{"id":817,"date":"2020-03-17T18:22:53","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T17:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mordorswiss.com\/?p=817"},"modified":"2020-06-01T23:05:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T21:05:42","slug":"urzeit-live-at-la-dolce-vita-1997-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mordorswiss.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/17\/urzeit-live-at-la-dolce-vita-1997-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Urzeit \u2013 Live at La Dolce Vita (1997) Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Part I available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Of the Aztec cosmic cycles and the mythos of the five Suns<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Toltecs have been taken, alas, the book of their souls has come\nto an end, alas, everything of the Toltecs has reached its conclusion, no\nlonger do I care to live here.\u201d
\n\u2013 Extract from a song of the antique Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl\ncyclus in Ancient Nahuatl Poetry<\/em>, translated by Daniel G. Brinton.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aztecs had not only a sense of history and chronicled the\nimportant events of their past, but tried to measure and manipulate time with\ncomplex and accurate calendric systems, and decrypt the repeated patterns of\nevents. As most of the traditional cultures, they had too a cyclical conception\nof time \u2013 or more accurately, spiralic, for it is not exactly an eternal\nrecurrence with the repeat of exactly identical events over and over again \u2013\ndifferent of the strict linear view peculiar to modernity, constructed on the\nidea of continuous progress, secularized legacy of some religions like\nAbrahamic monotheisms, at least in their exoteric beliefs. The two perspectives\ncan even partly co-exist in our society today, with the annual calendar of the\nfeasts still in existence celebrating observances like Christmas or the New\nYear, although they are often for most people henceforth empty of a profound\nmeaning if we compare them to the festivities of traditional societies. The\nAztecs also had their own conception of the cosmic cycles or ages presented in\na temporal succession including multiple creations and destructions, a doctrine\nthat exists in several traditions such as Hinduism. According to Ren\u00e9 Gu\u00e9non in\nTraditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles<\/em>, \u201cIn the most general sense of the\nterm, a cycle must be considered as representing the process of development of\nsome state of manifestation, or, in the case of minor cycles, of one of the\nmore and less restricted and specialized modalities of that state.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is mainly in Pur\u0101nic Hinduism that the doctrine of the cosmic cycles was certainly the most highly formulated: the development and the dissolution of an universe \u2013 or multiverse \u2013 and species is governed by great cycles of an astounding duration subdivided into smaller ones. To name a few, we have kalpa<\/em>-s, manvantara<\/em>-s, mah\u0101yuga<\/em>-s, every mah\u0101yuga <\/em>being divided itself into four yuga<\/em>-s including the (in)famous Kali-Yuga (literally meaning \u201cage of the losing side of a dice\u201d or \u201cage of Kali\u201d, a demon not be confused with the goddess K\u0101l\u012b), which is our cursed present era, although there were previously other Kali-Yugas. Every yuga<\/em> produces a gradual spiritual decline as decrepitude increases in prominence \u2013 albeit temporary redressements<\/em> are still possible \u2013, and this doctrine is one of the key elements of our worldview: to identify the deep reason of an issue is the first step to find a solution to remedy it. Hinduism for instance has envisaged various appropriate means to respond to this critical situation and cyclical determinism in view of achieving spiritual liberation, and Left-Hand Tantrism undoubtedly is one of them.[22]<\/a> Even in the worst age, there are still some \u2013 rare \u2013 possibilities to seize.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eliade in his novel Dayan<\/em> speaks a little of the Aztec view\nof the cosmic cycles, without going into detail, for it is not an academic\nessay but a work of fiction, which does not mean that it is less important for\nus, quite the contrary. He simply mentions a \u201cheavenly time\u201d ending with\nCort\u00e9s’ disembarkation on the Mexican coast, and consequently starting a\n\u201chellish time\u201d; he attributes a duration of 13 \u00d7 <\/strong>52 years to the heavenly period, that is 676 years, and 9 \u00d7 <\/strong>52 years to the hellish period, that\nis 468 years. We have respected in \u201cUrzeit\u201d the indications of Eliade, although\nwe have partially completed them with some of the surviving data supplied by\navailable indigenous and Spanish sources. For the Aztecs, before our current\nSun, four Suns have previously existed since the initial creation of the world,\neach of which ending with a disaster, making thus a total of five Suns or ages.\nEach Sun is named after the power that rules over it or the Element that\ndestroyed \u2013 or for our era, will destroy \u2013 the world and mankind in question\nand the occurrence day sign used in two of the indigenous calendars, the ritual\nand divinatory 260-day t\u014dnalp\u014dhualli <\/em>and the annual 365-day (360 + 5 nameless\nand \u201cuseless\u201d days) xiuhp\u014dhualli<\/em>.