Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate

Abstract

Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate By Elizabeth Hill Boone Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. xxvii+307pp. Figures, color plates, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $55.00 (Cloth), ISBN-10: 0-292-71263-4, ISBN-13: 978-0-292-71263-8.Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate is a major contribution to the study of Pre-Columbian religion and worldview. Anthropologists, archeologists, art historians, and others interested in Mesoamerica will find much of value in this beautiful volume, replete with color plates and illustrations. The book focuses on the few central Mexican divinatory manuscripts that managed to survive centuries of accident, neglect, and even purposeful destruction at the hands of overzealous missionaries. The Codices Borgia, Cospi, Fejervary-Mayer, Laud, Porfirio Diaz Reverse, Vaticanus B, and Aubin No. 20 reflect themes from the greater Mixteca-Puebla-Tlaxcala region. The Codex Borbonicus and the Tonalamatl Aubin are screenfold books (made of bark paper) that exhibit the Aztec tradition of central Mexico. The term codex, though traditionally conceived of as a book of individual pages sewn together along one side, is, according to the author, also used by Americanists to refer to these screenfold books and scroll-sit denotes pictorial content above all.The Mexican codices are divinatory almanacs, material records of the techniques and ciphers necessary to reveal occult information. The divinatory worldview promotes a metaphysics that associates certain signs and patterns with other vital energies that affect human life. This worldview illuminates the meaning of Mesoamerican calendrics and the role of time in these societies. They were not obsessive historians eager to date and file events. Rather, they were convinced that the patterns of the present had come before and would return again. To track and understand these patterns was to have insight into the nature of the universe and a greater measure of control over one's own life. Boone writes that "these codices are our best portal into the religious ideology and cosmology of the Aztecs, Mixtees, and their neighbors. They are as close as we are likely to get to the spiritual world of ancient Mexico" (p. 6).The author, a former Director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, has taught art history at Tulane University since 1995. Boone has studied the Mexican divinatory codices for over a quarter century and her thorough review of the manuscripts and the swarm of debates over all aspects of their decipherment and interpretation conveys both erudition and an infectious enthusiasm. Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate is the first book that attempts to synthesize information from all the divinatory codices in order to arrive at larger themes and patterns than contained in any one codex alone. She envisioned the present volume as a companion to her prior work, Stories in Red and Black (University of Texas Press, 2000), which discussed the surviving historical codices of the Aztec and Mixtee. With her two volumes, Boone has completed an impressive study of the Mexican codices and permitted even non-specialists to see inside the history and thought of these Mesoamerican empires during their final efflorescence.Boone's text is evenly divided in its discussion. On the one hand, she addresses the content of the codices she is interested in comprehending Mesoamerican calendrical divination and its significance in a cosmology of repeating cycles of time. On the other hand, she is interested in the form in which this knowledge finds expression - namely the complex iconography of the writings, the elements of this "symbolic vocabulary," and the way this vocabulary comes together in the multicolor artistic renderings of the individual codices. The highly detailed analysis of the graphic elements may tax non-specialist readers, but the entanglement of medium and message in the codices requires a hermeneutic subtlety that only such fine-grained studies can provide. …