MAGIC 1309 · The Codex Borgia and the Tonalpouhqui — The Mesoamerican Divinatory Tradition

Led by The Codex Borgia Simulacrum and the Tonalpouhqui Simulacrum

1. Module 9 ○ Open

   The Codex Borgia and the Tonalpouhqui — The Mesoamerican Divinatory Tradition

   Led by The Codex Borgia Simulacrum and the Tonalpouhqui Simulacrum (in dialogue)

   The question

   The European magical tradition that Strands 1 and 2 traced and Strand 3 continues was not the only sophisticated divinatory-magical tradition in the world. Mesoamerica — the cultural region from central Mexico through Guatemala — developed across two and a half millennia (from the Olmec foundations c. 1500 BCE through the Aztec-Mexica Empire that the Spanish encountered in 1519 CE) a divinatory-religious-calendrical system of comparable sophistication and entirely independent origin. The *tonalpohualli* (the 260-day divinatory calendar; from *tonalli*, meaning *day-sign* or *fate*; combining 13 numbers with 20 day-signs in a 260-day cycle) was its operational core; the *tonalpouhqui* (the trained ritual specialist who interpreted the calendar; literally *the day-counter*) was the divinatory practitioner; the surviving pre-Hispanic divinatory codices — particularly the *Codex Borgia* (held now at the Vatican Library; named for its earliest known European owner, Cardinal Stefano Borgia) — are the working manuscripts of the tradition. The Aztec-Mexica encountered the Spanish in 1519; the destruction of the indigenous priesthood was systematic; the surviving codices and the testimony preserved in the *Florentine Codex* of Bernardino de Sahagún (1577) are the principal documents through which the tradition can now be approached. What does the Mesoamerican divinatory tradition teach, and what does opening Strand 3 to its non-European counterparts allow us to see about the broader phenomenon of magical-divinatory practice?

   Outcome

   The student has read substantial portions of Elizabeth Hill Boone's *Cycles of Time and Meaning* (chapters 1-3 at minimum); examined the Codex Borgia in modern facsimile (the ADEVA edition or the high-resolution Vatican digital edition; visual examination is essential to understanding the codex tradition); read Sahagún's *Florentine Codex* sections on the *tonalpouhqui* (Book IV: *The Soothsayers*; in Anderson and Dibble's translation); and ideally read at least one chapter of Barbara Tedlock's *Time and the Highland Maya* on the contemporary K'iche' continuation.

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   Practice scenarios

   Reading the Codex Borgia

   The Codex Borgia Simulacrum and the Tonalpouhqui Simulacrum walk you together through specific pages of the codex. Recommended: the *trecena* pages of the central divinatory section (pages 49-53 in the standard reckoning), with parallel reading from Sahagún's *Florentine Codex* Book IV. Read Boone's chapters 1-3. Examine the codex pages in high-resolution facsimile. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is the *tonalpohualli* as divinatory system — what is the structure, how does it operate; what does the *Codex Borgia* reveal about Mesoamerican divinatory-religious thought as an integrated cosmological-calendrical-ritual system; what does opening Strand 3 to the Mesoamerican tradition allow us to see about magical-divinatory practice as a global phenomenon, beyond the European tradition Strands 1 and 2 traced; and what are the methodological challenges of reading a tradition whose priestly-institutional context was systematically destroyed five centuries ago, surviving only in colonial documentation and in fragmentary contemporary continuation?

   Your goals

   • Read the chosen sections of Boone, Sahagún, and the codex itself before drafting.
   • Render the *tonalpohualli* structure precisely.
   • Address the cross-cultural-comparative question with care; avoid both naive equation and dismissive othering.
   • Engage at least one piece of contemporary scholarship.
   • 700 words ± 100, scholarly register.

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