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are various, contradictory versions of the mythos of the five Suns \u2013 we preferably use interchangeably the terms \u201cmyth\/mythos\u201d instead of that of \u201clegend\u201d, which is often the degraded transposition of a myth \u2013, with a discrepancy of dates, duration, order and number of the eras in the sequence, and so forth; therefore it is hard to reconstruct a hypothetical canonical model, that might have never existed, for variations on a myth are usual in traditional societies, without speaking of the defectiveness of the transmission of native ancient lore due to the Conquest. Variations can be the opportunity to highlight other perspectives too, for a myth can be told from different viewpoints with equal authority. If the conception of four successive Suns was likely Mesoamerican, the addition of a fifth Sun seems to be specifically Aztec and was in phase with their horizontal spatial division into quadrants, each age being in relation with a cardinal direction and an element, whereas the centre is the axis mundi<\/em> or navel of the world associated with their fire god, an idea metaphorically akin to the Vedic one illustrated by the following quotation from Taittir\u012bya Sa\u1e43hit\u0101<\/em>: \u201cKindled on earth’s navel, Agni [the fire god] we invoke\u201d. The day signs of the end of the Suns are graphically represented among other things on the remarkable monumental sculpture Piedra del Sol<\/em>, the famed Sun or Calendar Stone, whose the carved motifs covering its surface refer to important components of the Aztec worldview; thus it is not just a fine and elaborated piece of art released for aesthetic purposes, resulting from a random inspiration, but above all a means to express mythical, religious and cultural elements from their Weltanschauung<\/em>. Furthermore, when we were in front of the sculpture exhibited at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, we perceived a strong \u201cenergy\u201d (Skt. \u015bakti<\/em>) originating from it, thus undoubtedly confirming that we were not dealing with profane ornamental art.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Click here<\/a> to view larger. Detail of the Aztec Calendar Stone, photo taken in 2012 by Rob Young, license CC BY 2.0<\/a>, converted into greyscale tones, with day names added. The four squares that surrounds the central figure represent the dates of the end of the previous Suns, while the first ring contains the twenty day signs of the xiuhp\u014dhualli<\/em>. The identity of the central deity is debated among scholars, arguing for the sun god T\u014dnatiuh, the earth monster Tl\u0101lt\u0113uctli or the Lord of the Night Yohualt\u0113uctli.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Drawing to one version of the myth of the five Suns dating from\n1558, contained in the Leyenda de los Soles <\/em>and translated from Nahuatl\nby Miguel L\u00e9on-Portilla[23]<\/a>, we\nindicate the order of the Suns, the day of their end, their duration and some\ndetails:<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. First Sun: n\u0101hui \u014dc\u0113l\u014dtl<\/em>\n(4-Ocelot or 4-Jaguar), that lasted 676 (13 \u00d7 <\/strong>52) years. People were finally jaguar-eaten, a chthonic animal.\nElement: Earth (Note: Elements are primarily \u201ccosmic forces\u201d and \u201csubtle roots\u201d\nof the gross material elements or states of matter).<\/li>
  2. Second Sun: n\u0101hui eh\u0113catl<\/em>\n(4-Wind), that lasted 364 (7 \u00d7 <\/strong>52) years. People and the sun were carried away by the wind and\nmen turned into monkeys. Element: Air.<\/li>
  3. Third Sun: n\u0101hui <\/em>quiyahuitl<\/em> (4-Rain), that lasted 312 (6 \u00d7 <\/strong>52) years. People were fire-rained and turned into turkeys, the\nsun was burnt by fire. Element: Fire.<\/li>
  4. Fourth Sun: n\u0101hui \u0101tl<\/em>\n(4-Water), that lasted 676 (13 \u00d7 <\/strong>52)\nyears including a 52-year flood. People were swallowed by water, heavens\ncollapsed upon them and they turned into fishes. Element: Water.<\/li>
  5. Fifth Sun (\u201cthis is our Sun,\nthe one in which now we live\u201d): n\u0101hui ol\u012bn<\/em> (4-Movement or 4-Earthquake).\nThe text indicates that \u201cit was also the Sun of Our Lord Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl in Tula\u201d and a \u201cdivine hearth\u201d in the city of Te\u014dt\u012bhuac\u0101n, \u201cthe\nplace where one becomes a god\/spirit\u201d. People will perish due to earthquakes\nand hunger. Element: maybe Earth or none, or a synthesis of the four.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The duration of each age is a multiple of the Aztec \u201ccentury\u201d of 52 years. Note that the 676 (13 \u00d7 <\/strong>52) years of the first and fourth Suns corresponds to that of the \u201cheavenly period\u201d given in Dayan<\/em> by Eliade. The number 13 could symbolize the thirteen superposed layers of the celestial plane mentioned in some sources, and by assigning to the \u201chellish period\u201d a duration of 9 \u00d7 <\/strong>52 years, Eliade had perhaps in view the nine levels of the Aztec Underworld. We also notice that when adding the duration of the second and third Suns, that is 364 and 312 years, there is a total of 676 years equal to the respective duration of the first and fourth Suns, and that the sum of the multipliers 7 and 6 gives 13. The importance of the fifty-two year count for the Aztecs was directly related to the two main types of calendars in use, the 260-day t\u014dnalp\u014dhualli<\/em> made up of 20 groups of 13 days and the 365-day xiuhp\u014dhualli<\/em>, made up of 18 \u201cmonths\u201d of 20 days, to which were added five days regarded as unlucky at the end of the year, the n\u0113mont\u0113mi<\/em>. <\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Because of their different way to compute time, a concordance of the beginning day of the two interrelated calendric systems would occur once every fifty-two years of 365 days. It was regarded as a liminal time of terrifying uncertainty by the Aztecs, for they thought that the sun could never rise again and it was marked by the celebration of a crucial feast called toxiuh molpilia<\/em> \u201cour