This is my 700th article on the VO site. I thought, let it be devoted to a topic that, in general, is interesting to everyone, namely, omens. But not ours, of course, which Pavel Globa interprets to us, but those that were once upon a time, but were, and people, just like today, paid attention to them …
“If the reader asks:“What have you done, all these conquistadors, in the New World?” I will answer like this. First of all, we introduced Christianity here, freeing the country from the previous horrors: it is enough to point out that in Meshiko alone at least 2,500 people were sacrificed annually! Here's what we changed! In connection with this, we have altered our customs and our whole life."
((Bernal Diaz del Castillo. The true story of the conquest of New Spain. M.: Forum, 2000, p. 319)
Fragment of the Bourbon Codex with signatures in Spanish, page 11. In the upper left corner - the goddess Tlasolteotl. Cycle days are shown at the bottom of the page and in the column to the right. The entire Bourbon Codex can be viewed on the website of the National Assembly of France, in the library of which it is kept. The original is at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. There is also a Russian-language edition of it, made in Ukraine.
So, what are these such ominous omens that they undermined the very spirit of the Aztec people and deprived them of the will to victory, and pointed to the arrival of aliens from across the sea, as a punishment of the gods? How do we know about them and what do we know about them?
First of all, let's name the source: these are the works of Christian missionaries who came to the New World after the conquistadors.
The first who reported about the "signs" that took place on the eve of the invasion was a certain fri Toribio de Benavente, nicknamed Motolinia. In his "Notes" ("Memorials"), created between 1531-1543, chapter 55, he told about the strange phenomena that took place several years before the appearance of Cortez.
One of the pages of the Telleriano-Remensis Codex depicting the god Thype Totek, dressed in a shirt made of human skin.
First of all, people saw in the sky the figures of warriors in unusual costumes, fighting with each other. Then an "angel" appeared to the captive who was to be sacrificed, encouraged him and promised that these sacrifices would end very soon, since those who would have to rule this land were already close. Then at night, on the eastern side of the sky, people saw a certain glow, and then - a column of smoke and flames.
Bernardino de Sahagun - the largest expert on the culture of the Aztecs, who worked hard to preserve it, compiled a whole list of signs that spoke of the coming of Cortez and his people. In the first edition of his so-called Madrid Codices (1561-1565) or General History of Things in New Spain, he described a number of miracles that foreshadowed the seizure of the Aztec empire by aliens. Of course, for us all this looks, to put it mildly, strange, but the people of that time had a different psychology. De Sahagun wrote that the arrival of the Europeans was predicted … by the ceiling beam. Then the cliffs and hills seemed to crumble to dust, which was clearly "not good." And most importantly, the deceased and already buried woman seemed to come to the ruler of the Aztecs Montezuma (Motekuhsome) and told him that the power of the rulers of Mexico City would end with him, since those destined to enslave this land are on their way!
Then, in his 12th book, The Conquest of New Spain, a list of eight more such signs was given.
The first sign was the radiance that appeared in the east between 1508 and 1510 (or 1511), which "like dawn" illuminated everything around. Moreover, the top of this fiery "pyramid" reached the very "middle of the sky."
One of the types of sacrifices: the tongue is pierced with something sharp and the blood from it is sacrificed! Telleriano-Remensis Codex.
Then there was a fire in the temple of the god Huitzilopochtli; then lightning without thunder struck the temple of the fire god Shiutekutli, and he caught fire. The fourth sign of disaster was a comet with three tails, which appeared either during the day or at night, and moved across the sky towards the east, scattering sparks in all directions. For the fifth sign, the Aztecs considered an unexpected rise in the level of Lake Texcoco, which flooded part of Tenochtitlan. Well, and then the real miracles began. The goddess Ciucoatl suddenly began to wander around the city and lament: "My children, I leave you," and they brought a bird that looked like a crane to Emperor Montezuma, but for some reason had a mirror on its head. Then this bird disappeared no one knows where, but a new miracle was brought to him: freaks with two heads, who also seemed to disappear in the most magical way.
Telleriano-Remensis Codex, p. 177. Captives captured …
It is clear that Sahagun himself did not invent any of this, but simply wrote down what the old Indians from Tlatelolco, which was the satellite city of Tenochtitlan, told him. But the Dominican Diego Duran, who also collected Indian folklore, received information from a descendant of the ruling house of the city of Texcoco, with whom the Aztecs had a very difficult relationship. Therefore, in his "History of the Indies of New Spain" (1572-1581), the prophecies are named completely different.
