Article suitable for older students

Sacred geometry was at the FOURfront of Aztec life and world (1)

12th Aug 2020

Aztec rug design from the Codex Magliabechiano based on the number 4

Over the years we have randomly come across - and noted down - nearly a hundred examples of contexts in which the number 4 played a pivotal role in Aztec/Mexica mythology and daily life - and indeed continues to do so in Mesoamerican households today. A two-day scholarly symposium early in 2020 (The Mesoamerica Meetings at the University of Texas, Austin) took as its theme ‘Centre and the Four Corners’, focussing on the ubiquitous quincunx design (four points and a centre) underpinning so much that was sacred in the Mesoamerican landscape and world. As one of the speakers emphasised, it is a testament to the power of the quincunx symbol that it has survived the last 500 years... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Starting August 2020 we’ll note these examples, adding them steadily to this page. We won’t necessarily add sources, to avoid cluttering the pages. If you want an academic treatment of this, try ‘Aztec Philosophy’ by James Maffie (2014), pp. 216-222.

We start with a note from the 16th century chronicler Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón:-
• ‘Hunters, when they set out snares to catch deer, shout towards the four quarters of the world and place four crossed cords on a rock. The archers call four times to the deer... shouting four times like a puma. They place a lighted candle on the grave for the dead for four successive days...’

• At birth, Aztec children were given miniature symbolic gifts, indicative of the future gender-bound career in store for the newborn. Boys were usually given a mini set of weapons: four arrows and a shield, representing his future as a warrior. Each arrow represented a quarter or cardinal direction of the world.
• Four days after birth, a Mexica midwife would present the babe four times to the sky and to the cleansing, even nutritious water with which it would be bathed; according to Fray Durán, ‘noble’ children were washed in special basins for four days in a row, whereas ‘commoner’ babies were simply bathed in streams; after this, the all-important naming ceremony would take place, attended by friends, family and local dignitaries.

• In the ritual ballgame, players were generally prohibited from using their four limbs - they had to use the CENTRE of the body, the belt representing the entrance to the underworld. The four corners (with four distinct colours and four deities) represented the four quarters of the world. The ball was thrown symbolically around the ball court four times to consecrate the space prior to a match. Curiously, the formula for vulcanising the rubber ball was traditionally mixing four parts rubber with one part juice from the morning glory plant, which grows near rubber trees.

• Four days after the announcement of a death, small effigies or images of the dead person were carefully made and their praises sung with great devotion.
Every year, for four years, the family of the deceased would mourn for exactly four days, weeping and making offerings of food, song and dance to a (new) effigy of the dead person. Finally, after four long years, not forgotten, but left to rest in eternity, the deceased would never (need to be) mourned again. Job done!
If a woman died in childbirth, her husband would keep vigil over her grave for four nights whilst the magic power that was believed to fill her body slowly subsided.

• In public ceremonies, each chant phrase, with its accompanying rhythm, was intoned and repeated four times. In merchants’ banquets, the lead priest would raise his incense ladle four times in front of the ‘ground drum’ (the large vertical tlalpanhuehuetl), addressing each of the four directions.
Flutes generally had four finger holes.
Drumbeat patterns consisted of four basic ‘syllables’: to-co-ti-qui, two relating to high pitch, two to low.
The conch trumpet was blown every day at regular intervals four times a day from dawn to dusk.

• In Aztec mythology there had been four previous world eras or ‘Suns’ - and we’re now living in the fifth and last. These are clearly depicted in the centre of the famous Mexica Sunstone - centrepiece of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. Each world era was named with a number and a day sign. Most sources (not all) suggest the order of the Suns was:
Four-Jaguar
Four-Wind
Four-Rain
Four-Water.
The current fifth world era was named Four-Movement.
And only four of the 20 day signs were ‘year-bearer’ signs - House, Rabbit, Reed and Flint.

• The emperor had four supreme noble advisers at the top of government, who chose the next ruler. They were usually close relatives of the incumbent tlahtoani. The Nahuatl term for the empire itself was Nacxit Xochitl or Four-fold Flower. There were four tribute streams flowing to Tenochtitlan, and tribute was paid four times a year. Tenochtitlan itself was at the centre of the four corners of the world, and consisted of four great administrative quarters, the centre - aligned with the all-important fifth direction - being the sacred precinct. When the Templo Mayor was inaugurated in 1487, the dedication ceremony went on for four days.

• For the Mexica, lizards were symbols of agility: people born on a day 1-Lizard could not be injured by falls. They were also used magically to cure someone who ‘fell striking his chest’. According to the Florentine Codex the cure involved drinking a potion of very bitter herbs, drawing blood from a vessel near the heart to prevent future complications, and drinking a mixture of four raw, ground-up lizards in urine’ (Aztec Medicine, Health and Nutrition by Bernard Ortiz de Montellano).

• In the ancient Voladores (Flyers’) ceremony, there were and are always four flyers (they circle the pole 13 times as they descend - 13 x 4 = 52, completing a Mesoamerican ‘century’.
• A ‘week’ consisted of four working days, followed by a market day
• Only four of the twenty calendar or day signs were all-important year-bearer signs (House, Rabbit, Reed, Flint).
• The creator couple Ometeotl had four sons, each related to a cardinal direction, and to an element.

