Chapter Two
STORYTELLING and RITUAL
HISTORY WAS RECALLED AND COMMUNICATED MAINLY IN THE HEART OF THE community, the ceremonial and administrative center. Actually, no clear descriptions of such events in Ñuu Dzaui have come down to us, but they can be reconstructed on the basis of patterns observed in the Classic Maya cities. There, the important historical statements are inscribed as images with hieroglyphic texts on stelae and tablets and are directly related to temples, palaces, and similar structures. Their reading, therefore, always took place in the presence of the Gods, the Ancestors, and those who held important offices in the sovereign community. History was embedded in the sacred precinct of power, and at the same time it made that sacrality even more manifest to the people.
This connection is also found in the record itself. History unfolds from a basic statement embedding human agency within a context of time (as the divine order) and place (as the sacred heart of the community). As a rule, Maya inscriptions begin by elaborately stating the date, relating it to the time of origin, and mentioning the diverse Divine Patrons of the moment. This is the Long Count. After describing the event itself, they end with the so-called Emblem Glyph, reaffirming the sacred connection of the ruling lineage to the place. In fact, the superfix of the Emblem Glyph seems to represent the difrasismo “mat and throne.”
Similarly, Ñuu Dzaui codices and lienzos start the dynastic record with a sacred foundation date and a place sign. Rulership is expressed as a couple, the Lord and Lady, seated on the mat and the throne at that specific place. Their descent from a sequence of earlier couples—mentioned explicitly or connoted implicitly—connects them to the sacred time in which the sovereign community was created. In this way the mat and throne (yuvui tayu) becomes an emblem of governance and at the same time an emblem of a community’s sovereignty.
The difrasismo “father, mother” occurs even today as an important title of deities, shaman priests, and authorities.1 The ruling couple in ancient time was also likely considered the “Father and Mother” of the people. These fundamental relationships were expressed by the depiction of the king and queen seated on the place sign. These relationships were also the main issue in commemorating history during celebrations in a ceremonial center.
The analysis of its contents shows that Ñuu Dzaui historiography goes beyond the recording of simple annals with straightforward statements about past events. This is an epic history of communities as told through their heroes. It aims at involving its public by evoking and communicating emotions within the context of a ritual and by expressing a specific shared ideology. Writing is not some form of “objective” documentation but the point of departure for artistic elaboration and dramatic performance. Codifying the information directly in figurative images and scenes, pictography is very close to body language and physical enactment, making it especially appropriate for ritualized expressions. Involving both the storyteller and the audience, such a performance has a much more compelling effect than simple discourse would have. The painted representation is an image (naa in Dzaha Dzaui, ixiptla in Nahuatl) in which the past and the Ancestors can actually become present.
Storytelling is an art in all cultures. Parallels can be drawn with the Homeric epic tradition, the medieval troubadours, the Wajang theater, and the storytellers of the Arab world. In the course of our investigations we became acquainted with the Sicilian puppet play, the opera dei pupi, an oral performance of Carolingian and other epics that has survived to today. We found it extremely illuminating to see the universality and depth of the art of the pupari, not only in handling the puppets and giving them voices but also in sculpting the figures, painting the scenery and the lienzos that announce the presentations, decorating the traditional wooden carts with scenes from the dramas, reflecting on narrative structures and human psychology, and similar activities.2
In present-day Ñuu Dzaui tradition, such an oral art form survives in the parangón (sahu in Dzaha Dzaui), the formal discourse for special occasions, such as prayers, handing over authority, or asking for the hand of a bride. Thus it is not surprising to encounter in the heart of the Ñuu Dzaui region, in San Agustín Tlacotepec (originally located at the site of Tixii), the very same Carolingian epic cycle in the form of an extremely popular performance of dances, known as “los doce pares de Francia.” Each year at the occasion of the Patron’s feast, on August 28, the inhabitants gather in front of the former municipal building to watch realistic battle scenes, with flashing machetes, and hear the chivalrous and defiant speeches of Roldán, Oliveros, and the other knights of Charlemagne. According to local memory, the spectacle was introduced in 1926 from Yucu Uvui, Ometepec, in the State of Guerrero. It came with a hand-copied manuscript. A new copy was brought from the same town in 1976 and is still in use today.
Oral literature in general can be characterized as, among other things, “agonistic,” that is, focusing on events, with praise of heroic deeds. Its presentation is additive rather than subordinative, aggregative rather than analytic (Ong 1982). Indeed, the codices enumerate events, leaving the causal relationships between them mostly implicit, and paint personages in a schematic way, without attention to their individual characteristics, let alone to psychological peculiarities or motivations. The viewpoint of performative art is empathetic and participatory: the performer takes sides and takes into account the often very local bias of the audience. Indeed, we find numerous examples in which the local perspective may have been responsible for certain information being mentioned or omitted. This is a conservative, traditional medium. No creative originality in the plot or composition is expected from the performer; quite the contrary, it is crucial to represent the well-known story with sophisticated and flamboyant performance techniques. Performer and audience are locked into a specific frame of reference; oral transmission is not well suited to include data outside that scope. The tradition can be surprisingly strong in a continuous context, but breaks do occur, especially when the social-cultural panorama has gone through major changes.
The presence of a system that could fix data in a controllable fashion helped to codify history, to give it the legitimacy of “this is what really happened and was registered in ancient times,” and to preserve it with respect, precision, and care. The very notion of writing creates the preoccupation with a fixed canonical text as a norm for performances and interpretations (cf. Goody 2000). It is possible that the use of difrasismos and formal pictorial language originated as a mnemonic technique aimed at verbatim reproduction of ancient texts during oral performances.
In Europe, starting with the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, the central questions of the dominant historiography have long been close to the concerns of judges and lawyers: finding out what really happened and why. Often this procedure implied some form of judging the past. This is not the character of Ñuu Dzaui pictorial manuscripts. They are closer to an older form, that of the epic narrative, a kind of discourse that usually sets out simply to conserve the memory of the deeds of great people. Focusing on the constants and internal contradictions of the human condition, this discourse may develop a deep layer of cultural symbolism and psychological insights. The main issue is not what “really” happened but the exemplary value of deeds, usually connected with a dramatic dimension and a ritualized performance. This is the narrative art of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Marabharata, and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The tragedies of authors such as Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Goethe continue this tradition.
