an animal figure, likely a crocodile, symbol of the subterranean waters of primal chaos. Tlaloc is the source of all forms of water from the heavens above (rain, hail, snow) to the earth below (lakes, rivers, springs).

But Tlaloc had another aspect. As Lord of Times, he also provided for the annual cycle that nourishes vegetation and hence life. The widely held expert view is that the Temple of Quetzalcóal originally displayed from 360 to 366 composite masks. In this it is similar to the Pyramid of Niches constructed at El Tajín on the Gulf Coast in Veracruz state. El Tajín was built as Teotihuacán declined (600 CE). 

Quetzalcóatl

The serpent was used to define the meeting place of spirit and matter. The use of the serpent to flank the stairway at the Temple of Quetzalcóatl prefigured the symbolic use of serpents to flank temple doorways and pyramid stairways elsewhere at Teotihuacán. 

Quetzalcóatl: This multi-dimensional deity combines not only the bird, who ascends to the Heavens, and the serpent, who comes from the Earth, but the jaguar as well. The jaguar represents the night sun that travels through the Underworld. 

The Markmans:

This use of the serpent to define the liminal meeting place of spirit and matter coincides with the serpent symbolism associated with blood sacrifice since it was up these pyramid stairways, after all, that the sacrificial victim made his way to the temple where his spirit was freed by the act of sacrifice to return to its home [in the essential life-force] and his body, now merely matter, was released to tumble back down that same stairway to be reunited with the earth (Markmans, p. 45).

Over time, the serpent symbol would come to be used by later cultures in the Valley of Mexico.

Some Final Thoughts

The masks that cover the frieze of the Temple of Quetzalcóatl represent the relationship between the realm of the spirit and the world of man. The message of the images that cover the Temple suggest that for Teotihuacanos, life is made possible in the visible, tangible world of man through the continuous intervention of the invisible, intangible realm of the spirit.

Let me give the scholars the last word:

These [masks] can only be called graphic symbols…[full of meaning] for those who beheld them. In this sense [these images were] the expression of a sacerdotal body, the reflection of a caste of learned clerics concerned with elaborating the concepts of a pantheon in which the forces of the universe are personified [emphasis added].

Henry Stierlin, 1982

Teotihuacán was a highly developed society, which

...was unquestionably the preeminent ritual center of its time in Mesoamerica. It seems to have been the most important center of trade and to have had the most important marketplace. It was the largest and most highly differentiated craft center. In size, numbers, and density, it was the greatest urban center and perhaps the most complexly stratified society of its time in Mesoamerica. It was the seat of an increasingly powerful state that appears to have extended its domination over wider and wider areas…. Indeed, it appears to have been the most highly urbanized center of its time in the New World (emphasis added).

René Millon, 1976

Still Curious?

The archaeological excavation continues. This article (Aug 2010) describes initial exploration of a tunnel found under the Temple of Quetzalcóatl.

UTube Video (1:59 sec), produced by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, features excellent close-up views of the temples plumed serpent (ruffed collar) and Tlaloc (goggle-eyes) masks.

UTube video (36 sec), shot from a viewing platform atop the second facade, has a good view of the plumed serpent masks lining the staircase of the Temple of Quetzalcóatl.

UTube (1:09 sec), shot from a viewing platform atop the temple's second west facade, gives excellent views of the entire Citadel complex from the stairway lined with plumed serpent masks, across a long view of the temple masks,  panning the area of the residential complex that surrounded the temple on three sides. A view is also given of the sunken plaza in front of the temple with the great altar and temples ranging the plaza's massive exterior walls.

Here's the link to Reed's Picassa photo album, From the Monumental to the Miniature, of Teotihuacán and artifacts found in its site museums.  The "miniatures"—small sculptures—are an unexpected delight!

Jenny's Post Quetzalcóatl at Xochicalco (Morelos state) describes the Temple of Quetzalcóatl built by the ruling elite of Xochicalco, which rose to power in the vacuum created by the decline and fall of Teotihuacán.  

Cuicuilco, Volcanoes and the Fragility of Life in Mesoamerica

This morning, as I often do, I stood before our front window and watched the sun rise behind Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl. This morning brought something new. Shining from below the horizon behind Iztacc, the sun's angle was such that sun's rays bathed the slope of Popo facing us. A few minutes later, the sun peeked over Iztacc and the volcanoes began to fade from view.

