Quetzal

Little wonder then that of all the deities of the Nahuatl-speaking tribes, Quetzalcoatl was preeminent. The name of this benevolent god come from quetzal (representing the sky); co (representing earth); and atl (denoting water), thus collectively comprising and representing a combination of the earth, the seas, and the heavens. This so-called plumed serpent is often represented in human form as having a headdress of flowers and feathers and holding in one hand a staff of life and in the other a spear with its point representing the morning star, where his heart resides. Perhaps initially based on an actual historic figure, the last hero-king of early Toltec culture, Quetzalcoatl was later gradually transformed into a major deity among the Aztecs of the high plateau of central Mexico. There he gradually metamorphosed into a wind god, presiding over earth, water and sky, and a peace-loving guardian of arts, crafts, and music. indeed, in a sixteenth-century Nahuatl manuscript, a poem describes how Quetzalcoatl (in his wind-god persona) stole Music and his attendant musicians from the possessive Sun, in order to bring them and their special treasures back to Earth...

Quetzalcóatl in the Codex Magliabechiano, folio 62

In a similar way, birds once brought the first real music to our Earth, music that together with their great beauty and grace, we now all enjoy. It would be a much poorer and sadder world if the quetzal and all of its avian relatives were to disappear. Then Earth would become a more silent and fearful place, as it was before we received, at least in these mythic traditions, the gift of Music from Quetzalcoatl.

Pavonine quetzal, male and female; hand-coloured lithograph by J. Gould

NOTE! According to the famous English evolutionary biologist Sir Julian Huxley, it was the American historian and explorer Victor von Hagen who was ’the first man to bring the gorgeous and almost mythical Quetzal birds alive to Europe. You can see the birds he brought over in the Bird House at the London Zoo’. (Foreword by Julian Huxley to von Hagen’s book Quetzal Quest, OUP, 1940). Not any more you can’t, but the Zoological Society of London have confirmed to us that the ZSL purchased 3 male and 3 female quetzales from von Hagen on November 15th 1937; sadly three died the following year, one in 1939, and the remaining two survived till 1941.

‘A male quetzal’; illustration by Antonio Sotomayor