Consequently, stories about the past are structured according to literary conventions and to the ideas of ruling families regarding power, social-religious functions, and legitimacy. History is presented and experienced as the foundation of the present. Monuments and permanent visual images (in codices, on carved slabs, and the like) are palpable products of and references to what we may call, with Paul Ricoeur, the “narrative identity” of the community. Declamation and reenactment of the story during ritual occasions re-create and reaffirm the sense of belonging to a community with a common background. This implies a respectful attitude toward the past. The storyteller knows that in the performance he or she is invoking the Ancestors; they are present at the occasion, watching if the storyteller does his or her job well. The Ancestors are not to be manipulated as mere puppets on the string of our imagination; their deeds and motivations must be commemorated and interpreted with care. Thus personal interpretations can be brought into the historiographer’s epic work, filling in the gaps of the register with imagination. But this element of fiction occurs within a framework of serious empathy, limited by shared convictions and conditioned by human experience. Respect for the past ensures that the epic memory not only expresses a cosmological vision but also records many detailed facts and dates, both as indications of the working of higher powers and for their own sakes.
In telling our own story now, we are trying to follow the same path of respect, combining all kinds of fragmentary data to voice that ancient epic and striving for insights into both the historical process and the ideological dynamics of the society that produced it. In exploring this field in such a way, we are particularly interested in the structures and concepts of power that become manifest in the story. The sovereignty of the communities, expressed in its dynastic records and rituals, is therefore one of our leading threads.
The RITUAL DIMENSION
The occasion to bring out the codices and lienzos must have been a community event, a large ritual on a specific commemoration date. The discourse about the past was formal, in accordance with the conventions of oral literature known as “flowery speech”: the sahu. The pictorial register was both a point of departure for such performances and concrete evidence of the canonical truth of the story told. While the codices and lienzos may have expressed a message or monologue on the part of the rulers, the text was also meant to have an effect on the people at large. Therefore, it had to take into account the expectation horizon of the public, including its social ethos and norms. The aim of the performance was not just to please a passive audience but also to motivate the beholders and involve them in a ritual action.
In discussing the differences between theater and ritual, Roy Rappaport has pointed out:
Those present at a ritual constitute a congregation. The defining relationship of the members of a congregation to the event for which they are present is participation. (Rappaport 1999: 39)
[T]he transmitter-receivers become fused with the messages they are transmitting and receiving. In conforming to the orders that their performances bring into being, and that come alive in their performance, performers become indistinguishable from those orders, parts of them, for the time being. . . . Therefore by performing a liturgical order the participants accept, and indicate to themselves and to others that they accept, whatever is encoded in the canon of that order. (Rappaport 1999: 119)
Ritual is usually the reenactment of an ancient codified set of acts and texts with the aim of marking and (re)establishing relationships in the present, such as the bonds between a person and him/herself (as in a healing process), between individuals and groups, between humans and Nature, or between humans and divine powers. In other words, ritual performance often has to do with positioning individuals or collectives within society, life, and the cosmos. As such, it provides a shared experience that may become an ingredient of “identity,” a rather vague concept, which we do not see as a pre-existing “monolithic” essence but as a web of developing relationships with others, an ongoing act of developing and communicating within a spatial and historical dimension. Identity is a project, a journey, and, in terms of the philosopher Deleuze, a “becoming.”3 Braidotti insightfully describes the prototypical subject in this process as a nomad, which “stands for movable diversity” and “expresses the desire for an identity made of transitions, successive shifts, and coordinated changes, without and against an essential unity” (Braidotti 1994: 14, 22). At the same time, with our identity we look back, honoring a spiritual connection to the land and earlier generations. The multiple relationships involved are not neutral but are laden with specific meanings and emotions that are actualized in ritual.
2.1. Calendar with the four World Trees and nine Deities of the Night (Codex Tezcatlipoca, 1).
Rituals may inspire respect and awe and reestablish spiritual equilibrium and confidence, giving people the strength for critical confrontations. This positioning within a web of relations in turn produces, reinforces, and states publicly the individual’s commitment to that which is perceived as a higher-order meaning. Thus ritual expresses and provides power of at least two types: loyalty (the collective acceptance of authority within a social hierarchy or institution) and inner strength or charisma, received from an outside, divine source. A high-intensity religious ritual usually provokes a special state of mind: a catharsis, an inner empowerment with religious overtones, and a form of consolation or at least strengthened confidence in a social order and a normative ethos.
Not all rituals have this effect. Obviously, many ritual acts may be experienced as routine, fun, or boring, repetitive actions, depending on their character, their context, and the participants’ background and state of mind. On the other hand, some high-intensity rituals are expected to have a great influence on people. In many societies these rituals express central religious values capable of overruling rational discursive thought. With the process of modernity and secularization, these rituals are often being replaced by cultural historical values. Sacred places then simply become cultural and historical monuments. Archaeology, at least in Mesoamerica, plays a crucial role in this transformation.
For researchers, it is wise to reflect first on what ritual has done for them in their own lives, not only because in those cases one is usually better informed about contexts and meanings but also because an examination of one’s own experiences is the basis for a careful and respectful treatment of other people’s feelings. Such a comparative and engaging perspective makes us aware of the many different emotions a ritual may evoke in specific individuals.
To our eyes, for example, modern Dutch society is not very religious, at least not publicly. The process of transforming sacrality into cultural history and reducing religion to the private sphere is well advanced there. One of the country’s few large public rituals is the commemoration of those who died in World War II and other conflicts, defending the causes of freedom and human rights. Each year, on the eve of May 5, a minute of silence is observed, garlands and flowers are ceremoniously laid down at specific monuments, and bells toll. Some may look upon all this without engagement, but others will feel deep emotion, stemming from personal experiences or a shared commitment to combat racism and Nazism. The same difference holds true for the attitude toward sacred places. In Dutch society, quite a few churches have been secularized and are now public activity halls. As a consequence, parties may be held in former ceremonial environments and on top of ancient sepulchral slabs. This is acceptable to some but shocking to others, either because they find it inappropriate in view of the monument’s cultural value or because they sense that such activities will offend the divine powers still present there.
In exploring what rituals might achieve and how, we go back to a personal experience, a ceremony in which we became compadres of a family from San Pablo Tijaltepec, a community close to Ñuu Ndeya (Chalcatongo). It is a small, relatively isolated village, with a breathtaking view of the blue mountain ranges of the Mixteca Alta. All inhabitants speak the local dialect of Dzaha Dzaui; many are monolingual. The women dress traditionally, with colorful embroidered blouses. Because of this, the people of San Pablo are easily recognized in Ñuu Ndeya, a town in transition, with traditional agencias (hamlets) but also a booming commercial center. Being poor and associated with the indigenous tradition, visitors from San Pablo are often discriminated against and treated badly.
