Chapter III: The Great Gods (4)

(3) That it seems to have been associated with a myth relating to the fountain of youth, that is, the fountain in which the refreshing and revivifying rains were stored, to which Quetzalcoatl must return for rejuvenation and a fresh rain-supply.

(4) That the conception of the god Quetzalcoatl became humanized in the light of the agricultural and other manifestations of Toltec culture, thus bringing about the idea of his existence as a priest-king, and culminating in the establishment of a line of priestly rulers bearing his name, which endured as long as Mexican civilization.

(5) Out of these conceptions there naturally arose other related ideas, as those of:

(a) Quetzalcoatl as inventor of the tonalamatl, the instrument by which the festal days of the rain-cult were originally noted, but which on the adoption of the solar calendar as time-count degenerated into what may be regarded as an astrological table.

(b) The lunar basis upon which the tonalamatl was founded connected Quetzalcoatl with the moon. [167]

(c) Regarded as inventor of the tonalamatl, he gained a reputation as the possessor of profound hieratic wisdom, and came to be looked upon as the magician or sage par excellence, the patron of education, the rain-maker who knew precisely when the blood shed in penance should be spent in order that it might return to the soil of Anahuac in an abundant rainfall.

(d) Quetzalcoatl as the god of wind was also regarded as the breath of life, a phenomenon encountered in many mythologies, and therefore came to be conceived as the agency by which souls were originally placed in human bodies. From this, too, we may argue his appearance as a creator, or cosmic deity, although it may have been in his character as fertilizer that he came to be regarded in this light.

(e) Quetzalcoatl is the great penitent, the supreme protagonist of the penitential system, because without the blood spent in penitential exercise no rain might fall. The secondary character of this conception is probable.

(f) Quetzalcoatl seems at a later date to have been regarded as the god of the four quarters of the compass, a conception of him indubitably evolved from his status as a wind-god. I think I also perceive signs that from this latter idea was further evolved a conception of him as god of the four elements—fire, air, earth, and water. He is the fire and the flint, because of the lightning which in Mexico accompanies the fall of the trade-wind rain. He is the air in his rôle of Wind-god, and as such is symbolized by the bird, the natural inhabitant of the air, the beak of which he uses as a funnel from which to expel the wind. He is earth, and, his myth says, a builder of subterranean houses, and sometimes bears the earth-staff of agriculture. [168] He is water, or rain, in which guise he is typified by the feathered snake.

This conception of him, evidently strongly sophisticated by priestly theological science, is illustrated in the Codex Magliabecchiano, where he is represented on one sheet along with Tezcatlipocâ, Tlaloc, and Uitzilopochtli. This group, in my opinion, represents the four elements: Fire (Uitzilopochtli), as possessor of the tlachinalli symbol, a hieroglyph for water and fire, and as sun-god; Air (Quetzalcoatl); Earth (Tezcatlipocâ), who as Tepeyollotl was an earth-deity; and Water (Tlaloc). The picture may also be descriptive of the four points of the compass over which he rules. But above and beyond this, as Seler has shown, it implies that these deities were later embodied in the idea of Quetzalcoatl. When Cortéz, coming from the East, landed at Vera Cruz, the Mexicans naturally believed that Quetzalcoatl had returned, and Motecuhzoma sent him as an offering “the dress appropriate to him,” four kinds of attire, the ceremonial costumes of Uitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipocâ, Tlaloc, and Quetzalcoatl.

ETYMOLOGY

There but remains the etymology of Quetzalcoatl’s name. It is compounded of the element quetzalli and coatl. The first denotes the bright green tail-feathers of the quetzal bird, and coatl = “snake,” so that the whole implies “feathered snake.” The generally accepted belief is that this name applies to the rain-bearing clouds which accompany the trade-wind, although others have seen in it a description of the rain itself, and still others the ripples made by wind on water. But quetzal in a secondary sense means “precious,” and coatl is capable of being translated “twin.” The Mexicans themselves, however, frequently drew and sculptured the god as a feathered serpent, although this may easily have possessed a merely pictographic significance. In any case, after prolonged consideration on the etymology of the name, I do not, so far, see any reason to quarrel with the currently accepted rendering of it.