This is a masterful study of Tezcatlipoca, one of the greatest but least understood deities in the Mesoamerican pantheon. An enigmatic and melodramatic figure, 'the Lord of the Smoking Mirror' was both drunken seducer and mutilated transgressor and, although he severely punished those who violated pre-Columbian moral codes, he also received mortal confessions. A patron deity to kings and warriors as well as a protector of slaves, Tezcatlipoca often clashed in epic confrontation with his 'enemy brother' Quetzalcoatl, the famed 'Feathered Serpent'. Yet these powers of Mesoamerican mythology collaborated to create the world, and their common attributes hint toward a dual character. In a sophisticated and systematic tour through the sources and problems related to Tezcatlipoca's protean powers and shifting meanings, Olivier guides the reader skilfully through the symbolic names of this great god, from his representation on skins and stones to his relationship to ritual knives and other related deities. Drawing upon iconographic material, chronicles written in both Spanish and the native Nahuatl, and the rich contributions of ethnography, Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God -- like the mirror of Tezcatlipoca in which the fates of mortals were reflected -- reveals an important but obscured portion of the cosmology of pre-Columbian Mexico.

This is a masterful study of Tezcatlipoca, one of the greatest but least understood deities in the Mesoamerican pantheon. An enigmatic and melodramatic figure, 'the Lord of the Smoking Mirror' was both drunken seducer and mutilated transgressor and, although he severely punished those who violated pre-Columbian moral codes, he also received mortal confessions. A patron deity to kings and warriors as well as a protector of slaves, Tezcatlipoca often clashed in epic confrontation with his 'enemy brother' Quetzalcoatl, the famed 'Feathered Serpent'. Yet these powers of Mesoamerican mythology collaborated to create the world, and their common attributes hint toward a dual character. In a sophisticated and systematic tour through the sources and problems related to Tezcatlipoca's protean powers and shifting meanings, Olivier guides the reader skilfully through the symbolic names of this great god, from his representation on skins and stones to his relationship to ritual knives and other related deities. Drawing upon iconographic material, chronicles written in both Spanish and the native Nahuatl, and the rich contributions of ethnography, Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God -- like the mirror of Tezcatlipoca in which the fates of mortals were reflected -- reveals an important but obscured portion of the cosmology of pre-Columbian Mexico.

In Aztec Philosophy, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world. Bringing together the fields of comparative world philosophy and Mesoamerican studies, Maffie excavates the distinctly philosophical aspects of Aztec thought. Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.

Tezcatlipoca: Trickster and Supreme Deity brings archaeological evidence into the body of scholarship on “the lord of the smoking mirror,” one of the most important Aztec deities. While iconographic and textual resources from sixteenth-century chroniclers and codices have contributed greatly to the understanding of Aztec religious beliefs and practices, contributors to this volume demonstrate the diverse ways material evidence expands on these traditional sources. The interlocking complexities of Tezcatlipoca’s nature, multiple roles, and metaphorical attributes illustrate the extent to which his influence penetrated Aztec belief and social action across all levels of late Postclassic central Mexican culture. Tezcatlipoca examines the results of archaeological investigations—objects like obsidian mirrors, gold, bells, public stone monuments, and even a mosaic skull—and reveals new insights into the supreme deity of the Aztec pantheon and his role in Aztec culture.

Reshaping the World is a nuanced exploration of the plurality, complexity, and adaptability of Precolumbian and colonial-era Mesoamerican cosmological models and the ways in which anthropologists and historians have used colonial and indigenous texts to understand these models in the past. Since the early twentieth century, it has been popularly accepted that the Precolumbian Mesoamerican cosmological model comprised nine fixed layers of underworld and thirteen fixed layers of heavens. This layered model, which bears a close structural resemblance to a number of Eurasian cosmological models, derived in large part from scholars’ reliance on colonial texts, such as the post–Spanish Conquest Codex Vaticanus A and Florentine Codex. By reanalyzing and recontextualizing both indigenous and colonial texts and imagery in nine case studies examining Maya, Zapotec, Nahua, and Huichol cultures, the contributors discuss and challenge the commonly accepted notion that the cosmos was a static structure of superimposed levels unrelated to and unaffected by historical events and human actions. Instead, Mesoamerican cosmology consisted of a multitude of cosmographic repertoires that operated simultaneously as a result of historical circumstances and regional variations. These spaces were, and are, dynamic elements shaped, defined, and redefined throughout the course of human history. Indigenous cosmographies could be subdivided and organized in complex and diverse arrangements—as components in a dynamic interplay, which cannot be adequately understood if the cosmological discourse is reduced to a superposition of nine and thirteen levels. Unlike previous studies, which focus on the reconstruction of a pan-Mesoamerican cosmological model, Reshaping the World shows how the movement of people, ideas, and objects in New Spain and neighboring regions produced a deep reconfiguration of Prehispanic cosmological and social structures, enriching them with new conceptions of space and time. The volume exposes the reciprocal influences of Mesoamerican and European theologies during the colonial era, offering expansive new ways of understanding Mesoamerican models of the cosmos. Contributors: Sergio Botta, Ana Díaz, Kerry Hull, Katarzyna Mikulska, Johannes Neurath, Jesper Nielsen, Toke Sellner Reunert†, David Tavárez, Alexander Tokovinine, Gabrielle Vail

In Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, H.B. Nicholson presents the most comprehensive survey and discussion of the primary sources and relevant archaeological evidence concerning this man/god, the most enigmatic figure of ancient Mesoamerica. Long available only on university microfilm, this classic text has been updated and now includes new illustrations and an index. Nicholson sorts through the wealth of material, classifying, summarizing, and analyzing all known primary accounts in the Spanish, Nahuatl, and Mayan languages of the career of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl. In a new Introduction, he updates the original source material presently available to scholars concerned with this figure.

In Conquered Conquistadors, Florine Asselbergs reveals that a large pictorial map, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, long thought to represent a series of battles in central Mexico, was actually painted in the 1530s by Quauhquecholteca warriors to document their invasion of Guatemala alongside the Spanish and to proclaim themselves as conquistadors. This painting is the oldest known map of Guatemala and a rare document of the experiences of indigenous conquistadors. The people of the Nahua community of Quauhquechollan (present-day San Martín Huaquechula), in central Mexico, allied with Cortés during the Spanish-Aztec War and were assigned to the Spanish conquistador Jorge de Alvarado. De Alvarado and his allies, including the Quauhquecholteca and thousands of other indigenous warriors, set off for Guatemala in 1527 to start a campaign against the Maya. The few Quauhquecholteca who lived to tell the story recorded their travels and eventual victory on the huge cloth map, the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan. Conquered Conquistadors, published in a European edition in 2004, overturned conventional views of the European conquest of indigenous cultures. American historians and anthropologists will relish this new edition and Asselbergs's astute analysis, which includes context, interpretation, and comparison with other pictographic accounts of the "Spanish" conquest. This heavily illustrated edition includes an insert reproduction of the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan.