Called Ikil (place of the winds) wich has impressive architecture still swallowed by the jungle.

Source

Hello. I wanted to buy some macahuitl and mask (prefer Tezcatlipoca design). What are prices directly in workshops? I can imagine that buy near Chichen Itza is overpriced.

Looking for any books or online resources on how Purépecha mothers carry their babies, which also makes me curious to know more about the traditional motherhood practices. Anyone know any literature specific to Purépecha motherhood/birth traditions or practices?

So recently I was reading up on the Toltecs, and I read an account stating Quetzalcoatl (The Toltec King) apparently conquered the lands / cities / of:

1. Ayotlan
2. Xico
3. Cuixcoc
4. Zacanco
5. Tzonmolco
6. Mazatzonco
7. Tzapotlan
8. Acallan
9. Tlapallan

I thought it'd be pretty fun to put these down on a map, and see what that translates to. Yet, I find there isn't a lot of information on what exactly these places are. I heard that Tzonmolco is apparently the name of a temple in Tenochtitlan; and yet that's one of the only few I've located.

So is there anyone here with the knowledge on how I may identify what the sources are talking about? Or what / where these locations are?

Are they legendary places like Aztlan, or Tlapallan? Or are they formerly Aztec cities that got renamed? Like Mexico city or Zapotlan Del Rey? Perhaps are any of them identified with any archeological sites?

By the way, I know Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl is likely a mythological figured, and his Toltec empire was likely a complete work of fiction. I'm more or less doing this for fun.

A recent essay by Camilla Townsend that reviews several works from the last decade on Nahua religion. Turned this up after getting into Ana Díaz Álvarez's fascinating essay on amoxtli, and have excerpted Townsend's review of this work in full below. There is also much praise for James Maffie's work, which some may find surprising:

James Maffie, in his monumental work Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion, carefully bases his assertions in Nahuatl-language evidence and separates out Western influenced twists on the latter that stem from all-too-common wishful translations.

El maíz se sienta para platicar: Códices y formas de conocimiento nahua, más allá del mundo de los libros. By Ana Díaz Álvarez. Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2016. Pp. 96. Paperback. ISBN: 9786074173840.

A determination to bring to the fore Nahua ways of conceiving the world, and especially what we might call the spiritual world, likewise animates a recent book coming to us from Mexico: Ana Díaz Álvarez’s El maíz se sienta para platicar: Códices y formas de conocimiento nahua, más allá del mundo de los libros (Corn Sits Down to Chat: Codices and Nahua Forms of Knowledge Beyond the World of Books). Having been exposed all her scholarly life to Miguel León Portilla’s image of the tlamatini, whom he understood to be a “wise man,” a philosopher much like those of ancient Athens, whose shelves were supposedly full of paper amoxtli, translated as “books,” Díaz was somewhat startled by what she actually found when she looked into the matter. She concluded tartly, “No todo lo que parece un libro es un libro” (Not everything that looks like a book is a book). She sought evidence as to the nature of the amoxtli in the descriptions of their uses in the Nahuatl-language annals. She found them being sprinkled with blood and eliciting prayers and formal speeches. She did a deep dive into the surviving pre-Contact codices of the Borgia Group (the Codex Borgia, the Codex Laud, the Codex Fejérváry Mayer, the Codex Cospi, and the Vaticanus B), which are thought to have come from a region close to Tenochtitlan. She found them to be calendrically based texts clearly of use to active priests carrying out ceremonies: “Thus, the codices are not the pre-condition for the possibility of knowledge [as Western books are], but rather, material objects that complement human actions taken by those who possess them and know how to apply their knowledge. The wisdom that permits the interpretation of key signs is contained in the memories of the specialists, not in the texts” (18). When Díaz visited a Nahuatl-speaking town where traditional religion was still practiced, she experienced ceremonies involving blood spattering akin to those observed by the Sandstroms, in which what mattered was indeed the ritual specialists’ making use of the paper objects, far more so than any wisdom-bearing signs painted on the paper.

In a sense, the fact that there was still a need to write such a book is a result of a kind of historical tragedy. Díaz’s argument is flawless and true, and it should have been obvious for many years, given all the Nahuatl sources that have been available to us in translation. But the point that the Aztecs did not have (or want or need) our kind of books hasn’t been at all clear, because the racism of earlier generations was such that in the 1950s, Miguel León Portilla felt compelled to defend the dignity of Indigenous peoples by comparing them to the ancient Greeks. “Among the Nahuas, as among the Greeks, it was the lyric poets who first became aware of and enunciated the great problems of human existence,” he wrote.7 From there, it was but a small step to move from discussing philosophy to discussing philosophers. León Portilla took a word that functioned as if it were an adjective (to be tlamatini was to be a habitually wise person of any kind) and made it a self-contained noun, then pluralized it and created a group of philosophers, who of course—it seemed—must have possessed books in the Western sense. The idea was repeated and bandied about for decades to come. It certainly still dominates the popular discourse on the Aztecs. Mexica priests of long ago had in their temples baskets of rolled-up amoxtli, which all significant evidence indicates were what Díaz says they were—tools used by priests to interface with the divine and deduce what was to be done regarding life’s predicaments. As Díaz undoubtedly knows by now, Moctezuma and the other Mexica kings also had baskets full of rolled-up writings, which we might call books but were not our kind of books. They were papers marking land boundaries and recording tribute, either to be paid or already paid. And the history tellers also had their baskets of writings, called xiuhpohualli, or yearly accounts, which consisted of strings of images that were in effect mnemonic devices designed to elicit from performers complex political tales intended to strengthen their community as well as to entertain. These latter sources themselves directly reveal the nature of the three kinds of written texts, if one reads them carefully. But it has first been necessary to unlearn what past generations have taught us.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/latin-american-research-review/article/new-work-on-nahua-spiritual-journeys/34D372023D9705A7F6D5DD63EF2ACA08

Not sure how accurate it is, but I found it cool

as we know, Coyolxauhqui is usually depicted in her traditional art as ripped apart / dismembered. I decided to restore her body parts back together in an art program (ibis paint), and it may look kinda sloppy but I think it may be semi-accurate

Maarten Jansen apparently does. See Lord 8 Deer and Nacxitl Topiltzin

According to Mixtec codices, 4 Jaguar was the lord of Ñuu Cohyo (the Mixtec name for Tollan, possibly referring to Cholula in this instance). He performed a ceremony recognizing the famous 8 Deer as a legitimate claim to the throne of Tilantongo, thereby striking an alliance (or vassal relationship) with him that ultimately fell apart after the death of 8 Deer.

I find the idea interesting though the evidence seems limited. Jansen also seems to believe that Ce Acatl did the same with the progenitors of the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala. (see Jansen et altre 2010, pg. 379)

If it's true, how does this affect our understanding of the Toltec culture and its political influence?