[Aztlan] Ollin

[Robert Hall]

Listeros,
     I would agree that there is a relationship between the human body and the Ollin glyph, but I would argue that while the human body can represent the Ollin glyph, the Ollin glyph does not represent the human body.
     In my thinking, the best example of the human body representing the Ollin glyph is in the posture of the victim in the scaffold or arrow sacrifice. This is not as clear from Mesoamerican examples as it is from a version of the sacrifice that diffused northward in pre-Aztec times into midcontinental North America and that survived among the Skiri (or Skidi) band of the Pawnees. The sacrifice survived as an actual sacrifice only into the early 1800's, but the accompanying ritual survived into the early 1900s and late enough to be witnessed by such observers as Eduard Seler and Paul Ehrenreich in 1907.
     I say that the sacrifice diffused northward in pre-Aztec times because it was represented on an engraved marine shell bowl found at the Spiro site in Oklahoma, a bowl dating no later than 1200 but representing a ritual that was probably known at the Cahokia site in Illinois by 1000.
     The victim in the Pawnee sacrifice was typically a young woman who represented Venus as the evening star. Gender was not a critical factor, however, because during the ritual an identity with the earth was transferred to the victim. The victim was painted black on the north side and red on the south to represent earth and sky, respectively. This will be recognized as the opposite of the associations of earth and sky in Mesoamerica, because north of the Tropic of Cancer the sun at noon never appears in the northern sky. On the Piedra del Sol Earth and (terrestial) Water are represented on the south side and Wind and Rain (celestial water), on the north side.
     In Pawnee thought Evening star was referred to ritually as 'earth' and as 'movement' in the sense of 'life'.
      In preparation for the sacrifice a Morning Star impersonator ritually destroyed four circles of feathers, each circle representing one of the world quarters. The arrow penetration of the victim symbolized the conquest by Morning Star of Evening star and the sexual penetration of Evening Star. In a Pawnee planting ritual arrows were shot at the earth. Evening Star represented earth fertility. It is clearer from the Ponca Sun dance that each of the four world quarters represents a separate 'medicine world of the sun' that were destroyed before the present or fifth world came into being.
     Before the actual arrow shooting of Evening Star she was touched on each side by certain torches that represented fires seen on each side of the sun at sunrise. These are better known as 'sun dogs' or parhelia and were known to the Aztecs as Fire Serpents. The Pawnee sacrifice scene was in effect a tableau that represented the central imagery of the Piedra del Sol.
     The physical characteristics of the Ollin glyph represent the splayed or butterfly version of the handle of a twin-fingerloop variety of the atlatl. The non-splayed version can be seen in Codex Zouche-Nuttall but lacks the atlatl dart seen in the Aztec versions. The earliest prototype of the glyph is apparent in the imagery of atlatls with darts on two pottery cylinder seals from the Tlatilco site outside Mexico City dating, say, around 900 BCE.
     It is not at once evident why an atlatl handle should have cosmological significance unless one is aware of other atlatls dating to around 900 BCE that have as handles a figure of a beast that has the body of a crocodilian and the head of a bird, i.e.earth/water and sky. 
     To see my arguments in published text form go to www.amazon.com, search BOOKS for Archaeology of the Soul. It will be the first on the page. Then check SEARCH INSIDE THIS BOOK for Ollin glyph and click on page 113 to see Figure 14.3. Then page to 115 to see Figure 14.5. For the chapter on the Morning Star sacrifice enter Ehrenreich.
     Bob Hall