v. 2.1

	by Richard L. Dieterle

Table of Contents

§1. The Restoration of the Red-Haired Scalp
§2. The Mayan Lost Paradise
§3. The Floral Tree of Tamoanchan
§4. The Morning Star and the Atamalcualiztli
§5. The Year One
§6. The Flint Years
§7. The Mystery of Cinteotl and Venus
§8. The Other Year One: the Carina Conjecture
§9. The Seduction
§10. Venus, 1-Flower, and 5-Monkey
§11. A Coda of Beginnings

§1. The Restoration of the Red-Haired Scalp. A Siouan myth tells of a red haired being who was attacked and scalped, but somehow lived to tell the tale. He resided in an earthly paradise whence he sent his animal messenger to summon a special hero. This man succeeded, after great travail and danger, in restoring his scalp to him. In the Hocąk version, he rewarded the hero with powers that ensured for him, and for all of humanity, a life of ease. Yet in the end, because of the hero's all too human folly, this paradise was taken away from us. Following the affinities of this story will take us to a like myth known in central Mexico, whose account of "Paradise Lost" will be the focus of this essay, and will be an occasion to contemplate the reach of civilization into the distant regions of the far north.

Finding a story about someone who possessed red hair must naturally peak our interest, especially in light of the fact that it also features a number of figures found in Siouan cognates of Redhorn myths: specifically, the Oglala Iron Hawk and Red Woman of the Crow. Here is how these myths map onto one another.

The version of the Hidatsa story given to us by Bower is abbreviated. The fuller version would no doubt have many more points of correspondence with the other Siouan stories. The Arapaho have a similar story which diverges from the set significantly.^8* It has a Crow counterpart, with a like degree of divergence, which in keeping with expectations, features Red Hair as the victim.⁹

The last element of the paradigm requires special comment. The narrative elements in §25 are expressed rather like inverses of one another. In the Hocąk, it is because (and only because) Hare violated the conditions set out (~c) that he lost his powers (~p).

In Mandan, it is stated in positive terms: because (and only because) he met the conditions, was he able to retain the powers with which he was blessed. These two propositions are logically equivalent; so they both express the same deep structure with respect to the contingency of conditions and powers — the difference is that in Hocąk 'c' is false, whereas in Mandan, 'c' is true.

The red hair of the victim certainly calls to mind the famous Redhorn, a preform of whom archaeologists believe was well known in Cahokia during its heyday. We, of course, have no way of knowing whether the man whose red hair is restored in the Hocąk version is Redhorn or someone even remotely connected with him. It certainly could be him. Esoterically, Redhorn loses his red hair when his star (Alnilam) heliacally sets, and regains it when it again rises with the sun in late summer. Thus, once he (re-)acquires his red hair, he ascends, leaving the place on earth where he was compelled to sojourn. So, if this is Redhorn, we find that once again, as in the "Red Man," his brother Hare is the one who comes to his rescue. As against this thesis, the closely related Ioway, who know Redhorn by the name "Wears Human Heads as Earbobs," do not feature him in their version of this story at all.

§2. The Mayan Lost Paradise. The Maya have a similar story about little people who had the power to do things by automation. All the stone pyramids and roads that are seen today were built by little people. All they had to do to put a great stone in place was to whistle. By whistling they could cause firewood to float in the air and drop into the fireplace. There was no task they could not do by simply whistling. These little people lived in darkness before the sun was made. Once the sun rose and there was daylight in the world, these people lost their powers and were turned to stone.¹ The little people have a counterpart in the diminutive Heroka of the Hocągara, which brings us back into the realm of Redhorn, who as Herokaga, is chief of the Heroka. It is also quite striking that the power possessed, then lost, is the power of automation.

§3. The Floral Tree of Tamoanchan. There exists a Central Mexican version of Paradise Lost, although it is fragmentary and found in many variants. The story is devoid of detail, but tells of a time when the gods lived with the Supreme Couple, a dualistic entity that embraced the male and female natures, and which had created the gods themselves. In the beginning of time, the gods lived with the Supreme Couple in a place called Tamoanchan, a Mayan word meaning "Land of Mist." ¹ Tamoanchan is rather like the place where the old man of the Siouan myths lived, a place that some suggest could be reached by traveling the earth,^2* yet was in some way not of this world.^3* No wonder it reminded the Spanish friars of the Garden of Eden. Many scholars believe that Tamoanchan was located near Vera Cruz in La Huasteca.⁴ On the other hand, Tamoanchan was also said to be the thirteenth and highest heaven where Xochipilli-Tonacatecuhtli ruled over the souls of the most elite royal dead.⁵ The idyllic land of Tamoanchan, whose location is also shrouded in its mists, was the creation of the Supreme Couple. And like the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Hebrew mythology, the tree of Tamoanchan had its own forbidden fruit. The forbidden "fruit" was a flower (xochitl) which the Spanish loosely call a "rose" (rosa). It was the "rose" of this tree that the deities plucked, causing the tree to break in two.⁶ Having violated the sole prohibition set down by the Supreme Couple, the gods were cast out of Tamoanchan, as it says here:

[CTR Hand 2:] This place called Tamoanchan and Xochitlicacan is the place where these gods they had were created, which is like saying the terrestrial paradise. And therefore they say that when these gods were in that place they transgressed by cutting roses and branches from the trees, and thus Tonacatecuhtli and his wife Tonacacihuatl were greatly angered and cast them out of that place. And because of this some came to earth and others to hell, and these are the ones who terrify them.^7*

Other variants place the blame mainly upon one of the goddesses.

[CTR Hand 3 = Fray Ríos:] This Itzpapalotl is one of those who fell from heaven with the others who fell from there; those who fell from there are the following: Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, Tonacatecuhtli, Hohualtecuhtli, and Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. These are the sons of Citlalicue and Citlalatonac. This means that in that garden they ate those roses, and this only lasted a short time, and then the tree was broken.^8*

Here we find the figure of Itzpapalotl, "Obsidian Butterfly," who in many ways corresponds to Flint, the enemy of Redhorn and Hare both. As can be seen in the illustration below, her dorsal standard is the broken tree of Tamoanchan. In this illustration from the Mapa De Cuauhtinchan No. 2, the standard is severed by an arrow (or atlatl dart). The page on which the last annotation was written, shows the Tree of Tamoanchan bleeding where it had broken.^9* Itzpapalotl plucked the flower from the sacred tree, and Ríos says that she actually ate it, although this is surely a case of Christian assimilationism. Flowers have the same sexual duality ascribed to the Supreme Couple, so the seizure of the flower was treated as an attack on the dualistic entity and resulted in the expulsion of the gods from Tamoanchan. The breaking of the unity of the gods with their origins was captured in the felling of the tree, since trees connect the upper and lower worlds. Itzpapalotl exemplifies the sexual duality of the Supreme Couple: when she claimed for herself the sexually dualistic flower, she reiterated her inherent split-unity, expressed in her alloform as the two-headed deer that descended from the heavens to threaten Mimich and Mixcoatl, a cervid who was at once a doe and an antlered stag.¹⁰ The strange standard held in her right hand in the Mapa, shaped in the "V" of unity-in-duality, unites a phallus, the engenderer of life, with the severed leg of a sacrificed ball player, an exemplar of death.^11* Yet these are dual elements of an underlying unity, since in sacrifice life (reproduction) and death are one and the same.^12*

The Flowering Tree of Tamoanchan, from CTR	Itzpapalotl, Redrawn from Mapa De Cuauhtinchan No. 2
13	14

The Spanish annotators do not agree on whether Tamoanchan was a celestial or terrestrial paradise, but it appears that as in the Hocąk case, it was a place without labor. Fray Ríos says,

To express that this fiesta was not good and that what they did was out of fear, they depict this tree bleeding and broken in half, as if to say, fiesta of labors caused by that sin.¹⁵

So the transgression at Tamoanchan, like that of Hare in the land of perpetual summer, resulted in the curse of labor. This implies that prior to their expulsion, they had been living in a place where everything was automated and there was no labor. In this version, Fray Ríos tells us of yet another variant in which a different woman was guilty of having picked the flower ("rose").

Her name is Ixnextli, which means eyes blinded with ashes; and she is like this since she sinned by picking the roses, and thus they say that now they cannot look at the sky. And in memory of that idleness that they lost, they fasted every ... years every eight years [to commemorate] this fall, and their fast was only bread and water; and they fasted eight days before this one rose [1-Flower] arrived; and when it occurred they adorned themselves in order to celebrate it. They say that all the days with five in this calendar refer to this fall, for on such a day she sinned.¹⁶

The first sentence seems to suggest that because Ixnextli was blinded by ashes, that humanity today cannot see the sky. The "blinding by ashes" is the darkness of the night, whose sky, it must be admitted, is readily visible. What is not visible is the sky of the next cosmic level which the blackness of the night occludes. This certainly suggests that the events took place in a celestial world higher than we can now see. The idleness to which Fray Ríos refers certainly seems to imply automation, leading us to conclude that Ixnextli must have been living in a paradise of leisure very much like that of Hare and his Grandmother, Earth.

§4. The Morning Star and the Atamalcualiztli. The ejection from Tamoanchan was commemorated at regular intervals by an unusual "feast," more properly described as a "fast." This was a festival of Atamalcualiztli at which people consumed only atamalli, "water bread," a tomalli created from corn flour, then cooked only after having had nothing more added to it than water.¹ Since it lacked processing and augmentation by lime, salt, spices, or chili pepper, it represented both a pure and minimal form of food whose consumption stood in contrast to a feast. Thus, it was considered suitable as fasting food. It was said that all the amenities that were normally added in the processing of food had caused it to become fatigued, and that the rite of Atamalcualiztli would serve to rejuvenate the food supply by religiously negating the process by which it had been worn out. In its commemorative dimension, it recalled the birth of the very cornerstone of subsistence, the maize plant, which had emerged from the earth as the god Cinteotl ("Maize").

Cinteotl and the rites of Atamalcualiztli seem to have some connection to Venus. That the connection between Cinteotl and Venus is not coincidental in this context is made clear by the fact that the rite is celebrated at intervals of eight years. Eight is a "Venus number." Eight solar (xiuhpohualli) years of 365 days each amount to 2,920 days. This figure is identical to five heliacal revolutions of the planet Venus, each of which takes 584 days (averaged and rounded off). In addition, 65 Venus Cycles line up with 104 solar years, or two calendar rounds. Two calendar rounds are 146 divinatory (tonalpohualli) years of 260 days each.² The tonalpohualli calendar is clearly adapted to the Venus Cycle. If the Morning Star rises on 10-Deer of 10-Flint, then eight years later, it will rise on 5-Deer of 5-Flint. Every eight years will be a Deer day in a Flint year, with the coefficient numbers following a set and predictable pattern.^3* No matter upon what day Venus rises with the sun, it will repeat that day sign and year sign with different coefficients every eight years until the minute irregularities of the orbiting planets cause a slight incongruity that expresses itself in calendrical drift. The eight years of this cycle also find a numerical mirror in the approximately eight days of the inferior conjunction of Venus. It is obvious that five is also a Venus number, since it takes five synodic revolutions of the planet to bring it into alignment with calendrical time. Five has another extraordinary association with Venus, or more specifically, the Morning Star: there are five heliacal cycles that Morning Star takes across the heavens, just as there are five such heliacal cycles for the Evening Star. These five patterns repeat themselves in a fixed order, doing so, therefore, within an eight year period. So the eight year periods in which commemorations of the birth of Cinteotl were celebrated are paradigmatically periods of time belonging to the planet Venus.

The five points on the standard representation of the Hocąk Great Star (Morning Star) reflect the five synodic cycles of the star.

Below are the five local patterns of Morning Star's motion across the sky (at Tula, Mexico) from heliacal rising to heliacal setting.

