Esoteric Currents in Mesoamerican Thought

Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes

There is more than one "esoteric way" of studying and appreciating Mesoamerican Spiritual and Religious Thought that is manifested for the first time to Europeans in documents, travel accounts, chronicles, abundant collection of sculptures and a wide set of inscriptions; Powerful and current oral tradition.

A powerful codification and spiritual configuration within an ancient Naguálic structure of symbolic communication.

It is the nagual of power Báalam Ahaw = jaguar-snake who orders and defines the multiple categories and levels of reality in a unifying message sharing features of the set of beliefs and practices. Power of the wayob'.

Consequently, this thought has been considered by many academics, as = "rejected Knowledge", mere perception or interpretative distortion of the work of barbarian and uncultured peoples par excellence.

The influence of the clergy, the excessive zeal of conquerors and missionary friars in their relationships and documents were laying the basis that gradually forged and nurtured distorted images of a particular vision of the world, in the face of an unknown universe of symbols and multiplicity of meanings.

Many of them, immersed in the very rich dimension of the spiritual situation of Mesoamerican sacred thought.

(Juan de Zumárraga, Diego de Landa or Fray Toribio de Benavente = Motolinía)

His disputed and famous opinion on "the diabolical properties" of the divine entheogen, the Teonanacátl. (1)

The sages and humanists contributed to the psychic nature of their nostalgia and unconscious projections to perpetuate the stigmata of anthropophagus and sodomites.

In modern times, Vaillant said of the Aztecs: "They have a past, but they have no history." (2)

In fact, if the Renaissance of the 15th century can be considered -for Europe-, the period of the foundation of esoteric thought, in honor of the truth, for many centuries before in Mesoamerica its own and millenary tradition was firmly established.

Ancient and rigorous way of thinking and highly spiritualized esoteric legacy.

A universe of sacred, invisible and palpable energies that are extraordinarily complex and systematically encoded in well-captured iconographic manifestations.

Iconography and indigenous testimony in soteriological function within a millenary religious structure and conception of the world or formative genesis of Aboriginal Peoples of America.

"From Faivre and Hanegraaf I learned to understand the Renaissance of the 15th century as the founding period of esoteric thought, and to differentiate between ancient models and the modern reception." (3)

It is possible, therefore, that we can refer directly to that powerful millenary esotericism.

This indicates his maturity before the friars took pains to demonize and try in vain to minimize indigenous thought.

For there already existed, throughout Mesoamerica, a strong and constant 'documented historical tradition and millenary spiritual esoteric with strong currents of philosophical-spiritual thought; stable, rigorous and solidly structured.

Based on the above, the esoteric Tradition is not only exclusive to European and Eastern thought.

"It would be naïve to recall that esoteric language, full of symbolism, rather than constantly aimed at disguising knowledge from the vulgar, is intended to serve to clarify before intuition what cold reasoning could not find on its own." (4)

No less important were our Native Peoples, capable of deepening and being overwhelmed by the SACRED of questioning themselves regarding the "poetic law of analogy" mentioned by the prestigious scholar Antoine. Faivré.

Did they have and know of "angelic spirits" or of the experimental science of theurgy?

Did the priesthood and its adherents master the complex mathematical equations of astrology as the enigmatic salutary compounds of the master plants?

Did they know the unsurpassed medicinal properties of magic and stones?

Is it even possible to consider man in Mesoamerica as a whole microcosm? (5)

Can we contextualize the thought of the Toltecáyotl as a faithful manifestation of the most refined of Mesoamerican esoteric thought?

"Metaphorically, esotericism is the doctrine according to which a science should not be vulgarized but communicated to known and chosen adepts because of its special qualities." (6)

Do we still continue in European Universities and in academic circles scholars of "new esoteric currents" with the racist, classist and even exclusivist Columbian vision of the spiritual thought of our ancestral peoples?

Based on the above, this indigenous thought is generally perceived as "irrational and superstitious."

"It has also been said that the first allusions that Columbus makes in his Diary about the existence of monstrous men are the product of the influence of the book by the Englishman Thomas Mandeville, which the Admiral is said to have carried with him." (7)

In a similar way, and according to this obtuse Columbian conception and vision, our Caribbean Indians are described as having "a dog's snout and only one eye."

Consequently, we can understand, with certain reservations, that the definition of esotericism has shown itself to be "expandable, transparent and semantically indeterminate."

On the other hand, it is worth emphasizing that since esotericism = "a form of thought"= (forme de pensée), its expression and practical function can be clearly recognizable, and certainly pointed out in the very depth of Mesoamerican religious thought.

"The Toltecáyotl, the legacy of Quetzalcoatl and the Toltecs, encompassed black and red ink – wisdom – writing and calendar, painting books, knowledge of the paths followed by the Stars, the arts, among them the music of the flutes, kindness and rectitude in the treatment of human beings, the art of good eating, the Ancient Word, the worship of the gods, dialogue with them and with oneself...''

