American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent by Daniel Garrison Brinton
page 71 of 249 (28%)
page 71 of 249 (28%)
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Of these Dr. Schultz-Sellack advances plausible reasons for believing that
Itztlacoliuhqui, which was the name of a certain form of head-dress, was another title of Quetzalcoatl; and that Pantecatl was one of the names of Tezcatlipoca.[1] If this is the case we have here another version of the same myth. [Footnote 1: Dr. Schultz Sellack, _Die Amerikanischen Götter der Vier Weltgegenden und ihre Tempel in Palenque_, in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd. xi, (1879).] §3. _Quetzalcoatl, the Hero of Tula._ But it was not Quetzalcoatl the god, the mysterious creator of the visible world, on whom the thoughts of the Aztec race delighted to dwell, but on Quetzalcoatl, high priest in the glorious city of Tollan (Tula), the teacher of the arts, the wise lawgiver, the virtuous prince, the master builder and the merciful judge. Here, again, though the scene is transferred from heaven to earth and from the cycles of other worlds to a date not extremely remote, the story continues to be of his contest with Tezcatlipoca, and of the wiles of this enemy, now diminished to a potent magician and jealous rival, to dispossess and drive him from famous Tollan. No one versed in the metaphors of mythology can be deceived by the thin veil of local color which surrounds the myth in this its terrestrial and historic form. Apart from its being but a repetition or continuation of the genuine ancient account of the conflict of day and night, light and darkness, which I have already given, the name Tollan is enough to point |
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