years were bound\u201d including the New Fire Ceremony in a specific locus to ensure the rebirth of the sun and the start of a new cycle. All fires were extinguished, a new one using perhaps 52 pieces of wood or a bundle of 52 sticks symbolizing the old 52 years was ignited by drilling during a sacrifice and its flame distributed to temples, cities and domestic hearths, a conception perhaps similar to that of some Indo-European traditions. To give a single illustration, according to The History of Ireland<\/em> by Geoffrey Keating: \u201cit was there the Fire of Tlachtgha was instituted, at which it was their custom to assemble and bring together the druids of Ireland on the eve of Samhain to offer sacrifice to all the gods. It was at that fire they used to burn their victims; and it was of obligation under penalty of fine to quench the fires of Ireland on that night, and the men of Ireland were forbidden to kindle fires except from that fire\u201d.[24]<\/a> In The Myth of the Eternal Return<\/em>, Eliade explains thus the aim of this \u201ctermination ritual\u201d: \u201cThe ritual extinguishing of fires is to be attributed to the same tendency to put an end to existing forms (worn away by the fact of their own existence) in order to make room for the birth of a new form, issuing from a new Creation.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Another version of the mythos of the five Suns can be found in the Historia\nde los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas<\/em>. It adds extra data to those given\npreviously such as the type of food eaten by people in every age, and the fact\nthat the men of the first era were giants, but it shows some divergences: the\nduration of the Suns for example is 676-676-364-312 years. It also provides\nsignificant information missing in the Legend of the Suns<\/em> on the gods\ninvolved in the process. If we extract some relevant elements of the story for\nour purpose[25]<\/a>, it appears that there was originally\none god named T\u014dnac\u0101t\u0113uctli\nwho took for wife T\u014dnac\u0101cihu\u0101tl, who created themselves and were perpetual\ninhabitants of the thirteen heaven, the metaphysical region. They engendered\nfour sons, rulers of the cardinal points, the four Tezcatlip\u014dca-s, including\nthe Black Tezcatlip\u014dca and the White one, Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl,\nwho are engaged in a constant warfare with each other. After the shaping of the\ncosmos by the four gods and the creation of other deities, to complete or\nreplace the half-sun at that time giving very little light, the Black\nTezcatlip\u014dca made himself a sun and it was the first age populated by giants.\nIt finished when Quetzalcohu\u0101tl gave his brother a blow with a great stick, and\nthrew him over into the water, where he turned into a jaguar, slaying the\ngiants. Therefore Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl became the second Sun and a new mankind emerged but the god was\neventually thrown out by Tezcatlip\u014dca, and a terrible wind arose which carried\naway all the men, except a few who turned into apes and monkeys. The next Sun\nwas Tl\u0101loc, the rain god; when his time was over, Quetzalcohu\u0101tl sent down a\nrain of fire from heaven, destroying the third humanity and made Tl\u0101loc’s wife\nand sister, the sweet waters goddess Ch\u0101lchihuitl\u012bcue, the fourth Sun. She was\ndeprived of her function by a deluge so great that heavens themselves felt, and\nthe waters swept away all the men that were, and from them were made all sort\nof fishes. After the deluge, heavens were lifted and a new mankind was made as\nwell as a new Sun, which should eat hearts and drink blood, so to feed it,\ncontinual warfare is mandatory.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The account also refers to the new sun as Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl’s\nson, \u201cheated red hot in a fire\u201d, and to the moon as Tl\u0101loc’s son, who was\nthrown by his father \u201cin the cinders from whence he issued forth as the moon,\nfor which reason he appears ashy coloured and obscure.\u201d It partially echoes the\nmyth of the sacrifice of Nan\u0101hu\u0101tzin, a modest and diseased god, and\nT\u0113ccizt\u0113catl, an arrogant one, during a gathering of the gods in the pristine\ncity of Te\u014dt\u012bhuac\u0101n. T\u0113ccizt\u0113catl volunteered to be the fifth Sun but was\nafraid to jump into the bonfire, and so the first god to sacrifice himself was\nNan\u0101hu\u0101tzin, who became the new sun and took the name of T\u014dnatiuh. Only then\nT\u0113ccizt\u0113catl leapt into the fire and became the moon. Other gods began to\nimmolate themselves for the purpose of starting the first solar cycle, and\nsubsequently human beings have to be sacrificed to ensure the movement and the\nstrength of T\u014dnatiuh. It is one of the explanations why offerings,\nautosacrifice, vegetal, animal and human sacrifice were essential for the\nAztecs in order to provide the energy necessary to feed the gods: in their view\nsacrifice was not a sadistic act of gratuitously cruelty but a fair exchange\nbased on the principle of reciprocity and a kind of debt-payment to assure the\nsurvival of the world; without it, everything will cease to exist. \u201cWe mortals\nowe our life to sacrifice\u201d, says the Leyenda de los Soles<\/em>, \u201cbecause for\nus did the gods sacrifice\u201d. If the gods are real incorporeal beings sometimes\nbenevolent and providers of gifts (the first being life), they may also be\nfrightful, arbitrary and malevolent: they are amoral, not bounded by human\nvalues and morals. Just as for spirits, it may be necessary to propitiate them\nby sacrifice, especially in times of trouble. And it should be not forgotten\nthat for various academics the number of the sacrificed victims was greatly\nexaggerated by the Spanish chroniclers as a strategy to justify the crimes of\ntheir own compatriots against the Mesoamerican people[26]<\/a>,\na narrative still in use today in other contexts.