Symmetry as a Cognitive Tool in Mesoamerican Divinatory Books.

Abstract

The Mesoamerican pre-Hispanic divinatory books, called codices, encode meaning through various semiotic mechanisms, that is, iconic, glottographic, semasiographic, and notational principles. The last one refers to the meaning encoded through the spatial arrangement of signs on the graphic surface; thus, it can also be called internal syntagmatics. As the divinatory codices are organized in the form of lists, tables, and diagrams, the internal syntagmatics is particularly important, and one of the essential semiotic tools within it is symmetry. As I demonstrate, in some diagrams, the information is encoded through different symmetries-or rather, antisymmetries-simultaneously. They are: translation, rotation, mirror symmetry, and-the most productive of them-the chiasmic symmetry. Being not only "a pattern of thought" but also "a pattern for thought", the X-form arrangement in divinatory codices turns out to be a cognitive tool that structures the Mesoamerican ontological conceptualization of the world.