Telleriano-Remensis Codex, p. 185. In the year 11 Reed 1399 (this figure is Spanish) Colhuacan is ravaged.
In Duran's book, the "bad" prophecies begin with a description of the claims of Nesahualpilli, ruler of Texcoco, who died in 1515. He had the fame of a sage and a magician, although the city of Texcoco, once an equal partner of Tenochtitlan, was no longer playing its former role by the time of his death. So he told Montezuma about future troubles, most likely not without gloating:
"You should know - in a few years our cities will be destroyed and plundered, we ourselves and our sons will be killed, and our vassals will be humiliated and enslaved."
Telleriano-Remensis Codex, p. 197. Epidemic of bloody vomiting, 1450-1454
Realizing that Montezuma would not like such a prophecy and he would begin to doubt it, Nezahualpilli said that he would be defeated (more than once) if he went to war against the Tlaxcaltecs, and then signs would appear in the sky, indicating the death of his state.
Telleriano-Remensis Codex, p. 201. there was an earthquake in the Year of Seven (1460 by European accounts).
Naturally, Montezuma decided to check whether this was so and immediately began a war with the city of Tlaxcala. But, as Nezahualpilli predicted, his army was defeated, and soon a strange glow appeared on the eastern horizon, a comet appeared and a solar eclipse occurred. Nezahualpilli himself said that the last years of his life should be spent in peace and tranquility, and stopped all wars with the neighboring tribes.
And then suddenly a stone spoke, intended either for human sacrifices, or for the sculpture of Montezuma, and told the Aztecs that the power of their ruler would soon come to an end, and he himself would be punished for pride, the desire to achieve what was revered as a god. In support of its innocence, this prophetic stone allowed itself to be carried only to the middle of the dam leading to Tenochtitlan, that is, the very place where Cortez and Montezuma met later, where it fell into the water and drowned.
Telleriano-Remensis Codex, p. 205. The year 1465 is the beginning of human sacrifice.
Since the number of people who reported to the emperor about their prophetic dreams that promised him troubles began to grow well, just rapidly, the emperor ordered all such dreamers who predict troubles to be brought to him, and after listening, he imprisoned them, where he starved them to death. The result of this was that now few people in the empire dared to tell anyone about their dreams.
The most complete list of signs predicting the collapse of the Montezuma empire is contained in the 21-volume work "Indian Monarchy" (1591 - 1611) by the head of the Franciscan mission in New Spain, Juan de Torquemada (Torquemada). He studied the works of his predecessors-missionaries, studied the surviving pre-Hispanic manuscripts of the Indians, and questioned the descendants of the rulers of Tlaxcala and Texcoco. At the same time, he did not limit himself to rewriting old books, but also added new and vivid details to the narrative. So, Sahagun's message about the revived deceased, he turned into a real story of the afterlife wanderings of the sister of Montezuma Papancin, who met a winged youth in the next world, who informed her that the arrival of aliens was coming, which would bring her people true faith, and everyone who did not know it were doomed to death throes. Moreover, it seems that this Papantsin did not die in the end, but lived, having made her prophecy, for another 21 years and was the first woman in Tlatelolco to receive holy baptism.
Telleriano-Remensis Codex, p. 229. In the year 3 Reed (1495) there was an eclipse of the Sun.
Torquemada, apparently, had a good imagination and wrote a lot, and then his works were copied many times by other missionaries and Spanish chroniclers, who considered it all true, because "he was there." Over time, however, namely already in the 17th century. in the writings of a number of Spaniards, for example, in the "General history of the exploits of the Castilians on the islands and the continent of the Sea-Ocean" (1601-1615) by Antonio Herrera and Tordesillas, new plots appeared. For example, the story of sorcerers who, being invited to the palace to Montezuma, cut off their arms and legs for his amusement and engrafted them back. But, being distrustful by nature, the emperor ordered to boil their limbs in boiling water, after which they, of course, did not grow back, and then the offended sorcerers predicted the death of his kingdom to Montezuma, and the water in the lake before that would turn into blood. The emperor looked and yes - the water became blood, and the hands and feet of the unfortunate sorcerers floated in it. It is interesting that this plot has parallels with the epic of the Maya-Quiche Indians "Popol-Vuh", where there is also a trick with cutting off and augmenting arms and legs.
The author of another story, Cervantes Salazar, simply wrote that one old priest of the god of war Huitzilopochtli, before his death, predicted the appearance of white people who would free the Indians from the yoke of the priests and turn them on the path of true faith. That is, we can say that all these legends were … simply invented by the Spaniards in order to show that the death of the Indian kingdom was a foregone conclusion and that the Spaniards committed the act simply pleasing to God. And everything would be very simple if only the Spaniards wrote the stories about the disastrous signs.