As may be seen, the Morning Star inscribes a rather narrow path in the eastern sector of the sky, while the background stars rotate behind it. The spatial pattern of each of the five heliacal cycles is stable, but its temporal pattern, as will be examined below, is complex, and drifts through the calendar. It is this calendrical drift that is the ultimate undoing of this sophisticated and elegant calendrical system, for the real synodic period of Venus's revolution around the sun varies between 581 and 587 days.^4* McCluskey points out, furthermore, "During the period A.D. 500 to 1500, the Venus Synodic Period decreased slightly from 583.921371 to 583.921368 days."⁵ Consequently, the Aztec calendar is off by .07862 of a day per Venus Cycle. This means that the calendar drifted with respect to the rising of Venus about eight days every 100 cycles (160 years).

Given the octennial nature of the observances, originally the Atamalcualiztli rite was probably timed with the heliacal rising of the Morning Star. There was hardly any agreement on precisely when the Atamalcualiztli occurred. This may derive from several causes. The first is that since there are five heliacal cycles run by the Morning Star, in an eight year span it is possible to pick any one of these five as a starting point. It may well have been the case that different cities chose to commemorate different initial heliacal risings, having selected a different initial 1-Flower date for the birth of Cinteotl. Another source of divergence is found in deliberate corrections to bring calendrical drift into realignment with the heliacal rising of Morning Star. Yet another reason is found in the same process, for if no corrections are made, the drift of the calendar could go so far as to lead to a different commemorative year (Reed instead of, for instance, Flint). There seem to be at least three traditions concerning when the Atamalcualiztli was observed. We have already seen Fray Ríos make reference to the sin at Tamoanchan in association with the date 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit (Mʰ I). Despite this, he also makes a tentative reference to the observance of Atamalcualiztli in Flint years, which belongs to a different helical cycle of Morning Star (Mʰ V). This very same cleric makes another mistake in saying that Atamalcualiztli had been recently observed on July 23, 1562, which turns out to be exactly one year after the date on which Morning Star rose with the sun. That year, 1561, belongs to yet another Morning Star heliacal cycle (Mʰ III). We shall now set out these Morning Star heliacal cycles with select dates during which they occurred.

The first of these (the selection is arbitrary) will be that associated with 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit. It should be noted that in all cycles, the heliacal rise of Morning Star is always in connection with inferior conjunction.

Except for the first year, each year presented on the table is 58,392 days after its predecessor save where exceptions are noted. This is because each day presented under the heading "Julian Date" is a date on which Morning Star rose with the sun and followed Mʰ I through the sky. The interval represents the approximately 160 years taken by 100 Venus Cycles. This gives us an overview of the passing of more than eight centuries. It can be readily seen how much the calendar slips out of correlation with the Venus Cycle during the course of this period. On the other hand, it may also be noted that all the years in Mʰ I are Rabbit years, so that this path can be thought of as the "Rabbit Heliacal Cycle." However, there are only four possible yearbearers (Rabbit, House, Flint, Reed), and there are five Morning Star Heliacal Cycles, so one of them must duplicate a yearbearer name of one of the others. This is seen in Mʰ II —

It may be seen that initially Morning Star Heliacal Cycle II fell within Flint years, but crossed over in the XIᵀᴴ century into Reed years. However, Mʰ II is not known to be correlated with any celebration of the Atamalcualiztli.^6* The third heliacal cycle, however, is firmly associated with the festival.

Like Mʰ II, the fourth heliacal cycle lacks any known attachment to the Atamalcualiztli.

An interesting feature of Mʰ IV is that it has a 1-Flower of 1-Reed in it (Nov. 2, 739). "One Flower" is the calendar name of Cinteotl, and "One Reed" is the calendar name of Quetzalcoatl, both of whom are identified with Morning Star. As far as can be told, nothing was built on this otherwise fortunate coincidence. The fifth heliacal cycle corresponds to those Atamalcualiztli festivals that fell solely within Flint years.

With this table we complete all five possible heliacal cycles of ca. 584 days each that Morning Star could take through the sky in the span of the eight years (ca. 2,920 days) of the Venus Cycle.

As can be seen, each of these Morning Star Heliacal Cycles drifts through the veintenas in a backward direction. The following table shows in greater detail the gradual drift of an heliacal cycle through the calendar, which also goes through the day signs in reverse order.

A Flower day will occur in a Rabbit year only on 12-Tecuilhuitontli (VIII), and their coefficients will always match.

It can be appreciated at a glance that Morning Star Heliacal Cycle I (as well as the rest) represents a course through time as well as space. The mathematics of the calendar lead to a salutary temporal structuring of events. The event which defines Mʰ I, the rising of Morning Star with the sun, slides slowly through time in a reverse order: in the XIIIᵀᴴ century b.C. it fell in the XIIᵀᴴ veintena, but gradually fell back to the VIᵀᴴ veintena by the XVIᵀᴴ century a.D. However, although we think of the solar calendar as being wildly out of alignment with the ritual calendar of 260 days, here the two move in lock-step, but this coordination is done en passant. Extraordinarily, Flower days that fall on Mʰ I, whatever their coefficients, occur on and only on the twelfth day of a veintena. Similarly, Cayman days on Mʰ I will always fall on the thirteenth of a given veintena, and so on with each of the 20 day signs, the progress through them moving in a backward order. This temporal path through the calendar can be set out for each of the five Morning Star heliacal cycles.

Using Mʰ I as an example, if Morning Star rises with the sun on 7-Water of 1-Hueitecuilhuitl (IX), in the course of time, it will slip to a Rabbit day which will fall on the twentieth day of the previous veintena, as on the date 19 January 719, which was the day 1-Rabbit of 20-Tecuilhuitontli (VIII). As it happens, these signs duplicate the sequence of day signs that make up the first year of the Toltec calendar, the year 1-Rabbit (727 a.D.), which began on 7-Water. All the years in it are, like a single year, defined by the last day sign in the sequence, in this case Rabbit.

§5. The Year One. Fray Ríos gives us one of many accounts of how the Fall of the gods was commemorated by the populace. On the page of the CTR devoted to Ochpaniztli, he characterizes the rite as "properly speaking our end, termination of our life our beginning," and identifies the earth goddesses Toci and Tlazoltéotl as the primary foci of the rituals performed at this time. He goes on to say,

Here they celebrated the feast of she who sinned by eating the fruit of the tree; they call it the feast of our beginning end or of our mother.

[By the ritual of sweeping,] all the evils and hungers that she caused in the world would go away.

Xochiquetzal was the first who sinned, and here she is called Itzpapalotl Tlazoltéotl, who is goddess of garbage or sin; and for that reason they celebrated a fiesta, because of what man must endure after dying.¹

The annotations of Hand 2 in the same manuscript tells us something about the ritual.

Ochpaniztli means cleaning, and thus during this month they swept everything, especially their houses and roads.

They fasted the four first days of this month and throughout it sacrificed to plants; and after worshiping them took them to their temples. The reason for this cleaning was that they believed that by performing that ceremony all the evils of the people would go away. They had many fasts, but the priests fasted more than anyone ... and they all fasted on bread and water.²

Hand 2 also adds that Ochpaniztli began on 12 September. Graulich appreciated that the rites of Ochpaniztli have many resemblances to those of Atamalcualiztli: they are both associated with the Fall of the gods from Tamoanchan, identify Tlazoltéotl and allied goddesses as having a central role, bestow religious honors on plants, and involve a fast of bread and water.³ The sweeping, which one would naturally associate with the goddess of pollution and purification, Tlazoltéotl, is not present in the Atamalcualiztli, nor are the blood thirsty rites related by Durán.⁴ Another important divergence is that the festival is anchored in the xiuhpohualli, the solar calendar, and therefore does not float according to the dictates of the heliacal rising of Morning Star. Nevertheless, that its theology is founded on the same primordial events of Tamoanchan, along with similar practices contained in both rites, shows that Ochpaniztli is a counterpart of Atamalcualiztli, and probably owes some of its divergent features to different places of origin. Nevertheless, they could also be divergently evolved expressions of a common preform.

Given the minimal thesis that the festival of Ochpaniztli is a counterpart of Atamalcualiztli, then it must in origin have been both seasonal in character and correlated with the heliacal rising of Morning Star. The season to which it belongs is the one in which Cinteotl is born, or in de-allegorized terms, when maize (cinteotl) is planted. For most of Mexico, corn is planted from the first of May through the end of June. It then silks from mid-July through mid-August, with the harvest beginning around the first of October and running through the end of December.⁵ However, this will vary somewhat by locale. The date on which all of these requirements are satisfied occurs in the late VIIᵀᴴ century.^6* This would be the calendar Year One of the festival of Ochpaniztli-Atamalcualiztli. The table below shows the Morning Star Heliacal Cycles (Mʰ) belonging to this Year One.^7*

On the table we find the date of 12 April 682 a. D. (14-Ochpaniztli), which falls within Morning Star Heliacal Cycle III. The date was chosen by Graulich who states that the heliacal rising of Venus took place on 18 April 682, which he says was 16-Ochpaniztli, neither date agreeing with either my astronomy program nor the Aztec Calendar Calculator for either the Caso or Cortés correlations. The Graulich date of 18 April (actually 20-Ochpaniztli) may mark the time at which Morning Star could first be seen, since at that date it has an angular separation from the sun of 6° 56' 49". However, in fact, it makes little difference what date is chosen in Mʰ III as long as it is in rough alignment with the seasons, and mid-April falls, appropriately enough, at the end of the dry season.^8* This date then becomes our Calendar Year One, where the rite aligns with the seasonal activity to which it is dedicated.

It is with some measure of confidence, then, that we can say that one tradition of the festival commemorating the Fall was founded on what we are here calling "Morning Star Heliacal Cycle III." When we continue out Mʰ III through the relevant parts of the XVIᵀᴴ century, we get a series of "Tlaxochimaco dates" that conform to the octennial cycle of the heliacal ascension of Morning Star.^9*

Fray Ríos also said, "This year of 1562 on the 23ᴿᴰ of July was the feast of she who sinned."^10* This date is confirmed in an odd way by a remark that Fray Ríos made later in the same work:

This year of five rabbits [5-Rabbit] on the day one flower [1-Flower] they had a feast; and this year of 1562 the feast was on the 23ᴿᴰ of July.^11*

This is an 11-Tlaxochimaco date, making Ríos' statement a striking contradiction to what he had said earlier about the commemoration of "she who sinned" as being in Ochpaniztli. This statement was crossed out in acknowledgement of error. We can see from our table that Venus did rise with the sun almost precisely a year earlier on 24 July 1561 (12-Tlaxochimaco of Caso), and with a small measure of charity, allow that it might have been seen the day before, in which case Fray Ríos will have gotten the date right save that he was exactly a year off. It occurred to Graulich that this error might be due to a Venus cycle calculation made by the friar. Given knowledge that 12 April 682 was a date on which Morning Star rose with the sun, we should be able to add a set number of Venus Cycles to get the most recent date for the heliacal rise of Venus in relation to the time at which Fray Ríos was writing. This turns out to be 550 cycles of 584 days each, for a total of 321,200 days. So if Ríos was calculating from Julian day 1970259 by adding 321,200 (550 cycles x 584 days), he would get Julian day 2291459, which is 4 Sept 1561 (= 14-Ochpaniztli). However, using the corrected value of a Venus Cycle, which is 583.92 days, 550 cycles would total 321,156 days. This would give us Julian day 2291415, which is 21 July 1561. This does not quite agree with Graulich. We must ask, How would a Spanish friar in Mexico know that Venus rose with the sun on 12 April 682? Would he not have had to calculate this from some known heliacal rising of Venus on a previous Atamalcualiztli? To select a particular date in April as the starting point on the basis that it is the best day on which to plant maize would be an absurdly lucky guess. Yet despite all this, the computed date is still wrong anyway, since it should have been 1561, not the year that Ríos gave, which was 1562. At this point we should entertain a much simpler explanation. That he was precisely one year off rather suggests that either the numeral "1" in the Julian year was misread as "2," or someone in the evidentiary chain of custody correctly remembered the day and month, but not the year. That the festival fell on 12-Tlaxochimaco at some place during the year 1561 should not be a surprise, since it falls on Mʰ III, and would reflect the outcome of holding to the helical rising of Morning Star from an Ochpaniztli starting date in the VIIᵀᴴ century. Nevertheless, despite quibbles that move events a day this way or that, the basic thesis of Graulich survives intact when approached from this different point of view.

