José Luis Díaz

The legendary adventures of Topiltzin Ce-Ácatl, who was the last king of Tula around the middle of the tenth century and the best known of the human equivalents of the great pre-Hispanic god Quetzalcoatl (“the Plumed Serpent”), are the source and the chief product of a Mexican myth in constant evolution. In examining these adventures, it is notable how the experiences of the Toltec king at each point precisely repeat and signify on the earth the same fate faced by Quetzalcoatl himself.

The son of Mixcóatl and Chimalma, who died at the time of his birth, the boy Topliltzin was necessarily born in a year Ce-Ácatl (One-cane) and was raised by his grandparents in what is now part of the Mexican state of Morelos. Today, a well near the town of Amatlán, at the foot of the steep cliffs of Tepozteco Hill, proudly proclaims his native territory. After a time, the young Topiltzin defeated Tepoztécatl, his father’s murderer, on the very peak of Tepozteco, thus avenging his father’s death and successfully recovering his earthly remains. He turned over the soil in search of his father’s bones and buried them in the shrine to Quilaztli, “she who makes germinate”, one of the manifestations of the Mother Goddess.

In his youth, Topiltzin began to teach the Chichimecas (literally “barbarians”) and urged them to leave their caves and begin sowing corn. Once he had successfully established agriculture, the hero settled in Tulancingo, where he devoted his life to penitence and meditation. As a result of his achievements his fame grew and prompted the Toltecs of Tula to invite him to become their priest-king. Now with the investiture of Quetzalcoatl, the new monarch preached by example natural law and penitence, opposed human sacrifices, and taught the arts and agriculture. According to the calculations of Mexican historian Enrique Florescano, Topiltzin-Quetzalcoatl governed Tula between 1029 and 1040 of our era, but was not a governor opposed to sacrifices, an image belonging more to the Christian tradition than that of Mesoamerica, where no priest or king was ever opposed to the ritual.

One of the Atlante statues in Tula, ancient city of the Toltecs

Living in “meditation and retreat”, according to the Annals of Cuautitlán (cited by León Portilla in his book, Quetzalcoatl, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1968), Topiltzin conceived of an unfathomable god, at once singular and dual: Ometéotl, also called Tloque Nahuaque (literally, “the master of the near and nigh”) whom the human being can only approach through artistic creation and meditation. He also perceived the aim of wisdom to be a world beyond the physical: Tlillan Tlapallán, “the place of the red and the black”, which could be reached through art and “dialogue with the heart itself”, and which would come to be considered the most elevated of human ideals (León Portilla, 1974: 302-308). It is highly probable that these astoundingly enlightened notions, so close to universal Gnosticism, were in fact developed and refined over the long course of the evolution of Nahuatl culture and Mesoamerican teachings and have been partly attributed to Topiltzin. On the other hand, just as Buddha did with the Hindu tradition or Jesus with the Hebrew, it is also possible that the King of Tula engendered a profound reform of the teachings through his own personal and exalted vision.

In any case, the Toltecs understood Topiltzin’s doctrine well, and they made it their own. As a result, the civilization flourished and enjoyed a long period of peace and creativity under his rule. However, predictably, the conflict between instinct and austerity, between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, soon reared its ugly head. The king discovered that, beneath his shroud of purity, he was plagued by passions and doubts. It was in these moments of fragility when the astute necromancers, priests of the rival god Tezcatlipoca and advocates of human sacrifice and militaristic expansion, seized the opportunity to reveal his body to him before a mirror. Topiltzin was terrified; in his body, the dwelling place of time, instinct and death, he recognized the serpent. To conceal it, the necromancers cleverly dressed him up in the feathers of the quetzal bird, with a turquoise mask, a wig and a beard made of the blue and red feathers of the macaw. An almost literal allegory of a plumed serpent, the king took pleasure in his costume and agreed to drink the intoxicating pulque offered to him by the seducing wizards. He sent for his sister Quetzalpétatl, made her drink the pulque too, and then engaged with her in an orgy that lasted until dawn. In some sources, Quetzalpétatl is substituted in this scene of the Fall with another aspect of the Mother Goddess; the young goddess Xochiquetzal, the salacious deity from whose womb flowers blossom, the patron of handcrafts, sexual love and the temazcal steam bath. In any case, when dawn came and with it the hangover resulting from his Bacchic fury, the reprobate king was overwhelmed with bitterness and exclaimed the terrible truth that had assaulted him: “My body is made of dirt”. His other nature had been cruelly revealed to him: the serpent beneath the feathers.

