Friday, July 9, 2021

Almena:OTI::pics,notes:::7/9/21

Open To Interpretation

Almena Wind Jewel/ehēcacōzcatl





Diego Durán, illustration of the Templo Mayor with the twin temples of Tlaloc (left) and Huitzilopochtli (right), from The History of the Indies of New Spain, 1579 (Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid)



The calmecac of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was located in the ceremonial centre of the city and it was dedicated to Quetzalcoatl.





Clay almena, Mexica (Aztec), early 16th century, height 233 cms., Museo del Templo Mayor, Mexico City, found in the sacred precinct.

The roof of the ‘calmecac’, the priestly school, was decorated with many of these ‘almenas’. They represent the cross-section of a sea shell. The cut shell was one of the symbols of Quetzalcoatl, the patron god of knowledge and learning.

From Aztecs, eds. Doris Kurella, Martin Berger and Inés de Castro, with INAH, Mexico - catalogue for the exhibition Azteken, Linden Museum, Stuttgart, Hirmer Publishers, Germany, 2019, p. 326.

Photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.

















https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almena#/media/Archivo:Pergamonmuseum_Ishtartor_06.jpg



Notes:  game on...on the radio...Angels at Mariners...top of seventh...Fletch on first..Ohtani coming up...Angels 3-2...earlier, Fletch had his first home run of the season, and kept alive his over twenty one game hitting streak, and, and Ohtani hit #33-463 footer...two down...as I'm doing this post, I'm finding stuff while finding the stuff I found for the post!...4-3 out...to bottom of seventh...from the wind jewel, to almena...almena another word for battlement...Quetzalcoatl wears the wind jewel pectoral, as did his followers...it's a stylized spiral sea shell, sliced in half to show the spiral and protruding knobs...I've gone on about this in previous posts...noting it atop the big Aztec temples...first, I found almena that looked like the top of half of the chicanna-in the Old World, the crow step...gone on about the Old World crow steps too!...and then I found the wind jewel almenas...some, in really good shape, have survived...the Mexiclore page shows the conch being played, and, and how much it looks like the step fret!...in Peru too, they played conch shells...how did Music and Songs distribute in the Americas?...runners first and second, one out, for the Mariners...base hit...Angels 3-3...to top of eighth...Walsh up...the youtube clip is in Spanish...it's something about dynamic symmetry in the motif...discoveries of modern science are often said to be revealed in ancient motifs...like the Dendera Lightbulb/electricity...something like this, is seeing dynamic symmetry/sacred geometry in the motifs...that may be so!...I dunno...my refrain, step fret triangle, always brings this to mind, as the triangle is often a right triangle, which is like the basis of sacred geometry...I've floated the notion that a contingent of Pythagoreans made it to the New World!...kindofa in a leaky boat...but, anywhere, a close observation of the Natural world reveals the Golden Section...Science is a close study of Nature...the old master artists were big on dynamic symmetry...my favorite reference for this is D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form...Angels strand two...to bottom of eighth...runners at first and third, two out...and, and here I find the wind jewel decorated the roofs of the priest/warrior schools dedicated to Quetzalcoatl...bases loaded...woop...Seattle with a Grand Slam...Mariners 7-3...time to feed Maya, my dog...Mariners 7-3...

:)

DavidDavid 

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