§6. The Flint Years. After a myriad of inconsistent dead-ends, finally Brother Ríos gives us an interesting date to which we might tie the Atamalcualiztli, as he says here:

It was the year two knives [2-Flint = 1520]. This month was year of the general fast that they call atamal, which means bread and water; during this fast they did not eat salt nor anything else except bread and water.¹

On the same page of the CTR, Hand 2 tells us that it was during this veintena ("month") that they were celebrating the Feast of the Lords, precisely on 14 July 1520, which was 12-Hueitecuilhuitl (IX). The year 2-Flint lasted from 25 January 1520 to 23 January 1521. There was no rise of Morning Star at all in 2-Flint — it rose on 30 December 1519, which is 20-Atemoztli (XVII) of the previous year of 1-Reed, and next rose on 4 Aug 1521, which is 13-Tlaxochimaco (X) of the succeeding year of 3-House. So this year of 2-Flint does not connect to any of the five heliacal cycles of Morning Star, and therefore the Flint years that belong to Mʰ V do not include 1520 = 2-Flint. Some say that the festival was celebrated on a 1-Flower day, but no such day could have fallen within this veintena. This veintena contains only a single Flower day, that of 7-Flower which fell on 2-Hueitecuilhuitl. The day 1-Flower occurred on 2-Teotleco (XIII), which was 22 September 1520. Therefore, we can with some confidence state that Atamalcualiztli did not occur during this veintena, and indeed, it could not have occurred at any time during this year (2-Flint = 1520).

However, Fray Ríos revisited the matter of the Flint years in the same manuscript:

This year of 1548 when the bishop [Zumárraga] died was the year of Atamalcualiztli, which is when they eat the rye bread, for it is known that every eight years in a flint knife year there was a general fast of four days when they only ate cooked bread with water and no salt; and thus, always as I say, [it falls] in this sign although not always in four knives [4-Flint] except once in four [4-Flint = 1548] and another time in nine [9-Flint = 1540] and again in one [1-Flint = 1532], which was when the bishop came to the land.²

All this was struck out by diagonal lines. Although he repudiated what he said, it nevertheless appears to be essentially accurate, at least with respect to the Flint years referenced. Perhaps he rejected it because of the incompatible (and wrong) things that he had said about the year 2-Flint, which he did not repudiate. Whatever his motivation may have been, there is good reason to think that Fray Ríos should not have crossed this annotation out, as Keber tells us,

The actual date of Zumárraga's death was 1548. ... However, the mention of the feast of Atamalcualiztli every eight years in Flint Knife (Tecpatl) years clarifies one of the mysterious features of the early folios of the dynastic chronicle. A drawn hand on folios 29r, 29v, 30v, and 31r points to Tecpatl years at eight-year intervals, no doubt indicating those years when Atamalcualiztli was celebrated.³

These years (1388 = 13-Flint, 1396 = 8-Flint, 1404 = 3-Flint, 1412 = 11-Flint, 1420 = 6-Flint, 1428 = 1-Flint, 1436 = 9-Flint) all belong to Mʰ V.⁴ The several Flint dates that he gives in his rejected annotation also belong to Mʰ V. In the 680's, the Flint years were slightly out of season, but by 893 when the heliacal rising of Morning Star fell on 17-Quecholli (22 April), it had slipped into the appropriate time of year. This sequence may owe its origin to a desire (by some city or other) to reset the festival of Atamalcualiztli so that it corresponded to the planting season of maize. This ambition is ultimately vain, as the new sequence too is subject to calendrical drift. It will have survived only because greater importance was attached to keeping it more or less in sync with the heliacal rising of Morning Star. Holding it on a particular date in the xiuhpohualli calendar would take advantage of the natural Venusian sympathies of the time keeping system, since the celebration would recur on a tonalpohualli day having the same sign, and whose coefficient is assigned according to a regular, and therefore predictable, order. If a particular date in a Morning Star heliacal cycle, let us say 9-Tepeilhuitl, were chosen on which to celebrate the Atamalcualiztli, then every day sign for that date would be the same for a very long period of time. That sign would have been Deer. This would mean that the Atamalcualiztli festival of the year 4-Flint had fallen on 4-Deer, a date which was slightly out of sync with the heliacal rising of Morning Star. If we look back into the recent past, the festival in the years 9-Flint and 1-Flint will have fallen on 9-Deer and 1-Deer respectively, and generally in any year n-Flint, the day of the Atamalcualiztli would have been n-Deer. In order to use this easily predictable system, it becomes necessary from time to time, when the rising of Morning Star drifts too far out of alignment for propriety, to reset the day sign and its associated xiuhpohualli date. This is implied by the very existence of such a system. In the hypothetical case adopted here for the purposes of illustration, we can see that if Atamalcualiztli was held on 4-Deer of 4-Flint (1548), then it must have been recalibrated back in the year 1476.

Using the built-in Venus tracking structure of the tonalpohualli calendar implies periodic corrections and the selection of a new day sign from time to time. For example, one has to go back four days from 12 Oct 1548 to reach the heliacal rising of Morning Star (Oct. 8), and as each octennial succeeded the next, the gap widened. After the gap was considered too wide for propriety (perhaps after 104 years), the festival could be reset with a new day sign. As we have seen, the year signs are highly stable. The willingness to make adjustments to keep the temporal context within the scope of theological propriety, here expressed in the choice of the Mʰ V of Flint years, certainly suggests that Atamalcualiztli would not have been a moveable festival.

Sahagún tells us that in some places the Atamalcualiztli was celebrated in Quecholli or the preceding veintena of Tepeilhuitl. Mʰ V drifted through this veintena a few centuries prior to Sahagún's time. It may well be that the associations of the Atamalcualiztli with the celebrations of Quecholli, where the god Mixcoatl-Camaxtli was honored, were a desirable fit, and so maintained by occasional minor adjustments to the time at which the festival was celebrated. The table below shows the dates at which Morning Star rose with the sun in the veintena of Quecholli.

Having examined the five heliacal cycles of Morning Star, we can now say definitively that only one of them passed through Quecholli to Tepeilhuitl, and that is the Flint years which belong to Mʰ V. So it need not be the case that they became dates of the Atamalcualiztli by calendrical drift from the 680's. The last time 1-Quecholli/20-Tepeilhuitl were in temporal alignment with the heliacal ascension of Morning Star were on the dates 8 January 1245 and 5 January 1253. Around this time, the desirability of fixing the Atamalcualiztli to the beginning of Quecholli began to outweigh all other considerations. It may also be noted that 2-Quecholli always correlates with a Flower day sign. Therefore, if the Atamalcauliztli is set on 2-Quecholli, it will always occur on a Flower day, but not necessarily a 1-Flower day.

We should appreciate the fact that by selecting these xiuhpohualli dates, the Atamalcualiztli interlocks nicely with the Quecholli festival of Mixcoatl-Camaxtli. Durán says that during the feast of Camaxtli in the veintena of Quecholli,

When the tenth day arrived—this being like the octave of the feast—early in the morning the dignitaries and priests of the temple took charge of a man and a woman. The woman was given the name Yoztlamiyahual, and the man was called Mixcoatontli, and both were dressed in the raiment of the gods they represented. ... These (two) were taken out in public, and the people paid homage to them. Once their public appearance ended ... then they took the woman and knocked her head four times against a large rock which stood in the temple. This rock was known as teocomitl, which means "divine pot." Half conscious, before she had died of the blows, her throat was slit as one cuts the throat of a lamb. And her throat flowed upon that rock. Once she was dead, she was decapitated, and the head was carried to Mixcoatontli, who took it by the hair and then went to stand in the midst of his attendants.⁵

The octave of a feast is the eighth day from its celebration, with the count including the first day of the feast. This would mean that if 10-Quecholli was like the octave, then the feast itself began on 3-Quecholli. If we return to our table, we find a date of special interest: 15 Jan 1221, which fell on 1-Flower of 1-Flint. "One Flower" is the calendar name of Cinteotl, the object of the Atamalcualiztli, and "One Flint" is the calendar name of Mixcoatl, the god honored by the Quecholli festival. At the very end of Quecholli, the impersonators of Mixcoatontli [Mixcoatl] and his consort Yoztlamiyahual, are sacrificed. The identity of Yoztlamiyahual is not perfectly clear, but Baquedano and Graulich suggest that she is, "... an earth goddess whose name may be an epithet of Itzpapalotl or Chimalman-Coatlicue ...".⁶ The symbolic death of the earth goddess is preceded by two days of ritual hunting, which also involve the setting of a new fire as a weaker reflection of the New Fire ceremony that attends the binding of the years into a calendar round every 52 years. If Atamalcualiztli were on 2-Quecholli, then the eight days of its fast would conclude with the double sacrifice. If the Atamalcualiztli festival were moved all the way back to the last day of Tepeilhuitl, then the fast would cease in time for the important hunting ceremonies. Both ceremonies are devoted to fecundity, and complement one another, as one is devoted to the fecundity of the floral world (especially maize) and the other is devoted to the fecundity of the faunal world (especially deer). We should not be surprised under the circumstances to find a Mixcoatl connection to Atamalcualiztli. Durán informs us that the temple of Mixcoatl, like the Venus-honoring festival of Atamalcualiztli, was renewed every eight years.^7* The fasting connected with the feast is an expression of mourning for the loss of the paradise of Tamoanchan, for which the "Eve" in this affair, Ixnextli, perpetually weeps. She is also known by the variant names Ixnextioa or Ixnextiua, which mean, roughly, "to have ashes (or coal) on the face."⁸ Ashes on the face recall the mask of Mixcoatl and his followers, who take ash or coal and apply it in a set pattern around their eyes. This ash was originally of the incinerated body of Itzpapalotl. Itzpapalotl, it may be remembered, is the counterpart of Ixnextli in other variants of the myth. These interconnections explain why it was desirable to keep Atamalcualiztli linked with Quecholli even at the price of ultimately disconnecting it from its attachment to the rise of Morning Star, not to mention its seasonal associations.

§7. The Mystery of Cinteotl and Venus. The octennial rite of Atamalcualiztli is timed to coincide with Venus cycles, while at the same time displaying a focus on maize, a fact which would seem to imply that Cinteotl must have some connection to Venus. However, it is not perfectly clear that Cinteotl was everywhere and at all times identified with the Morning Star. Šprajc nicely sums up the complexity of the problem in a note.¹

In the light of this comparative evidence it would seem that Cinteotl, too, was linked to the evening manifestation of Venus, as suggested by Dieter Dütting.² It might also be added that Thompson placed Cinteotl to the west, remarking that "all the western deities, except the sky bearers, are associated with maize."³ But on the other hand, CinteotI's calendric name, 1 Xochitl, befits rather the morning star (cf. infra: L). A verse in the chant of Xochipilli reads: "By night did the god of corn shine"; but the context seems to refer to the dawn.⁴ As already mentioned (Section 2), the 8-year intervals, at which the Atamalcualiztli festival of the rejuvenation of maize was celebrated, suggest it was somehow tied to the 8-year Venus cycle; according to Long's calculation, based on the data in Sahagún and Telleriano-Remensis, the feasts of Atamalcualiztli may well have coincided with heliacal risings of the morning star.⁵ Graulich argues that Cinteotl personified the morning star and the sprouting maize, while the seeds and the evening star corresponded to Xochipilli.⁶ In sum, the data are contradictory and probably reflect the overlapping characteristics of the manifold central Mexican maize deities.

