An excerpt from our bilingual study guide for Raíz, Milagro’s 2012 Day of the Dead celebration. Visit each week for another installment or contact the theatre for complete copy in English or Spanish.

Creation of the World, a Tale in Five chapters
According to A History of Mexican Archaeology by Ignacio Bernal, the Aztecs believed that it took four attempts at creating the earth and mankind before the gods finally got everything right with the fifth.

In the beginning there was nothing; nothing at all. No light, no life, no consciousness, no movement, no breath. In the beginning of time and in the Void, the Oldest of Old Gods, Ometeotl, was formed, an entity that was both masculine and feminine. This Supreme First God was able to create himself-herself as Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, the Lord and Lady of Duality, because he-she could not bear life alone.
Ometeotl, a being both masculine and feminine, spawned four children who became the ministers of the the creation of the visible, palpable, physical and changing world. These children were separate, yet the same, and for this reason they are referred to as the four manifestations of one god, Tezcatlipoca, God of the
Smoking Mirror.

The first creation took place when Black Tezcatlipoca, one of the four sons of the Lord and Lady of Duality, Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl (the duality of Ometeotl), changed himself into the sun.  Tezcatlipoca’s rival, Quetzalcoatl, couldn’t stand the fact that Tezcatlipoca was ruling the universe, so he knocked him out of the sky. In his rage at being knocked out of the sky, Tezcatlipoca turned into a jaguar and destroyed the earth.
Attempt number two began when Quetzalcoatl took over the heavens. He created people on earth who ate pine nuts. Tezcatlipoca overthrew Quetzalcoatl and destroyed the earth with a great wind. The few people who were left on earth were changed into monkeys.

The third creation began when Tlaloc, the god of rain, became the sun.  Quetzalcoatl sent rain which flooded the earth, killing almost all mankind. Those who did survive were turned into birds. When Chalchiuhtlicue, the water goddess, took over the sun’s responsibilities, the fourth creation began. This time, however, Quetzalcoatl sent down fire which destroyed the world again.  The men who survived became fish.

The final creation, the fifth sun, occurred when the gods met and decided that one among them had to sacrifice himself to become the new sun. One poor, humble god did this and became the sun. However, the sun hung in the sky and didn’t move.  In order for the sun to move, it was necessary for all of the gods to sacrifice themselves. Once the sun was moving across the sky, it was Quetzalcoatl who took on the responsibility of creating mankind. He did this by going to Mictlan, the underworld, to steal the bones of past generations to bring back to earth.  While fleeing Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the underworld, with his bag of bones, he slipped and fell, breaking the bones.  He sprinkled the pieces of one with his blood and turned them into men. Because the pieces of bone were all different sizes, the men and women he created were all different sizes, too.

In the Mayan tradition, however, human beings emerged from the raw material of maize.  The lower tribes of Central America believed that humans grew from seeds, like corn kernels, planted by a deity.

Check back next week for the next chapter about the Aztecs’ beliefs about the natural world …