More than twenty years ago we asked an elderly San Pablo couple to become our daughter’s godparents. Consequently, their own daughter, in the first years of elementary school at the time, respected us as her godparents. Later, we lost contact with this godchild; after finishing school, she cut her braids, abandoned the traditional dress, and went to seek work in Mexico City and Tijuana. A few years ago we met her again. She had married and gone back to the village, dressed again in the traditional way, and was raising her children in Ñuu Dzaui traditional culture. It was an occasion of joy and true emotion.
The renewed contact led one of her family members to ask us to take her two small children to the church for the Catholic evangelio ceremony. We all went to the late colonial church of Ñuu Ndeya, where an elderly German Capuchin monk celebrated Mass. The Capuchin mission in this area follows the ideas of Liberation Theology. In a radical break with the demonizing of “pagan idolatry” that was so characteristic of colonialism and is still widely practiced by conservative Mexican clergy, members of this order, working in the Franciscan tradition, see the work of God manifested in Nature and as such recognized by precolonial religions. A conscious effort is made to respect and integrate the native spiritual tradition. During the ceremony the German monk, keenly aware of the discriminatory views held by many in Ñuu Ndeya, asked the people from San Pablo to assist him in the Mass, handling the sacred objects and walking through the church in their traditional dress, incensing with copal.
The physical actions of the ritual are rather ordinary—the Mass, the words of the priest, the incense, the holy water, the embracing—but they are realized within an extraordinary setting and within a specific context with its own particular history.4 All movement is situated on a permanent focus line that directs the minds of the participant public in the nave toward the altar, dedicated to the Virgen María de Natividad, celebrated on September 8. The church reproduces the basic form of the ancient Roman basilica, shaped as a cross to represent the Virgin’s Son, the crucified Founder. In a similar way, the ancient Mexican temple was the body of a God or Goddess. According to tradition, this particular church (vehe ñuhu) is built on the spot of an ancient spring, where dark cattail reeds, or tules (kohyo), were growing. Our Lady, originally from Nuu Yoo, appeared among the reeds and manifested herself to the people. Under the main altar is the head of a large serpent, whose tail lies under the market square where the civic center is located. Tradition has it that a child was buried in the fundament of the building, a sacrifice that inspires awe. The Virgin Mother, both Demeter and Tonantzin, represents earth as a universal female principle, the power of life and death. Jesus Christ has become the divine personification of corn, while God the Eternal Father is generally identified with the Sun, who sees everything and guarantees ultimate justice. The evangelio ritual—insignificant at first sight—is held in great esteem locally; it replaces the precolonial naming ceremony when a child first enters the temple at age seven.
Gathered in a circle in front of the altar, we stood under the dome supported by the four evangelists, painted in their well-known representations as man, bull, lion, and eagle, representing the four cornerstones of the religious universe and, as astrological symbols, the four seasons and segments of time. This quadripartite temporal-spatial order comes from medieval European churches and castles but blends with similar Mesoamerican ideas. One is reminded of how in both Europe and Mesoamerica, churches were often built on more ancient sanctuaries (e.g., the San Clemente in Rome on top of a Mithraeum). Words of the Catholic liturgy mingled with clouds of copal incense burned in the typical Mesoamerican tripod vessels (koho kuu).
All these different symbolic references in interaction produce a stream of consciousness, a feeling of being immersed in a complex spiritual process of long duration, a fusion of aesthetic impressions with reflections on cultural history and with love for real people. The awareness of values and powers out there, greater than the beholder, evokes the feeling of being a creature in control of neither life nor destiny. In this context the ritual induces a sense of responsibility. It establishes a spiritual kinship between families, which will respect each other as compadres and comadres, and a serious commitment to take care of the godchildren if anything happens to their parents.
Even in this brief presentation of a particular and very personal experience, some fundamental characteristics of ritual are evident. The “true” and “real” meaning, the impact itself, is beyond words, like the Tao of the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tse. Precisely in this beyondness lies the power. Ritual achieves this by a warp and woof of different symbolic references, actions, and structures that are thus interconnected and become mutually determining.
Clearly, several relationships are established in this example: the responsibility of godparents for their godchildren, the bond between parents and godparents, the reaffirmation and readaptation of the religious authority of the priest vis-à-vis his parish, the integration of a foreign researcher into Ñuu Dzaui society, the struggle to put traditional values and social change on equal terms, and to combat discrimination. These relations are continuous, occurring between contemporaneous, interacting individuals; we can call them syntagmatic. They are established through repetitive or paradigmatic actions within a specially designed or paradigmatically encoded structure. Placing oneself syntagmatically in a symbolic context evokes the emotion of being connected paradigmatically with primary encoders and Ultimate Sacred Postulates.5 In this way, the paradigmatic aspect of the performance produces religious experiences and creature feeling, inducing the public manifestation of a personal commitment to a certain truth or social ethos.
There is an incisive interaction between self and other, between thought and experience, religion and society. On one hand, there is the reflective and symbolizing projection of the individual mind on the outside world, on the other the impact of outside forces, through symbols designed by others and by earlier generations, on the active mind. Significance is officially given (as the evangelio ritual is part of a general liturgy), but its actualization in the form of experience is personal to the individual participant or beholder; the emotional intensity is dependent on many factors, such as concentration, consciousness, and commitment.
In this case, a special emotion is produced because of the interconnection (“magic fusion”) of different fields: the mind, already sensitive because of coping with specific incidents and vicissitudes of life, is now directed to reflect on symbolic meanings, partly consciously and partly subconsciously (through the rhythm of the actions within the special environment), to open up and become alert to connected values. In a number of lectures, presented in the first years of the twentieth century and published later under the title The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James attempted to describe this process:
[M]an identifies his real being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomes conscious that this higher part is coterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with. . . .
So far . . . the experiences are only psychological phenomena. They possess, it is true, enormous biological worth. Spiritual strength really increases in the subject when he has them, a new life opens for him, and they seem to him a place of conflux where the forces of two universes meet. (James 1958: 383–384)
Fundamental in religious experience is the recognition of the existence of a superior other power (the Numinous) and of being embedded in a larger, essentially mysterious “cosmic plan.” Religious emotion is produced in the encounter of self with that other power, which is not only MORE of the same quality but also COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (das ganz Andere in the words of Rudolf Otto). Ritual (re)creates the sphere in which such encounters become possible, resulting in moral, aesthetic, and catharsis-like experiences. Space is important here: on one hand it structures the acts, on the other it is given meaning by those acts. Ritual indeed “takes place” (Smith 1987). In it space and time structure each other, with specific implications for social organization, planning, and memory.