We can now see that as far as the Atamalcualiztli is concerned, at least in some significant places, the rite was tied to Morning Star and not Evening Star, since it fell on Mʰ III (House) and Mʰ V (Flint), which are uniquely tied to apparitions of the Morning Star. Nevertheless, these results serve to confirm Šprajc's observation that Mesoamerica has a multiplicity of maize gods, and their attributes, and by extension, the rites associated with them, are likely to show a substantial measure of plurality and divergence. Given the additional association of the rite — and Cinteotl — with the day 1-Flower, and the year 1-Rabbit, we see yet again a variant foundation for the rite in another course of Morning Star, once again exhibiting the same bewildering variety that makes the study of this issue so complex.

Given that the rising of Morning Star with the sun in a Rabbit year must necessarily occur during the time of Mʰ I (the Rabbit Apparition), is there a 1-Flower day in such a year on which Cinteotl could be born as the rising Venus? We can give, for all practical purposes, an exhaustive enumeration of all occurrences of Flower days falling on Mʰ I going back to deep antiquity.

It is possible to track down all Flower days that fell during the Mʰ I by finding when this heliacal cycle passed through the twelfth day of the veintena in which it was then occurring. Since Mʰ I is the only Venus heliacal cycle in Rabbit years, we can readily determine the date on which a 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit hosted the rising of Venus with the sun. As can be seen by inspection, there are none. However, there are two days in this large slice of history in which Morning Star rises in a Rabbit year on 1-Flower: 63 a.D. and 447 a.D., and these only. They are, unfortunately, of rather too remote an antiquity to be plausible candidates for the birth of Cinteotl. In addition, it is quite easy to collect all 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit dates that fall during the Mʰ I. A 1-Flower day will correspond with the rise of Morning Star (theoretically) only every 104 years, when the two calendar cycles correspond to the Venus Cycle. Plotting this data on a table we get the following ("+" indicates the number of days after the rise of Morning Star that the Julian date fell; "-" indicates the number of days before).

The 52 year median points (= one calendar round) in between each of these dates on Mʰ I belong to the first heliacal cycle of Evening Star (Eʰ I). A highly relevant pattern plainly emerges. We can see that there is no heliacal rising of Morning Star on 1-Flower in a 1-Rabbit year. Now it must be appreciated that when Morning Star heliacally rises, it may not be visible owing to its proximity to the glare of the sun. Two days after leaving the horizon, Morning Star has an angular separation from the sun of only ca. 55' on 18 November 934. The glare of the sun would have rendered it invisible. Morning Star should appear out of conjunction with the sun about five days after its ascension to the eastern horizon. This means that the next 1-Flower date is too late, as Morning Star will have appeared on 20 October 1038 (11-Motion of 1-Rabbit) with an angular separation of about 6°. As time progresses, the discongruity becomes ever more pronounced. From this fact we can also learn that there never was, nor will there ever be, an initial apparition of Morning Star that has the date 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit. So Cinteotl's appellation "One Flower," if it pertains to Venus at all, must derive from some year other than 1-Rabbit.

It is also possible to examine all 1-Flower days in other Rabbit years (in Mʰ I).

It can be seen from the linked tables, that as far as the heliacal cycle is concerned, there are no 1-Flower days on which Morning Star rose with the sun. However, the visibility cycle of Morning Star is slightly different: it begins with the first day, and ends on the last day, of its visibility (from the end of solar conjunction to the beginning of the next solar conjunction). It seems rather more likely that Cinteotl as Morning Star will have been born when he first became visible. There are some dates which might satisfy this standard. The earliest of these dates is 22 March 705 b.C. (1-Flower of 12-Rabbit), where on the fourth day after its heliacal rise, it had attained ca. 4° of angular separation. On 8 July 167 a.D. (1-Flower of 13-Rabbit), on the fourth day, Morning Star had an angular separation of nearly 8°. Both of these dates seem rather too early, and in the latter case, it is possible that Venus could have been seen the day before (13-Rain). On the other extreme, the rather late date of 29 June 1422 (1-Flower of 8-Rabbit), Venus shows a separation of 9° on its fifth day (which suggests that it might have been visible one or two days earlier). Rather more appropriate in age is 14 March 551 (1-Flower of 7-Rabbit), where Morning Star had attained somewhat more than 5° separation on the fifth day. The date of 14 March 551 is rather early in the year and makes the birth of Cinteotl occur well before the planting season begins. In the end, however, the date we are seeking is 1-Rabbit, not a Rabbit year having some other coefficient. A review of other Rabbit dates is at least useful to see how few candidates can be adduced even when we widen the criterion.

However, if we are going to use the visibility criterion, matters become more complicated. To have Morning Star rise 5 days after it first reaches the eastern horizon, the heliacal rising of Venus would have to have occurred on 10-Vulture ({1} 10-Vulture > {2} 11-Motion > {3} 12-Flint > {4} 13-Rain > {5} 1-Flower). Since we are interested only in the year 1-Rabbit, the relevant 10-Vulture days will fall on Mʰ I. These can be tabulated.

So, as we can see from an inspection of these tables, we must conclude that there is no case of the Morning Star coming out of conjunction with the sun on 1-Flower of a 1-Rabbit year, nor is it likely, except for one improbable candidate, that it did so in any Rabbit year whatever. This leaves the connection between Cinteotl, Venus, and the day 1-Flower a complete mystery.

§8. The Other Year One: the Carina Conjecture. We have seen that among what must have been many traditions associated with the food-renewal ritual of Atamalcualiztli two are intimately bound up with a pair of heliacal cycles of Morning Star, Mʰ III (House), and Mʰ V (Flint). In these two cases, Cinteotl is correlated with Morning Star rather than Evening Star. From the same source, Fray Ríos, we discover that the mythology associated with the Atamalcualiztli introduces us to yet another heliacal cycle of Morning Star, that belonging to the Rabbit years. We may recall what he had said linking the two: "... here on this week of one rose [1-Flower] when a rabbit year occurred they fasted [to commemorate] the fall of the first man ..."¹ The Fall, which we know from other versions is the exile from Tamoanchan, is commemorated in some fashion on 1-Flower of certain Rabbit years. Brother Ríos, who often enough gets things somewhat wrong, as his own numerous cross-outs prove, has given us a date that counterintuitively "floats" on the calendar. We might well entertain the idea that perhaps instead of occurring on One (Una) Flower, what his sources meant was that it occurred on a (una) Flower day. When we compare octennial dates (beginning in 727 a.D.) with the date on which 1-Flower fell in that year, we can appreciate the contrast.^2* It should be pointed out that since Rabbit years occur every four years, octennials represent every other Rabbit year.^3* However, as we saw from another chart (⤊), only in the years 902 and 910 did Morning Star rise on any Flower day. What is relatively fixed is the date 12-Tecuilhuitontli on the solar calendar, since every 12-Tecuilhuitontli day in a Rabbit year octennial falls on a day named "Flower."^4* Each Flower day in a Rabbit year on 12-Tecuilhuitontli is separated from the next by 2,920 days. This is exactly eight years of 365 days each, and five synodic periods of Venus, each of 584 days. Unfortunately, if they held to this formula, it would work for two to four octennial cycles, but due to the variability in the duration of these cycles, the course of Flower days would drift away from Mʰ I. In other words, the rising of Morning Star with the sun would move further and further away from the initial Flower day. In time it will have seemed just as appropriate to celebrate 1-Flower alone rather than just certain Flower days, since it came to pass that neither of them coincided with the rising of Morning Star. Therefore, it may well have been the case that it was considered more important to commemorate the day 1-Flower, since originally that day was taken to be the birthday of Cinteotl. So, even if Atamalcualiztli were fixed in other helical Morning Star cycles (III, V), and was not "moveable," it is obvious that the festival could have occurred in the trecena ("week") of 1-Flower only if it was "moveable," since this day floated widely about the calendar. This would make Atamalcualiztli a fixed festival with respect to the octennial year, but floating with respect to the day. Only every 104 years on a 1-Flower day of a 1-Rabbit year, would the festival fall on precisely the fixed date that it was designed to commemorate. In any case, this original date, whenever it was, we know a priori to have fallen on Mʰ I, the octennial sequence of heliacal risings of Morning Star which uniquely occurred during Rabbit years.

In connection with the same heliacal cycle, Fray Ríos mentions a piece of pseudo-history that seems to be a version of the Tamoanchan myth that has reached us incognito. It's found in an annotation to another fragmentary version of this myth, although its relevance is obscure at first. Fray Ríos informs us,

They told an omen, that in the year one rabbit [1-Rabbit], on the day of this rose [1-Flower], a rose was born on earth and it dried up instantly.^5*

There was an omen that on the day one flower [1-Flower] in the provinces of the Huaxteca a rose appeared in the mountains, which was called by this very precious name (or, ... which was called by this name, "Most Precious").^6*

An omen is a sign of future events, and as such must be "read." As we have seen, Atamalcualiztli is the festival which commemorates the Fall, but in addition, also celebrates the birth of Cinteotl, "Maize." As Graulich argues, all this took place at the beginning of time, and amounted to the creation of the earth itself. Using Mʰ III as the foundation for tracing the origins of the rite, this is put back into the 680's, which becomes its Year One. However, this particular myth is not from the tradition that set the Atamalcualiztli rite in Mʰ III, as evinced by its placement in the year 1-Rabbit. This raises a number of interrelated questions. For whom is the year 1-Rabbit of particular significance? When was the cosmological Year One, when Morning Star first rose, and Cinteotl was created? When was the very first 1-Flower day, and the very first 1-Rabbit year? In one particular tradition, these questions are easily answered. This is the Toltec tradition, which starts its calendar count in our year 726/727 a.D., which is none other than the year 1-Rabbit.⁷ The year 1-Rabbit lasted from 11 August 726 (7-Water of 1-Rabbit) to 5 August 727 (1-Rabbit of 1-Rabbit), not counting the five Nenmontemi days. This 1-Rabbit year is found in Mʰ I, the "Rabbit Heliacal Cycle." The following table shows the first set (Sequence I) of five heliacal cycles beginning with the first year of the Toltec calendar and the next set that followed them (Sequence II).

There is a 1-Flower of 1-Reed date in Sequence II, which is the calendar name of Cinteotl in the year bearing the calendar name of Quetzalcoatl as Morning Star. However, to our knowledge, no Atamalcualiztli tradition is based on Mʰ IV. The table shows that Morning Star rose with the sun on 17 January 727, but it was not visible, and had therefore not completed its inferior conjunction. The appearance of the portentous flower that was immediately desiccated by the sun, was on 1-Flower, not 9-Rabbit (or later).

What is this flower, if not Cinteotl-as-Venus? What took place at the beginning of Toltec time on 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit (9 January 727 a.D.)? To answer this question, we must look to the heavens, the inspiration for the calendar itself. On this date of 9 January 727, the most striking events take place. Here we find an astronomy that closely matches the myth of the omen. On this precise 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit date, the star η Carinæ, which centrally anchors the vast Carina Nebula, set at 07:15:53, almost at the precise moment when the sun rose (07:17:41). This was its achronical setting.^8* The reconstruction immediately below shows the achronical setting of the nebula as it was seen at Tula, the capital of the Toltecs.

