[Aztlan] Aztec calendar not cyclical

[Joanna Sanchez]

    I intend no disrespect toward fellow listeros, but I am endlessly 
fascinated by approaches to the topic of Mesoamerican temporality that would 
assert absolute privilege to one or the other aspect of this phenomenon.  It 
is quite possible that I don't understand the rationale for the question, 
however, it seems  that calendrical devices necessarily accommodate both 
linearity and cyclicity as part of their semiotic operation.  Rather than 
presenting a dichotomy between which sort of 'time' is 'right' or 'intended' 
or more 'accurate' in calendrical representations, the more compelling issue 
for me is how one or another aspect of these integrated dimensions of 
temporal processes meaningfully lend themselves to framing human action in 
various domains of expression, and how these may be conditioned by favored 
conceptualizations of 'being' and 'reality'.
     It has been conceded in this arena that both linear and cyclical 
dimensions of time present themselves simultaneously in the human 
experience. The life span of individual organisms unfolds along an 
inexorably linear trajectory from birth to death, yet periodic return is 
ever present in seasonal and social arenas, ocean tides, phases of the moon, 
the solar day and year, astronomical movements, etc.; this presents a 
dilemma of reconciliation. "Time" is a label we apply to a second-order 
reality we perceive as changes on living and non-living things and the 
cyclical recurrence of observable events.  It is intangible, the word itself 
a reification of a concept that arises from the observation of patterned 
effects (not unlike "culture"), and this ambiguity prompts debate.  Entities 
will be motivated to mark their endurance across linear time as well as 
their place in it relative to those that came before, but must reckon this 
by passage of recurrent points in the cyclical scheme; these serve as 
emblems of both linear durativity and cyclical intersection with past 
moments.
     The English phrases "cycles of history", "cycles of power" or "the life 
cycle" at once implicate both linearity and cyclicity.  The linear narrative 
trajectory of the Leyenda de los soles or Popol Vuh or any other ontogenetic 
telling of human 'becoming' is marked by an iterative cyclicity that 
provides its cohesion and coherence; each 'sun' witnessed parallel 
repetition of linear causal event sequences (creation> behavior> 
insufficiency > destruction), and each succeeds the other in a chain of 
event-episodes leading to culmination in a 'now' of being.  The speech of a 
ruler requesting a bride in The Bancroft Dialogues illustrates the bridging 
of Nahua individual linear being and cyclical continuity through solar 
metaphor:

.in tichoquiz  in totlaocol 
such will be our weeping, such our piety
    ca tomahcehualtiz 
so that it be our future merit

              cememeh omemeh 
one of the Many, two of the Many

in itlachihualtzitzinhuan 
the precious creations possessed by Him

      in totech tzicuehuazqueh 
from our unity they will splinter off,

      in totech tlapanizqueh 
from our unity they will break off

   in yehhuan ceppatizqueh in itechpa                            this they 
perchance will come to possess-

   in itcoca in imamaloca in atl in tepetl;                       its 
vassalhood, its bearing, the water, the hill;

         in otozceuhqueh 
when we have here lost our warmth,

        in otontlanqueh, 
when we have reached our end,

    oc yehhuan intech tonaz 
still yet Them, by Them the sun will shine,

                      intech tlathuiz, 
by Them it will dawn,

     canel yeh inic toncateh 
as it is for that which we exist,

     canel yeh inic tictotlahtolchialilicoh                        as it is 
for that which we are mandated by You

  in tlacatl in totecuiyo in ilhuicahuah                           the 
Person our Lord of the heavens,

     tlaticpaqueh, mictlanqueh. 
Possessor of the earth, of the place of the dead...



(see Karttunen and Lockhart 1987: 119-20; please excuse the insufficency of 
this translation)


         To assert that linear or cyclical dimensions of 'time' can or 
should be considered singularly dominant appears to reveal conditioning by a 
culturally relative episteme that favors referential specificity, a tendency 
also manifest in the recent thread about human sacrifice which began with a 
question about quantitatively fixing 'how many' were killed in each solar 
'year'.  The discussion soon admitted the problematic of relativity and the 
question "why," yet ironically this consciousness has not substantially 
influenced the way we approach our objects (by the way, several of my 
students with loved ones either killed or involved in war express 
rationalizing their "sacrifice" in the name of an idea, "freedom," but only 
after an alternative "for nothing tangible in my immediate experience" had 
painfully recurred until it could be banished from the realm of possibility. 
"Freedom" it is, then, at least for today...).
      I would say that if a society highlights one aspect of temporality 
over another, and this appears to be the case, it does so as a function of a 
dominant discourse that preserves a conceptual orientation to a dimension of 
'being' it has molded to some advantage.  In societies that place an 
epistemic premium on collective being and interactive complementarity, as do 
many Amerindian peoples, cyclicity is foregrounded by dominant discourses; 
the connectedness afforded by cyclicity resonates with salient principles of 
social organization.  A paper by Richard Grimes, "Ascent of the Cheyenne Dog 
Soldiers, 1838-1869" (2000), depicts institutionalized strategies for 
supressing individual Cheyenne agency; the No-Face tales of the Seneca also 
enact an ideology of collectivism.

    In Western tradition, the dominance of empirical particularity and 
discrete individualism resonates with linearity- hence our attentiveness to 
measurement and accretionary functions of caledrical devices, mathematical 
precision of astronomical calculation, accurate historicity in which to 
locate events, the dependability of tangible written accounts, numbers of 
sacrifice victims; it is also apparent in discourse fragments like the 
oxymoronic "army of one."  Yet despite our preference for linear time, we 
nonetheless recognize and speak of events as recurrences of some archetypal 
event in "the circle of life."  Both aspects of temporality are accounted 
for in all human societies, and calendars present these for meaningful use 
by human agents toward relevant ends within given contexts.  This is not to 
say that research into culture chronologies or sacrificial practices or 
astronomical devices or ethnophilology is pointless, simply that we should 
be more critical about how our own deeply embedded orientations may present 
obstacles to clarity; "Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the 
blood runs, hoping it's not poison; and we will all come to the end 
together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle" 
(LeGuin1980: 199).