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Remote view of the Pyramid of the Sun (right) and that of the Moon (left) in the city of Te\u014dt\u012bhuac\u0101n. mirroring the contours of the volcanic mountain Cerro Gordo in the background. The names of the pyramids and of the city were given by the Aztecs a long time after the abandonment of the place by its original inhabitants or its collapse. Te\u014dt\u012bhuac\u0101n was regarded by the Aztecs as a sacred place where the fifth Sun and the moon were born after the self-sacrifice of two gods. Photo: Scorh, 2007, license CC BY-NC 4.0<\/a><\/em>. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    There are other Aztec myths of particular interest, such as the creation of the current mankind of the fifth Sun from the bones of previous men by Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl, after a journey to Mictl\u0101n, the Underworld, and some tricks done by Mictl\u0101nt\u0113cutli, the Lord of the place of the dead, to stop him, but we will not discuss them here. From the Hindu perspective, the five cosmic ages of the Aztecs like those of the Graeco-Roman tradition or the four periods of metal mentioned in the Mazdean compendium D\u0113nkard<\/em> will partly correspond to the four yugas contained in one mah\u0101yuga<\/em>, itself part of greater cycles. A difference should be noted: the Aztec view apparently does not include the notion of a worsening of the spiritual situation with each age. On the contrary some scholars insist on the idea of a progress occurring with each Sun, using as argument among others the fact that maize, the Mesoamerican staple food, was available only from the fifth Sun; men’s food getting successively closer to that ideal. It seems also that for the Aztecs our era was the best of the Suns for it is situated at the centre, the foundational point. We may however point out that our current Sun is the only one that requests sacrifice because of its weakness and that historically the Aztecs regarded the era of previous cultures (like those from Tula, Te\u014dt\u012bhuac\u0101n and perhaps the Olmecs, \u201cmother culture\u201d of Mesoamerica) as a kind of golden age they attempted to recreate. If we accept the thought of a progress, it is certainly neither an evolutionary process (some species such monkeys are the remains of previous human races) nor a continuous progress, as each age is brutally interrupted; it would be more like several empirical tests conducted by the gods to finally find the right formula for a type of men suitable for them, although the mankind of the fifth Sun is still doomed to disappear too.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We prefer to stay in line with the Aztec agonistic worldview, that could be likely partially understood by ancient Norse peoples: the cosmos is not static but dynamic, the changing, violent place of a constant struggle between opposing and complementary divine powers generated at the beginning by a dual principle which is sole whole, where destruction inevitably follows creation in a cyclical manner. The potentialities of each main cardinal point, Element and of their rulers are successively actualized. We live in the instability of a continually threatened world where nothing lasts forever, where the most beautiful flowers fade away too, as a song of the great king-poet and philosopher Nezahualcoy\u014dtzin reminds us: \u201cAll things of earth have an end, and in the midst of the most joyous lives, the breath falters, they fall, they sink into the ground. All the earth is a grave, and nought escapes it; nothing is so perfect that it does not fall and disappear.\u201d[27]<\/a> Furthermore, time for the Aztecs was not composed of an uniform series of qualitatively identical instants. In La Pens\u00e9e Cosmologique des Anciens Mexicains<\/em>, anthropologist Jacques Soustelle supplies an interpretation of their view on space and time:<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cMexican cosmological thought does not make a sharp distinction between\nspace and time. It refuses, above all, to think of space as a neutral and\nhomogenous medium independent of unfolding time. Time unfolds in the form of\nheterogeneous events whose peculiar characteristics follow one another with a\npredetermined rhythm and cyclical manner. [\u2026] The world can be compared to a\ngreat stage upon which different multi-coloured lights, controlled by a\ntireless mechanism, project reflections that follow one after the other,\nmaintaining for a limitless period an unalterable sequence. In such a world,\nchange is not conceived as the result of a gradual evolving or \u2018becoming\u2019 in\ntime, but rather as a brusque and complete mutation: today it is the East that\nrules, tomorrow it will be the North; today we still live under a favourable sign\nand we shall, without any gradual transition, pass into the fatal days of the n\u0113mont\u0113mi<\/em>.\nThe law of the universe is the succession of different and radically separated\nqualities which alternately prevail, disappear and reappear without end.\u201d[28]<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    5. Of time, its abolition and immortality<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cThe metaphysical doctrine simply contrasts time as a continuum with\nthe eternity that is not in time and so cannot properly be called everlasting<\/em>,\nbut coincides with the real present or now of which temporal experience is\nimpossible.\u201d \u2013 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Time and Eternity<\/em>.