• In the classic story of the origin of the alcoholic drink pulque (called octli in Nahuatl) - in Book X of Sahagún’s Florentine Codex - the discovery of the first process is credited to a woman named Mayahuel (who became a goddess). ‘A feast was then prepared, to which the leaders and elders were invited. All drank just four cups of octli, except the leader of the Cuexteca, the Huastecs. He drank five (i.e. the number signifying excess), became drunk, and while in this state removed his loincloth. Thus shamed, he fled with this people, the Huastecs, who gained the reputation of being great drunkards, back to the land from whence they had come...’ (Henry B. Nicholson).

• Some captured enemy warriors were destined to die in gladiatorial sacrifice. The poor soul would would be surrounded by four experienced and heavily armed Mexica warriors, who could move at will. He had to fight whilst tied by one ankle to a round sacrificial stone (temalacatl). If he should succeed in defeating all four, he was freed! This was exceedingly rare, of course. After the combat, the captor would lead the victim to the ‘eagle stone’ to be sacrificed, and traditionally would raise a cup of octli (fermented cactus juice) four times before drinking it through a straw.
• In heart sacrifices generally, the victim would be held down over a techcatl rectangular stone, his four limbs held down by four priests while a fifth cut out the heart.

• In the myth of the creation of the Aztec fifth sun, the haughty rich god Tecuciztecatl hesitated four times before the great fire from which the sun would be born. Both he and Nanahuatzin - the poor pimply god who eventually became the Sun - had to do penance for four days on top of the Pyramids of Sun and Moon at Teotihuacan before undertaking the challenge of jumping into the fire. The fire was kept burning for four days prior to the challenge.
• As part of the story of the creation of people, Quetzalcoatl was ordered by Lord of the Realm of the Dead Mictlantecuhtli to travel four times around the underworld blowing a conch shell trumpet before Mictlantecuhtli would hand over to him the bones of the people of the fourth sun.

• During a Mexica marriage, the bridegroom’s mother ritually fed her daughter-in-law four mouthfuls of food, and then the bride fed her new husband four mouthfuls too. After the wedding, the couple undertook penance and a fast for four days before cohabiting.
• In the annual festival of Toxcatl, the youth representing Tezcatlipoca was entitled to marry four women, representing four goddesses.
• According to the Primeros Memoriales, ‘It is said that prior to [a wise sage] being born, four times from the womb of his mother he disappeared, as if she were no longer pregnant, and then he would reappear’ (Miguel León-Portilla).

• Ziggurat-shaped temple-pyramids were built with four sides and a fifth ‘dimension’ (the flat top)
• Ancient Patolli game boards consisted of a track along which counters moved round four arms on a cross-shaped board; the whole evoked the 260-day ritual calendar
• Ancient versions of the solar disc contained four sun-ray pointers inset into them.
In each example, the shape was designed as a quincunx.

• On their long migration journey from Aztlan to Lake Texcoco, the Mexica would tend to spend four years staying in each place; this is shown in the Codex Boturini or Tira de la Peregrinación - here we see them staying at Pantitlan
• According to the Florentine Codex (Book V, Appendix), if a twin entered a temazcalli (steam bath) (s)he would have a negative effect, dispelling the heat. But by casting potsherds four times on the ground and sprinkling them with water, the heat would not be dispelled - in fact it would be even hotter.

• The fourth level of the heavens was the paradise of Tlalocan, home to the four Tlaloque, assistants of rain and storm god Tlaloc. According to legend, ‘In order to create the god and goddess of water, all four gods [sons of creator couple Ometeotl] gathered together and made Tlalocatecuhtli and his wife Chalchiuhtlicue, god and goddess of water, and from them one sought water when it was needed. It is said that the abode of the god of water as four rooms, and that in the middle of a large patio there are large jars of water.
’The water in one jar is very good, and from this jar come the rains when grain and seeds sprout and the weather is good. In another jar the water is bad, and when the rains come from this jar, cobwebs form on the grain and the grain mildews. The third jar contains water that sends freezing rains; the fourth jar sends the rains that prevent the grain from heading or cause it to whither’ (Alfonso Caso).

• ‘And in the time of Netzahualpilli began what kept appearing, in the heavens, like a light, like a flame of fire. It glowed each night. And for four years this came to pass. In the year count Seven Flint Knife it came to appear for the first time, and its disappearance [was] in the year count Eleven Flint Knife. And thus it persisted for four years...’ (Florentine Codex, Book VIII, chapter 3, describing the omens said to have foretold doom to the Mexica) - but read our feature on ‘The Myth of the Omens’ in the ‘Spanish Invasion’ section!

• ‘According to the Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas, the heavens were raised by the four sons of the creator couple along with four other gods. To assist in this effort, Quetzalcóatl and Tezcatlipoca transformed themselves into two great trees’ (Mary Miller & Karl Taube). The Codex Borgia shows four skybearers, each oriented to a particular world direction and yearbearer. Depicted here is Ehécatl-Quetzalcóatl representing West and the sign House.

• The invading Spaniards also recorded the Aztecs’ emphasis on the number 4. In his History of the Conquest of New Spain Bernal Díaz del Castillo refers to Moctezuma II thus: ‘The clothes that he wore one day, he did not put on again until four days later... four very beautiful cleanly women brought water for his hands in a sort of deep basin... [All] kept their eyes lowered with great reverence, except those four relations, his nephews, who supported him with their arms.’