Aztec Philosophy Quotes

Chapter 1 argues that at the heart of Aztec metaphysics stands the ontological thesis that there exists at bottom just one thing: dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, force, or energy. The Aztecs referred to this power as teotl. Reality and thus the cosmos and all its inhabitants are identical with and consist of teotl. Since teotl is constitutionally uniform, reality consists ultimately of just one kind of stuff: energy.

At the collective level, pride is expressed in the conviction of being superior to others as a nation or a race, of being the guardian of the true values of civilization, and of the need to impose this dominant “model” on “ignorant” peoples by any means available. This attitude often serves as a pretext for “developing” the resources of underdeveloped countries. The conquistadors and their bishops burned the vast Mayan and Aztec libraries of Mexico, of which barely a dozen volumes survive. Chinese textbooks and media continue to describe Tibetans as backward barbarians and the Dalai Lama as a monster. It was pride, above all, that allowed the Chinese to ignore the hundreds of thousands of volumes of philosophy housed in Tibetan monasteries before they demolished six thousand of those centers of learning.

Walter Benjamin suggested almost a century ago that capitalism is a religion as well, a “cult” with its own ontology, morals, and ritual practices whose “spirit … speaks from the ornamentation of banknotes.”6 I take this as a point of departure and argue that capitalism is a form of enchantment—perhaps better, a misenchantment, a parody or perversion of our longing for a sacramental way of being in the world. Its animating spirit is money. Its theology, philosophy, and cosmology have been otherwise known as “economics.” Its sacramentals consist of fetishized commodities and technologies—the material culture of production and consumption. Its moral and liturgical codes are contained in management theory and business journalism. Its clerisy is a corporate intelligentsia of economists, executives, managers, and business writers, a stratum akin to Aztec priests, medieval scholastics, and Chinese mandarins. Its iconography consists of advertising, public relations, marketing, and product design. Its beatific vision of eschatological destiny is the global imperium of capital, a heavenly city of business with incessantly expanding production, trade, and consumption. And its gospel has been that of “Mammonism,” the attribution of ontological power to money and of existential sublimity to its possessors.

The Aztecs located the Templo Mayor and surrounding sacred precinct – by far the grandest and most powerful nepantla-middled ritual time-place stretched out and put in place by human beings – at tlallinepantla (“in the middle of the earth”).159 Tlallinepantla coincided with the center of the earth (tlalli olloco),160 the navel of the earth (tlalxicco), the crossroads of the horizontal forces of the Fifth Sun-Earth Ordering, the confluence of vertical malinalli-twisting-spinning forces that ascend from below and descend from above the earth, and the axis mundi. Here is the meeting point of the four roads created by the four sons of Tonacatecuhtli~Tonacacihuatl (each associated with one of four intercardinal directions).161 In so doing, they arranged the earth into four quadrants and a center. Here, too, is the time-place defined by the crossing of two springs, red and blue (or yellow), on a small island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. Mendieta describes their crossing as formada a manera de una aspa de san Andrés (“shaped like a Saint Andrew’s cross”).162 Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc likewise describes a spot defined by two springs intersecting one another. Van Zantwjik, Berdan and Anawalt, and Heyden read Tezozomoc as claiming the two springs are Tleatl-Atlatlayan (“Fire Water, Place of Burning Water”) and Matlalatl-Toxpalatl (“Dark Blue Water, Yellow Water”). The former ran from east to west, the latter, from north to south, and so they crossed one another.163 López Austin and López Lujan, however, read Tezozomoc as identifying the two intersecting springs as Matlalatl (“Dark Blue Water) and Toxpalatl (“Yellow Water”).164 Either way, their intersecting divides the island into four quadrants and forms the St. Andrew’s cross depicted in Codex Mendoza, fol. 2r. Dúran says the Aztecs found the sight of yellow and blue streams “espanto” (“frightening, terrifying, astonishing, awesome”).165 Next to this spot was where an eagle perched upon a prickly pear cactus. Lastly, here, too, the Aztecs constructed their Huey Tocalli. After building their first temple at the site, the Aztecs ordered the surrounding area divided into four quarters, with the Huey Teocalli at their intersection. The roads of Tepeyac, Itztapalapa, and Tlacopan, which arranged the city into four quadrants and served as communication routes between the island and the surrounding lake shores, intersected at the Huey Teocalli, forming a grand human-constructed crossroads with the Huey Tecocalli at its center.166 All of these crossings and intersectings coincided with one another as well as with the center of the earth, the navel of the earth, and the axis mundi. Codex Mendoza (fol. 2r) depicts the founding of Tenochtitlan at this nepantla-middled, nepantla-intersecting time-place (see Figure 4.10).