Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky

by David Bowles

  Archer of the Sun

  The nomadic tribes of the Chichimecah began to fill the northern wastelands, looking to the semi-divine Cloud Serpents for guidance. But many other groups flourished in Mexico as well, guided by the will of the gods.

  Across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the mist-shrouded mountains and hills of Oaxaca, live a people who call themselves the Ñuu Dzaui or People of the Rain. The Nahuas, when they came across this mighty nation, named them Mixteca—Cloud People. Their wise ones narrate a singular origin for this ancient tribe and its ancestral lands.

  Ages ago in the land of Yuta Tnoho, within the cave from which the Achiutl River once flowed, two gigantic trees began to grow on either side of a fountainhead. These trees loved each other despite the chasm that separated them, and with the passing of the centuries their yearning overcame the divide: their roots and branches stretched over the river’s source to intertwine as one.

  The creator gods—revered by the Mixteca as Lady 1 Deer and Lord 1 Deer—found themselves moved by this improbable love. They granted the trees two special offspring: the first Mixteca woman and man. In time that primordial couple had children, who had children, on and on down the centuries until the multitude of Cloud People established the mythical city of Achiutla.

  Generations passed, and Achiutla sprawled into a metropolis. One day, in one of its many homes, was born a boy who would become a hero to his people: Yacoñooy. As he grew, it was clear he would never reach the physical stature of other men, but what he lacked in height he made up for in tenacity, bravery, and skill. Soon his fellow warriors learned to respect and love him for his audacious feats in battle, and he rose to the rank of captain.

  The leaders of the Achiutla faced a problem, however, that weapons could not solve.

  “There is simply no more room upon this mountaintop for future generations of Cloud People,” declared the toniñe, Achiutla’s Lord of Blood, its divinely chosen king. “A new site for a sister city must be found, a beautiful place with great bounty where our nation may continue to expand.”

  The Cloud People were hesitant. Achiutla had always been their home. They had defended it against invaders for centuries untold. The trek to a new region would be harrowing enough. Who dared be the first to chart the way? To route enemies encamped nearby?

  “By the leave of our Lord of Blood, I shall go,” Yacoñooy declared. “I shall discover the ideal region for another settlement, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. You know my valor. Does anyone doubt that I can accomplish this task?”

  No one gainsaid him. The king blessed the captain before the gods and all the people. Yacoñooy took up his bow and arrows, setting out to conquer new lands in the West, ready to vanquish any foe who stood in his way.

  The warrior wandered for weeks and months, searching aimlessly. Entire days would pass without rest, despite the toll that exhaustion and heat would have taken on a lesser man. Yacoñooy went beyond the limits of human endurance, impelled by some mysterious force to continue his quest as long as necessary.

  At last the brave captain came to a vast, uninhabited expanse. No one appeared to stand in his way as he explored that lovely and fertile land—only the sun accompanied his every step, shining with brilliant heat upon his head and back.

  Finding no man with whom to prove his mettle, Yacoñooy lifted his eyes to the heavens. Not a single cloud appeared to cover the unrelenting sun. As thirst and fatigue threatened to overwhelm him, Yacoñooy felt sunrays hit him, biting into his flesh like arrows from above.

  Realization dawned. No man or woman ruled those lands. This was the Evening Kingdom of the Sun. The solar god himself was their sovereign lord!

  This knowledge would have stopped a lesser man. Iya Ndicandii—Lord Sun—had initiated the Age of Light, ending the Age of Darkness when he had emerged for the first time millennia ago. The clarity of daylight, the elders taught, allowed the Cloud People to see, understand, reason, establish social order. That first morning was the beginning of time itself, of human history. Before that dawn, unimaginable and unending sacred night had filled the cosmos.

  In the Age of Darkness, the wise ones said, lived the Stone People. Lord Sun had not appeared: only Lady Moon—Ñuhu Yoo—glimmered faintly in the sky. When Iya Ndicandii crossed the horizon at last, the Stone People were terrified, thinking the world was about to end, consumed by fire. They tried to kill themselves, leaping into caves, hiding under boulders, slipping down ravines, tumbling from mountaintops.

