The Blue Star

The Blue Star is not very apparent in the Meso-American culture because most of the texts available to us are stone inscriptions. Modern basic astronomy lessons tell us about X-1, thought to be the great exploding blue star in the lower end of the constellation Cygnus (considered to be the beak of the bird), even though Hawiian religious texts tell us that it was a nova in the upper arm area of the Northern Cross. No one today saw the original event, nor can anyone actually prove that it even occurred. Yet monuments in Mesoamerica tell of a great stellar event. Because the writing medium is stone, there is no color associated with the star. Nevertheless, turquoise and jade are the two colors associated with the sky gods in the painted codices involved in this occurrence.

Other manuscripts--also found in Mesoamerica--do infer that there was a "blue" event in the heavens.

The Nuttall is one place where the color blue seems to be concentrated in several areas : laminas 1, 2, and 7, then laminas 11 through 14. The blue in some places might be a lighter blue-gray tone or a truer blue for sky and water. In spite of the fact that the color blue appears to be more prominent in these pages, it continues through the Eight Deer Story on the obverse. In fact, blue appears to be an integral part of the Nuttall color scheme, but, apparently, not in the 1972 Dover edition. This edition only has a gray element.

In the first pages of the newer edition, notable colors are basically green, gray, brick red, black, brown, and ochre. Nevertheless, in the upper right corner of page 7, a jaguar man (Tezcatlipoca of the mirror foot) has a blue (blue-gray) speech scroll of Tlaloc. He steps out of a cog element carried by a young harpy eagle. One Lamina 12, a blue-nosed dragon/person seated on a jaguar-skin sky throne. Blue star-waters flows from his knees. Next comes the star hanging from a sky-grid, then it is seen above a different sky grid with Lady Two Xochitl.

However, on Lamina 12, Lady Two Vulture, holds a flaming torch with a shining blue star on the bottom. She is facing a sky-warrior standing on a sky (probably of rain) band with Tlaloc-type sky band which contains a burst of expanding blue to the left of its "eyes".

If this element were rain it would be below the eye elements, falling towards earth, but here, it is equal with the eye band in the heavens, as if because of its power, Tlaloc of the "flying "eyes" ( as found in the Caxactla southern wall mural), is able to rule as a god, but, contrary to opinion, not as a rain god. It was this concept of power in the Vindobinennses (Lamina 3) that appeared as a great star form before the arrival of the rain-Tlaloc.

The blue-gray element is again found in a strange temple form on top of a sky-band mountain with a black bar obscuring sunlight. This "temple" is reminiscent of a cave used to view stars as found in the Madrid 36. In the following pages, there is blue in some form or another: such as blue number circles, as part of a headdress, as part of clothing or as part of a date/name. This is nothing extraordinary, since Tlaloc is associated with water. This may only be an interpretation of those evaluating the codex. They believed that the color blue implied our modern Floridian concept of "water."

Another icon, that of a bird/fish bears only one blue fin which may indicate its sky origin. As the bird (meteorite) with its feather (fire) tail encircled by a ring, entered the waters of the lake (as in Lamina 14), it would then become a fish. Mental transitions such as these, illustrated as simple line graphics instead of computer morphs, are common art forms of cultures we consider to be primitive.

The story line appears to read as follows:

The hand of god extended from the heavenly grid. (Lamina 7).The blue stone man head (Lamina 11) as a name element in a star grid And on the next page a single star hanging from the same type grid of the heaven (Lamina 12). Just below this appearance of the star, another red/blue blazing grid as a name glyph is next to a chain of stars used both as a necklace and as a name glyph for Twelve Jaguar. The star then becomes part of the Tlaloc symbol in the vault of the heavens while Two Vulture female holds a blue flaming star torch and a lowered blue flower staff (Lamina 12).

These events are viewed in the Star temple in the year Two Atl and Four Cuauhtli. Several numbered date/names and years contain blue circles instead of the more ordinary reds, grays, and ocher's. Finally, Tlaloc rules from the mountain top (Lamina 14) where the blue star fell and the star is no more.