However, the chronicles of Mexico's pre-Hispanic history were not written solely by missionaries. They were written by both Indians and mestizos, and not just anyone, but the descendants of the rulers of cities such as Texcoco and Tlaxcala. Undoubtedly, they knew the ancient traditions of their homeland. And some of them probably have ancient manuscripts. Despite this, their writings are strikingly reminiscent of the chronicles of missionaries. However, their descriptions of the signs coincide in many respects with the Spanish. Again, the simplest reason was that the Indian "nobility" from childhood studied at the Catholic College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, where young Indians were not only forced to cram Latin, but also gave them the beginnings of a medieval university education: that is, they studied the works of the church fathers and even … ancient philosophers. And their missionary teachers, too, were not always stupid dogmatists, but collected Mexican antiquities and often resorted to the services of their students. That is, speaking in the language of modernity, “the circle of these people was narrow,” therefore, information flows of similar content were spread among them, and opinions about them, of course, were also similar.
Here it is - this glow, remembered by everyone, in the sky in the East, which lasted about 40 days. P. 239.
Nevertheless, almost all chroniclers, both “their own” and the Spanish, mention the mysterious “night light” in the east, which they describe as either “shining in the form of a cloud” or “a pyramid with tongues of flame”. In addition, the so-called codes are documents relating to the pre-Hispanic tradition of transmitting information, copies of ancient "books" of a historical and ritual nature made during the colonial period, written in pictographic (drawing) writing, often with notes explaining the drawings in Aztec or European languages. The most famous of these is the Telleriano-Remensis Codex, compiled in the 1960s. XVI century And here it also speaks of an unusual radiance in the east, which was perceived by the Indians as a signal of the return of Quetzalcoatl:
“They say … that it was very large and very bright, and that it was located on the east side, and that came out of the earth and reached heaven … This was one of the miracles that they saw before the Christians came, and they thought it was Quetzalcoatl they were expecting."
An unusual occurrence took place in 1509. In addition, other catastrophic phenomena are named in the code: eclipses of the Sun, earthquakes, snowfalls, as well as "miracles": when in 1512, suddenly "stones began to smoke," so that "the smoke reached the heavens," and then birds without entrails appeared, hard as bone!
We have also heard comments on a number of later lost Aztec documents written in European languages. So, in the "History of Mexicans from their drawings", written in the 40s. XVI century, two signs from the list of Sahagun are also mentioned: about a fire in the temple and … again, about a radiance in the sky. His "night light" dates from 1511.
So that in 1508 and 1511. some unusual astronomical phenomenon was indeed observed in the sky in Mexico, many documents, both Indian and Spanish, confirm. For example, about the mysterious "light from the east" are found in the memoirs of a soldier of the army of Cortez Bernal Diaz del Castilio: like a wheel of a carriage, and next to it from the side of sunrise was visible another sign in the form of a long ray that connected with the scarlet one, and Montezuma … ordered to call the priests and soothsayers so that they would look at him and find out what kind of thing it was, before never seen and unheard of, and the priests asked for his meaning as an idol [Huitzilopochtli] and received the answer that there would be great wars, and epidemics, and bloodshed."
In addition, in the year of Montezuma's accession to the throne, a severe drought began, then famine, which reached its climax in 1505. The next year, by all indications, the harvest should have been good, but the fields were invaded by hordes of rodents, of which there were so many that they were driven away with torches.
That year - the 1st year of the Rabbit according to the Aztec calendar - ended the cycle of 52 years, or the Aztec "century". But the first year of the previous cycle, also the 1st Rabbit, was also hungry. To prevent a new "century" from starting under such unfavorable circumstances, Montezuma decided to take an unprecedented step - he postponed the holiday of the "New Fire" to the next year, 1507 - the 2nd Reed. But here, too, it was not without the darkest omens. At the very beginning of the year, there was a solar eclipse, and then an earthquake. True, the Aztecs themselves for some reason did not consider this eclipse at the beginning of the calendar cycle a sign. Information about him has survived only in the Telleriano-Remensis Codex. Perhaps, in other documents, the message about the eclipse was simply "removed"? However, in 1510 (May 8), another eclipse happened, and in 1504, lightning hit one of the temples. Isn't this an event, considering it an unkind omen, and then described by Sahagun?