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We should like to conclude our notes by touching shortly on the chief subject addressed by the novel Dayan<\/em> and our song \u201cUrzeit\u201d, namely the issue of time, which is a jail, and its temporary or definitive abolition, a goal pursued by Constantin Orobote, the main protagonist of Eliade’s short story. It is not our intention to discuss here the possibility of using mathematics to overcome time and consequently death; in his search of the \u201cultimate equation\u201d, Orobote, a mathematical genius working mainly on a theorem proposed by the logician, mathematician, and analytical philosopher Kurt G\u00f6del, finally figured out through a weird experience (thanks to his old guide, a sort of World-soul, anima mundi<\/em>) that time can expand and contract depending on the circumstances and that it can be compressed in two senses: forwards, towards the future, and backwards, towards the past. On the contrary, we personally favour elements of the perennial wisdom mentioned in Dayan<\/em> such as myths, legends, poetry and so on, that far from being obscurantism, superstition, and false beliefs are in our view a precious means to decipher the mysteries<\/em> of the world beyond scrutiny of its gross components and the level of immediate ordinary experience, provided that the mentality of the seeker is adequate to the material studied and, as myth and ritual are often closely interrelated, put into practise when possible. Rationalistic knowledge is not in itself sufficient to achieve the gnostic goal of liberation and inner transformation that we set ourselves following traditional models and our own experiences. In the words of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, \u201cOne must also ‘become’ what one knows\u201d.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A lot of traditions have considered that time can be overcome and its noxious effects reversed one way or another, even if this quest is not always successful, as evidenced by the famous Epic of Gilgame\u0161<\/em>: the hero, \u201cking without equal\u201d, went on a long, hard journey in search of immortality to eventually receive a plant against decay and with rejuvenating powers named \u201cThe Old Man Becomes a Young Man\u201d, performing superhuman feats to this end. Gilgame\u0161 after having acquired the plant bestowing a \u201clife-without-end\u201d was however unable to consume it because of the intervention of a snake that stole it while he was bathing. At least the hero got the relative immortality of the \u201cimperishable, unfailing fame\u201d by his deeds recorded by the means of epic poetry; his renown well survived after his death. The episode of the subterranean tunnel guarded by two scorpion monsters, where \u201cdense was the darkness, light there was none\u201d, that Gilgame\u0161 has to cross before seeing the garden of the gods is actually mentioned in Dayan<\/em>. The search of an everlasting life that we call \u201ccorporeal (or physical) immortality\u201d is an old dream that maybe some yogis, Taoists and alchemists have partly obtained, in order to gain more time to achieve their spiritual quest. Today scientists and advocates of transhumanism are working to obtain the same result, but for a mundane goal and with different means, considering and turning the physical body into a machine or a biochemical algorithm, logical consequence of their materialistic perspective: if we are exclusively corporeal beings and nothing exists outside \u201cmatter-energy\u201d, then the sole possibility of solving the problem of death (or at least to repel it further) is by cloning or to create an \u201cupgraded man\u201d by technology, and\/or intervening in the programming that sentences us to death.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It is however not corporeal immortality that we have in mind when speaking about the abolition of time and real immortality, for \u201cNo one becomes immortal with the body\u201d (\u015aatapatha Br\u0101hma\u1e47a<\/em>). In his essay \u0100tmayaj\u00f1a: Self-Sacrifice<\/em>, Coomaraswamy acknowledges in the Vedic sacrifice (yaj\u00f1\u00e1<\/em>) performed by priests for a sacrificer \u201cfor the winning of both worlds\u201d (the terrestrial and the Otherworld) two types of immortality that can be achieved. One is the \u201crelative immortality\u201d of not dying prematurely, living the full term of one’s life on earth with an increase of possessions and progeny founded on the principle of reciprocity do ut des<\/em> \u201cI give that you may give\u201d between men and deities, knowing that like for the Aztecs \u201cActually, sacrifice is the food of the gods\u201d (\u015a. B.) <\/em>and the payment of a debt owed to the gods, including Death, due to human birth. <\/em>The other immortality is the \u201cabsolute immortality\u201d, i.e. the deification of the sacrificer, which requires however the comprehension of the ritual as a series of symbolic acts, which can be used as supports for contemplation, and of the substantial identity between him and the victim: what is sacrificed is the mortal, psychophysical self \u2013 a compound, \u201chost of elemental beings\u201d \u2013 to ensure the new birth of the initiate. Thus \u201cThe sacrificer’s ‘death’ is at the same time his salvation; for the [immortal] Self is his reward.\u201d[29]<\/a> The climbing rite of the sacrificial post (y\u016bpa<\/em>) described in some Br\u0101hma\u1e47a-s involves too initiation and symbolic death, and was considered not without risk: either the sacrificer is no longer a common man but becomes a deva<\/em> \u201cgod\u201d, or if he does not return again to the terrestrial world, he may go to the suprahuman one, or go mad or perish consumed by the sacrificial fire. Besides, the Vedic sacrifice is the reactualisation or mimesis of the archetypal First Sacrifice providing the elements of the world, which was done by the First Sacrificers in illo tempore<\/em>, \u201cin that time\u201d, the primordial, mythical time not to be found in the historical past or present: \u201cWe [the sacrificers here and now] must do what was done by the gods [the original sacrificers] in the beginning\u201d.