THE TAIGUANO PROPHETESS — Part II
Taiguano hagiographers say that upon her arrival, the Prophetess was immediately purchased by Tēzcatl, mercenary king of Mayapán. She was taken as his concubine at first, but she was so beautiful that Tēzcatl could not help but make her his wife.
In exchange for becoming his queen, the Prophetess asked that all the Yucayan slaves in the king’s entourage be freed. This was granted, and every day she personally trained the new freemen in the arts of war in the palace courtyards, so that they would make good soldiers in some future war.
The Prophetess stayed in Mayapán for four years, until 1362. In time she came to love her husband, and the beautiful frescoes and shaded stuccoed pavilions of this Land of Turkey and Deer. Tēzcatl and she had children, twins, a son and a daughter. They were proclaimed heirs to the kingdom of Mayapán.
The Prophetess's days in Mayapán were idyllic ones. She rose every morning with an embrace with her loving husband who doted on her day by day, even though she was not a virgin and had been despoiled. Every other day he would tell her in a marveling voice, "I am the happiest man in Mayapán, not because I am king but because you are with me. If I was usurped and they blinded and castrated me and threw me out to beg, if you were there in my beggar's hut, I would still be happiest." Sometimes he would whisper in her ears, "Let me blaspheme too. I go to the pyramids, but I don't worship the idols there.
You are my only idol." And they laughed together at how un-kingly the king's words were.
And the Prophetess would respond, "When I was sold and thought of death, the god Bacocolon told me to live. And now I know why he told me that: because of you."
Sometimes the two breathed in the scented air of Maya gardens, or bathed in the streams that ran beside the royal aviaries. Or, when her husband was dealing justice, the Prophetess would sit down and giggle as her twins crowded around her, competing to see who could hug her the most. And in these moments the Prophetess would sigh softly and remark on how everything and everyone was lovable here, from the tenderness of venison to the pyramid's coiling shadows to the melody of the Maya tongue.
But from time to time she would feel that something was missing, though she could not say what.
It was 1361 when Bacocolon came to her again. He did not speak, and yet she understood.
She wept again. "You are the cruelest of the gods! You do not allow me a single second of happiness, a single moment of respite—
you rejoice in my tears—"
Bacocolon said to her,
"I give you the right to disobey."
And for a year she disobeyed. But the fact that men in her homeland were still being enslaved and sold weighed down her heart, and the image of the sacrifice she had observed in childhood shimmered like a mirage in her eyes. She understood why she had trained the freemen, and Tēzcatl saw that his queen was no longer happy as she once had been.
In 1362, the Prophetess left Mayapán. She took her Yucayan freemen militia with her, and she liberated all the other Yucayan slaves in the city as she left.
What did the Prophetess say to her husband the day of her departure? Did she feign love and normalcy, did she say “Good night, my beloved” and kiss him to bed, or did she give a sign of what was to come, some sign that Tēzcatl could not understand? The sources are silent, each and every one.
Her two children remained behind in the mainland. She did not have the heart to take them away from the only life they had ever known.
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From the
Prophetic Sayings of Chichen, anachronistically claimed to be the Prophetess's teachings to the Yucayan freemen when at Mayapán:
Know that there is no God but Bacocolon. There are spirits in this world, but God is one.
Who is Bacocolon? The Beautiful Lord, the Quetzal Lord. Here in Mayapán they call him Kukulcan, there in Oaxaca he is known as Coo Dzahui, and over there in Cholula he is Quetzalcōhuātl.
Who is Bacocolon? The Creator, the Instructor. He created humans from an unknown material and placed them on a bountiful earth; he came to the earth in the guise of Deminán Caracaracol [Yucayan culture hero], and he instructed us in fire and irrigation, in tobacco and medicine, in manioc and maize, in kingship and architecture.
Who is Bacocolon? The Master of Sweetness, the Master of Hearts. Know that the greatest Sweetness is the Sweetness of human hearts. There is no action outside the human will. Do idols have mouths to eat? No – how then could they have the Sweetness to feed us? Do idols have hands to receive? No – how then could they have the Sweetness to give to us? Do idols have hearts to be loved? No – how then could they have the Sweetness to love us? Humans alone have the Sweetness to eat and feed, to receive and give, to be loved and love. And this human Sweetness originates from the Supreme Sweetness of Lord Bacocolon, as embers and sparks originate from a mighty burning bonfire. Every man and woman is a shadow of the Quetzal Lord.
Why do people worship the idols? The idols have glib tongues they use to fool the people, to feed on the people, to tricking the people into offering themselves as meat and tomato juice. The idols make the people think that they themselves are the source of Sweetness, when in reality they are mere reflections of the Sweetness of the men and women who feed them. Who frees the idol from its prison of stone and wood? Should not the idols be grateful to men for their very existence? Why do the idols lead their creators astray? How little they understand!