In the same year, returning from a campaign against the Mixtecs, 1,800 Aztec warriors drowned in the river. Then in 1509, in Oaxaca, their troops, crossing the highlands, were overtaken by a blizzard. Someone just froze, and someone was beaten with stones and trees uprooted. Thus, the number of "signs" with each year of Montezuma's reign grew like … a "snowball". And from here it was not at all far from the thought of the curse to which the gods subjected the empire of the Aztecs.
Quite funny, but the historians of the XIX, and the first half of the XX centuries. considered all these legends about signs to be almost absolute truth. Moreover, their opinion was that the Aztecs were simply demoralized by all these ominous signs, and as a result of this, the conquistadors were not given a proper rebuff from their side.
It was argued that what is explained by the action of natural causes - that took place, no doubt. And all sorts of revived women there must be recognized as a consequence of … stress or the action of hallucinogenic mushrooms, which, by the way, are so often mentioned in their comments by readers of articles on VO. For example, the two-headed freaks who were brought to the palace to Montezuma are just Siamese twins, who died, and then the resurrected woman was in a coma, and then came out of her. And the lake of blood seen by Montezuma is again a vision of a man who has eaten hallucinogens. In addition, the Indians on the mainland should have already heard rumors about white aliens who appeared on the islands of the Caribbean.
So, in 1509, the expedition of Juan Diaz de Solis and Vicente Yanes Pinson visited the coast of the Yucatan, and two years later a boat with the sailors of a wrecked Spanish ship was thrown onto the coast of the peninsula. Two of them - Gonzalo Guerrero and Jeronimo de Aguilar, after that even survived the appearance of Cortez in Mexico.
Naturally, Montezuma should have known from merchants about what was happening in the neighboring Mayan country. Some of the inhabitants of the Antilles could also become a source of information about the newcomers, especially since having fled to the mainland, they could tell the Aztecs a lot.
However, in the 90s. XX century in the scientific environment there was a lurch in the opposite direction - there were scientists who not only denied that the legends about all these signs were based on real facts, but also generally doubted their Indian origin. Everything, they say, that has been written about this is nothing more than falsifications of "bad" Spanish missionaries. Well, of course - after all, in many of these signs there are recognizable Christian motives. In a word, everything is similar, everything is recognizable, and therefore - invented for the glory of God. Well, and the distributors of all these dramatic stories were Spanish students and teachers from Santa Cruz College.
War between Spaniards and Indians. 100 Spaniards and 400 Hueszinks killed. The Spaniards entered Meshico. P. 249.
Then the Belgian scientist Michel Grolish proposed to divide all the legends about prophecies into two large groups: the first - prophecies in the "Spanish" and "Aztec" spirit, that is, those where an angel appears to a person, or a deceased woman prophesies. But the second - these are eight signs reported by Sahaguna, can also be divided into two cycles, since the Aztecs had an idea of the dual nature of the world around them. The first four include: a flickering light in the east, fires, lightning strikes, the appearance of a comet, that is, symbols of heaven. The last four are a flood, a crying goddess, a bird with a mirror on its head and various monsters - earthly symbols!
If we carefully consider them, it will be possible to conclude that the formulation of the myths about signs both meaningfully and textologically took place after the end of the conquest. In this case, it turns out that all of these eight phenomena predict very specific events. For example, a fire in a temple caused by a lightning strike is an attack by the Spaniards on Indian temples, a comet predicted the death of Montezuma, and the vision of people about strange animals is horsemen, and nothing more!
However, in any case, it is unlikely that the Indians invented (and why did they have to do it?) Night lights in the east between 1508 and 1511. Meanwhile, almost all sources mention him. That is, it could be a very real phenomenon of nature. It could even be the aurora, which at the latitude of Mexico City can sometimes occur in the event of a strong magnetic storm caused by a solar flare. And then there were frosts and crop failures, that is, the fact of the harmful influence of this heavenly phenomenon was obvious.
Montezuma and Marina meet with Emperor Montezuma. "History of Tlaxcala".
That is, crop failures and frosts, followed by famine, floods, and of course unusual phenomena in heaven, plus rumors spread by the enemies of the emperor about a bad ruler cursed by the gods, who will be punished by the gods, and some strange rumors about strange beards white people, dressed in inconceivable clothes, plowing the seas surrounding Mexico in huge canoes, all this could not but affect the consciousness of people and cause them fears for the fate of the world around them. The Aztecs clearly felt that they were threatened by something unknown to them. But what it was like was unknown to them and therefore frightened even more. Well, then the Spaniards appeared with horses, cannons and muskets, and even the most skeptics admitted - “there is something in all this and this something - clearly the wrath of the gods! And it is pointless to fight against the wrath of the gods!"