  Yes, the ruler of these lands was fiercesome indeed. But Yacoñooy was undaunted. He cried out in defiance:

  “Iya Ndicandii, Lord Sun who rules these lands with awesome force—I challenge you. Let us see who is greater, who can give greater glory to this unequaled paradise!”

  The sun laughed, confident in his own power, ignoring the small being that defied him from the ground below.

  Yacoñooy cried out again:

  “I am not frightened by the strength of your light. I have time as a weapon, aging slow within my heart!”

  He notched an arrow and pulled his bow taut, aiming for the center of the haughty sun.

  The sun laughed again, reaching his zenith and pouring from his belt of fire a hail of sunbeams at the upstart, thinking to roast him alive.

  Dropping his weapons, Yacoñooy lifted his shield and stood firm, heat passing around him in waves, until noon gave way to afternoon. The regal solar god watched his strength begin to wane as time progressed. There below, however, the small warrior had not budged—he resisted still beneath his ample shield, waiting for an opening.

  Afternoon waned. The sky began to gloam. The sun grew weaker as the wheels of time spun ever onward. Yacoñooy tossed aside his shield and took up his bow once more. Quickly notching and loosing, the captain sent seven arrows winging their deadly way toward the glowing orb even as Iya Ndicandii rushed toward the refuge of some distant peaks.

  Twilight fell. The sky went blood red as the sun dropped down the sky.

  Impassive, Yacoñooy watched his opponent sink behind the mountains. The mist that wreathed them was stained scarlet at the god’s passing. The valient warrior waited in silence, his heart thundering in his ears. At any moment, a last glowing missile might come arcing over the peaks, a surprise attack from a dying enemy.

  But Lord Sun was gone. He did not reappear, clambering up over the horizon to face his human foe.

  The warrior lifted his weapons and bellowed in triumph.

  “I have defeated you, Lord Sun! The prowess of my arm has dealt you a mortal blow! Beyond those peaks you cower, wounded—never again will you reign in these lands. My one regret is that I cannot watch you writhe in pools of your own blood! What I would not give to see you die before me!”

  Thrusting an arrow into the starlit soil, Yacoñooy claimed those lands in the name of his Lord of Blood, in the name of the Cloud People themselves.

  In due time, he led his people to the vast expanse he had ripped from the hands of a god. There, upon sands blackened into glass by the sun’s attack, they built the city the Nahuas would call Tilantongo.

  Its Mixtec name was Ñuu Tnoo—Huahi Andehui.

  Black Town—Temple of Heaven.

  The Toltecs and the Rise of Civilization

  Convocation

  Do you see the blur of history, time flowing past like a rapid river, allowing only glimpses of moments caught within its currents?

  Dive in with me. Let us navigate that racing tide.

  The Fifth Age is well under way. Decades become centuries—centuries, millennia. All across the world, women and men band together in tribes, cities, nations. The wild complexity of woods and plains is tamed into cultivated symmetry. Bit by gradual bit, rising above the trees as if to touch the gods, come the mighty statues and temples, the ziggurats and pyramids.

  Among all the mighty peoples who work their will upon the world, there is one whose name will go whispered down the years in awe, the very epitome of our collective potential.
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br />   The Toltecs, noble nation for whom creativity is philosophy—

  And their home, that fabled city, shrouded in mists, glimpsed through tall reeds at the water’s edge, glittering and haughty beneath a proud sun—

  Tollan, jewel of Mexico, height of civilization, cradle of the arts.

  This majestic realm is ruled for centuries by wise kings and queens until at last, in its waning years, Tollan places a crown on the brow of Feathered Serpent made flesh.

  His reign cannot last. Chaos will not abide the perfection that Order seeks to realize in this earthly kingdom.

  So once more Hurricane plots the downfall of his brother Feathered Serpent. Born as mortal men upon the sea-ringed world, they assume names that echo down the centuries:

  Tezcatlipoca.

  Quetzalcoatl.

  Tragedy follows.

  We can piece together the vast sweep of the tale from the old manuscripts—Popol Vuh, Historia Chichimeca, the Florentine Codex, the Codex Chimalpopoca. We can fill in narrative gaps with the words of Conquerors and priests—Torquemada, Herrera, Landa.

  Listen. You can almost hear our ancestors, moaning their loss.