History, myth and legend intertwine all the more from this point which marks the initiation of the eastward pilgrimage, the veritable Mesoamerican flight or hegira. Out of a need to search and repent, the king decides to desert his throne and abandon the duties of his office; he chooses purification by fire and burns his belongings. Once on his way he becomes fully aware of his inevitable aging; he turns to Tula and bemoans the loss of the sacred city, leaning on a rock that is left stained by his hands and scarred by his tears. When the people attempt to dissuade him, he replies: “the sun calls me”, and when he passes along the edge of a cliff (which tradition tells is the precipice now named Paso de Cortes, between the Iztazíhuatl and Popocatépetl volcanoes), his companions die in a snowstorm. Ever on the lookout for meanings, tradition associates Quetzalcóatl at this site with Hernán Cortés, who often passed through it on his journeys to the Valley of Mexico. They would also be associated, for his disgrace and that of his people, with the emperor Moctezuma.

On the other side of the volcanoes, Topiltzin, the commander of the exodus who has lost his entourage, sets himself up temporarily in Cholula (“the place of the flight”), where his influence would remain visible up to the conquest. In some moment of his itinerary, Topiltzin decides to explore his own nature fully. His spirit then descends to the Land of the Dead, takes the bones of his ancestors from the Lord of the Depths, faces the ghastly void of death in terror and then returns to continue on his pilgrimage. Finally, he reaches the seashore at the place named Coatzacoalcos (literally, “the place where the serpent hides”), which today is home to a petrochemical inferno. Here he dons a costume of feathers and a turquoise mask and sets himself on fire. The sun rises over the sea in a red dawn, while the most beautiful birds, “the red-feathered macaw, the bluebird, the thin thrush, the shining white bird, the parrots and parakeets of yellow plumage…” come singing to provide musical accompaniment and added colour to the burning heart of the king, the heart which is consumed to rise from the ashes and transform into Venus, the Morning Star.

It can be observed that this wondrous scene constitutes a meeting point in world mythology. The final element is repeated in the Egyptian legend of the Phoenix, which has the power, after having been consumed in the bonfire, to be reborn out of its own ashes. Another version of the myth no less significant has the hero boarding a ship of serpents and disappearing into the unknown eastern horizon with the promise to return.

Equally full of wonders were the lives of the many other Central and South American equivalents of the man Quetzalcoatl. Among these is Gucumatz, the Quiche king who for seven-day periods was a snake, an eagle, and a tiger, and who lived in the sky and walked to the Quiche underworld called Xibalba. Another is the miraculous life of Kukulkán, the great lord who ruled over the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá around the 11th century. Or the Andean god Viracocha who, before disappearing at high sea, wandered like a beggar while teaching his ephemeral subjects the arts, agriculture, herbalist remedies, writing and magic.

Meanwhile in Mexico, the hope that the god-hero will one day come back and restore the classic culture and veritable golden age of the Toltecs will endure forever.

It is the longed for return, the anxiously awaited new flight of the whirling serpent.

José Luis Díaz is professor and researcher with the Department of the History and Philosophy of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). He is the author of several hundred scientific articles and project reports and, among others, the books Psicobiología y conducta: Rutas de una indagación (FCE, 1989) and El ábaco, la lira y la rosa (FCE, 1997). The article above is an English translation of an extract from his most recent book, El revuelo de la serpiente. Quetzalcóatl resuscitado (Herder, 2007), and is reproduced here with the author’s permission.

Translated by Martin Boyd