The record

Where the sources contradict each other, the contradiction is published

Gathered on one page, these are the part of the work that usually stays in the notebooks. They are not errors or doubts of the author: they are disagreements that have been in the material since the sixteenth century and that nobody has resolved.

Choosing one version and keeping quiet about the others would be deciding for the reader.

Why are there three systems of directions?

The Mexica sources do not agree on which colour and which guardian belong to each direction, and this app does not hide that disagreement: it lets you choose among three traditions.

The four Tezcatlipocas (the default) distribute the four sons of the divine pair among the directions, with Quetzalcoatl in the east — as morning star (Venus), where the dawn star appears.

The colours of the maize, documented on the Tizapán Box, use yellow, white, red and black, with no blue.

And the canonical distribution of the Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas instead places red Xipe in the east and white Quetzalcoatl in the west.

One point did come out clear: blue is not only the centre. León-Portilla records blue as the direction of the south, and that is why the default system puts blue in the south.

No version is «the correct one»: they are different traditions, and here you choose which one you walk with.

Miquiztli: between the Sun and the Moon

The sign Miquiztli — death — carries a double energy in this app: the Sun (Tonatiuh) and the Moon (Tecciztecatl).

Most classical sources give Tecciztecatl, the lunar energy of night, as the ruler of this sign. The app keeps the setting Sun alongside her, because death in Mexica thought is not only darkness: it is also the Sun sinking in the west to travel the underworld and be born again.

It is a reading of duality, declared here so the choice is visible.

Which one is right?

In most of these cases, nobody knows. The sources disagree, and no amount of reasoning settles it from here. What this page does is show the disagreement with what each side rests on, so the reader can see the shape of the problem rather than a tidy answer that hides it.

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