The Mexica-Aztecs and the number five

The addition of a fifth orientation defines the Fifth Age as one of metaphysical excess, overripeness, and exhausted completion, and as one staged for imminent doom. [Henry] Nicholson asserts the number five signifies excess. The Nahuatl word for five, macuilli, suggests the full grasp or take (cui) of all five fingers of a human hand (maitl). A hand can hold no more. Although a symbol of wholeness like the number four, the number five connotes a surfeit or condition of being surfeited. With five, [Louise] Burkhart writes, ‘wholeness passes into completion, fullness, and excess.’ Five thus connotes a sense of inexorable and imminent demise. According to [Frank] Lipp, Mesoamericans commonly associate the number five with aged gods, aged humans, and old age per se.

Pic 1: The hand - detail from an image depicting parts of the human body; Florentine Codex Book X

Five is also associated with chance or luck and hence uncertain outcomes. The patolli board, for example, has the shape of a quincunx. Five grains of corn were commonly used in divination. Five is the number of the dangerous, unlucky nemontemi (‘uncounted’ or ‘unnamed’ days) occurring at the completion of every 360+5-day cycle. Before being renewed, the solar year must pass through these five days of dangerous uncertainty. The number five thus invokes Tezcatlipoca.

Pic 3: The five ‘nemontemi’, depicted as dots, falling in between the feasts of Panquetzaliztli and Atemoztli. Veytia Calendar Wheel no. 5

On these dates the Fifth Sun might very easily NOT be reborn. These ambiguous deathdays-birthdays thus held the potential for cataclysmic destruction of humankind. The Aztecs saw this as a consequence of the Fifth Sun’s and Fifth Age’s being defined by the power or personality of the number five (not the number four). Immanent within the number five’s energy IS inexorable and imminent demise. The Fifth Age will be the last. There are no further Suns or Ages in the offing. Five is all the hand of the cosmos can hold.

Text from Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion by James Maffie, University Press of Colorado, 2014, pp. 226-227.

Captions based on information in ‘Nemontemi, días baldíos - Abismos periódicos del tiempo indígena’ by Patrick Johansson K., Arqueología Mexicana no. 118, Nov.-Dec. 2012, pp. 64-70.

Pic 5: The day signs for the five ‘nemontemi’ are depicted in the white curved band around the waist of the (deer) character; the man falling headfirst (top right) into an abyss relates to the nemontemi. Codex Borgia pl. 53 (detail)