16/02/2024
In Toltec culture, Quetzalcoatl has several meanings:
Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, is the most important symbol of Toltec culture. It expresses the core of the Toltec spiritual goal - the integration of opposites. Quetzalcoatl’s name, which means “Feathered Serpent,” was derived from the Nahuatl words for the quetzal bird and “coatl,” meaning serpent. So the literal translation is feathered snake.
In Toltec culture, Quetzalcoatl has three meanings:
• He is one of the most important embodiments of divinity.
• He is the name of one of the most influential spiritual and political leaders of the ethnic Toltecs from Tula: Ce Acatl Topiltzín Quetzalcoatl.
• He is the philosophical axis of Toltec culture.
Quetzalcoatl represents the realization of the power that arises from the harmonization of opposites (kin - power that arises from the harmonization of opposites). The combination of what flies (eagle) and what crawls (snake) is the basis of evolution. This concept defines the evolutionary path of the individual and the whole of humanity. Opposites merge and become one powerful being. He is one aspect of the sacred duality in conflict with his counterpart: Eagle symbolizing the Sun and male energy kills snake, which symbolizes the Moon and female energy. It is sad that the history of indigenous people of Central America is identified mostly with Aztec culture, which represents a degenerate form of Aztec traditions, and only a small part of indigenous history of Mexico.
The Aztec stage of Mexican history lasted from the founding of Meshico-Tenotichtlan in 1325 AD to its fall in 1521 AD, when it was conquered by the Spaniards. While Aztec domination lasted 200 years, Toltec culture lasted 1500 years, from the founding of Teotihuacan to the decline of Tula. On an individual level, snake represents the negative aspect of yourself that you reject, while an eagle represents your effort to achieve higher goals. Eagle and snake represent eternal opposites - spirit and matter, virtues and vices, earth and heaven, good and evil, etc. Feathered snake is the final reconciliation of the conflict of opposites. When opposites are reconciled, there is a sacred experience that we call the flight of a feathered snake. This approach eliminates internal conflict of individuals and global conflicts of human society. If humanity is to survive and complete its natural evolution, it can only do so through flight of feathered snakes.
The symbol of feathered snake - snake with eagle feathers is a basic expression of approach to duality. Eagle and snake could be enemies, but when they join and become one, the result is flight of Quetzalcoatl, which symbolizes elevation of human spirit.
Quetzalcoatl: The Legend
Once upon a time there was an old, wise, humble king given to solitary penitential devotions: cold nocturnal bathing and puncturing himself with thorns. He taught his people to write and to measure time, to work gold, jade, and feathers, to grow and weave cotton of many hues, and to raise core and cacao. He built four precious houses for fasting and prayer, and a temple with serpent columns. but his extraordinary piety excited anger among the sorcerers, intent on destroying the Toltec. They tricked him into drunken behavior that so shame him he fled to the east. There, at the edge of the sea, dressed in his divine feathers and turquoise mask, Quetzalcoatl burned himself up and rose into the sky. The old people say he became the star that appears at dawn-the Lord of the Dawn, or Venus. More variable in the Mexica accounts are those parts of the legend that describe Quetzalcoatl's departure from Tollan and his travels to the Gulf Coast. According to Sahagun when Quetzalcoatl left Tollan her buried the works of art, all the marvelous and costly things; everything else he burned, including his exquisite houses. he changed the cacao trees to mesquite and sent the birds of precious feather to Anahuac, the land at the edge of the water. Thus he destroyed the civilization he had created, and headed east, with his people, to Tlillian-Tlapallan, place of knowledge, believe to be the Gulf Coast.
However, according to Sahagun, Quetzalcoatl "fashioned a raft of serpents... [and] set off going across the sea". here we lose the mytho-historical Quetzalcoatl, said to have born in the year 1 Reed (understood to be A.D. 895) after fifty-two years or one calendric cycle-a period represented metaphorically by a tied bundle of fifty-two sticks or canes. many versions of the story of Quetzalcoatl have survived, but as apotheosized ruler of Tollan and exemplar of civilization his legendary persona and shimmering spirit have both presided over the theological questions and historical confusion that cloud Tula, Chichen Itza, and Tollan to this day.