[30]<\/a> For the cosmos and living beings are subject to the law of becoming and decaying, and need a periodical renewing and strengthening by repeating what occurred originally; hence the importance of the New Year festival for instance in several traditions or the Aztec New Fire Ceremony toxiuh molpilia<\/em>.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Click here<\/a> to view larger. The first page from the pre-Hispanic Codex Fej\u00e9rv\u00e1ry-Mayer<\/em> made before 1521, public domain. It is of particular interest because of its antiquity and deep symbolism: it contains not only the twenty calendric day signs but also depicts inter alia the cosmos divided into four trapezoidal coloured quarters displayed at the compass points, each one including a cosmic tree with a bird at its top flanked by two deities, plus the centre occupied by the god Xiuht\u0113uctli. His name in Nahuatl is built on xihuitl<\/em>, which means among other things \u201cyear\u201d as well as \u201cjadeite, turquoise\u201d, a stone symbolically identified with fire, and t\u0113uctli<\/em> \u201clord\u201d. He is Lord of the fire and of the year, by extension of time itself. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    The mention of the primordial time leads us to the distinction of\n\u201cprofane duration\u201d, the quantitative ordinary, irreversible time measured by\nclocks, and \u201csacred time\u201d, a reversible \u201csuccession of eternities\u201d, made by\nEliade in The Sacred and the Profane<\/em>: \u201creligious man lives in two kinds\nof time, of which the more important, sacred time, appears under the\nparadoxical aspect of a circular time, reversible and recoverable, a sort of\neternal mythical present that is periodically reintegrated by means of rites.\nThis attitude in regard to time suffices to distinguish religious from\nnonreligious man; the former refuses to live solely in what, in modern terms,\nis called the historical present; he attempts to regain a sacred time that,\nfrom one point of view, can be homologized to eternity.\u201d While for nonreligious\nman, although aware too of times of different intensities and rhythms \u2013 one\nminute of torture is not the same that one minute of pleasure \u2013, time can show neither break nor mystery;\nit is just the routine of a \u201cday after another day\u201d, a purely human experience,\nwith no sudden possible irruption of the numinous, whether it is its bright or\ndark, terrible face. In the festivals of the liturgical time of the calendars,\nbesides their immediate utilitarian purposes, according to Eliade \u201cthe\nparticipants recover the sacred dimension of existence, by learning again how\nthe gods or the mythical ancestors created man and taught him the various kinds\nof social behavior and of practical work\u201d; they experience \u201cthe same time that\nwas created and sanctified by the gods at the period of their gesta <\/em>[deeds],\nof which the festival is precisely a reactualization […] For the sacred time\nin which the festival runs its course did not exist before the divine gesta<\/em>\nthat the festival commemorates. By creating the various realities that today\nconstitute the world, the gods also founded sacred time, for the time\ncontemporary with a creation was necessarily sanctified by the presence and\nactivity of the gods.\u201d[31]<\/a> Hence\nreligious festivals are a way to communicate with the divine world, an attempt\nto restore the balance of the cosmos and to be periodically in the presence of\nthe gods.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Our own experience shows that if we can hardly influence the\nmacrocosmic or physiological time (except with some yogic practices in the\nsecond case), we can however intervene on the subjective time. When a ritual is\nadequately performed in an ideal spatio-temporal centre with the real presence\nof gods or other incorporeal beings, the perception of time and space differs\nsignificantly of the ordinary one, with this particular feeling of a \u201ctime\noutside of time\u201d, an instant without duration. It is not a concept created by\nthe mind but really a perception of the different quality of the \u201csacred\nspace-time\u201d established for and by the event. This quality can even expand far\nbeyond the physical limits of the consecrated place, as a ritual also produces\nan \u201cenergy\u201d (\u015bakti<\/em>). It is worth noting that it may lead the sensitive\nparticipants to an altered state of consciousness without resorting to\npower-plants (entheogens) for instance. We could say it is a temporary\nabolition of the profane duration and a regeneration of time due among other\nthings to the fact that \u201cThrough the paradox of rite, every consecrated space\ncoincides with the center of the world, just as the time of any ritual\ncoincides with the mythical time of the ‘beginning’.\u201d[32]<\/a> The degree of the presence of\nincorporeal beings and their positive or negative involvement as well as the\nproper performance of the ritual are evidently determinant.