My experience of visiting Cuicuilco, the first monumental civic-ceremonial center in the Valley of Mexico, is similar. When I think of early peoples in Mexico City, the Aztecs come immediately to mind. But in point of fact, the so-called Aztecs were late arrivals.

Note: 'Aztec' is a word coined by anthropologists; it probably derives from the mythic origin of the peoples in Aztlán, located in today's northwest Mexico or the Southwestern United States.

To my surprise, Cuicuilco was first settled about 1200 BCE. By 800 BCE it was a thriving civic-ceremonial center—a realization as improbable to me as the sun's predawn rays shining across Popo's slope!

The association is particularly apt because sometime around 150-200 CE Cuicuilco was utterly destroyed by ash and lava flow from Xitle, a small cone volcano nearby. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Volcanic Axis Runs through Mexico City's 'South Side'

Living in Michoacán, we had become acquainted with the Volcanic Axis running East-West across Mexico. So many volcanic craters are visible that 'flying' over Michoacán via GoogleEarth, Reed exclaimed, "is like viewing a moonscape."

Volcanic Axis (red) cinches Mexico's midsection; four black triangles represent the largest volcanoes: (West to East) Colima (active); Popocatéptl (active), linked by a mountain ridge to Iztaccíhuatl (dormant); La Malinche (dormant 3,100 years); and Pico de Orizaba (active).

Lake Texcoco; red lines indicate Volcanic Axis; Cuicuilco is on West Side (left, triangle just below top red line); Cerro Xitle (Extinct Volcano) is Southwest of Cuicuilco; North of Cuicuilco is Ciudad de México (today's Mexico City Historic Center).

"If you would understand a man, walk a mile in his sandals..."

I've taken liberties with this traditional saying, because it is a useful reminder as I try to understand the circumstances of Mexico's earliest peoples—specifically, how they coped with natural forces that periodically threatened to destroy them.

In an earlier post, I described the geology of Mexico and the threat it has long posed to the people who inhabit these lands. Today our focus is on volcanic activity.

Mexico's volcanoes are of two types:

• Large, violently erupting volcanoes characterized by long repose periods between eruptions (Popocatépetl); and
• Smaller volcanoes that tend to form and erupt where there has been no previous volcanic activity; once eruption occurs, the activity shifts to a new locality where an eruption occurs at a later time (Paricutin, Michoacán ... and Xitle).

Xitle, in fact, formed on the flank of Ajusco, a larger volcano in the same area. When Xitle erupted, lava flows poured into the Basin of Mexico, covering the area of what is now known as the Pedregal de San Ángel, upon which has been built the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico [UNAM].

Cuicuilco's First Settlers

Cuicuilco provides a rare snapshot of life in these early periods. The first peoples to settle Cuicuilco about 1200 BCE were small, family groups making the transition from hunter-foragers to village-based farmers. Their agriculture was based on cultivation of maís (corn).

During this period, the central and southern regions of the Basin of Mexico (modern-day Mexico City) enjoyed greater rainfall, which fostered settlement of tribal farming villages. The well-watered valley floors were green with maís (corn), and irrigation techniques enhanced crop yields. People continued to hunt and trap and collect important (often medicinal) plants. The landscape was clearly divided between cultivated land and the wilderness—forested mountainsides that served as watersheds for the valley and were dotted with natural springs.

In the eyes of these early settlers, their farming villages and milpas (farm plots in Nahuatl) represented the point of connection between heaven and earth—a fruitful union of water, earth and mountains.

The earth was viewed as the milpa of the gods. Outside the milpa, chaos reigned. In this worldview, prosperity sprang from proper regulation of the agricultural (solar) year, and from effective mediation with controlling natural forces, which were viewed as spiritual in nature.

At Cuicuilco, Cerro Xitle (Xitle Hill) would have been an active presence, spewing smokey plumes as Popocatéptl does today, providing a daily reminder of the people's vulnerability before la naturaleza (natural forces). The natural follow-up question is: How might these early settlers have sought to 'mediate' let alone 'regulate' these natural forces?