IDEOLOGY and HISTORIOGRAPHY
Experienced as a part of ritual performance, epic history becomes a shared reflection, serving to admonish rulers and to manifest the people’s commitment to respect them. The collective memory, actualized through commemoration rituals, obtains the character of a moral prescription: the rights of the dynasty are translated in terms of a social ethos. The listing of past conquests and marital alliances explains the political actuality, indicates who is friend and who is foe, and defines possible marriage candidates and ways of conduct for the future. The Ancestors are not simply talked about; in the ritual context they are invoked, their ancient powers are brought to life in the present. Recalling their exploits and legacy becomes a catalyst for the progress of history itself. The sahu goes back to the time of origins, explaining the sacred connections among places, dates, and dynasties. Its starting point is the time of primordial darkness “before there were days or years.” That was the time of the Plumed Serpent, who, as a supreme liminal figure, guided humanity and culture into existence.6 Places were established as anchors of spiritual power, to which the ritual reaches back.
Seen in this light, sacred history becomes part of ritual practice within the context of the architecture and iconography of a ceremonial center. All these interconnected levels refer to fundamental symbols of Mesoamerican thought. A central element is the passage from darkness to light, seen in the rising of the sun and the sprouting of maize and from there projected onto a social and individual level as the passage from the occult forces of the Other World to the daily realities and institutions of human life and history. The sacred history mentions the activities of the divine Founders in the primordial time of darkness: priestly figures carrying the Sacred Bundle, emerging from dark caves (Chicomoztoc), wandering in pilgrimage to their final destiny where the Sun rises (i.e., history begins) and the new fire is drilled (i.e., the dynastic and ceremonial life is inaugurated). A series of rituals starts in the Dark Temple of the Death Goddess Cihuacoatl, whose body is the hallucinogenic tobacco (piciete). We see priests offering their blood and carrying the Sacred Bundle through the night. Their awakening from trance is like emerging from the mouth of the vision serpent (Codex Yoalli Ehecatl / Borgia, 29 ff). Using the same symbolism, temple entrances, as caves, can be represented as the mouths of reptiles. Darkness, mystery, has its powers.
2.2. Priests transformed into vision serpents stand in the corner of the Temple of Cihuacoatl, in the center of which another priest offers his blood into a deified vessel (Codex Yoalli Ehecatl, 29).
According to Mesoamerican cosmology (as expressed in the Popol Vuh), the Founding Ancestors had a clearer view and knowledge than we do today—since then, human understanding and vision have dimmed. Religious experience and power are created in the interactive liminal sphere between the two worlds. It is in this nahual sphere that the source of inner power is located, which, in turn, is the basis of social realization on the slippery earth. Therefore the Mexica said “already a nahual comes out, emerges” (ye onquiza naoalli) when people took care to gain a good livelihood or, through study, quickly attained what was taught them (Sahagún 1950–1978, book VI: ch. 41).
In registering events, historiography includes implicit and explicit references to their significance on that cosmic stage—for example, the coincidence of what happened on certain dates with the role of those dates in the story of creation and primordial order or the way in which calendar names contain mantic symbolism and connect rulers to their destiny.
Today, looking back, we tend to see works of art as expressions of a general cultural or ethnic identity; we relate the manuscripts to the whole of Ñuu Dzaui, the region and the people. In their own time, however, they were conceived of as much more particularistic, related to a specific yuvui tayu. Ethnicity—basically speaking the same language and belonging to the same polity—was less important than religion in the creation of social solidarity. The same holds true in other preindustrial and pre-nationalistic societies. From a modern perspective, influenced by nationalism, the idea of a circumscribed territory owned by a specific people or community is too easily projected on precolonial data. Colonial documents indeed focus on the boundaries of the village-states, but, in contrast, precolonial texts do not deal with this topic at all. Ancient society was made up of agricultural communities without clear boundaries, nucleated around the seat of a lineage or a noble house, often identical to the shrine of its Founders. That seat and shrine determined the central place of the mat and throne. Native history is about the establishment and sovereignty of that place. In the absence of a monetary economy, the land was not reduced to a commodity that might be sold and bought; nor were people driven to accumulate wealth. Instead, the native view recognized the Patron Deities and the Ancestors as the true Owners of the land, from whom the present users took their livelihood as a loan. With those spiritual powers (Ñuhu), humankind had a ritualized, reciprocal relationship, defined in terms of food. Offerings and sacrifices were made in return for permission to work the land, construct houses, hunt, and harvest. The combination of all these elements was the foundation of the dynasty’s social function and moral authority. Coming from the time of creation and descending directly from the forces of Nature, the rulers were Iya, “divine Lords and Ladies,” and would-be Ñuhu, “deities,” after their death.
RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM
The ideological character of the origins and actions of the rulers connects the Ñuu Dzaui narrative paintings with the Books of Wisdom, the codices of the so-called Borgia Group. Those codices are prescriptive in character; they guide the ritual and divinatory practice and focus on the relationship among time, space, and the divine powers. We gain some access to the symbolic forms of the Teoamoxtli Group by studying the metaphors, riddles, and similar figures of speech registered by sixteenth-century chroniclers, especially Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (in book VI of his Florentine Codex).
For example, one prognostication in the Books of Wisdom shows a woman with a flower on her head, from which an arrow is pointing outward. She has a water vessel in her arm, from which a coral snake emerges, and she is passing over water in which a huge scorpion is painted (Codex Tezcatlipoca / Fejérváry-Mayer, 27). A woman with flowers, passing over water, appears in the work of Sahagún as a frivolous and dissolute woman; the arrow, scorpion, and coral snake are symbols of attacks, intrigues, and destructive viciousness. The message is clear: in this period, vices affect the woman who is going for water; as a consequence, she will run into great and potentially mortal danger. In a cognate scene the coral snake is falling apart and burning, emphasizing its destructive character (Codex Yoalli Ehecatl / Borgia, 20). A cooking pot with a dead man in it has taken the place of the scorpion, signaling the danger of being killed and eaten. In accordance with the religious vision of the painter, who transports even trivial scenes of daily life to a cosmic level, the woman protagonist is represented as the Goddess of Lakes and Rivers, in Nahuatl known as Chalchiuhtlicue, “Jade is her Skirt”: this deity is in charge during this period, being the cause of potential trouble, but it is also the remedy if she is properly adored with offerings.