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The festivals that made up the ritual calendar are a means to put\nmen in phase with the cycles of nature and cosmos too; however, there were\npeople not completely satisfied with the closed circle of the year, for it also\nreveals the precarious situation of the cosmos periodically created and\ndestroyed, and men according to the Aztec myth of the five Suns are threatened\nwith extermination. Therefore some individuals were in quest not for a\ntemporary but definitive abolition of time and space, a release of the\nspatio-temporal slavery. India is specially interesting in this respect, with\nthe notion of an Absolute beyond contraries and polarities, and the possibility\nto achieve mok\u1e63a<\/em>, the spiritual liberation. If we quote again Eliade:<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cfor the yogins and other contemplatives the summum bonum<\/em> \n[the highest good] transcends the cosmos and life, for it represents a new\nexistential dimension, that of the unconditioned<\/em>, of absolute freedom\nand beatitude, a mode of existence known neither in the cosmos nor among the\ngods, for it is a human creation and accessible exclusively to men. Even the\ngods, if they desire to obtain absolute freedom, are obliged to incarnate\nthemselves and to conquer this deliverance by the means discovered and\nelaborated by men.\u201d[33]<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    His remark about the gods requires some comment, because some spiritual traditions differentiate one or several greater deities superior to the common gods. In the schools of Tantrism and \u015a\u0101ktism practising a kind of henotheism, depending on the orientation of the adepts, the Great Goddess Mah\u0101dev\u012b (whatever Her names: \u015aakti, Dev\u012b, K\u0101l\u012b, Durg\u0101, P\u0101rvat\u012b…) or \u015aiva, or their divine couple inseparably united, the Two-in-One, is declared to be the supreme divinity, equivalent in fact to the Brahman, the Absolute: \u201cYogins, seers of the absolute truth call me, O Great King, as composed of \u015aiva and \u015aakti, the Supreme Brahman, the absolutely Supreme entity by the nature of my own Self\u201d, says the goddess P\u0101rvat\u012b in the Dev\u012b G\u012bt\u0101<\/em>. Thus in \u015a\u0101ktism, the Great Goddess can be seen in the same time as granter of enslavement and of liberation, the basis of the true reality and existence, substratum of the cosmos and the cosmos itself, both wholly transcendent and immanent; consequently She is the essence of the other gods and sentient beings too. The gods, of whom they are many classes and degrees, are certainly the highest inorganic beings in the cosmic hierarchy; nevertheless, it is said that themselves and demons still worship in secret the supreme \u015aakti, for they are plural manifestations of Her identified to the ultimate reality. In the Dev\u012b G\u012bt\u0101<\/em>, She asserts that \u201cthe different deities are but the parts and parcels of my own energy\u201d.[34]<\/a> Besides, in Tantra or \u0100gama texts, Dev\u012b (the Goddess), \u015aiva, or Vi\u1e63\u1e47u are often petitioned to reveal the metaphysical truths and adequate means to overcome the fundamental ignorance (avidy\u0101<\/em> or aj\u00f1\u0101na, <\/em>nescience), root-cause of the human bondage and of the cosmic flow: an epithet of Durg\u0101 signifies \u201cliberatrix from the world of births and deaths\u201d, and in a Pur\u0101nic eulogy to the Dev\u012b, She is addressed in the following terms by the gods: \u201cThou art the germ of the universe, thou art Illusion [in the sense of \u201cappearance\u201d, m\u0101y\u0101<\/em>, the veil or power that obscures the Absolute] sublime! All this world has been bewitched, O goddess; Thou indeed when attained art the cause of final emancipation from existence on the earth!\u201d[35]<\/a> (i.e. liberation, mok\u1e63a<\/em> or mukti<\/em>, the supreme worth of human life).<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    The goddess K\u0101l\u012b painted by Surendra N\u0101th Kar, from Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists <\/em>(1914) by Sister Nivedita and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. According to Alain Dani\u00e9lou, She is the Power of Time, and under the name of Mah\u0101k\u0101l\u012b, the Transcendent Power of Time. Her name is derived from k\u0101la\u00b9<\/em> \u201cblack, dark blue\u201d but is also associated with the homonymous k\u0101la\u00b2 <\/em>\u201ctime\u201d. A hymn from a Tantra calls \u0100dy\u0101 K\u0101l\u012b \u201cDestroyer of Time, Devourer of Him who devours, Mother of Time\u201d. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    If now we turn to the Aztecs, L\u00e9on-Portilla in Aztec Thought and Culture <\/em>refers to a doctrine developed by C\u0113 \u0100catl Topiltzin Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl, king-priest of Tula, the capital of the Toltecs, including perhaps the possibility to overcome our transitory world and find the sole stable \u201cregion\u201d beyond the primordial waters and a world constantly experiencing conflicts. This region is named Tl\u012bll\u0101n Tlapall\u0101n, \u201cPlace of the black and red colour\u201d[36]<\/a>, the location of Wisdom, a mythical toponym built on the same model that the difrasismo<\/em> (idiomatic complex) in tl\u012blli in tlapalli<\/em> \u201cthe black, the red [inks, used for the pictorial books]\u201d, meaning \u201cwriting and wisdom\u201d. According to L\u00e9on-Portilla and the Anales de Cuauhtitlan<\/em>, Topiltzin Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl paid honour to the supreme dual principle \u014cmete\u014dtl in the forms of the Lord and Lady of Our Sustenance and led a life of meditation and retreat, establishing as king a sort of golden age. But he has to leave Tula because of the activities of sorcerers or demons (the text names among others Tezcatlip\u014dca) who wanted to sacrifice people while he was opposed to this practice, favouring autosacrifice (ritual extracting of one\u2019s own blood) and animal sacrifice (snakes, birds and butterflies[37]<\/a>) to satiate the needs of the gods. After a series of successful tricks and magical deceptions done by the demons, Topiltzin Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl finally departed from the city, broken, with his servants and went to Tl\u012bll\u0101n Tlapall\u0101n in order to burn himself, then entered the sky and turned into the Morning Star (Venus), becoming the Lord of the Dawn, a form of the god Quetzalc\u014d\u0101tl. So if the story is not one of the liberation and absolute freedom sought by Tantric adepts, it could nevertheless be an example of apotheosis, in the sense of the deification of a being able to quit the human condition and (re-)gain a higher divine state.