Beginnings...

The Greeks had a word for it: eudaimonia — the good life. Not good in the sense of indulgent, luxurious, happy or pleasurable but rather, in conjunction with arete, in the senses of desirably virtuous, of fulfilment and satisfaction. They were not alone. On every continent the rightness of living has been an abiding issue for all humanity throughout recorded history. Many, with varying degrees of success and acceptance, have spoken or written about how life should be lived. Many more still wonder.

Now, as powers once the sole preserve of mighty nation states are wielded by progressively smaller and smaller entities, as each and every human being perceives how he or she affects the world at large, the question becomes yet more pressing. And so it is asked again: How should we live?

This book does not contain the answer — the question has no ultimate end — but it does offer an answer as the basis for a new beginning. The book is itself a journey — of beginnings and endings and beginning again. Read it and travel — along the way you may remember your own dreams and discover more.

Read it and you will never be the same again. Let it pass unread and still you will be changed. How will you change? The choice is yours.
Showing posts with label Aztec. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aztec. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The Aztec and the New Fire Ceremony

Codex Laud, folio VIII at FAMSI

Time is spiralled, time is spun; time weaves tendrils through the days.
Tonight we mourn the dying sun; tonight my heart will feed the flames.
Fragments of Berossus, Alcor
 
In the pre-Columbian era, before the Spanish conquest, a variety of calendrical systems were in simultaneous use by the cultures of Mesoamerica, including both the Maya and the Aztec.

For the Aztec, two systems, the 260-day cycle (tonalpohualli) and the 365-day cycle (xiuhpohualli), were particularly important. The 260-day cycle comprised thirteen repetitions of twenty day names, and the 365-day period consisted of eighteen such "veintenas" (the Spanish name; the original Nahuatl is no longer known) plus five nemontemi, or nameless days.

Because of the disparate lengths of the two cycles, the combination of tonalpohualli and xiuhpohualli dates formed an even longer cycle of approximately 52 solar years (365.25 days). After 18,980 days (the smallest number divisible by both 260 and 365; 18,980 = 73 x 260 and 52 x 365) the calendar combinations would then repeat* if the world did not end first — which could only be prevented by human sacrifice.
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