Metaphorical expressions not only played an important role in addressing the religious and political authorities but also formed part of the historiographic idiom. An illustrative example of how metaphorical expressions affected the historical register is found in the comparison of two versions of how the primordial unity of the Central Mexican peoples was broken. The Mexica manuscript roll, known as “Tira de Peregrinación,” depicts this event as a tree that breaks above the heads of consulting personages—the broken tree being a well-documented metaphor for rupture, discontinuity, and disaster. But the cognate scene in Codex Azcatitlan shows a destructive flood, comparable to the mantic symbol for instability and loss.7 We conclude that the message (loss of unity) is given in two alternative symbolic statements (broken tree, flood) that, once included in a historical tale, became interpreted as events.
2.3. A woman who carries water finds scorpions, that is, conflicts, on her road (Codex Tezcatlipoca, 27).
The tree is an important metaphor in Mesoamerican iconography; it symbolizes the genealogy of a family and the success of enterprises in general but also the stability of the Heaven and the fertility of the Earth. Primordial trees were raised by the Creator Gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca to sustain the heaven.8 As an axial symbol, the “world tree” was an apt symbol for the strength, continuity, and growth of a community under the protecting shadow—that is, the good governance—of its ruler. In accordance with the Mesoamerican conceptual organization of the cosmos in four parts (each associated with deities and segments of the ritual calendar, with their divinatory implications), some sources speak of four or five trees, associated with the cardinal points.9 When we read about the Founders of the dynasties being born from trees in the primordial time of darkness—or, in other versions, from caves, mountains, or rivers—we understand this as a symbolic reference that underlines the connection between the ruler and Earth and therefore a connection with the mysterious powers that control fertility.10 It was this connection that allowed the rulers and their descendants to give the land in usufruct to the people, who, in reciprocity, then owed tribute to them.11
Of several great rulers of the past—Motecuhzoma of the Mexica, Tecum Umam of the Quiché—it is said that after death they transformed into earth deities who control the fertility of the land and the fortune of their descendants and vassals. On the sarcophagus in the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, the deceased ruler, Lord Pakal, is deposited on a spirit bowl, or “god pot,” as an offering at the foot of the sacred Tree of Rulership.12 In this way he enters the subterranean realm and takes his place there as a deity in the circle of his Ancestors, represented in reliefs on the four sides of his tomb as humans who now grow from the Earth as plants, to feed their community.
2.4. A woman who carries water encounters the broken coral snake, that is, dangerous divisions and conflicts (Codex Yoalli Ehecatl, 20).
In Mesoamerican thought, the opposition between darkness and light is crucial. Human life and history are associated with light. Human history starts with the dawn, the First Sunrise, separating “our time” from the primordial era in which there was not yet light and no days or years. Darkness is the time of creation, before history, and the place of mystery, where the souls exist before birth, where the dead go. It is the environment and essence of the Gods, where the mind dwells in vision. Therefore Mesoamerican sacred history starts in the time of darkness and mists; the founding of a town or dynasty is described as “dawn” and the beginning of a reign as the kindling of a new fire.
The moral authority of a ruling lineage was inherited from the past, specifically from the sacred phase of foundation. The link to the mysterious time of origin was both physical (through the bloodline of descent) and paradigmatical (through the realization of rituals). Following the example of the Creator Gods, the rulers and their vassals offered their blood—extracted from their tongues, ears, or genitals—in “self-sacrifice” to the relics and symbols of this primordial time, generally represented as the Sacred Bundle, and so made the cosmic tree of the dynasty grow and flourish.13 In a similar way, the drilling of the new fire enacted and re-created the First Dawn, while community festivities commemorated the specific sacred dates that symbolized the foundation of the village-state.
2.5. A nahual shrine (round altar with Fire Serpent) connected to the entrance (mouth) of a ball court (Codex Tonindeye, 15).
On many occasions we find rulers represented as nahuales or deities. This is the other aspect of power—not a mere economic or military faculty to control the behavior of others, to make them obey and pay tributes, but a charismatic power, a religious authority, based on the sacred experience of personal contact and identification with the Ancestors, Earth, and Creation.
The Mexica rulers were seen as “manifestations” (ixiptla) of Patron deities, “flutes” played by those divine powers. The corresponding Ñuu Dzaui concept is probably yuhu nuu, “mouth, face,” that is, “delegate.” So we find the tlatoani Tizoc represented as Tezcatlipoca on the famous round stone that commemorates a series of conquests as cosmic struggles between Tezcatlipoca-Huitzilopochtli (the Patron Deity of the empire) and other Deities (Patrons of the conquered towns).
It is interesting to compare this monument with the cosmogram on the first page of the religious Codex Tezcatlipoca (Fejérváry-Mayer), which shows the Lord of the Smoking Mirror as a mysterious, omnipresent deity, sacrificed in the four corners. His blood streams to the center, where it feeds the God of Fire as Patron of war and human struggle. As the spatial structure of the page is defined by a cyclical band of days and years, we can say that the blood of the supreme god flows through time and space, creating a dynamic relationship between the distinct human activities and destinies, ordered symbolically in the temporal-spatial structure. The calendar’s mantic symbolism conveys a sense of belonging, an idea of order in life, both on a cosmological and a socio-political level, everything and everybody having its position and destiny in time and space. This established order should be maintained through proper behavior, that is, by respecting the rhythms of rituals and tributes.
Nahuatl texts, registered by Sahagún in the Florentine Codex (book VI: ch. 1), characterize the God Tezcatlipoca as yoalli ehecatl, “night and wind,” a difrasismo that stands for “invisible and impalpable.” This is a metaphor for the quality of “mystery” of the Gods and the nahualistic experience in which the shamanic priests meet with them. In paintings, this concept is rendered through a serpent, which functions as a symbol for the visionary experience.14
In the central Temple Scenes of the Codex Yoalli Ehecatl / Borgia (29 ff), priests in visionary trance are shown as serpents of wind and night. If one did not know this pictographic convention, the entire scene would be impossible to interpret. Several serpents—Xiuhcoatl, the fire dragon, and Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent—clearly function as markers of nahuallotl, the nahual-experience. Their images surround temples and holy places as a coatepantli, a serpent wall, which marks the liminal zone between ordinary human life and the Other World of Spirits, deified Ancestors, and Gods. This iconographic phenomenon is observed not only in the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan but also in earlier sites such as Teotihuacan, Cacaxtla, and Xochicalco. In present-day oral tradition, serpents are often mentioned as guardians of ruins and even churches.