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Nahuas knew a type of man, the tlamatini<\/em>, a word meaning\n\u201che who knows something\u201d, generally translated as \u201cwise man\u201d, characterised\nnotably by the fact that \u201che knows what is above us (topan<\/em>), the world\nof the gods, and in the region of the dead (Mictl\u0101n)\u201d. Besides obvious shamanic\nconnotation, according to L\u00e9on-Portilla, \u201cThe idiomatic complex topan, mictl\u0101n<\/em>\ncarries the meaning, ‘what is beyond our knowledge, what is in itself beyond\nexperience’. The Nahuatl mind formulated what we today would call a\nmetaphysical order or noumenal world. Its counterpart is the world itself, cem\u0101n\u0101huac<\/em>, ‘that which is entirely surrounded by\nwater’. At other times, as has been noted, a contrast is made between what is ‘above\nus, the beyond’ and ‘what is on the surface of the earth [tl\u0101lticpac<\/em>]’\n[\u2026] On the one hand, there is that which is visible, immanent, manifold,\nphenomenal, which for the Nahuas was ‘that which is upon the earth’, tl\u0101lticpac<\/em>; on the other, there is that which is\npermanent, metaphysical, transcendental, expressed in Nahuatl as topan,\nmictl\u0101n<\/em>, ‘what is above us and below us, in the region of the dead’\u201d.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The term tlamatini<\/em> also refers to the n\u0101hualli<\/em> \u201cmagician, sorcerer, one who uses spells and incantations\u201d, who had notably the ability to shapeshift into the animal form of his personal guardian spirit and other \u201csupernatural\u201d powers. The word written nagual or nahual will be later popularized by Carlos Casteneda and various authors as one term of the opposing and complementary pair tonal\/nagual and as a title for \u201cthe leader or teacher of a group of apprentices in the art of mastering awareness\u201d. <\/em>The highest goal in the path described in Castaneda’s books is certainly to escape from the usual fate of living beings: their awareness enriched by experiences is doomed to be devoured by the Eagle, the supreme power, source of all sentient beings, that governs all destinies and whose emanations are made out of time, also called the dark sea of awareness. <\/em>Two of the means used for that purpose are impeccability <\/em>and the technique of recapitulation, <\/em>allowing the practitioner to clean his memories of people, places and the feelings associated with them, in order among other things to lose the human form<\/em> conditioning us. The human form <\/em>is defined by Castaneda in The Wheel of Time <\/em>as \u201ca conglomerate of energy fields which exists in the universe, and which is related exclusively to human beings. Shamans call it the human form<\/em> because those energy fields have been bent and contorted by a lifetime of habits and misuse.\u201d Impeccability <\/em>and giving our life experiences to the Eagle before death offer us a \u201cchance to have a chance\u201d to not end up in his beak, for he may be contented with a perfect recapitulation<\/em> instead of awareness: \u201cTo die and be eaten by the Eagle is no challenge. On the other hand, to sneak around the Eagle and be free is the ultimate audacity\u201d (The Eagle’s Gift<\/em>). We can partly compare recapitulation<\/em> with the burning of the v\u0101san\u0101<\/em>-s (past imprints, including not only individual memories of one’s present existence, but also the collective, and karmic residues of past lives) pursued by the yogi in order to free himself and \u201cto abolish the work of time\u201d. Eliade writes in The Myth of the Eternal Return <\/em>about the Buddhist perspective: \u201cThe only possibility of escaping from time, of breaking the iron circle of existences, is to abolish the human condition and win nirv\u0101\u1e47a<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In the end, the definitive abolition of time for a seeker of the ultimate reality is achievable only when he is freed from the conditioned human state as well as others even higher, once and for all, thus becoming according to Hinduism either a j\u012bvan-mukta<\/em>, one who is liberated in this life, being permanently in the paradoxical eternal present, the real eternity, or a videha<\/em>–mukta<\/em>, who obtains liberation solely when \u201cout of his bodily form\u201d, i.e. at the moment of his death. A comment from \u0100di \u015aa\u1e45kar\u0101c\u0101rya, one of the great masters of Advaita Ved\u0101nta, the non-dualistic school of Hinduism, may help to give an idea of the ultimate \u201cnatural state\u201d achieved by a yogi delivered in this life:<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cHe who has made the pilgrimage of his own ‘Self’, a pilgrimage not\nconcerned with situation, place, or time [or any particular circumstance or\ncondition], which is everywhere [and always, in the immutability of the\n‘eternal present’], in which neither heat nor cold are experienced [no more\nthan any other sensible or even mental impression], which procures a lasting\nfelicity and a final deliverance from all disturbance [or all modification];\nsuch a one is actionless, he knoweth all things [in Brahma<\/em>], and he\nattaineth Eternal Bliss.’\u201d[38]<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    6. Credits<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cUrzeit\u201d is dedicated to Mircea Eliade, with a special thought for\nCu\u0101uhtem\u014dctzin, the last Mexica tlahto\u0101ni<\/em> before the Spanish dominion.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n