Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion by James Maffie

Author:James Maffie
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-60732-223-8
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Published: 2017-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

The captive then waged combat with the tlahuahuanqui. Tlahuahuanqui derives from huahuana (“to scratch, scrape something, to incise lines on something”).250 Durán glosses tlahuahuanqui as “tanner or scraper of skins,”251 Dibble and Anderson, as “striper.”252 There were five stripers, each of whom was armed with an obsidian-bladed war club and each of whom moved freely around the temalacatl. The captive was armed with only four wooden balls and a feather-bladed war club. Codex Magliabechiano (pl. 30r) depicts him carrying a club covered with unspun balls of cotton (see Figure 5.13). His arms and legs are covered with unspun cotton balls, suggesting his status as raw energy needing to be malinalli spun upon the temalacatl before feeding the Sun. The five warriors sought “to stripe” the captive, that is, cut his thighs, calves, arms, and head causing him to bleed upon the temalacatl. Although the sources do not say, it would make sense for the five to circumambulate the temalacatl counterclockwise, repeating the path of the Sun and spinning the victim’s spilling blood in all four directions. By constraining the captive, the rope forced the captive to spin around the temalacatl. In doing so, he moved in a malinalli twisting-spinning manner and thereby ordered his energies for transmission. Not coincidentally, he spun around like a spindle shaft, while his energies spun around like twisting thread. The striping proceeded until the captive fell upon the temalacatl, his energies ritually prepared for extraction and transfusion to a hungry cosmos.

Let’s examine briefly the temalacatl. The temalacatl functioned as a site of energy transmission between vertical layers of the Fifth Age and time-place of human ritual participation in its continuing existence. It operated as a launching pad for twisting and spinning energy up into the cosmos. Temalacatl derives from tetl and malacatl, and literally means “stone spindle.” Indeed, a temalacatl resembles a large spindle whorl. Like the spindle whorls discussed by Elizabeth Brumfiel, Aztec temalacatl’s bore carved images upon their upward-facing horizontal surfaces.253 These typically consisted of bas-reliefs of sun disks, the face of Tonatiuh, or the glyph 4 Olin.254 Plate 16 of Durán’s Book of the Gods and Rites depicts a warrior standing upon a temalacatl with a 4 Olin bas-relief at its center.255 The temalacatl rests upon a square pedestal with steps on four sides, giving the larger structure the appearance of a quincunx. Above the warrior’s head is a 4 Olin glyph, symbolizing Tonatiuh and the Fifth Age, the recipients of his energies. One surviving temalacatl, called “The Stone of Tizoc,” displays an elaborate bas-relief of a radiating solar disk on its upper surface. Quincunxes, chalchihuitls, and eagle feathers adorn its rim. 256

The hole at the center of the temalacatl was called iyollo (“its heart”).257 It commonly contained a depiction of Tonatiuh.258 Like human navels and spindle whorl holes, this hole is the product of piercing, penetrating, and drilling. It symbolizes the human navel; the Earth’s navel where the axis mundi pierces the Earth’s surface; the hole of a fire board; the

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