(#8)

Our peoples have magic, astrology and theurgy in their millenary occult thought.

On the other hand: "The scholarly study of Western esotericism is a comparatively recent phenomenon." (9)

The sacred undoubtedly permeates the religious thought= (pattern of thought) of our indigenous peoples.

It is the educated and firm development of the spiritual awareness and experiential experience of the sacred, permeating all the esoteric thought of the native.

In him there is an essence shared with the gods.

(energies and powers)

The esoteric vision is an essential element of the structure of their consciousness, so that for our Ancestors their transhuman models = (Prisca theologia de Quetzalcoatl-Kukulkán), manage to be codified and revealed within the oral and written Tradition.

"Today it seems inconceivable to us that Europe could have ignored until the sixteenth century the existence of a civilization such as the one that had reigned in Mexico for more than fifteen hundred years. No less inconceivable is the indifference shown by the conquerors to the universe that they were given to surprise." (10)

For the researcher L. Séjourné, Aztec society: "... on the contrary, it possessed a spiritual richness that obliges us to consider it among the peoples of high civilization."

(p.12)

Thus, to consider esotericism "exclusively" as "an integral part of the history of European knowledge" is a serious error and demonstrates a great ignorance of the European esoteric by academics. (11)

And then scholars discriminately apply the six categories of esoteric spirituality ONLY to their "recent" esoteric world, which happens to be a limiting and delicately exclusive view or expression.

At the same time, more than dangerously... exclusionary and RACIST! (12)

The esoteric for the sage M. Eliade has a great antiquity:

"As is well known, all the beliefs, theories, and techniques encompassed by the terms occult and esoteric were already popular in the late antiquities." (13)

Where do they place our native peoples?

In René Guénon's classification of "traditional esotericism"?

Or are there no esoteric categories to classify them?

If, as Eliade himself says= "... Shamanism is the most archaic and widely spread occult tradition."

(Occultism... p. 91)

So, what happens to the shamanic tradition of the Powerful and cultured Mesoamerican Sorcerers?

It is time for these same scholars to RECTIFY.

“… contemporary scholarship has produced many works of great value that have radically MODIFIED our understanding and appreciation of the esoteric spiritual tradition." (14)

And, indeed, it is totally inconceivable that in the famous Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (2005) edited by Dr. Wouter J. Hanegraaf in collaboration with Antoine Faivre, Roelof van den Broek and Jean Pierre Brach, there is not even a single explanatory note on its intentional omission or total ignorance of the esoteric currents of Our Indigenous Peoples of Mesoamerica.

On the other hand, the worst and most regrettable of all, that in the Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica J.R. Ritman, and in other entities related to the subject= (ESSWE, European Society of Western Esotericism, (ASE) American Association for the Study of Esotericism), Mesoamerican esoteric thought is not even considered.

From ancient times and from a verifiable historical principle, deep philosophical and esoteric reflection or dialectics of the sacred was a substantial and integral part of the horizon of Mesoamerican thought.

A solid and complex system of superb and monumental religious-philosophical beliefs was elaborated with refined and cultured esoteric and theurgical techniques and practices, rich in cognitive content and descriptions and elaborate explanations and reflections of the cosmos, with deep epistemological and ontological roots.

In any case, we cannot forget that beyond the multiple cultural variants and their marked regional and temporal characteristics, the sacred mentality expressed in Mesoamerican art revolves around the expressive power of great symbolic and aesthetic depth of the snake and the Jaguar. (15)

Esoteric Currents in Mesoamerican Thought

Victor. Arturo. Cabello. Reyes

Bibliography:

1. Fray Toribio de Benavente = Motolinía: History of the Indians of New Spain.

2. The Aztec Civilization in Manual de Historia Universal VI Historia de América, p. 28.

3. Monika Neugebauer-Wolk, Hermes in the Academy, W.J. Hanegraaff and J. Pijnenburg, p. 137.

4. Antoine Faivré, Esotericism in the Eighteenth Century, p. 11.

5. Codex Vaticano Ríos, f.54r.

6. A. Faivré, p. 10.

7. Cárdenas Ruiz, Manuel, Crónicas Francesas de los Indios Caribes. Introduction by Dr. Ricardo Alegría, pp. 2-3.

8. Miguel León Portilla, Toltecáyotl aspects of the Nahuatl Culture, p.7.

9. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions, p.3.

10. Laurette Séjourné, Thought and Religion in Ancient Mexico, p. 7.

11. Andreas B. Kilcher, Seven Epistemological Theses on Esotericism: Upon the Occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Amsterdam Chair, see: Hermes in the Academy, p. 143.

12. The Western Esoteric Traditions, pp. 8-10 in: N. Goodrick-Clarke.

13. Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions, p. 81.

14. M. Eliade, Occultism, p. 89.

15. Don José Díaz Bolio, La Serpiente Emplumada eje de Culturas.