Quetzalcóatl came to Tlapalan and disappeared into the sea.
He told his people not to cry for him.
He would return.
Quetzalcóatl went to Tlapalan 'the Land of the Dawn' also known as 'the Land of Red and Black', where he died in the year 1-Reed and was changed into the Morning Star....
The struggle of the light.
Venus invisible for 90 days.
Then it burns for 250 days in the afternoon sky.
Then it disappears for 8 days and returns to shine in the east as the Morning Star. (the descent into hell.) Quetzalcóatl, 8 days among the dead…
These are the opening lines of Ernesto Cardenal's long poem Quetzalcóatl ('feathered serpent'), the legendary king of the Toltecs (a high civilisation that preceded the Aztecs in Mexico). This good king is driven out of the city for forbidding human sacrifice.
He disappears into the sea, spends 8 days among the dead and comes back as the Morning Star. He promises to return to his people, restoring a just kingdom with no human sacrifice. As well as being their king, Quetzacóatl is also the Toltecs’ god:
He taught singing.
To have kindness in the heart and to sing.
Cuali in iyolo: kindness in the heart.
A social ethic.
He taught them to teach others to make their faces wise.
A great humanist tradition. ‘They had only one god.
His name was Quetzalcóatl…’ He never permitted human sacrifice.
Quetzalcóatl, who is both divine and human, becomes the guiding star in the long human struggle for liberation (salvation) and against human sacrifice.
The poem ends:
Quetzalcóatl or the historicity of myth.
Carrasco called it subversive.
Quetzalcóatl by Ernesto Cardenal, bilingual edition translated by Clifton Ross, was published in Britain by Stride (Exeter 1994).
Bilingual edition translated by Clifton Ross, published in Britain by Stride (Exeter 1994).