[Aztlan] E-groups and Sun Dogs

[Robert Hall]

Estimados listeros,
   
  NADIR PASSAGE: Unlike zenith passage, which occurs twice yearly when the sun is directly overhead at midday, nadir passage occurs twice yearly when the sun in directly underfoot at midnight. This means that nadir passage is not directly observable. To approximate the day of nadir passage for a given latitude the Mayas could have counted forward or backward one-half year from a day of zenith passage. Moving forward 183 days or backward 182 days from August 11 one arrives at February 10, for instance. More accurately, the Mayas could have done as Craig Berry suggests and estimate nadir passage by counting forward or backward from the December solstice by the number of days that zenith passage is before or after the June solstice.
   
  The Chortis in the greater Copan area celebrate the anniversary of their Creation on February 8, which very nearly coincides with nadir passage at their latitude. In the Creation story of the inscriptions according to Schele et al. one of the two days of the Maya Creation was February 5 (584285 correlation, otherwise February 3). Three stela dates with the E-group at Uaxactun very nearly coincide with nadir passage at the latitude of that site. I think the cosmological significance of nadir passage deserves more attention than it has gotten.
  
SUNDOGS: In 1834 Prince Maximilian observed sundogs in North Dakota that he described as two short arcs of rainbow, one on either side of the rising sun. The local Mandan Indians told Maximilian that this rainbow was "a spirit accompanying the sun." This "rainbow" had to have been a pair of sundogs because the temperature at the time was -35 degrees C., too cold for rain, and in any case rainbows are always seen opposite the sun. Sundogs are only seen when one faces the sun; they are 22.5 degrees on either side of the sun, accompanying the sun and bracketing it. Sundogs are formed when sunlight is refracted through the ice crystals of certain high altitude clouds.
  
Farther south in the Central Plains the Pawnees had a narrative in which a rainbow was divided in two for the purpose of providing "companions" for a certain spirit, one on either side. The element coatl in Nahuatl Xiuhcoatl, Fire Serpent, translates not only as ‘serpent’ but also as ‘twin’ and survives in Mexican Spanish as the aztequismo ‘cuate’ with the meaning ‘twin, pal, companion’.
  
The idea of sundog is more explicit in the so-called Morning Star sacrifice of the Skiri band of Pawnees that was a northern expression of the Aztec scaffold or arrow sacrifice. This ritual survived in the north five centuries later than did the Aztec version, though only four centuries with the fatal finale. During the Pawnee rite a captive was secured to a frame with arms and legs splayed outward in the form of the Aztec day sign Ollin, ‘motion’, on the Sun Stone. The captive represented Evening Star, one of whose Pawnee identities was with the concept ‘motion.’ At one point the Evening Star impersonator was bracketed by two priests with torches representing sundogs, described as certain fires seen on either side of the sun at dawn. This made the scene tantamount to a tableau representing the central glyph in the Aztec Sun Stone as a cosmogram. On the Sun Stone the Ollin glyph is bracketed by two Fire Serpents. In Aztec ritual Fire Serpents were sometimes also represented
 by torches. 
  
THE COMMONALITY of nadir passage and sun dogs is that both relate to associations of the night sun, one sun in the depths of the underworld and one newly risen from the underworld. In the National Museum in San Jose, Costa Rica, there is an archaeologically found split-log drum (read ‘tun’?) upon which there was carved an ocelot (read ‘night sun’?) standing erect on two feet and holding in each hand a serpent, head-down (sundog?), much as on the Aztec Sun Stone the sun 4-Ollin (the ‘night sun’ according to Cecilia Klein) has clawlike hands extending toward the two Fire Serpents that bracket it, heads down, and much as in the Andes the feline-faced Staff God holds in each hand a serpent metaphor, head down.
  
Well, some things to think about. Bob Hall