The Setting of the Great Carina Nebula (Azimuth 212° 4') at Sunrise, January 9, 727 (Day 1-Flower of Year 1-Rabbit), Tula, Mexico		The Great Carina Nebula NGC 3372
Starry Night Software

The Carina Nebula, known also as the "Great Carina Nebula" or the "Eta (η) Carinæ Nebula," NGC 3372, is one of the largest and brightest diffuse nebulæ in the sky, with a magnitude of 1.0. It is four times larger than the Orion Nebula (M42), with an angular diameter of 2°.^9* At the center of the nebula is the star η Carinæ. Despite its reasonably good fit with respect to time and mythology (as we shall see), any astronomical interpretation must overcome a potential problem. Since the star η Carinæ has shown itself to be highly variable over the course of its history,^10* and because it is partly responsible for illuminating the nebula that surrounds it, the question arises as to whether the Carina Nebula could be seen at all in the past. The first Westerner to report the existence of the star η Carinæ was the Dutch explorer Pieter Keyser, ca. 1595–96. Not long afterwards his data found its way onto globes and charts (1598-1603).¹¹ In 1677, Edmond Halley was the first to record η Carinæ in a catalogue of stars. At that time, he estimated it to be only a fourth magnitude star.¹² The star η Carinæ is now thought to have undergone an eruption as early as the beginning of the XIᵀᴴ century.¹³ In 1843, in an event known as the "Great Eruption," its outer shell blew off, creating an occluding cloud of dust known as the "Homunculus Nebula."^14* This new dust cloud obscured the star,^15* contributing to the reduction of its magnitude to 7.6 in 1886.¹⁶ However, the star η Carinæ is one of the largest known, and contributes to the illumination of the surrounding gas and dust of the Carina Nebula,^17* although it is only primus inter paribus among its numerous and very large companion stars.^18* Prior to the Great Eruption, was the Carina Nebula visible at all? Halley did not record the nebula, but his interest lay in cataloging stars. The next cataloguer to examine this area of the sky was La Caille, who did take note of the nebula in 1763, well before any substantial illumination was added from η Carinæ.^19* So the very large Carina Nebula should have been visible before the Great Eruption, and perhaps even more so before the eruption of the XIᵀᴴ century.

We can now see why the myth said that a flower bloomed on earth. The Great Carina Nebula has been described as having "... the shape of an exotic flower ..."²⁰ This floral shape descends to the ground (sets), and at that very moment, it "dries up," which is to say in astronomical terms, the sun rises upon it, washing it out with its light and heat. By this allegorical means, the creators of this one sentence myth marked an exact moment in history, 0716 hours, January 9, 727, a date replete with celestial oddities.^21* On the supposition that the Carina Nebula is the flower, and its achronical setting is its desiccation, we must now consider how this astronomy is to be read. In short, of what is this astronomy an omen? It turns out that the achronical setting of the Carina Nebula is itself an omen, or at least a signal, of further impending celestial events. As it happens, right within the nebula there is a scattering of "stars" in the form of a meteor shower. These are the η Carinid meteor showers, first (re)discovered in 1961.^22* The meteors are white and have the interesting property of leaving no trails, giving the appearance of stars that are literally falling from the sky. The brightest are magnitude 2, with an average of 3.75 magnitude. The meteors are infrequent, in one observation totaling but 16 for the whole night. There were some years where the shower was nearly nonexistent.^23* The shower runs from January 14-27, with its peak on January 21. At first we might think that there is a gap between the achronical setting of η Carinæ and the appearance of meteors from the nebula. However, these dates are New Style (Gregorian), whereas in the conventions of astronomy, the dates given prior to 1582 are those of the Old Style (Julian) calendar. On the Julian calendar, the η Carinids occur from January 10-23, with the peak on January 17. On the Aztec calendar, this would be from 2-Cayman (Cipactli) to 2-Jaguar, with its peak on 9-Rabbit. So, the "stars" (meteors) fall from the sky out of the nebular flower, the very next day. When the flower nebula is near the ground, the meteors (appear to) fall to earth and to "hell." So the astronomy can be described in the allegorical and metaphorical language of myth in these terms — a flower (Carina Nebula), being on earth (setting), desiccation (sunrise), and being an omen (foretelling the subsequent meteor shower). The meteor shower itself is composed (seemingly) of stars, and stars are thought to be spirits. The gods who fell from the heavens were once stars, as Fray Ríos says here, where they are (mistakenly ?) identified with the Tzitzimime:

Properly, it should be called the fall of the demons, whom they say were stars; and thus there are now stars in the sky that they call by the names they had, which are the following:

[inserted by Hand 2:] Yacatecuhtli, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl, Achitumetl, Xacopancalqui, Mixcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Zontemoc.

like gods. They called them this name before they fell from heaven and ... and now they call them Tzitzimime, which means monstrous or frightening thing.²⁴

That these divine spirits scatter from the flower and tree (Milky Way) is a satisfactory model of the ostracism of the gods after having plucked a flower from the tree. The omen of the myth is sidereal, and the stars themselves foreshadow what is related in the Aztec myth of the Fall.

The myth of the ostracism from the paradise of Tamoanchan has its own internal isomorphism, since the breaking of the branches and plucking of the flowers is replicated in variant form by the breaking of the trunk of the tree itself. The Milky Way is commonly homologized to a tree, and when the Carina Nebula sets, this "tree" is bent over. This also expresses the fission that takes place between the worlds connected by this axis mundi, and the alienation of the gods (and mankind) from their origins. The combination of the nebula right on the Milky Way "tree" conjoined with the red dawn creates a fair image of profuse bleeding. So the astronomy itself, the product of interpreting the mythical language in which the omen is set, is portentous of the transgression and consequent ostracism of the gods themselves. So interpreting the myth allows us to see the astronomy which constitutes an omen by enacting a celestial allegory of the impending Aztec Götterdamerung. So the achronical setting of the Carina Nebula is an omen of the η Carinid meteor shower which takes place immediately thereafter. Yet at the same time it also models the mythical plucking of the flower on 1-Flower in a Rabbit year, and the ejection of the gods from Tamoanchan (the meteor shower). These conclusions can be summarized on a table.

So the story of the beginning of the divine order is set at the time of the initiation of the Toltec order, when the time count of the calendar itself begins. That these events took place in primordial times almost compels them to be assigned to Year One of the Toltecs' calendar count. That this is a 1-Rabbit year is more than just a happy coincidence. Although the story of the omen is a close allegory of the astronomy, the tale of the ejection from paradise is probably a myth that found its astronomy rather more than the converse.

§9. The Seduction. The general Siouan myth of the Restoration of the Red Scalp seems to come to a natural end with §21 or §22. Most of the myth (§§1-21) has no known counterpart in Mesoamerica. However, the story of the magical land and the strange powers of its resident are very prominent in the Hocąk versions, and it is this that finds parallels in Mexico. Both Hocąk versions place strong emphasis on this part of the story which has barely left a trace elsewhere in the Siouan world, and is altogether absent in the Oglala version. Here are the relevant parts of both Hocąk versions.

(100) Then said the old man, "My grandson must be hungry. So, you kettle, get some water in yourself and hang yourself over the fire," said the old man, and a kettle began to move about and did as it was told. It went after some water and hung itself on the kettle hook over the fire all by itself. "And you, plate," said he, "put some dried sweet corn in the kettle." (101) The plate began to move and put some corn in the kettle. "Now put some bear ribs in," said the old man, and it did so. The old man worked his mouth only. Whatever he asked, it was so. "Now plate," said he, "put some of the food in yourself and come before the Hare." It did so and came before the Hare. (102) The Hare was very much surprised at all this, about him ordering the things around. When the Hare was through eating, the plate went and got a watermelon and set it before the Hare. Everything did as he told them. [The old man tells Hare how he may retrieve his lost scalp, and Hare succeeds in restoring it to his head.] (125) The old man thanked him very much, saying, "For this reason I sent for you, and as you are very smart, I thought that you were the only one that could get it for me, and as I thought, you have brought it. Now grandson, as I promised you, you shall have all that I have power over and all that you saw me have, you will ever have. Whatever you wish, it will be so, but don't make anything do the same thing over four times in succession. (126) And in my tent is also a woman in the partition. She, you must never harm in any way, as she is in charge of all these things. If you care to take any other woman unto you as wife, you may do so and she will give you the power to get anyone. Now then, grandson, as I am likely to [have] trouble here on earth, therefore I am going home," said he, and went upwards making a noise as of thunder as he went. Thus he went out of sight. (127) In the night the Hare tried his power on the things that the old man had given him and they proved all as he said. So when he was ready for bed, he said, "Now I wish a nice looking woman to lie with, and a woman came that was very beautiful, but the Hare said, "I meant a beautiful woman," so the one that went there went on out and another one came in and she was more beautiful, but the Hare said, "I called for a beautiful woman," so this one went out again, (128) and another woman came in that was more beautiful than the two that had come. But again the Hare said, "I called for a beautiful woman," and the fourth time he called for another, and one came that was very beautiful, so he laid with her. He had been told not to call for anything four times in succession, but he did and the woman he was told not to harm, he was now lying with. It seems that he ought to have taken any kind of woman that came along, (129) as he had even lain with his grandmother, but he lay with the one they had forbidden him to, is why we have to work nowadays for everything we get. If he had done as he was told, we would have that power even to this day. He got a good thing for us, but he spoiled it again for us, that is why we cannot command things around to this day as the old man did. In the morning when the Hare got up, (130) the woman got up also and went in the partition. The Hare went to the partition and peeped in to see her. She was lying in the midst of white feathers, the woman that he had lain with. And nothing but her eyes were dark about her. After awhile the tent began to roar, and it got louder and louder, the Hare began to get frightened, (131) so he ran out of the tent. After awhile the roaring quit, so he came back to the tent, but it was gone, and no marks or signs of where the tent had been were there left. Then the Hare began to repent, saying, "Oh dear, when will I ever be anything [but] bad? A very good thing I had obtained for my uncles and aunts, but I have spoiled it again for them." So saying, he went home to his grandmother's.¹

... he came to a region where it seemed to be perpetual summer, and he found there a long lodge, pleasantly situated, and he peeped into it and saw a woman sitting, her back towards him and her head covered. She said, "You have come. I was expecting you. Rabbit, feel in your ear!" He did so, and pulled out something that looked like a bug; and the woman, whose name was Wakšexíwįka ("Waterspirit Woman"), told him, "That was the voice which had alarmed you," and this had guided him on the road to the long lodge. She then commenced providing a meal for him, and did it in a very singular way. She simply commanded everything to be done, and it was straightaway accomplished without labor or further agency on her part. She said, "Fire burn!" and it immediately blazed. "Kettle, go get water!" and it went and returned with it. "Kettle, sit on the fire!" and it sat there. Then she directed food to be put in the kettle and it was filled accordingly. When the food was cooked she issued the commands: "Wooden dish come forth!" and "Ladle, fill up the dish!" and "Dish, place yourself before him!" and it was all done as she directed, and she then said to him, "Eat!" While eating she called to him to notice how handy all this was, wherein everything was produced as desired at the word of command; without labor or inconvenience of any kind. Then she told him that she was without her scalp, which the Man-Eaters (the Giants), had taken from her head; that her hair upon it was red; and she "commanded" him to go at once and get her hair and scalp back for her. The Rabbit thereupon went across a lake water to an island, destroyed the Man-Eater and recovered "The Red-Haired Scalp," and the woman put it on her head again, and it was as whole as ever. She was very much rejoiced at this, and he saw that the restoration of her scalp and hair made her extremely beautiful. "Now," said she, "I shall leave you in this beautiful Summer Land, and I shall also leave with you my power to obtain or produce of the word of command everything you need or wish — you have only to order it and it will come to you the same as you have seen it given or come to me, provided, you strictly follow my injunctions and do as I bid you." She then called him to notice that the "Long Lodge" had a partition in it, which separated one end of it from the room in which they then were, and she said: "Never do you open the door, nor look into that other room, for if you do, it will cause a Curse to fall on you and all the wąkšik (people) who may come after you, and they will often suffer." She now went away. The Rabbit returned to the Cold Country and brought his Grandmother to the Summer Land, and he lived with her in the "Long Lodge" with everything at his command, without hunting for it, and without labor or exertion beyond what he chose, enjoying and pleasing himself, having no care or anxiety about his existence in anyway. One day, however, when his Grandmother was out, he took it into his head to see what was in the other room of the Lodge — his curiosity having been frequently excited before to do so, but without the opportunity of no one but himself being present. He thought that if he did so now it would not be known, and so the Curse, whatever that might be, could not follow from his intrusion upon the forbidden apartment. So he looked into it. He saw there a beautiful naked woman prostrate on the ground. And he could not resist going in unto her. Then speaking to him, she reproached him saying: "What a fool you are! — your curiosity and your actions have brought a curse and misery on yourself and on all the wąkšik (people) forever." He scarcely yet understood what this curse was, until he went to his own end of the "Long Lodge" when beginning to feel cold from the weather seeming to change, he commanded the "fire to burn!" but discovered that it would not burn as of old at his mere say so; nor were any of his other commands fulfilled. About the time his Grandmother came back, and seeing him so powerless, she knew at once he had disobeyed the direction and warning of the Red-Haired Woman, and that he had gone into the other end of the Lodge and that therefore the Curse of Labor had come upon him and all his forever. She reproached him for this, and said: "See how it is, and see what you have done. Hereafter, if you want fire or food or things that your life or your comfort require, you will have to procure them by your own exertions: you would do what was forbidden, and now you must work." Being still cold, and finding there was no other way of it, he went out and got wood and went through with all the labor of building a fire to warm himself. He now thought, that as the mischief was done anyhow, he would pay another visit to the inner apartment. He went in, but alas! the beautiful woman had disappeared.²

The basic action of this episode, sleeping with the forbidden woman and losing valuable powers, is found as far east as the Iroquois (Seneca and Cayuga).^3* It is this part of the myth that is of particular interest.