  This fifth and final sun will die, like every sun before—but for a moment we laughed in its light, like wind-blown petals sparkling near an exile’s campfire before the flames take them.

  If you can bear it, friends, sing with me the song of Quetzalcoatl and his beloved Toltecs. Let us remember the dream of our Feathered Lord and weep to know ourselves fallen.

  Tollan and the Toltec Queens

  The Rise of Civilization

  The gods guided humanity little by little: from Opochtli, men and women learned to fish; from Camaxtli, to hunt. Divinities of staple foods—like Xochipilli and Centeotl—taught the myriad tribes to gather tubers, grains, legumes and fruit. Xochiquetzal showed them how to weave sturdy clothing to stave off the cold. People lived simple, short lives centered on basic needs. They loved, they fought, they died. But they never forgot their covenant with their creators. Worship and thanksgiving were part and parcel of every daily act. Blood-letting and animal sacrifices were common, and when the need arose, a man or woman would be selected to lay down his or her life for the good of the people.

  Then Chicomecoatl—wife of that smoking mirror, Hurricane—taught humanity the basics of agriculture, and everything changed. No longer needing to move from place to place, following migrations and seasons, the tribes built more permanent shelters and temples. Before long other gods came among them, like Toxipeuhca, patron of metalworking and stonemasonry. Over time, nations arose with their great cities and ziggurats, teeming with people needing to be fed. The providence of the gods became a much more crucial matter.

  It was during this epoch that Camaxtli, last of the Four Hundred Cloud Serpents and incarnation of Hurricane’s red aspect, rose to prominence in the kingdoms of the sea-ringed world. Understanding the dire need of urban centers and their potential in terms of sustenance for the gods, Camaxtli encouraged greater bloodshed to call down rain from Tlalocan and to ensure the vitality of precious crops. He was called Yohuallahuan, “Nightdrinker,” because of the midnight showers he brought. But most enduring of his titles was Xipe Totec, Lord of Husking and Flensing. To symbolize the cycle of life, death and rebirth—sloughing away of old skin, bursting forth of shoots from seeds, shucking of shells to get at kernels—his priests flayed sacrificial victims before the spring rains, wearing those bloody husks until they rotted away to reveal the healthy flesh within.

  And so, down the millennia, the great empires arose. Along the Gulf coast, the Olmecs spread their divine wisdom, lifting great pyramids to honor the mountains and volcanoes on which their ancestors had begged the gods for bounty. The Olmecs were a civilization of firsts—the ballgame that would become ubiquitous in Mesoamerica, the dual calendar that governed lives, a system of writing, the mysterious number zero. For centuries those ancients flourished, carving enormous heads with the features of their rulers, spreading their knowledge of the cosmos and shape-shifting magic through breathtaking art that has endured long after their fall.

  Farther south, the Olmec mother culture came in contact with the peoples we now call Maya. A few centuries later, new urban centers sprawled in the jungles, massive monuments to humanity’s skill and power when guided by the gods. Vast trade networks connected the city states of the lowlands, and the Maya refined their Mesoamerican cultural heritage into one of the greatest civilizations our world has ever seen, a society teeming with life and wisdom and vision. Its kings became gods. Its priests could reach into the future through complex calculations and stunning divination.

  None foresaw the price such size required—Mother Earth herself appeared to turn from the Maya as drought and plagues and hunger swept across the southern lowlands. Those who survived fled into the highlands or north toward the Gulf, abandoning their vast cities to the whims of nature, which gradually swallowed the gleaming stone back into the jungles.

  On a distant plateau, near Lake Xaltocan, a people often allied with the Maya had built a city that would come to be known as Teotihuacan—the place where people become gods, an earthly reflection of the capital of heaven. Covering eight square miles, housing some 125,000 souls, Teotihuacan evolved into the most important religious center in what is now called the Valley of Mexico. Supplying obsidian to allied armies throughout Mesoamerica, Teotihuacan helped decide the course of progress for many societies. Its rulers adored above all other gods the Sun, his father the Feathered Serpent, and the Great Goddess, Mother of All. The temples they erected to these deities would inspire utter awe in newcomers to the area for more than a thousand years after their descendents had abandoned life along the city’s broad avenues.