The CEREMONIAL STAGE
As demographic growth brought about craft specialization and further social stratification, the central place became an urban nucleus, with permanent structures and monuments for social cohesion and administration. Archaeology finds only the remnants of those architectural spaces and artifacts. Taking into account that ritual and other religious practices are structured in a superabundant way, we may partially and hypothetically reconstruct some of their overall meaning. Historical and contemporary sources inform us about the root metaphors and focus points of the spiritual culture, which enables us to speculate about syntagmatic and paradigmatic aspects of past ideology and ritual activity. We see that the divine forces of Nature, originally situated within a liminal sphere in the periphery (mountains, caves, springs), were represented in the ceremonial center as a re-creation of the Other World in a controlled space, identified with the arena of political power. Heaven becomes a Heaven Temple. Through a principle of homology, the mountains (liminal places to contact Heaven) were represented as pyramids, the springs and caves (entrances to the earth) as temples and ancestral tombs, reproducing the original notion of the “house of the deity” (huahi Ñuhu).
In archaeological sites we see that temples indeed have the basic form of the huahi, “house,” generally constructed of permanent material (stone). In the more elaborated examples, the liminal aspect (porch, staircase) received extra emphasis. The concept of the deity being present in the building was expressed in the representation of the temple itself as an animated being, a divine body (cf. Codex Yoalli Ehecatl / Borgia, 29 ff). This is in accordance with common Dzaha Dzaui prepositional expressions, which define the inner part of the house as its heart (ini), the facade as its face (nuu), the door as the mouth (yuhu), the roof as its head (dzini), the foundation as its foot (saha), the walls as its chest (sica), and the outer courtyard as its back (yata).
The symbolism of light and darkness translates into an axis between a Temple of Heaven (a mountaintop) and a Temple of Death (a cave) as the characteristic combination of a Temple of visions above the entrance into the Earth (Codices Yoalli Ehecatl / Borgia, 33–34, and Tondindeye, 15). Indeed, we find temple pyramids with subterraneous passages and tombs inside or otherwise associated with caves or rock shelters (e.g., in Yucu Ita and San Martín Huamelulpan). Once again, Classic Teotihuacan, with its Pyramid of the Sun constructed above a Chicomoztoc-like cave, provides a model. In the mountaintop shrines, with their pyramids and tombs, we feel the vertical axis creating a dynamic relationship between Heaven (“hot”), as the source of vision and the seat of all-seeing justice, and Earth (“cold”), as the womb of fertility and the resting place of the buried Ancestors. This axis is represented as a column, rooted in the depth of the Earth and rising into Heaven, sustaining the sky as a post and roof beam (Codex Yuta Tnoho, 47).
It seems that the vertical axis Heaven-Earth-Underworld was projected onto a horizontal plane of four cosmic directions, Heaven becoming the East and Death situated in the South, while the earth was divided as a difrasimo “mountain and water,” of which the first element became the North (Dark Mountain) and the second the West (Ash River). These emblems then were connected to specific places in the landscape, delimiting the Ñuu Dzaui world.
On the horizontal plane, the division into the four world directions orients social and ritual organization. The sign for a ceremony consists of four volutes in four directional colors, bound together, that is, “speaking to the four directions.” The interaction with the cosmic forces is manifested in ritual movement (processions) along special roads, over staircases, and through plazas, as well as in the creation of perspectives on the focal points of a devout, religion-based society: the houses of the Gods, whether the divine mountains and springs around them or the sanctuaries in the built environment of the ceremonial center.
A good example of a mountaintop shrine that is still in use is a chapel in Toavui (Chila). The village is situated in a valley, directly surrounded by several impressive, isolated mountains. One of these is the steep Tepeyac that rises above the village. On its top is a Catholic sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin Mary, surrounded by huge boulders—normally considered Ñuhu or Ndodzo in the Ñuu Dzaui tradition—marking the entrance to a small precolonial temple complex. In Yuta Tnoho lore such stones are primordial Lords of the time of darkness, petrified at the First Sunrise. Moreover, the top of the Tepeyac not only offers a commanding view over the valley where the village is located and the wide panorama around but in particular of the nearby Cerro de la Tortuga, with its large archaeological site. Such associations and sightlines establish connections with sacred power in both space and time.
Considerations and impressions such as these must have been determinant in choosing a specific location for establishing a center of worship, a place where the encounter between humans and the Other World became possible. The mountaintop shrines are the locales of an important daily hierophany. They are the first places to catch the sun’s rays in the morning, producing an impressive change from darkness to light, fundamental in Mesoamerican cosmovision.
As ceremonies are taking place in time, each of the sacred sites has its specific date, which in turn implies mantic and other religious associations: “Places in existential space are foci for the production of meaning, intention and purpose of societal significance. . . . Architectural space only makes sense in relation to pragmatic, perceptual and existential space, but involves a deliberate attempt to create and bound space, create an inside, an outside, a way around, a channel for movement” (Tilley 1994).
All the different devotions had to be represented in the center and had to play their role in the ritual cycle. The center reproduced the principles of cosmic order, both in space and in liturgical time, and so became a nuu ii, “sacred place.” Dramatic sceneries were selected or constructed with an inspiring view over the exterior space, such as a mountaintop overlooking the valleys where people worked the fields. The experience is frequently not one of domination, however, but of being embraced by the landscape. A special emotion was provoked by the interaction between shared interior spaces for collective ritual (plazas, avenues), where the strong bond of communitas could be experienced, and the small and hidden interior spaces of personal ecstatic encounter with the deity—temple rooms and retreats, entrances to the Other World. The sense of group identity was further enhanced by collective memories about the Ancestors who built these monuments, who lived and performed the rituals previously, about specific persons and historical events, moments of triumph and crisis that had brought the people together here. Explicit markings (buildings, reliefs) triggered and revived this awareness.
A ball court is an important element in a Mesoamerican ceremonial center. It is connected to that atom of Mesoamerican sanctuary, the temple pyramid and its plaza, which belong together just as the altar and nave of a church do. Complexes of ball court–plaza-pyramid can be observed in many sites in Ñuu Dzaui: Yucu Duha near Ñuu Tnoo (Tilantongo), the complex behind the church in Yucu Nindavua (Huamelulpan), the Cerro de las Minas in Ñuu Dzai (Huajuapan), the Cerro Pachón of Yucu Ndaa Yee (Tequixtepec), and similar sites.
