MESOAMERICAN (AZTEC/MEXICA/NAHUA, MAYA, ZAPOTECA/BINE’ZAA, MIXTEC, OLMEC, etc.)
General overview
Mexicolore: This website was designed to teach children, but they basically got experts in Aztec and Mayan culture to answer an endless amount of specific questions over the last twenty years, that you might otherwise spend ages seeking an answer to, perusing and studying various codices and other sources, and never find out. It’s a vast and very accurate, multi-media treasure trove of knowledge. Have fun!
Guide to the Mesoamerican Codices
If you want to do more in-depth direct study, you have to go to the codices. Our ancestors had many ancient amoxtin, books, that were intentionally burned and destroyed by the Catholic priests. Of the vast libraries that existed, only 16 pre-conquest books, called codices—codex in singular, survive, of all our Mesoamerican cultures.
Most of what we know comes from other codices that were created or compiled by those same monks in the decades or centuries after conquest, as they tried to map out our elaborate religious traditions and ways in order to better stamp them out. While I sometimes want to weep at the amount of knowledge and culture that was lost with all the books that were burned, I take some comfort in the fact that those monks would be rolling over in their graves if they knew that their writings, which documented our ancestors’ world in such meticulous detail, were ironically now being used to revive the very things they tried to destroy. When we read post-conquest codices, we also have to keep in mind that, unfortunately, European prejudices and their inability to see and understand some of our ways leads to a somewhat tainted lens through which to view our past. With that in mind, we can try to balance out what we’re reading, and still get an extraordinary first-hand account of the world of our ancestors when it was still living.
If you’re new to codices, they were created as accordion books, amate-paper pages pasted together at the edges, plastered and painted, with wood top and bottom pieces that were often decorated with jaguar skin or other precious substances. Pages were painted on both sides, so as they were unfolded, they were read from right to left, then flipped over and continued. I was just reading about one of the codices that was almost fifty feet long when fully unfolded (Codex Borbonicus). Can you imagine that?!
One thing to say is that in terms of a culture that was literate through pictographs, to be a scribe and painter was the same thing. When you’re facing the dizzying array of gods and beings, ancient priests and scribes essentially ‘read’ the iconography of face paint patterns, headdress construction, symbols, mask shapes, colors of dress, etc. Each of these is coded for a particular sacred being. Even the common people who were not ‘literate’ were pictorially literate in being able to decipher which god or set of sacred beings they were looking at in the temples, dancers, etc., based on these things.
The other thing to know is that the tonalpohualli, or 260-day sacred calendar ruled the Mesoamerican world, and is referred to in pretty much every original codex. Many of them existed specifically as a guide to the tonalpohualli to help ancient priests track and know the timing of rituals based on the calendar; as a hint, you can always tell priests in the codices because they painted themselves in head to toe black.
Over time I’ve slowly added to my own library of books, and now have a small shelf full of codices. Because I found it kind of overwhelming and confusing to know which to get for what or where to start, I offer my best suggestions on beginning and deepening your own ancestral study.
Florentine Codex
For general knowledge of all things Mexica, the Florentine Codex is one of the largest sources of information. It’s currently published in 12 books, and is sort of laid out like an encyclopedia with small drawings put together by a monk named Sahagun and a team of Mexica informers 500 years ago to illustrate and explain Mexica culture to Europeans, shortly after conquest. A new project just made the entire codex, images as well as text, searchable so you don’t have to hunt for what you’re looking for. It’s amazing! Use this as a primary resource.
Print books are also sold on Amazon in 12 volumes, that are expensive at $25-40+ a book, but have a level of depth and rich detail you can’t find anywhere else. I buy myself one a year, and find it’s totally worth it to to have a paper version like our ancestors did, to sit in the sun and enjoy reading, instead of having to tap through a computer screen. Each book is also labeled with its topic, so it’s easy to select which might have the right information you’re seeking. Most of these codices are information in print, written in Nahuatl from a Mexica informer, with an accompanying translation in Spanish by Sahagún, finally translated into English for us by the modern publishers. They provide all these texts, so consequently, it also gives you an introduction to classical Nahuatl and the opportunity to try to read and practice it.
Codex Borgia
This is another of the codices that is actually sold in book form and is easily available on Amazon for a sane price. It was my first codex and was featured on my Dia de Los Muertos altar for more than a decade. It’s got incredible art, full color, full-page elaborate creations that definitely require puzzling over. This is the opposite of the Florentine Codex in that it’s almost all image in pure reproduction, with only sketched out notes in the way of explanatory text that are scholars’ modern interpretations—no original text. Consequently, this is best tackled after you’ve got some lay of the Mesoamerican landscape, or if you just want to enjoy some incredibly detailed, complex art. However, it does have a full set of the tonalpohaulli, and the modern authors give a calendar overview if you want to learn more about it.
