Mexico City 11

Posted on February 2, 2003 in Myths & Mysticism Photos Vacations

Feathered Serpent

Just about every school child in the Americas and Europe learns the story: The Aztecs had been ruled long ago by a golden-haired warrior who retreated across the seas, vowing to come back. When blonde Hernando Cortes appeared, the Aztecs took him for the god and dared not kill him lest they incur divine wrath. Cortes, being an evil soul, took advantage of this, captured Emperor Montezuma, and overthrew the Empire.

This neat legend does not appear in Nahuatl writings until half a century after the Conquest. There was a story of a divine king named Quetzacoatl — “Feathered Serpent” — but in earlier versions he embarassed himself in a sex scandal (ah, the pecadillos of politicians!) and was forced to flee across the Gulf of Campeche to Yucatan where he established himself again as a king some archaeologists believe.

This version, too, may reflect a myth, improvised by those who want to ascribe every story which the human mind has ever concocted to historic events. We tell ourselves that what we want are “the facts, nothing but the facts” but our drugs of choice are the embellished fictions which speak of gods and demigods. Personally, I don’t rule out that the minds which make myths seized on historic events or, more broadly still, on the themes they engendered. I remain hesitant, however, to fit our imaginations in any groove: we’re far more creative than the promulgators of either of these stories allow us to be.

In conclusion: Montezuma was a victim of his curiosity rather than his superstition; and the human mind is capable of great visions that have nothing to do with what has actually happened.

I celebrate the imagination.

Note: Today’s photos were taken in the Aztec/Mexica and Toltec Halls of the National Museum of Anthropology. If you want to fry your brain, do the whole museum in one day. We did only three galleries and saved our faculties for an afternoon trip to the city’s largest cemetery. Photos of that adventure coming soon.