The Mesoamerican versions considered so far are lacking the primary dramatic element in the related Hocąk tale, the seduction scene. Nevertheless, such a story is indeed found in a set of fragmentary and highly evolved stories from the Nahua traditions. The picture of Ixnextli in the CTR shows her carrying a container of feces (vide, 11r), which explains yet another fragmentary version, in which her role is assumed by Ixcuina-Tlazoltéotl. In this variant, we are told that Tlazoltéotl "before the flood caused everything evil and deceitful," and "was the woman who sinned ..."⁴ Tlazoltéotl was an earth goddess,⁵ whose name derives from tlazolli, "filth."⁶ Since she was the "goddess of garbage and shameful things,"⁷ she also had the power to remove them, and in that capacity was a goddess of purification.⁸ The Hocąk Grandmother Earth, although the illicit consort of Hare, is not seen in such extreme terms. Ixnextli et alia have roles in the story that make them counterparts to the provocative woman whom the lecherous Hare foolishly tries to seduce. In the CTR in which Ixnextli is painted as weeping profusely (11r), the facing page (10v) shows the lascivious god Huehuecoyotl, "Old Coyote."⁹ He is there presented as the patron of the trecena 1-Flower. He is a typical trickster, whom Fray Ríos says is a "mischief maker, the deceived one, or he who lets himself be deceived." On the other hand, he also says that he is "the same as Adam," and goes on to say, "here on this week of one rose [1-Flower] when a rabbit year occurred they fasted [to commemorate] the fall of the first man; and thus he is called Yueyuecoyotl as well as the old wolf."¹⁰ The idea that Old Coyote is a deceiving trickster and yet at the same time plays Adam to the weeping Ixnextli's Eve, implies that Old Coyote became Ixnextli's "husband" because he had seduced her, and that his trickster nature was implicated in the fall of man (or rather the gods). As Seler puts it,

This figure [Ixnextli] is therefore identified by the interpreters with the female member of the first human pair. But that, as is self evident, is the forsaken Eve. The figure has reference to some myth or story, of which unfortunately nothing more particular is known.¹¹

So there is at least one Aztec story that features an illicit seduction by a trickster figure, just as we have in the Hocąk versions.

Whether the fast begins or ends on 1-Flower, it is clear that this is a pivotal date. This date happens to be the calendar name of an important deity, Cinteotl, whose name means "Maize." Since the calendar name of a deity commemorates his birth, we may infer that Cinteotl was born on a 1-Flower day. The Atamalcualiztli is on the one hand about the birth of Cinteotl (given its connection to his birthday, 1-Flower), and the renovation of maize; on the other hand, it commemorates the fall of the gods, precipitated by the sin of the picking of the forbidden flower. Now we discover that the tale also connects, as with the Hocąk Paradise Lost myth, with a corresponding illicit seduction, a repeated instance of the "picking" a forbidden "flower." Given what we have gleaned so far of the manifold variants of the Paradise Lost myth, we must conclude that the trickster Old Coyote left the "abandoned Eve" pregnant with Cinteotl. As an earth goddess we might expect her to give birth to the god of maize just as the earth itself gives birth to this plant from the seeds buried within it. Among the Hocągara, it is said that maize arose from the breast of Grandmother (Earth), and that this occurred when Hare founded the Medicine Rite, designed to give Light-and-Life to mankind. It's interesting to note that the Hocągara also connect a trickster to maize. It is easy to show that the myth "Trickster Gets Pregnant" is esoterically about maize. The myth is a scherzo whose humorous conclusion is that maize is a parasite that tricks human beings into serving and protecting it, as well as facilitating its reproduction, which it could never do on its own. In this story Trickster disguises himself as a woman by making a vagina out of an elk's liver. The liver of the male elk swells to enormous proportions during rutting season, which falls at the beginning of September (the Elk Whistling Moon), the time when the harvest of green corn is roasted. Trickster seduces the chief's son, and has offspring by him. One day he is being chased by a female "joking relative" and leaps over the roasting pit. As he sails over the corn pit, his false vagina falls in, revealing his true identity to the world. As a result, Trickster and his friends then must flee for their lives. Thus, Trickster's sanguine life as the pampered wife of the chief's son comes to an end, as he and his tricky confederates are ejected from this light-hearted version of Tamoanchan. For Trickster's brother Hare, the paradise is more serious and its loss is catastrophic. Its connection to maize is remote, especially since no one is said to have become pregnant from Hare's seductions. If the red haired man is to be identified with Redhorn, the red haired woman that he leaves behind recalls his wife Pretty Woman, who "had the same red hair that he did." In the second variant, the Redhorn-like character is replaced by Waterspirit Woman, who recalls the Waterspirit seductress that tricked Redhorn into falling through a trap door to the underworld where he was made captive by the Bad Waterspirits.

In the Hocąk variants, we see a story rather like the Nahuatl group, but absent is the canine trickster, replaced instead by a quasi-lagomorphic, quasi-trickster, who is in fact the high-spirited national deity of the Hocąk nation. While we can make a remote connection between the Paradise Lost myths of the Nahua and the Hocągara, the Siouan story with which we started, the one which contains this seemingly unique Hocąk episode of the seduction, would appear to have only the most remote connection to the Mesoamerican material, or for that matter, the material that we find in the Hocąk versions. Yet it turns out that it is precisely what is lacking in the Hocąk version, the seduction of a woman by a canine spirit, and its connection to maize, that we, perhaps surprisingly, find in the story that connects to the Hidatsa version of the general Siouan story. It may be recalled that Black Wolf, who plays the role of Hare, finds himself magically transported to the lodge of Big Owl, who eventually gives him the mission of seizing the powerful Striped Scalp. Black Wolf succeeds, and receives a blessing of an owl skin and a set of magical arrows. As in the other versions, he is told that he will meet a number of dangerous women, but that he is to marry only the last of these, who turns out to be Woman in Dog Den. She has seven brothers, who try to intimidate Black Wolf. They hold a dance in which their very limbs fall off, but Black Wolf is unimpressed, and produces the owl skin which magically induces terror in the brothers. They all come to a rapprochement, and Black Wolf marries Woman in Dog Den. The episode that unfolds next links this story to the Hocąk. Woman in Dog Den returns with her husband to his native village, where she makes it very clear that no one may touch her husband. A sister-in-law carelessly touches Black Wolf's robe, which greatly angers Woman in Dog Den. The people fear that she might abandon them, so they sit up for four nights watching her, but on the last night they all fall asleep, and she vanishes. Black Wolf goes after her, but she disappears into Dog Den Butte and seals up all the entrances.¹² As in the other Western Siouan versions, the hero retains the blessings that he obtained from the owl figure, but in the Hidatsa, as in the Hocąk, he loses the prized woman because of the violation of a touch taboo.

When we examine the origin story of the seven brothers of Woman of Dog Den, we discover a bridge between the Siouan story and the seduction versions of the Nahua. In another Hidatsa story, we learn that these brothers are the sons of Red Woman. Since Woman of Dog Den is the sister of these stellar brothers, she must therefore be the daughter of Red Woman. Her Crow counterpart is featured in the "Restoration of the Red-Haired Scalp," where she is the one from whom the prize is to be seized. The Hidatsa, however, have an account of how Red Woman gave birth to the brothers who became the Big Dipper, an account that proves very illuminating. The following is a short retelling of the Hidatsa version of a story found in innumerable versions under the general title, "The Dog Husband."^13*

	Red Corn

One night a man came to the chief's daughter, Red Woman, and lay with her. This went on until one night, just as he was about to leave before dawn, she threw red ochre on his white cloak. The next day she searched for the man who had the red stain, but to her horror found that the only creature that bore such a mark was a white dog. Furious, she struck him with a corn digging stick, but the dog escaped with only a bloody gash on his face. After four months, she gave birth to nine male pups. She kept them hidden and nursed them in secret. One day after a great thunderstorm, she went out to see how they fared, but they were gone, their tracks falling in behind those of a large dog. She followed the tracks to a white teepee, where they were living in human form. The children were glad to see her, but the father, who bore a scar on his face, excoriated her for her neglect. Every morning when she woke up, they had vanished, but she doggedly followed their tracks and reunited with them. This pursuit led to a hill in which they lived. This hill was Dog Den Butte. Her dog husband rejected her, so she finally decided to leave. She said goodbye to her children and returned to her village. They call the red corn by this same name, "Red Woman." Her oldest son was the famous hunter Cedar Between the Eyes, and her second son was known as "Hole Blower." It is his name that they give to a kind of flute, the same flute through which Grandmother's Grandson blew the corn and the cold.¹⁴

The Hidatsa have adapted the Dog Husband story to give an account of the origin of the brothers who later became the stars of the Big Dipper. The story has also been connected to maize: she beats the dog with a corn digging stick, her second son was named after the flute whence corn was blown, and her name denotes the red corn. Here it is the one who sinned with the dog who is a personification of maize, not the offspring of their union, as with Cinteotl. Like Cinteotl, though, the brothers are said elsewhere to have become stars (of the Big Dipper, as do their Crow cognates). The Hocąk Hare, playing the role of the canines in other stories, attempts to seduce the red (haired) woman, but in touching her violates a taboo set out by his benefactor, and loses both the woman and the blessings attached to her. The same fate befalls the bearer of the canine name "Black Wolf," who because another woman touched him, the Woman of Dog Den vanished, and along with her all the blessings which her supernatural nature would have bestowed his tribe. So by this bridge, the Hocąk last episode to the "Restoration of the Red-Haired Scalp" finds a match in this episode of its Hidatsa counterpart. It is the Hidatsa version that carries the canine and maize connections that are lacking in the Hocąk. This gives us a perspective on the many fragmentary versions of the seduction among the Nahua, where the dog figure (Old Coyote) seduces the woman, then leaves her to bear her stellar offspring. Although Ixnextli does not have a litter of dogs, much of the Nahuatl story otherwise looks like an evolved version of the Dog Husband myth. As we are about to see more fully, the dog-headed Xolotl (Evening Star) of the Nahua may also have been a variant mate to Ixnextli, and therefore the father of Maize.