Who is Bacocolon? The Lord of Taiguan. What is taiguan? It is the Great Enterprise. When humans come together to expand the frontiers of what is known, when humans come together to build pyramids and temple grounds, when humans come together to raise butterflies and songs, that all is taiguan. Humans are mortal, but taiguan is immortal. The pyramids will stand, day onto day and year onto year and age onto age, dazzling visitors from near and far, even when nobody is there to remember who built it or when and the builders’ bones are already bleached and gone. And Lord Bacocolon is the spirit of taiguan. He is the fire that inspires the king to the war and the musician to the flute; he leads men to ever greater things. When humans die they go to the west and turn into owls, but a shard of their self remains in the taiguan they have contributed to – every pyramid is a pyramid of human souls – and the shard is happy in the embrace of Bacocolon.
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OCC:
The Mesoamerican cult of the Feathered Serpent is extremely interesting from a historical perspective. In all likelihood, it is the closest thing Mesoamerica had to a “world religion,” even spreading north of what is now the US-Mexico border as the horned serpent god
Awanyu. The cult of the Feathered Serpent god – worshipped as Quetzalcōhuātl by the Aztecs, Lord Nine Wind by the Mixtecs, and Kukulcan and Q’uq’umaj by the Maya – had been present in Mesoamerica since the beginning of civilization there, but its explosive rise into popularity came in the social turbulence of the Classic-Postclassic transition. It appears that the new commercial and military elites of the new era found much to favor in the Serpent God.
In most of Mesoamerica, the Feathered Serpent is considered, first and foremost, a creator god. The Aztecs believed that Quetzalcōhuātl created the Fifth Sun (the current world we live in) and stole the bones of the humans who had perished when the Fourth Sun (the previous world) was destroyed from Mictlantēuctli, the Lord of the Underworld. When these bones were used to recreate humanity, it was Quetzalcōhuātl who spilt his own blood as the necessary offering. When the Sun was created but did not move, it was Quetzalcōhuātl who sacrificed the hearts of the other gods to set it in motion and allow the Fifth Sun to reign. Similarly, in the Maya holy text the
Popol Vuh, it is said:
Then the earth was created by them [the Feathered Serpent and the other gods]. Merely their word brought about the creation of it. In order to create the earth, they said, “Earth,” and immediately it was created. Just like a cloud, like a mist, was the creation and formation of it.
The Feathered Serpent was also a culture hero and a patron of humanity. The Aztecs believed that the deity had discovered maize, created the calendar, and set human history in motion. Quetzalcōhuātl was also connected to intellectual and artistic achievement; he was the patron of schools and education, and had stolen music from the Sun for humans. More concretely, he was very closely associated with the human king Topiltzin Quetzalcōhuātl, during whose reign it was thought that corn ears were as long as human arms, cotton grew naturally dark blue and fine yellow without dying, gold and jade were cheap, and (according to some sources) human heart extraction was rejected for self-bleeding and the sacrifice of butterflies, snakes, and hummingbirds. Lord Nine Wind, the Mixtec variant of the Feathered Serpent god, is depicted in surviving codices as a writer, singer, and poet, and as a wanderer who presents the Mixtec dynastic founders with the symbols of kingship. Throughout Mesoamerica, the Feathered Serpent is an establisher of cities and royal lines.
The Serpent may have been associated with social mobility. The Spanish priest Diego Durán mentions the three means of Mesoamerican social mobility – success in war, mercantile success, and the priesthood – when he discusses the god. Indeed, the Feathered Serpent was in many places a war god, the Aztec merchant deity Yacatēuctli was seen as an avatar of Quetzalcōhuātl, and the high priests of the Aztecs were titled “Quetzalcōhuātl”.
Some historians have taken the Feathered Serpent to “stand for a highly abstract notion of spirit standing behind the many more specific manifestations of deity and behind the phenomena of the world… Behind the multiplicity of gods, men, and the things of this earth lay… fundamental unity. Quetzalcoatl was both that ultimate aspect and the vehicle by which it was attained.”
And though his importance has been somewhat obscured by Aztec ideology’s focus on the bloodthirsty war god Huītzilōpōchtli (to the point that Aztec religion as discovered by the Spaniards may have appropriated many of Quetzalcōhuātl’s roles and assigned them to the war god), he remains the best-known of all Mesoamerican gods.
As with many things ITTL, this TL takes an existing tendency in the OTL Americas further along, and so the Feathered Serpent becomes yet more prominent throughout the American world under an even more bewildering array of names. But the Yucayans of the Taiguano state might take it to an extreme…
(A good, if rather opaque, analysis is the paper “The Return of Quetzalcoatl” in
Ancient Mesoamerica by Ringle, Negrón, and Bey. It’s also the source of the quote.)