Cuicuilco: Monumental Civic-Ceremonial Center

Perhaps the best answer to that question is found in the words of renowned art historian George Kubler (1984):

"[The people engaged in] collective endeavors to guarantee the continuity of the creation of the universe against catastrophic dissolution in an unstable world." (Emphasis added)

In this context, Cuicuilco presents a good example of how Mesoamerica culture attempted to control the vital forces of the natural world by replicating them in ritual practices. The deity most associated with Cuicuilco, for example, was Huehuetéotl (Old Old God of Fire).

Huehuetéotl (Old Old God of Fire),
Museo Nacional de Antropología

Huehuetéotl is depicted as an old man with wrinkled face (symbol of wisdom), sitting cross-legged, with his hands on his knees. On his hat—a brazier for burning coals or incense—is carved the fire symbol.

Also evident at Cuicuilco is evidence of a cult to the fertility of the earth is found in the numerous clay sculptures of fecund women (Cuicuilco Museum) uncovered in private homes. This cult demonstrates the community’s recognition of their dependency on natural forces to assure ample harvests.

 

The elaborate peinado (hairstyle) of this female figure
—dubbed 'Pretty Woman'—
is undoubtedly an early symbol of fertility.

Generally understood to be a god of the family hearth rather than a focus of civic ritual practice, Huehuetéotl nonetheless appears on a 13 ft. (4 m.) stele (stone-carved column) outside Cuicuilco's pyramid—a truncated stepped cone with ramps on its East and West sides. (Left click to enlarge. Back arrow to return.)

Cuicuilco's pyramid; its summit was crowned by an altar
where the smoke of burning incense and sacrifices rose to the heavens.

The pyramid was constructed in several stages, beginning in 800-600 BCE and hence contemporaneous with one of Popocatépetl's violent eruptions. By 100 BCE, Cuicuilco's population was about 20,000—large enough to support the pyramid construction that continued across generations until about 200 BCE.

Retaining walls of pyramid at Cuicuilco

Both the hearth god and the monumental conical pyramid are earthly replications of Xitle, the conical smoking mountain whose presence posed a constant threat to Cuicuilco's inhabitants.

Cuicuilco Museum offers this explanation of how a tribal farming village underwent the transition to become a monumental, regional civic-ceremonial center (my translation):

"A more elaborate religious cult gradually developed at Cuicuilco where an incipient elite performed not only religious rites, but political and administrative functions as well. Over time, this elite solidified its control over the entire population and, by so doing, initiated a process that ultimately defined theocratic government."

It is not known exactly when Xitle erupted, but it likely occurred sometime between 200 BCE and 200 CE.

It is known that Popcatépetl's eruptions from 250 BCE to 50 CE severely disrupted southern Basin communities. It is also known that Xitle first spewed ash falls, followed shortly thereafter by lava flows. By the time Xitle erupted, with spectacular and frightening displays of fire and smoke, its effects would have caused Cuicuilcans and others to flee for their lives.

Cuicuilco was buried by Xitle's eruptions:

lava flows reached a depth of about 10 m. (33 ft.) and extended over about 80 sq. km. (32 sq. miles). 

The archaeological context was sealed so thoroughly that excavation at the site has proceeded with jackhammers—not ideal for preserving detail!

Aftermath of Volcanic Eruptions

It is difficult to overstate the psychological impact on early peoples of natural phenomena associated with Mexico's volcanic eruptions. But given the people’s proximity to these natural events, it is equally difficult to dismiss the idea that volcanic activity had a profound impact on how Mexico's early peoples came to view their world. Perhaps the most vivid example is found in the Aztec Creation Myth.

In a nutshell:

The Third Sun (World, or Era) was destroyed by fire—'Rain of Fire' may be volcanic eruption. Seeking to create a new era after the Fourth Sun was, in turn, destroyed by water (drought, flood), the gods created the earth, but still there was no light. Meeting in darkness around a great fire, two gods threw themselves into the pyre in order to create the Fifth Sun.

In a profound expression of the duality that marks Mesoamerican thought, it is fire in the form of the sun that gives life to the earth through maíz, and it is fire in its various forms, including volcanic activity, that just as easily takes life.

We're going to revisit this theme soon. This weekend Reed and I plan to visit Cerro de La Estrella (Hill of the Star)—visible from our balcony. The village of Huizachtécatl, related to Cuicuilco culture, was established in this area. It is thought that when the Cuicuilcanos fled the ash falls and lava flows, some sought refuge at Huizachtécatl.

Others fled to Teotihuacán, which is on our winter travel schedule.  Stay tuned.