§10. Venus, 1-Flower, and 5-Monkey. Fray Ríos gives us more information concerning the events centered around 1-Flower:

... And in memory of that idleness that they lost, they fasted every ... years every eight years [to commemorate] this fall, and their fast was only bread and water; and they fasted eight days before this one rose [1-Flower] arrived; and when it occurred they adorned themselves in order to celebrate it. They say that all the days with five in this calendar refer to this fall, for on such a day she sinned.¹

This statement leads to some confusion, no doubt partly because it is forced into a "sin" model understood in terms of the Hebrew myth of Eve. Another point of confusion arises from simple subtraction (inclusive or exclusive). They fasted eight days before 1-Flower, and this seems to be connected with the final statement that days beginning with the coefficient 5 commemorate the day of the Fall. Unfortunately, the fast does not seem to have begun on the day with the coefficient of 5, which in this case would be 5-Monkey. The eight days before 1-Flower are: 6-Grass, 7-Reed, 8-Jaguar, 9-Eagle, 10-Vulture, 11-Motion, 12-Flint, and 13-Rain. So we must conclude that although the sin took place on 5-Monkey, no fast was held on that day. Brother Ríos also said, "... here on this week of one rose [1-Flower] when a rabbit year occurred they fasted [to commemorate] the fall of the first man."² This statement contradicts what was said above, namely that Ixnextli sinned eight days prior, which would be 5-Monkey, and that on the next day they began their fast. The eight days prior to 1-Flower belong to the trecena ("week") of 1-Deer. Clearly, a good measure of confusion has entered in among the several fragmentary versions of this tale known to Fray Ríos. At the very least, therefore, the story of Ixnextli represents another version of the tale which confuses the exact role of the 1-Flower day that it was to commemorate.

Let us now examine the astronomy of this 5-Monkey day in the primordial year of 1-Rabbit. It belonged to the trecena of 1-Deer, which began on 27 December 726. On this date the moon was with the earth and had not risen. When it did rise, it came up in the west where Venus, as Evening Star, was declining day by day towards the horizon. They would normally just pass one another, but a reconstruction of the sky shows that they crossed paths on the day 4-Dog. In the set of illustrations below, the sky in Tula is reconstructed for the first five days of the trecena of 1-Deer, at sunset, with the horizon indicated by a purple line.

12/27/726 = 1-Deer of 1-Rabbit	12/28/726 = 2-Rabbit	12/29/726 = 3-Water	12/30/726 = 4-Dog	12/31/726 = 5-Monkey
Starry Night Software

The Moon rises from the earth to "mate" with the Evening Star. This might seem irrelevant given that the goddesses associated with the myth are Earth deities; but the Earth goddesses often manifest themselves as the Moon.³ Xochiquetzal, for instance, is usually taken to be the goddess of the young (crescent) moon.⁴ Heyden says of Itzpapalotl,

She is an invocation of the Mother Goddess, who is also known by other names (Tlazoltéotl, Toci, Tonan, Coatlicue, Teteo Inanna, Cihuacóatl-Quilaztli); she represents the Earth and the Moon.⁵

The consideration of the mother goddess (with the name of Tlazoltéotl) as a lunar goddess is seen in her nose ring [yacametztli]^5.1 in the form of a crescent moon and in the lunar ornaments of her attire. These crescent moons are also characteristic of the deities of pulque, which, like the mother goddess, are spirits of fertility and the Earth. The pulque is represented by the rabbit in the moon. In the Codex Borgia Tlazoltéotl is seen accompanied by the Moon.⁶

In the Codex Borgia, it is Itzpapalotl who stands facing the rabbit in the moon.⁷ Milbrath argues that Itzpapalotl is the earth-moon, the moon that lies on the earth in conjunction with the sun,⁸ recalling the dark, round, target shield that she carries in the Mapa (⤊). Her bisexuality is characteristic of the whole set of earth-moon goddesses.⁹ Her eagle attributes may owe to her intimate association with the sun (portrayed as an eagle) at conjunction. Even the itzpapalotl moth, as pyrotropic insect, satisfies the imagery of solar conjunction.¹⁰ So the appearance of the Evening Star meeting up with the Moon and penetrating her can well be taken as a mating of the star with any of the Earth goddess who appear in our Paradise Lost myths. The Evening Star is Xolotl, whose form is that of a dog, so it is of interest that this mating takes place on 4-Dog. On the whole, Xolotl is not the best candidate for the father of Morning Star, since he has a role as that star's twin and nagua. This made it attractive to replace him by another canine of more libertine propensities.^11* Nevertheless, since any rise of Morning Star directly follows inferior conjunction, it is preceded eight days prior by the conjunction of Evening Star with the sun. So Evening Star is metaphorically the "father" of Morning Star (Cinteotl), just as maize (cinteotl) has the earth for its mother. A hymn, apparently sung in connection with the Atamalcualiztli,¹² sets out an obscure role for Xolotl in connection with Cinteotl's birth.

Still other versions make Pilzintecuhtli (the young Sun, Mercury ?) the father of Cinteotl, but the trecena beginning 1-Flower is, in any case, governed by Old Coyote. The verses suggest some role for the dog-headed Xolotl, but it is obscure at best. Brundage understands the hymn in terms that recall the Hades/Persephone myth:

Mention is made of the "flowering tree" in Tamoanchan that the goddess desecrated, thus giving rise to her expulsion into the underworld. There can be no doubt that the whole scenario is placed in the underworld for it is identified as the place where "the old Xolotl" is playing his crucial game of tlachtli in the enchanted ball court. In myth Xolotl is the psychopomp, the evening star, and the eternal enemy, whereas his adversary in the ball game is the stripling sun Piltzintli (equally the young corn) who is valiantly struggling to be born. Victory in the game will allow him to rise over the land, initiating both the new day and the new corn.¹⁴

This suggests to Brundage that Xolotl, now in the form of Quetzalcoatl, has seized and impregnated Tonan-Xochiquetzal in the underworld, "for she subsequently bears her son on the day One Flower, thereby giving him his name. This is of course Cinteotl, the god of corn."¹⁵ In the astronomy of 727 leading up to 5-Monkey, we see Venus eclipsed by the moon (penetration-mating), then descending into the underworld to encounter the sun (Pilzintecuhtli ?). On 1-Flower, Xolotl is still in this ball court.

Why would 5-Monkey be the day of sin? The mating took place on 4-Dog, as is appropriate to the canine nature of the transgressor, but is this the sin? It is really the abandonment of Ixnextli (Seler's "forsaken Eve") that is the sin and transgression, much like the destructive plucking of the flower from the tree of Tamoanchan. Therefore, it is 5-Monkey that marks the sin, as the canine Evening Star deserts his lover, the Moon. When it comes to a day suitable to express sin, 5-Monkey is ideal. The coefficient of 5-Monkey represents the number of excess, and all days having five as a coefficient are ruled over by Tlazoltéotl, the goddess of filth and purification, who has been identified in some variants as the culprit.¹⁶ The animal for whom the day was named is appropriate to symbolize the foolishness of the illicit seduction. The monkey days are governed by the god Xochilpili, "Flower Prince,"¹⁷ a god of art, flowers, and generally matters of sensual indulgence. In the allied form Five Flower, he is one of the Ahuiateteo.¹⁸ The Ahuiateteo were gods of excess, five in number, each of whom had a calendar name with five as its prefix: Five Lizard (Macuil-Cuetzpalin), Five Rabbit (Macuil-Tochtli), Five Grass (Macuil-Malinalli), Five Vulture (Macuil-Cozcacuahtli), and Five Flower (Macuil-Xochitl). They derive their names from the five trecenas of the south, 1-Lizard, 1-Rabbit, 1-Grass, 1-Vulture, and 1-Flower. This gives Five Flower a special relationship to the day 1-Flower, the day designated to commemorate the Fall. The Five Ahuiateteo are matched with the five Cihuateteo, the demonic goddesses led by Itzpapalotl.¹⁹ The fasting period represents the last eight days of the trecena 1-Deer, which is governed by one of the Cihuateteo.²⁰ The Lord of the Night for this 5-Monkey is Cinteotl, the Maize God. Graulich argues that the birth of Cinteotl is the consequence of the seduction that led to the Fall.²¹ Therefore, all things considered, the day 5-Monkey was an ideal candidate for the day on which the sin was to have taken place. After the sin, the Venusian number of days are devoted to repentance, bringing us to the real commemorative day of 1-Flower.

Inasmuch as Cinteotl is One Flower we are compelled to say that he was born on a 1-Flower day. Graulich suggests that Cinteotl's birth is also that of his alloform Morning Star,^22* so he naturally identifies Cinteotl with the portentous flower of the east. The omen myth is set in La Huasteca, which is east of the Nahua lands, and where Morning Star could be seen to rise. However, as we have shown, Morning Star does not rise on a 1-Flower day of a 1-Rabbit year. So what are we to make of this reference to La Huasteca? More to the point, what are we to make of Ríos' expression, «... en las provinçias de la Guaxteca aparecia en la sierra una rosa que se dezia deste nombre muy preciado»?²³Graulich translates it as, "... in the Huaxteca there appeared in the mountains a rose bearing this name 'most precious'."^24* Graulich thinks that Muy Preciado is the name itself, and believes that it translates Cinteotl's byname, Tlacopili.²⁵ On the other hand, Seler does not translate Tlaco-pili as "(Most) Precious Lord," but as "Noble Lord," a name that he associates with Xochipilli, the god of flowers.²⁶ Keber translates Ríos' phrase as, "... in the provinces of the Huaxteca a rose appeared in the mountains, which was called by this very precious name."²⁷ The Keber translation prompts the question, "What 'precious name'?" Presumably, it would be "Flower," elliptic for "One Flower," the calendar name of Cinteotl. It is hard to see what else could serve as such a "precious name."^28* However, the flower is an omen (rather than that of which it is a prognosticator), and the flower itself, since it sprang up on the day 1-Flower may be called by that name. Since Cinteotl bears this name, the flower should be identical with this god, and the aborted life of Cinteotl must be an omen of something else as well. Since, ex hypothesi, the prognosticating flower is the Carina Nebula, from the standpoint of someone standing inside La Huasteca, the flower would be sitting on some mountain on the horizon at an azimuth from the viewer of about 212° at sunrise of 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit (9 January 727). This is SSW from part of the mountainous area of La Huasteca. Therefore, the azimuth of 212°, from some spot in the mountains of that land, points directly to Tula. This makes the sacred event not about the Huaxtecs, but about the Toltecs. The myth of Cinteotl is set at the beginning of time, and if its origin is as suggested by the astronomy of 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit, this is the primordial time of the Toltecs. In the end, however, the astronomy might prove to be completely irrelevant, since as we have noted already, Tamoanchan was said to have been in La Huasteca. So saying that the flower appeared in that province may only be an elliptic way of saying that it appeared in Tamoanchan.

It is at least possible that the 1-Flower birth date of Cinteotl may have already been inherited by the Toltecs when they mapped out their calendrical origin point of 726/727. However, it was not inherited from either the tradition founded on Mʰ III (House) or V (Flint) because the 1-Flower date belongs to the Rabbit Apparition, Mʰ I. It is very much more likely that the original 1-Flower of 1-Rabbit day (from the Toltec point of view) contains the answer. We would be forced to conclude, given these assumptions, that Cinteotl was first born as the floral Carina Nebula, and then died immediately. That a maize plant, even a prodigy, should be scorched to death by the sun is to be expected on a date like 9 January, since this falls in the middle of the dry season, when no one attempts to cultivate maize (see note⁸). Since we have been able to deduce that Cinteotl in the context of the Atamalcualiztli rites has some identity with Morning Star, we should then anticipate his rebirth as that star. This brings us to yet another interesting coincidence. If inferior conjunction generally lasts eight days from the disappearance of Evening Star to the visibility of Morning Star in the sky, then the mid-point should be the situation of Venus on the horizon at sunrise. Five days after this event, on the average, Morning Star should be visible. Morning Star rises with the sun on 17 January 727, which is 9-Rabbit, with about 5° angular separation. By the fifth day, it had no greater separation, but it rose at 06:42:17, the sun following at 07:16:51, over a half hour later. The horizon should have shaded the sun's light enough for Venus to be visible sometime after it crossed the horizon. This predicted visibility occurred on 22 January 727, which was the day 1-Reed. This day, Ce Acatl, gives us the calendar name of Quetzalcoatl, who as Morning Star, will have been born on a 1-Reed day. This is all the more interesting, since Ríos says that the Fall was commemorated during the "week" (trecena) of 1-Flower, which begins with the day of the same name, and ends on 1-Reed, the name day of the next trecena. So the day 1-Reed represents a new beginning, a renaissance aptly marked by the birth of Morning Star on its byname day.

