Arrows of Water
Sahágun called this red and white striped person Amimitl
which he translated as "arrows of water." A Lord with this name was thought to
be the leader of those who settled in Michoacan, México. Some of the
descriptions of this person includes a black "Lone Ranger" mask which is at
times outlined in stars. The net bag he carries usually has fish fins attached
instead of feather decorations.
All of the above, without any other reference, indicates that this
entity is not a human, but a celestial form which fell from the heavens
into (and was not "of") water, but it could have been a "contaminator of water."
Further investigation into the Nahuatl language
indicates that the word amina had come to indicate the effects of
"bad water" after eating raw, unprocessed food, which in México can
lead to what is commonly called "Montezuma's revenge" or diarrhea. Anyone
who has ever had this internal disturbance is well aware that extremely
accelerated "arrows of water" are expelled from the body, many times
unexpectedly.
The Mixtec Codices turned up some very interesting information about this
red and white striped costume. The Nuttall is the most informative.
It shows on lamina 21 three red and white striped personages falling or
descending from the sky. One with rock, one with water, and the other with
a large wind scroll. On the previous lamina (20) these creatures are shown
as mummy bundles. and even before that, they are shown as sacred red and white
bundles found revered in the temples. This appears to be a reversed sequence
of what actually occurred.
There can be NO revered bundles of bones (of creatures who wore red and
white striped clothing) if these beings did not yet die. Christian origins
of heavenly creatures indicate that a person must die before they can become
angels in heaven. However, this is not a Christian concept, it is a
Mesoamerican concept before the Conquest and appears to be the exact reverse
of this procedure. The creatures which fell or descended from the skies carried
with them stones, water and wind. Wind cannot be "captured." Water falling from
the skies can be contaminated with frogs or other creatures such as small fish
(probably indicated by the fish fins on the bag the entity carries)
while stones, which in Greek literature was considered to be the "bones of Typhon,"
was a possibility. The Codex Colombino actually shows two such
"stones of fire" falling into the water (Laminas 27 and 28), one of which is
attached to a spear shaft. Normally, meteors streaking across the
heavens show up against the night skies as white, but if they happen to reach
the atmosphere of the earth, they burst into flames (red). Apparently, the
Mesoamerican astronomers (the sages of the communities) gave detailed accounts
of this passage in picture format within the Mixtec Codices.
The Selden on the other hand shows the results of the stellar
event. In the first lamina, a heavenly personage in a red tunic with white
stripes tosses a spear into a mountain top, splitting it asunder. A picture
or two later, an older person, the sage of the community, is found to be
unwrapping a sacred bundle while the next frame shows a newly bound red and
white bundle with a "nuhu" head on top. ("Nuhu" is not a Nahuatl word). These
new sacred red and white bundles are henceforth found in temples and appear to
give "power" to subsequent rulers of the Mixtec area. Pages 9 through 11
of the Selden indicate that there was a hiatus when this "sacred bundle"
was missing, only to reappear again with the aid of another "Nuhu" attached to
a spear. These bundles seem to have been the source of political "power" up to
and including the time of the Conquest.The Aztec lore also indicate that
gold and silver was thought to be the "excrement" of the gods.
The photo here
shows a heavy pebble with flecks of gold thought to be a meteorite. It is one
of many which looked much like "dog droppings" to its finder. So here, we have
the end confirming the beginning: the "diarrhea" (arrows of bad waters) of the
gods. Other meteorite stones were magnetic in nature and, in fact,
could "lead" a group of people across the land, as Huitzilopochtli from Curl Top
Mountain giving directions for their journey by "speaking to the priests."
It was in this way that "political" power was acquired. With the above, we have
a very accurate description of several types of stones that could
fall from the skies. The rabbit image (an indication erratic behaviour due to
inebriation) will be discussed in another section.