Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture)
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: February 1, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 338
ISBN-13: 9780292712638
Subjects: American history: pre-Columbian period, BCE to c 1500; Occultism & quasi-religious beliefs; Social Science; History - General History; Sociology; Empires & historical states; Latin America - Mexico; Time; History / Mexico; Anthropology - Cultural; Aztec calendar; Aztec mythology; Manuscripts, Nahuatl; Mexico; Anthropology - General
Description: "In this comprehensive study, Elizabeth Hill Boone analyzes the entire extant corpus of Mexican divinatory codices and offers an explanation of the genre as a whole. She introduces the sacred, divinatory calendar and the calendar priests and diviners who owned and used the books. Boone then explains the graphic vocabulary of the calendar and its prophetic forces, and describes the organizing principles that structure the codices. She shows how they form almanacs that either offer general purpose guidance or focus topically on specific aspects of life, such as birth, marriage, agriculture and rain, and the forces of the planet Venus. Boone also tackles two major areas of controversy - the great narrative passage in the Codex Borgia, which she interprets as a cosmic narrative of creation, and the disputed origins of the codices, which, she argues, grew out of a single religious and divinatory system."--Jacket.