It may be recalled (⤊) that the day after the 1-Flower event, the skies erupt in a meteor shower emanating from the very Carina Nebula whose achronical setting is the conjectured astronomical referent of the allegorical omen of the desiccated flower. As it happens, again perhaps an interesting coincidence, the show stops on 23 January 727, the day after 1-Reed. So the celestial fireworks begin one day after 1-Flower and end one day after 1-Reed. This would be of no particular significance were it not for a parallel myth adduced by Graulich.²⁹ He shows that the primary myth about the death of Quetzalcoatl is isomorphic to the myth of the seduction of Cinteotl's mother, and the presumed birth of that god as Morning Star. Quetzalcoatl is tricked into imbibing too much of the intoxicating pulque, and in his drunkenness seduces his own sister. In shame, he abandons Tula and makes a long pilgrimage to a quasi-mythical land, where he resolves to die.

Now, this year, 1-Reed, is when he got to the ocean, the seashore, as is told and related. ... And as soon as he was dressed, he set himself on fire and cremated himself. And so the place where Quetzalcoatl was cremated is named Tlatlayan [Place of Burning]. And they say as he burned, his ashes arose, and what appeared and what they saw were all the precious birds rising into the sky. ... And as soon as his ashes had been consumed, they saw the heart of a quetzal rising upward. And so they knew he had gone to the sky, had entered the sky. The old people said he was changed into the star that appears at dawn. Therefore, they say it came forth when Quetzalcoatl died, and they called him "Lord of the Dawn."³⁰

"Lord of the Dawn" is the title given to Morning Star. There are several points of similarity between this Morning Star myth and that of the Seduction Myth, itself also a story about Morning Star. It is convenient to tabulate these isomorphisms.

It is interesting that Quetzalcoatl dies in the same year that gave him his calendar name, 1-Reed. This variant has been moved to a different time, according to the Annals, to the year 896.^31* However, what we have hypothesized about the Cinteotl variant suggests that this time frame was readapted from an earlier scheme. In the astronomy of the Toltec Year One, it seems that 1-Reed is the day on which Morning Star emerges from the fire (of the sun). On that day, the Carinid meteor shower radiates not far distant, but ceases after the "heart of the quetzal" rises into the sky above the sun. If it is true that the astronomy of 1-Flower through 1-Reed in the year 1-Rabbit was the inspiration, then we have two variant stories that once allegorically expressed the same fundamental astronomical meaning. It is this astronomy that our conjecture suggests to be the source of their isomorphism. As in many other myths in Mesoamerica, we have one god who at least temporarily becomes another. Just like Quetzalcoatl himself, Cinteotl is reborn as Morning Star on the day 1-Reed. This is the first 1-Reed day in history, and it serves well to mark the first rise of Morning Star in history (its birth), and to give that star (as personified by Quetzalcoatl) the name by which it is most commonly known.^32* That the Morning Star was not born on 1-Flower of any 1-Rabbit year, suggests that Cinteotl was called "One Flower" based on an additional identity that he had, one which may have been lost in time. From the impregnation of the goddess on 5-Monkey, nine days elapsed to 1-Flower, representing the nine months of pregnancy. But the aborted birth of Cinteotl is itself an omen not only of the Fall, but of the birth of Morning Star, who emerges on or about 1-Reed. His identity with this star shows that he, like all things that grow from seeds or eggs, was twice born.

§11. A Coda of Beginnings. It can be seen with the complexity and even the chaos that reigns among the innumerable fragmentary versions of the Paradise Lost myth, that it is difficult to come to any uncontroversial conclusions. The astronomy on which the Paradise Lost story is partly founded literally lies beyond the horizon of the Hocągara. Therefore, the omen story is missing altogether, and the tree and flower of Tamoanchan have no counterpart among them. Nevertheless, we do seem to have a myth of the seduction of a special woman the consequences of which are ejection from a paradise in which all was leisure. This leisure was lost by everyone forever. This bears a fundamental resemblance to the Hocąk version in particular, a version which appears to be an "add on" to the basic Siouan story, which itself, as a whole, has no known Mesoamerican cognates. We can see that both the Mexican and the Hocąk tales, as diverse as they are otherwise, share the same bilateral symmetry.

The correlations of §2 align Ixnextli, Waterspirit Woman, and the flower, as the (living) beings of beauty whose possession is prohibited by the owner of this paradise. However, the correlations may be more specific. Graulich says,

... I believe that the picking or eating of a blossom is a metaphor for copulation. Molina translates xochiuia (xochitl: blossom) as "to enrapture or seduce a woman: to take her somewhere else, or to bewitch her." In one myth, the blossoms are born of Xochiquetzal's genitals.¹

The parallel of the Hare myth reinforces the sexual aspect of the core myth. The floral tree of Tamoanchan can be seen as a botanical alloform of the Supreme Couple, its own sex organs exemplifying the very sexual duality that is their most striking feature. In the Mexican stories, and in the Hare story (§§2, 4), the plucking (P) of the beautiful object (B) implies the loss of the powers of automation and the amenities (A) of paradise (p):

(x)(∃y)((xPy & By) ⊃ ~xAp)

The Hocąk counterpart of the Supreme Couple in this context is the master of the land of summer who had summoned Hare. The singular and beautiful feature of the man or woman who is native to that paradise is their red hair. This, rather like the flower of the forbidden tree, has been "plucked." In a course of events that moves inversely, Hare restores the beautiful object that has been plucked from the sacred being. Just as the cause is a contrary state of affairs, so the effect is also reversed: reunification of the duality causes Hare to receive as a gift the amenities of the land and its owner.

(x)(∃y)((xP´y & By) ⊃ xAp)

However, just as in the deep structure of the Mexican case, when Hare himself "plucks" the thing of beauty (the woman), and unites himself to her in intercourse (thus becoming like a flower with its dual sexual organs thus united), he then loses the power he had obtained by the opposite process. We may wonder in this connection whether the woman seduced by Hare was a virgin, as the context seems to suggest, just as we may entertain the same thought about the status of Ixnextli. De-flora-tion is mimicked by the Tree of Tamoanchan, which is split and bleeds once its flower has been picked. The consequences are the same for both transgressions: to lose the automation presupposed in their complete freedom from all labor. This too is reproduced in the severing of the Tree, inasmuch as trees connect the Above world with the Below world of earth. What characterizes the Above world is that everything that takes place in the sky is without apparent labor — the sun, moon and stars always stay their appointed courses automatically, without the slightest signs of independent beings propelling them along. So automation is a notable feature of the Above world, and when the Below world is severed from it — symbolized several times by the breaking of the tree, the ejection from paradise (or vice-versa in the Hocąk case), or the vanishing of the creator from view — the lower world becomes disconnected from the characteristic power of the upper world, automation. Hare's loss of the power of automation is just a variant of Ixnextli's inability to see the sky: both are forms of severance from the higher world.

As we have seen, the Seduction Variant of the Paradise Lost myth has a Hocąk counterpart in the story known as "Trickster Gets Pregnant." There the sexual roles are reversed. Unlike the story in which Hare is the protagonist, the Trickster tale in its very essence is about the Maize Spirit. There the role of this spirit, as it is in Mexico, is played by a male. Among the Hocągara, the status of Xolotl and Quetzalcoatl are reversed: it is Evening Star (Bluehorn, Blue/Green Man) who, as one of the Good Spirits, is the protagonist, and Morning Star who is his twin antagonist. As was said in "Bluehorn,"

Another story which is almost certainly about Bluehorn features as its protagonist a person known as Wąkcoga, "Green (or Blue) Man." It begins as a variant of "The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head," as the Green Man and his sister, living together alone, expect the brother's doppelgänger to arrive to challenge him. The outcome of the duel is altogether different. The doppelgänger is killed and buried underneath the fire. The brother takes his place and visits the slain man's family. There he eventually passes for the man. While he is there, he marries, but shortly thereafter his wife is abducted. He discovers that she and others are held in captivity by the very man he had killed, and they are guarded by broken backed people (buffalo theme). With the help of Hare, Trickster, Redhorn, and others, he defeats his mirror image. The man is haughty nevertheless, and taunts him that it doesn't matter, since he cannot be killed. The Green Man then produces the man's external heart, which he had acquired on his journey there, and it is raked apart by Turtle, causing the man to disintegrate into a swarm of crickets. It is revealed that the Green Man is the chief of the Black Stone Spirits, and presides over the pit used to cook corn. His sister was the corn silk.²

It is Morning Star who is Lord of Crickets. In "The Green Man," we are told, "It is for this reason that crickets weep during Watajoxhiwira, the Moon of Roasted Ears, inasmuch as they were once in charge of the green things of the earth, and they announce when the greens are ripe."³ This is an interesting revelation: just like Cinteotl-as-Venus, Cricket (Morning Star) was once in charge of maize, and all other green things.

Ixnextli

The Mexican material also has an unexpected resonance in the comic mythology of the Hocągara. In "Trickster Gets Pregnant," Trickster and three of his friends had their own domestic paradise which they had secured by an extraordinary fraud. Trickster made a vulva out of a bull elk's liver, an organ which swells enormously and turns yellow during the rut. This occurs at just the time that maize is harvested and roasted (the Elk Whistling Moon of September). Trickster not only secured a place on "easy street" by marrying the chief's son, but also had children by him. By now his artificial vulva had become as ripe as the corn. In fact it had become "very rotten" (teeKe Kitti — t’ékjį). When one of his joking relatives was chasing him around the camp, he made a great leap over the roasting pit, then full of newly harvested corn. As he sailed over it, his rotten vulva fell into the pit, a denouement that led to his flight from his own domestic paradise. By landing in the corn pit, the vulva symbolically becomes one with the cooking maize over which Evening Star presides. The corn is at once a sex organ, the cob being a container of seed from which new maize could be generated, and an excrement, since if left unharvested, it would fall rotten to the ground. The maize plant itself, as all seeding plants, will at some point excrete its "vulva" full of seeds, the rotten part being the fertilizer out of which the seeds draw their nourishment to sprout. Trickster, as the Corn Spirit, and the mother of maize, does the same. It is this same take on plant reproduction that we see in the Seduction Episode from Mexico. The CTR shows the weeping Ixnextli holding a kylix of excrement. In the case of maize and many other plants, the seeds — the excrement of the plant — are the basic human food staple. So plant excrement is human food; and, as it happens, human excrement is food to plants. The painting from CTR can be understood in these terms, just as can the myth of Trickster's excreted vulva: the mother of maize must offer excrement to her offspring just as a human mother offers milk to hers. This may be part of the reason why Tlazoltéotl, the goddess of filth and excrement, constitutes the underlying identity of Ixnextli, and takes her place explicitly in other versions of the myth.^4* The pollution offered by Tlazoltéotl is nourishment to Cinteotl. So it is said that Grandmother Earth presented to Hare the first maize plant growing out of her breast: the humus of the earth is the milk of the maize plant. Both the Mexicans and the Hocągara appreciate the relativity of pollution.

These resonances between Mexico and what to them was the far north, may be "background noise" from similar subject matters treated with the same logic; but we should not exclude further Mexican influences on the Hocągara via such centers as Cahokia. Since a trace of the story exists among the linguistically allied Ioway as well, its addition to the basic Siouan tale of Paradise Lost was of some antiquity, but not so great an antiquity that it is found in other Siouan cognates of the same complete story. The episode of the lost paradise therefore seems a good candidate for a myth that was introduced out of Cahokia or some other far northern Mexican outpost, with the point of contact being with the ancestors of the members of the present Hocąk and Chiwere language groups.