QUETZALCOATL SWEPT THE ROADS.
This Quetzalcoatl was god of the air, and as such had his temple, of a round shape and very magnificent. He was made god of the air for the mildness and gentleness of all his ways, not liking the sharp and harsh measures to which the other gods were so strongly inclined. It is to be said further that his life on earth was marked by intensely religious characteristics; not only was he devoted to the careful observance of all the old customary forms of worship, but he himself ordained and appointed many new rites, ceremonies, and festivals for the adoration of the gods; and it is held for certain that he made the calendar. He had priests who were called quequetzalcohua, that is to say "priests of the order of Quetzalcoatl." The memory of him was engraved deeply upon the minds of the people, and it is said that when barren women prayed and made sacrifices to him, children were given them. He was, as we have said, god of the winds, and the power of causing them to blow was attributed to him as well as the power of calming or causing their fury to cease. It was said further that he swept the road, so that the gods called Tlaloques could rain: this the people imagined because ordinarily a month or more before the rains began there blew strong winds throughout all New Spain. Quetzalcoatl is described as having worn during life, for the sake of modesty, garments that reached down to the feet, with a blanket over all, sown with red crosses. The Cholulans preserved certain green stones that had belonged to him, regarding them with great veneration and esteeming them as relics. Upon one of these was carved a monkey's head, very natural. In the city of Cholula there was to be found dedicated to him a great and magnificent temple, with many steps, but each step so narrow that there was not room for a foot on it. His image had a very ugly face, with a large and heavily bearded head. It was not set on its feet but lying down, and covered with blankets. This, it is said, was done as a memorial that he would one day return to reign. For reverence of his great majesty, his image was kept covered, and to signify his absence it was kept lying down, as one that sleeps, as one that lies down to sleep. In awaking from that sleep, he was to rise up and reign. The people also of Yucatan reverenced this god Quetzalcoatl, calling him Kukulcan, and saying that he came to them from the west, that is from New Spain, for Yucatan is eastward therefrom. From him it is said the kings of Yucatan are descended, who call themselves Cocomes, that is to say "judges or hearers."[VII-24]
CLAVIGERO ON QUETZALCOATL.
Clavigero's account is characteristically clear and comprehensible. It may be summed up as follows:—
Among the Mexicans and other nations of Anáhuac, Quetzalcoatl was accounted god of the air. He is said to have been sometime high-priest of Tulla. He is described as having been white—a large, broad-browed, great-eyed man, with long black hair and thick beard. His life was rigidly temperate and exemplary, and his industry was directed by the profoundest wisdom. He amassed great treasure, and his was the invention of gem-cutting and of metal-casting. All things prospered in his time. One ear of corn was a man's load; and the gourds, or pumpkins, of the day were as tall as one's body. No one dyed cotton then, for it grew of all colors; and all other things in like manner were perfect and abundant. The very birds in the trees sang such songs as have never since been heard, and flashed such marvelous beauties in the sun as no plumage of later times could rival. Quetzalcoatl had his laws proclaimed from the top of the hill Tzatzitepec, (mountain of outcry), near Tulla, by a crier whose voice was audible for three hundred miles.
All this, however, was put an end to, as far as Tulla was concerned, by Tezcatlipoca, who, moved perhaps by jealousy, determined to remove Quetzalcoatl. So the god appeared to the great teacher in the guise of an old man, telling him it was the will of the gods that he betake himself to Tlapalla, and administering at the same time a potion, the effect of which was to cause an intense longing for the said journey. Quetzalcoatl set out and, having performed many marvels on the way, arrived in Cholula. Here the inhabitants would not suffer him to go farther, but persuaded him to accept the government of their city; and he remained with them, teaching many useful arts, customs, and ceremonies and preaching against war and all other forms of cruelty. According to some, he at this time arranged the divisions of the seasons and the calendar.
Having lived twenty years in Cholula, he left, still impelled by the subtle draught, to seek this imaginary city of Tlapalla. He was no more seen of men, some said one thing and some another; but, however he might have disappeared, he was apotheosized by the Toltecs of Cholula, who raised him a great mound and built a sanctuary upon it. A similar structure was erected to his honor at Tulla. From Cholula his worship as god of the air spread over all the country; in Yucatan the nobles claimed descent from him.[VII-25]
BRASSEUR ON QUETZALCOATL.
The ideas of Brasseur with regard to Quetzalcoatl have their roots in and must be traced back to the very first appearing of the Mexican religion, or of the religion or religions by which it was preceded; so that to arrive at those ideas I must give a summary of the abbé's whole theory of the origin of that creed. He believes that in the seething and thundering of volcanoes a conception of divinity and of supernatural powers first sprang up in the mind of the ancestors of the Mexicans. The volcanoes were afterwards identified with the stars, and the most terrific of all, Nanahuatl or Nanahuatzin,[VII-26] received the honors of apotheosis in the sun. Issued from the earth of the Crescent (Brasseur's sunken island or continent in the Atlantic),[VII-27] personified in the antique Quetzalcoatl, prototype of priests and of sacerdotal continence, he is thus his son and identifies himself with him; he (the divinity, Tylor's "Great Somebody") is the model of sages under the name of Hueman and the prototype of kings under that of Topiltzin. Strange thing to find united in one being, personalities so diverse! King, philosopher, priest par excellence, whose virtues serve as a rule to all the priests of the pagan antiquity, and, side by side with all that, incontinence and passion deified in this invalid, whose name even, "the syphilitic," is the expression of the abuse he has made of the sex.
At the commencement of the religion two sects appear to have sprung up, or rather two manners of judging the same events. There was first a struggle, and then a separation; under the banner-names of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca the rival schools fought for the most part—of course there were divers minor factions; but the foregoing were the principal and most important. There is every reason to believe that the religion that took Quetzalcoatl for symbol was but a reformation upon another more ancient, that had the moon for its object. It is the moon, male and female, Luna Lunus, personified in the earth of the Crescent, engulfed in the abyss, that I believe (it is always the abbé that speaks) I see at the commencement of the amalgam of rites and symbols of every kind, religion of enjoyments and material pleasures, born of the promiscuity of the men and women, taken refuge in the lesser Antilles after the cataclysm.