The ball court is not just a monument; it suggests dynamic acts of confrontation. The game establishes winners and losers; as such, it is a way to test the favor of the Gods. Thus it became a place where ritual execution of captive enemies could be initiated, but this is not its only or its most prominent association. The ball game was also an explicitly peaceful competition, one that could substitute for war. After confronting each other in a game, the different parties would enter the sacred precinct together and, through shared ritual experiences, focusing on the imposing temples, form a communitas or alliance. The Toltec king Quetzalcoatl proposed the ball court to his vassals as a model for cooperation, interaction, and division of powers. Taking into account the context of a structured cosmology with rather fixed temporal-spatial orders, the game provides political actors with a means to introduce dynamics and suspense in attributing to the winner a preferential role in social-religious activities. Both in the conceptualization and the actual layout of the ceremonial center, the ball court is a liminal space, situated between the secular areas of daily activities and the ceremonial center. As such, it is a portal to the Other World, a place where humans can encounter the Gods. It is through the outcome of the game that the Gods demonstrate their will to us and give us permission to enter their abode. This is probably the background of scenes that depict mortals playing ball with the Gods.
In this way the ceremonial center can be read very much like a codex: the architecture can be interpreted as a series of events and experiences.15 Monte Albán is a good example of a Classic ceremonial center. Its location suggests its origin as a mountaintop shrine, a liminal area directed toward heaven, and a focal point for all those living on the slopes and in the valleys around it. The plaza forms a sort of circular avenue; the presence of many buildings in and around it indicates a complex society, which made it necessary to integrate many distinct social-religious groups during rituals. A specific ritual sequence is suggested moving clockwise around the central temples, following the direction suggested by the arrowhead-shaped building known as Mound J. The ball court in the northeast corner on certain occasions may have been a preparatory or initial point for rituals, which then logically would end at the North platform, the main residence of authority. Mound J was probably dedicated to the veneration of the Sacred Arrow. Its direction-giving position in the circular avenue reminds us of the central role of struggle in life and of war in imperial society.16
In such a ceremonial center, the rulers’ palaces were constructed in the shadow of the pyramids and integrated into the ritual spaces. The ruler was the pivot. He or she received the tribute, redistributed it, and took care of the community. He or she supervised the economic life and intervened for the community with the Deities: remaining vigilant, fasting, making painful sacrifices. Thus the political and economic sphere, which centered on the Iya, was identified with the religious sphere, centered on the Ñuhu. There were several Iya in each village-state but only one main Iya toniñe. The tribute areas or realms could extend into different communities. In some cases the tributary space may have been continuous and delimited by clearly identifiable boundaries (rivers, mountain ranges, or similar features), while in other cases it may have been more disperse and surrounded by the uncultivated “wild lands of the mountain” (yucu), where people were free to hunt and gather food.
Codex Añute gives an interesting example of the beginning of central authority in this ambience. In the beginning of the dynastic history (page 4), the Lords of several towns—immediate neighbors and subject villages of the central place, Añute—come together to confer on one young man the power to make people prisoners and to take lives in sacrifice. The parents of this prince were characterized as a primordial couple of divine origin (1–2), while he is shown to have manifested himself in a local shrine of the Plumed Serpent (3). In addition, he fulfilled the necessary religious obligations, honoring the Sacred Bundle in Añute’s main mountaintop temple. Contracting marriage with a noble Lady from another town, he effectively created a royal lineage. In those early periods, local power holders were apparently chosen by leading personalities of different settlements, who were committing themselves to some form of confederation for the purpose of war or defense. The “offering of royalty” ceremony, depicted in many codices, seems to be the logical continuation of such a custom.
2.6a. After receiving the allegiance of noblemen of subject settlements and neighboring towns, the new ruler enters the Main Temple of Añute (Codex Añute, 4).
At the same time, the intervention or support by powerful outsiders may have added significantly to the ruler’s legitimation and prestige. A prefiguration of the Toltec intervention in Ñuu Dzaui history is found on a series of Early Classic reliefs at Monte Albán, known as “programme B” (Urcid Serrano 2001). They show the arrival of Lords from Teotihuacan, saluting a local ruler. The copal bags they carry indicate their priestly function: they are participating in an important ritual, showing religious respect. The theme of the arrival of strangers is also found in inscriptions at Tikal, the Classic Maya metropolis in Guatemala, where it has been interpreted convincingly as the enthronement of a local ruler by the forces of Teotihuacan (Stuart, in Carrasco, Jones & Sessions 2000). The associated date in Tikal is A.D. 378. Similar events at Monte Albán and Tikal may well represent successive stages in one single historical wave of military and ideological expansion. An additional point of interest is the fact that one of the Teotihuacan lords at Monte Albán carries a round bundle on his back. This detail demonstrates the importance of devotion to the Sacred Bundle and its connection to royal power at an early date. Giving full weight to the scene, we might conclude that the Bundle cult was strongly propagated as part of the Teotihuacan expansion.
2.6b. The Primordial Founders of the Añute dynasty marry in the Temple of Altar of the Spiderweb, Chindua (Codex Añute, 2).
2.6c. Their son presides over a ritual in front of Temple of the Plumed Serpent of the Place at the Foot of the Altar, Sachio (Codex Añute, 3-II).
2.7. Representation of the deity as a serpent (Sahagún 1950–1978: ch. 1).
Once established, the individual Iya had to draw on charisma, prowess, and strategies to extend his sphere of influence. The codices stress the nahualistic aspect of rulership, especially in the names of many Lords. This conceptualization of power goes back to the earliest manifestations of Mesoamerican thought: Olmec iconography depicts the powerful as jaguars and similarly strong animals.17 The same is true for the immediate antecedent of the codices, the Ñuiñe reliefs. One of the most interesting themes depicted on these carved stones is a feline (jaguar or puma) on top of a mountain, often accompanied by a day or full date.18 This animal may wear a feathered crown, recalling similar figures in the frescoes of Teotihuacan; this attribute probably indicates lordly status. If painted red, they would represent the title to(ho) niñe, “blood lord,” that is, “king.”19
2.8. The jaguar ruler on Stele 1 of the South Platform of Monte Albán (Caso & Bernal 1952).
In the same manner, we interpret the animal’s specific positions or ornaments as additional name elements. In some cases the feathered jaguar emits speech scrolls topped with flints.20 We might read this as “Jaguar who shouts: knife, knife,” which in view of modern idiomatic expressions in Dzaha Dzaui would be “Lord Jaguar who Threatens to Kill.” Another possibility is to take the knives as an indication of the character of the animal’s voice. In the Postclassic Language of the Lords, knives (yuchi) are a metaphor for “teeth.” This would lead us to a reading of the image as “Feathered Jaguar Gnashing his Teeth.” The knives or teeth may function as indicators of the qualities “sharp,” “dangerous,” and “brave” (dzaa in Alvarado’s orthography, shraan in Ñuu Ndeya). At first sight this suggests a meaning such as “Lord Growling or Roaring Jaguar,” “Lord Wild Jaguar,” or something similar. The expression kahan shraan in Ñuu Ndeya, however, actually means “to speak well,” “to speak intelligently,” or “to speak convincingly.” Thus the name of the ruler is more properly interpreted as “Lord Jaguar, the Great Speaker.”
