Abstract

DUPEY GARCIA, Élodie. The Place of color in mesoamerican mythology. From the fate of Quetzalcoatl to the epic of 8 Venado. Trace (Méx. DF) [online]. 2018, n.74, pp.159-184. ISSN 2007-2392.  https://doi.org/10.22134/trace.74.2018.116.

In Mesoamerican mythology, several spaces bear the name of “Place of Color”. This essay investigates their distinctive features and their function in myths, through the study of Central Mexican colonial sources and of Mixtec pre-Columbian codices. This comparative effort -specially focused on the feat of Quetzalcoatl of Tollan and 8 Venado Garra de Jaguar - shows that besides their relation to color, these mythical places shared common traits, for instance they were associated with stretches of water, as well as with the Sun god and its territory. As about their function, the present work reveals that the Places of Color were spaces in which originated a series of cycles, directly inspired on the archetype of the celestial course of the sun. Finally, this essay confirms the benefit to be obtained from compared mythology in the Mesoamerican context, since the comparison of Nahua and Mixtec mythical episodes illuminates some aspects of their content and meaning, which are impossible to comprehend if we keep ourselves confined to the corpus of sources from each of these cultural areas.

Keywords : Mesoamerican mythology; Tlapallan; Quetzalcoatl; 8 Venado Garra de Jaguar; solar archetype.

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