[Aztlan] Tlaloc Star/Comet?

Sun Feb 7 15:11:05 CST 2010

OK, so there's definitely evidence that associates Tlaloc with Venus. So the
EK/Venus glyph used to construct his face in the Wikipedia sculpture makes
sense. Yet the more I read about Tlaloc and the more images of him I see, I
can't help but wonder:

Is Tlaloc associated with a comet, not a star? (And can the EK/Venus glyph
be used for comets as well as stars and planets?)

I thought it curious there was a serpent behind Tlaloc in the image from
wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaloc

But I've also seen a sculpture of Tlaloc where his "goggles" are formed from
two serpents. I've also seen his face emerging from the mouth of a serpent.
And in the book "Masks of the Spirit" the author notes:

"however, in all four of the [Tlaloc] masks, those eyes are surmounted by
eyebrows that entwine to form the nose, a familiar motif in Aztec images of
Tlaloc which, as a number of those images makes clear, represents serpents.
According to Seler, a sculpture now in Berlin has a face 'made up of the
twinings of two serpents,'..... the serpents form the eyebrows and nose; the
goggle eyes remain under those eyebrows. It seems likely that the Aztecs
devised this eyebrow/nose configuration as another means of suggesting the
serpent symbolism manifested in the bifurcated tongue associated with Tlaloc
from the earliest times."

So the Wikipedia version of Tlaloc with the Venus glyph for a face is not
unique. And Tlaloc's association with serpents is pretty standard as well.
When you have a star associated with a serpent, you're usually dealing with
a comet symbol.

 Yes, serpents are also associated with lightning....but the whole "rain of
fire" business that's associated with Tlaloc makes me think these serpents
are meant to represent a comet/meteors. The fact that four Tlalocs are
supposed to hold up the heavens, keeping the sky from falling, also suggests
Tlaloc has some association with comets/meteors and an associated impact
event.

Is there any research associating Tlaloc not with Venus but with a comet? Is
there any research that shows the EK/Venus glyph can also be used to
represent a comet?

-Gary Daniels
http://www.LostWorlds.org

On 2/7/10 10:52 AM, "Ivan Sprajc" <sprajc at zrc-sazu.si> wrote:

> There is plenty of evidence indicating that Mesoamerican rain deities, like
> Tlaloc and Chac, were associated with Venus, particularly its evening
> aspect, forming part of the so-called Venus-rain-maize complex, and the
> latter was, in turn, related to warfare symbolism. While different types of
> data can be found in a number of publications, the following works discuss
> this subject extensively:
> Carlson, John B. 1991. Venus-Regulated Warfare and Ritual Sacrifice in
> Mesoamerica: Teotihuacan and the Cacaxtla "Star Wars" Connection. Center for
> Archaeoastronomy Technical Publication No. 7. College Park, MD.
> Sprajc, Ivan. 1993. The Venus-Rain Maize Complex in the Mesoamerican World
> View: Part I, Journal for the History of Astronomy 24: 17-70; Part II,
> Archaeoastronomy No. 18 (Journal Hist. Astron. Suppl. to Vol. 24): S27-S53.
> -----. 1996. Venus, lluvia y maíz: Simbolismo y astronomía en la cosmovisión
> mesoamericana. México: INAH.
> -----. 1996. La estrella de Quetzalcóatl: El planeta Venus en Mesoamérica.
> México: Ed. Diana.
> 
> Ivan Sprajc
> 
> 
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:20:21 -0500
>> From: Gary Daniels <Gary at lostworlds.org>
>> Subject: [Aztlan] Tlaloc Star?
>> To: Untitled <aztlan at lists.famsi.org>
>> Message-ID: <C79211E5.22D5%Gary at LostWorlds.org>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>> 
>> Does Tlaloc  have an association with stars (or a particular star)?
>> 
>> On Lintel 41 from Yachilan, the figure on the right wears a headdress
>> which
>> includes an emblem that looks like a five-pointed star. The interior of
>> the
>> star contains a circle-within-a-circle design. This headdress is
>> referred to
>> by Carolyn Tate in  her book on Yaxchilan as ?Tlaloc.? Here?s a link to
>> an
>> image:
>> 
>> http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_image.aspx?im
>> age=m
>> m029101.jpg&retpage199
>> 
>> So I started doing a little research on Tlaloc and found this very
>> interesting depiction on Wikipedia:
>> 
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaloc
>> 
>> It appears the sculptor purposefully rendered Tlaloc?s face as a sort
>> of
>> ?EK? glyph. The nose and eyebrows seem purposefully combined into one
>> unit-
>> which I haven?t seen in other sculptures. Tlaloc also appeas to have
>> rays of
>> light emanating from behind his head, star-like. And in his head band
>> is the
>> circle-within-a-circle motif repeated multiple times.  I?ve seen this
>> same
>> headband on a sculpture of Quetzalcoatl, who definitely has an
>> association
>> with a star/planet: Venus.
>> 
>> The article states Tlaloc was the Aztec version of the Mayan god Chac.
>> I?ve
>> read elsewhere that God GI is also associated with Chac. Interestingly,
>> God
>> GI is ?enthroned in the sky? at the beginning of the Mayan Flood Myth
>> and
>> Decapitation of the Cosmic Caiman. This ?enthronement in the sky? seems
>> very
>> star-like and suggests Chac (and thus Tlaloc) has an association with a
>> particular star.
>> 
>> Is this the case? If so, do scholars know which star Tlaloc is
>> associated
>> with?
>> 
>> -Gary Daniels
>> http://www.LostWorlds.org
> 
> 
> 
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