I would say the Dresden Codex is the Maya equivalent of the Codex Borgia in some ways. It’s the clearest and most complete of the four remaining pre-Colombian Mayan codices, and you can find it in book format, but it’s just photographs of the exquisite artwork with Mayan writing in glyph signs, mostly focused on the calendar and other sacred knowledge. Why can’t we get a full translation from a good Mayanist? There are a few options you can buy of just the art on Amazon, since there’s not a good online source. It’s worth it to puzzle over images of the gods and their symbology.
The Popol Vuh is another classic codex, written post-conquest, but supposedly of very ancient stories. This tells the story of the Mayan creation myth, from Yucatec Maya. It’s full text in a more regular-size book, popular on Amazon, but no photographs. If you’re curious to dig more into story, this is the way to go, although as with so many ancient myths, without the original context or an explanation of what things mean, it can be hard to understand sometimes, but worth the effort. Here’s a great YouTube video that tells the story in a very accessible way.
Those four codices, two Aztec/Mexica, two Mayan, should hold you in good stead for years of study (well, let’s be honest it’s like 3 plus 12, but I don’t plan on reading many of the boring books of the Florentine Codex, like a recitation of the genealogy of the rulers). Once you reach the stage where you can recognize most of the gods, understand a lot of the symbols you see on a page, can pronounce Nahuatl correctly, and find yourself poring over your pile of codices with a magnifying glass trying to figure out how they constructed their multi-piece ear spools so you can make some, you might be entertained by tracking down and comparing/contrasting more of the details in other smaller manuscripts.
The Codex Borbonicus is a smaller codex at just 36 pages, but I find it to have some of the most beautiful paintings of the Aztec/Mexica gods that I’ve seen, which are enhanced by the remaining bright turquoise blue paint that is non-existent or has faded in other codices. This is sort of surprising because the Borbonicus is one of the oldest, a pre-conquest codex, with a complete set of calendar paintings, along with some ritual actions towards the end. This one can be downloaded at the link above, which is good because it’s not in print.
Codex Magliabechiano is also a smaller codex that has some lovely, simplified symbolic graphics, and is handily available online, since it’s also not in print.
There are many other codices—for those who are interested in herbalism, there’s an Aztec herbal codex, but don’t plan on using this for anything more than entertainment. Many of the recipes call for things like whole ground lizards or bat excrement, and sound like some disgusting witches brew, but might be fun to have for reference, and might point to some useful plants.
Language
When I first started attempting to get a handle on my ancestral culture and sacred beings, I would just look at the insanely long Mexica names, with a dizzying, tongue-twisting array of letters thrown into syllables and sounds not native to English, feel overwhelmed just by looking at them, and give up trying. Learning to untangle that complicated knot of Nahuatl took a great deal of study and tracking down obscure dictionaries and grammar guides to Classical Nahuatl.
These days, there are increasing amounts of YouTube videos and additional popular books to guide language learners who are interested in Nahuatl. It’s also a still very living language with over 1.5 million speakers, so it’s not in immediate danger of dying out as many indigenous languages are. However, pronunciation between what is called Classical Nahuatl, the version spoken 500 years ago at the point of conquest, and how things are pronounced today have obviously changed. It’s sort of like imaging what Olde English sounded like in the Middle Ages, and learning to read Shakespeare, who was born just decades after the conquest of Mexico—as opposed to how we speak and read contemporary American English. I learn and teach Classical Nahuatl pronunciation, because I want to know how to speak our gods’ name correctly, as our ancient ancestors did, and sing their praises in the ways they were accustomed to hearing.
Nahuatl is part of the Uto-Aztecan language group, which spans indigenous tribes as far north as the Shoshone in Idaho, and includes other Native American ‘cousins’ here in the north, including Paiute, Comanche, and Hopi, in addition to many other variants south of the border. It’s something that my Shoshone teacher and I connected about, and I sometimes look to Shoshone or Hopi spiritual practices or teachings to see or feel how to revive similar practices from the Mexica, now extinct.
Aside from Nahuatl, Mexico has more than 60 other indigenous languages, and hundreds of variants or dialects. That means that there are, yes, more than sixty kinds of indigenous peoples in our ancestral homelands, who may be part of our ancestry aside from the Mexica or Maya. However, unless we have living relatives in Mexico currently, or recently emigrated and have strong and clear ties to living indigenous cultures, for most of the 37 million of us living in the Mexica diaspora, and even most of the 132 million people in Mexico itself, we were severed from our indigeneity so long ago that we’re not likely to know or easily be able to find out. DNA testing can be helpful for folks, but it can only identify geographical areas, which might relate to tribes, but might not. Consequently, I consider myself a Mesoamerican revivalist, because there was an incredible amount of shared culture, calendar, gods, religious practice, etc. that created a pan-tribal experience across the Mexica, Maya, and Mixtec, that was just expressed via different lenses of language and aesthetics.
Documentaries
Aztec Pyramids of War, Episodes 1 and 2
On Bundles
Balanzu Way School of Shamanic Arts 