  The Arrival of the First Nahuas

  Well to the north of Teotihuacan, there existed a land now lost in the mists of time. Aztlan it was called: Place of Whiteness. Fleeing their oppressors in a vast exodus, seven tribes escaped Aztlan and shrugged themselves free of their ethnic name, Aztecs. Calling themselves Nahuas, clear-talking folk, the tribes made their way to the mountain of Chicomoztoc, finding refuge in its vast network of caves, long abandoned by the Cloud Serpents.

  Compared to the luxurious paradise of Aztlan, the new home of the Nahuas was austere and unforgiving, replete with thorny plants, wild maguey, cacti, xihuallacatl squash, and wild rye. Yet, though life was difficult, the earth yielded her bounty to their hard work, and the Nahuas thrived.

  As centuries passed, some of the tribes felt the tug of destiny and emigrated, heading east and south. Many became eternal nomads, restless hunters who nourished themselves upon agave sap, mesquite beans, cactus blooms. They called themselves Chichimecah, people from the land of maguey milk.

  Others wended their long way to a highlands plateau, settling over the years in a great basin or valley whose ample lakes made a more sedentary existence possible. Among these tribes were the women and men who would come to be known as Toltecs. Guided by Camaxtli, now called Mixcoatl, the Cloud Serpent, for having vanquished his four hundred sinful brothers, the Toltecs founded the mighty city of Tollan and forged an empire that would become legendary.

  Tollan Established

  From within her sacred bundle, the goddess Itzpapalotl whispered to Mixcoatl. “It is time you left these Chichimecah, time they had a human ruler. I choose Huactli, chief among them. Tell them their goddess says to travel to Necuameyocan there in the wilderness and build a house of thorns and maguey in which to lay the mats of power.”

  Her people carried out these commands and others. Travelling to all four cardinal directions, they hunted for animals of all four sacred colors: blue, yellow, white, and red. Once they had gathered an eagle, jaguar, snake, rabbit, and deer of each hue, Itzapapalotl had them build a fire to honor Xiuhtecuhtli, Lord of Time.

  “Consign your catch to these flames,” the goddess instructed, “but first place three hearthstones amidst the blaze. These symbolize Mixcoatl, Tozpan, and Ihuitl,
the mighty demigods who have traveled with you across vast deserts, the three keepers of the holy fire, guardians of time itself. They leave you now, but forever shall you honor and remember them thus, until the wheels of time grind away to nothing.”

  Then their first ruler, Chichimec prince Huactli, fasted for four days within the house of thorn and maguey. His people made him a banner of egret feathers that he carried wherever they might go, a startling white sign for all to rally around in battle, for all to settle around in peace.

  And so they set forth, travelling from nation to nation, bearing the bundled remains of Itzapapalotl and the three sacred hearthstones. When they began, they did not know how to plant corn or to weave tilmas for clothes. They still draped animal hides across their backs and hunted wild game. Homeless, they followed plants and seasons, awaiting the divine sign that would tell them they had finally reached their promised land. In every kingdom they visited, they learned a new skill, preparing themselves for their destiny.

  Leadership of the tribe passed from man to man until, at last, among the reeds that bordered a broad river in the valley of Tollantzinco, Itzapapalotl told her people to build a city.

  Tollan grew in fits and starts, its inhabitants slowly abandoning their barbaric ways. A king was selected from among the wise and valiant elders—Chalchiuhtlonac, whose communion with the goddess allowed him to craft the first laws. He was succeeded by his son Mixcoamazatzin, who founded a dynasty that would lead the city to cultural greatness. King after king fostered the arts in Tollan until kingdoms throughout the central highlands and beyond vyed for trade alliances with the Toltecs. Over time a new concept evolved among the Nahuas: toltecayotl, the inimitable artistry of that vital civilization.

  The Queens of Tollan

  Not all of the city’s sovereigns were kings, of course. Many women guided the Toltecs—as Tollan’s citizens were now called—through peace and war. Early on, the wife of Chief Huactli became ruler. Lady Xiuhtlahcuilolxochitzin—“Flower Painted Emerald Green”—ruled from a house of straw beside the city square. She knew how to invoke the goddess Itzapapalotl, a holy connection that served her well in the twelve years of her reign.