Timely Wisdom

CULTIVATING WISDOM

Flor from WALKABOUT on Vimeo
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Flor shares a story from her Nahua grandmothers.N Á H U A T L
A Brief History of the Nahua People. 

The Nahua people held "the flower and song", or art, in great esteem. They considered it the only road to a more authentic form of knowledge, closer to reality, less subject to the relative, illusory nature of the earthly world. This is clear in their extensive legacy to universal art, poetry, architecture, murals, sculpture and textiles were some of the many disciplines which the Nahuas developed.

In Náhuatl culture, being an artist was reserved for only a few particularly gifted individuals and was directly linked with the realm of ritual and divinity, central to Aztec society. For someone to become an artist, different considerations were taken into account: first and foremost, he had to be destined to it, and that was determined by the position of the stars at his birth; secondly, he had to have "countenance and heart", which in the metaphoric Nahuatl language means "having a strong personality, a meticulously forged spirit".

In the Náhuatl cosmology, snakes were associated with earthly matters, the night, all things femenine, pleasurable and sensual. The serpent was one of the most important sacred symbols, associated not only with darkness, but also with precious things, such as in the case of Xiuhcóatl, or the turquoise serpent used as a weapon by Huitzilopochtli (a link between the blue of the heavens and the green of the earth), or the plumed serpent, Quetzalcóatl, the sacred serpent which could fly, covered with the plumes of the sacred bird, the quetzal.

Náhuatl tradition says that the world as we know it was created during the nocturnal transfiguration of Ometéotl, "the Absolute". This transfiguration is known as Tezcatlipoca, or "the smoky mirror", from which the four directions of the universe emerged:
black, the North
white, the West
blue, the South
red, the East

Náhuatl - The Mexican language, 
from the root 'Nahua' meaning 
"a dance done with the hands 
entwined, a concordance, to 
move in cadence". Also known 
as the turquoise smoke... 
harmonious speech, that which is pleasing to the ear.
(casademexico.com/nahuatl.html)


CULTIVATING WISDOM VIDEO

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