The Borgia: The Fortuneteller's Masterpiece:
Comets and Meteorites in the Borgia Codex
By D. M. Urquidi
3/13/1997
Omens and auguries that foretell good and bad events are found worldwide. The soul of man has not yet conquered his fear of the unknown quantity in his life and /or death.
In the Mesoamerican world, the Borgia Codex is no exception to this rule. In the almanac that makes up the sacred year count of 260 days, there are events portrayed that indicate certain features of the unknown world. Since the unknown cannot be known, there are certain events that occur that cannot be controlled. These things are beyond the reach of mankind. Each event may indicate a higher force, a more potent force in the heavens, or on the earth.
In order to tell a person if he is going to have good fortune or bad fortune, a Mesoamerican soothsayer will use one of these extraordinary events to infer to the client that his luck or fortune is beyond the realm the soothsayers, especially if it is a bad prediction. In this way, the soothsayer will himself, not be blamed for a bad prophecy but yet still profit from a good one.
On the top and bottom of the 260-day count, there are 104 pictures. This brings the calendar of 260 into the realm of 364 days. Certain pictures in these two rows can be deciphered as universal celestial events. A universal celestial event is one that the whole world can see in any given latitude during twenty-four hours.
Presented at the XIII Texas Symposium at the XX Forum on Maya Hieroglyphic Writing held March 6-15, 1997, Karle Taube, in his paper "Fire, Meteors and the Central Mexican Cult of War," suggested that, indeed, meteorites were portrayed as war spears (from the heavens). He indicated that these strange spears were used in conjunction with the butterfly image: the butterfly that was a symbol of the Toltec warrior.
For an explanation of this butterfly, one must return to Mexico around the year 1955. The six-inch wingspread of this butterfly was used in tourist pictures for many years. Its color was a striking iridescent blue. In 1982, when I went to the Rio Milagros in Chiapas, I only saw one butterfly of that color and it had less than a one-inch wingspread.
Iridescent blue was the color used to describe Halley's comet in 1911. This is not to say that references to all comets in the ancient world were references to Halley's. For sure, there is more than one blue comet recorded in astronomy. It is just to say that some burning stars falling towards the earth could and did have the appearance of beautiful but dangerous blue streaks of light.
There are several comets (those that did not fall to earth) shown in the drawings above and below the 260-day count of the Borgia Codex. In the first 52 day set, there are only two in conflict. They are located within the two lower paths on the crossroads symbol.
In the second set, these same star forms are not in one but in two positions. One serpent, not a comet is a golden yellow. This serpent is probably the great sun Tonatiuh of the Aztec Sun Stone fame. The other is the red coral serpent that hangs in the sky. This would be a comet that is very close to the earth, but going away from it. When it moved towards us, it would have appeared to be hanging suspended in the heavens, but it would also have the color blue. The color effect, blue approaching and red receding, is called the Doppler Effect. Normally, it is not phenomena that are seen in the skies, but in extra-ordinary circumstances, it might be seen in full color.
The Borgia icon for such an event is a yellow man being hung, yellow because the comet was as bright as the sun. There is a myth, not only in Mesoamerica but also in many other parts of the world that a star of the night competed in brightness with the sun. Apparently, using the Doppler effect as a guage, the yellowness would indicate that it is following our orbit, not approaching nor receding.
Page 12 of the Nuttall shows a similar bright image as a round star form suspended from the sky grid. The second view of the red comet serpent in the Borgia bears a knife on its back. One can assume that it brought a type of destruction. A destroying serpent in the Codex Ríos is also portrayed with a (cutting) scythe and a feather fan (of fire).
The third set of 52-days shows two events where the sun is battling for supremacy with the red coral serpent in one frame and in another frame where the red one is being held in place (or receding from the earth?) by a star entity.
The fourth set gives up all pretenses of serpent imagery and instead shows a brilliant star form falling as a red-man holding an ax. Another minor event is portrayed on the last page of this set. A yellow man is seen falling to the earth from the star-filled heavens.
Immediately in the next frame however, is a destructrive, bloody event indicated by the black obsidian knife. it looks very much like the falling Leonids we saw this week in Karl Tuabe's presentation. The black obsidian knife would indicate a volcanic reaction on land to this fall-outl This appears to be from the story of Huitzilopochitli born out of the Hill of Serpents and his battle with the stars, his brothers and sisters.
In Mesoamerica just as in other parts of the world, these symbols of past sky and/or earth events would warn a client that even though these disasters could not be avoided, even the earth survived these destructive . The man, woman, or child would also survive the lesser destructirve elements in his/her lifetime. The prophecy would not only be a dark one, but would also show the listener that his life could be peaceful in spite of the dismal prophecy that might befall him.
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