2.9. Ñuiñe relief: Lord Jaguar ‘Speaking Flints,’ that is, ‘Roaring Jaguar’ or rather ‘Great and Eloquent Speaker,’ climbing the mountain, that is, taking possession of the realm (Tequixtepec Stone 19; drawing by Ivan Rivera).
The record furthermore contains given names like “Feathered Jaguar Holding a Mountain in its Paw,” that is, “Lord Jaguar Ruler of the Mountain,” and “Feathered Jaguar Holding a Man in its Paw,” that is, “Lord Jaguar Ruler of the People” or “Lord Man-Eating Jaguar,” recalling a designation of this animal in Nahuatl: tecuani, “man eater.”21
If these signs are to be read as names, what, then, is the action to which the monument actually refers? Clearly, it was an important one for it to be commemorated in stone. Therefore we are not satisfied by earlier suggestions such as that the flints on the speech scrolls signify that a “feather-crested tiger on place glyph utters twice the name of 1 Flint or declares war in words as cutting as flint knives” (Paddock 1966: 187). Normally, it is the victory, not the declaration of war, that is commemorated.
In view of the pictographic conventions, it is significant that the jaguar or puma is usually represented on top of a mountain (yucu), the basic element of a toponym, to be read as “our town” or—if we take it as an abbreviated sign for “mountain and water” (yucu nduta)—“our community.” Clearly, the relationship between the individual and the place is the central theme of these carved slabs. Since the act of seating is a well-known Mesoamerican convention for taking control of the polity, we read the depiction of the animal standing or seated on top of the mountain sign, or sometimes climbing it, as a statement of a ruler’s accession to the throne. The accompanying day, then, is probably the date of the ceremony, although it may also refer to the ruler’s calendar name. In some cases the jaguar is seated or standing on a pyramid.22 Here the ceremonial center itself is explicitly referred to as the site where the enthronement took place.
The same concepts are present at Monte Albán, the main Classic site of Oaxaca. A synthesis is found on Stele 1 of the South Platform, which depicts the ruler as seated on a jaguar cushion on top of a mountain with a mat design, that is, on the mat and throne of the community (Urcid Serrano 2001). He is dressed in a jaguar skin, indicative of his nahual, and holds the staff of authority. The mountain—supposedly Monte Albán itself—is flanked by outward-looking heads of nahual animals, making explicit its sacredness and power. The same animal is repeated in the headdress of the ruler, suggesting again his visionary capabilities.
The Ñuiñe urns, deposited in high-status tombs, give additional information about the nature of the most important rituals carried out by the Lords and Ladies. A key piece is the urn from Tomb 5 of Cerro de las Minas, Ñuu Dzai (Huajuapan), now in the Museo Regional, Oaxaca.23 It shows the modeled image of an old man sitting on a basement that is decorated with the stepped fret motif, that is, the sign of ñuu, a town. The seated person again has to be read as the ruler of the place. In his hands he holds a small vessel or gourd, decorated with a precious stone. We recognize a parallel with the figure of the old priest carrying a piciete gourd on his back in the Postclassic codices. The man on the urn is in the process of transforming into a winged fire serpent (yahui). Clearly, we see the effects of a hallucinogenic ritual, during which the protagonist enters the nahual world. On the upper rim of the urn the ñuu sign is repeated, flanking the representation of rising vapors. By being anthropomorphized this way, the urn itself becomes a “god pot,” an animated entity that has life of its own and at the same time refers to a specific ritual event. It is comparable to the anthropomorphized vessels in the ritual preparation of the priests’ hallucinogenic ointment, depicted in Codex Yoalli Ehecatl / Borgia, page 29, both as the receptacle for bloodletting and as the origin of the vapors that produce a state of trance.
The urn from Tomb 5 of Cerro de las Minas is by no means unique. Similar scenes of old men and other individuals holding vessels or gourds and turning into nahual beings are found on other Ñuiñe urns and on urns from Monte Albán and the Valley of Oaxaca.24 It is interesting to note that the basic concept of these “urns” is actually that of the priest carrying the piciete gourd. In fact, we suspect that many nahualistic scenes on Monte Albán urns and other vessels are references to such rituals of vision quest during which contact was established with the Gods and the Ancestors. Supposedly, participation in such rituals was not a daily routine for the kings but a very special moment in their lives, during which they entered the nahual sphere of the Other World. The urns buried with them may have been the very vessels used during those ceremonies, now again functioning as their companions on the road to the Hereafter and in the renewed encounter with the divine beings. They have come down to us as testimonies of the religious nature of rulership, the ceremonial obligations and charismatic powers of the precolonial Lords and Ladies. By playing such pivotal roles in ritual, the rulers reaffirmed and justified their privileged position and at the same time effectively contributed to forging a feeling of communitas. We can read the testifying artifacts, monuments, and scriptures as expressions of both personal power and communal identification.
2.10. Consuming piciete, the ruler (seated on the ñuu sign) transforms into a winged nahual. Urn from Tomb 5, Cerro de las Minas, Ñuu Dzai (Huajuapan).
In synthesis, the Ñuu Dzaui historical codices were to be read as a kind of score or point of departure for oral performances to be carried out by a specialist (storyteller) for an audience (the nobles and the people of specific village-states). The seriousness of the contents, however, suggests that the occasion was not one of a simple theatrical presentation but of a ritual with ideological and religious implications. Similar statements were made in the decoration or form of other artifacts and monuments, which also played a part in such occasions.
To understand these ancient texts, we need to educate ourselves to listen and to open up to a special world of aesthetic experiences. We have to reconstruct the horizon and codes of communication of the original public. To translate their terms, we have to know their language, their forms and contents, their concepts and aims, as well as the particular cultural and historical context of the original performance. At the same time we have to be conscious of the fact that by rereading the texts, we join the participants in an ancient ritual.