Bringing together the dead

The Days of the Dead are quickly approaching. Marigolds have already been planted in the flowerbeds lining Paseo de la Reforma. Truckloads of the bright yellow flowers are making their way from farmers’ fields to towns and cities all over Mexico They will be used to decorate tombs as well as home altars.

This year there is a new destination for these fragrant flowers, the Cinerario Comunitario (Community Cinerarium) in Cuernavaca.

The Cinerario Comunitario was inaugurated just last month. It is located inside the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows in Cuernavaca’s Catholic Cathedral compound. It is the first in Mexico.

Unlike a columbarium, where cremated remains are each in a separate niche or urn, in the community cinerarium ashes are poured into a huge vault where they mix with the ashes of others. There is no charge for depositing ashes and the cinerarium is open to people of all faiths.

Cuernavaca’s cinerarium is the brainchild of Catholic lay missionary Raymond Plankey, a native of Massachusetts and a longtime resident of Cuernavaca. It required the backing and approval of the municipal and state authorities as well as the clergy.

In a generous exhibit of ecumenism, the cinerarium was inaugurated by two bishops, Roman Catholic Ramón Castro y Castro and Protestant Anglican Enrique Treviño.

Father Ángel Sánchez said at the inauguration, “It may seem strange to mix the ashes of the dead but there have been many cases of this documented in Church history.” He told us how English Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-90) was buried with his good friend Father Ambrose St. John.

The cinerarium has benefits at many levels. It takes pressure off overcrowded cemeteries. For the poor, it represents a tremendous financial savings. And, from a theological point of view, as Father José Luis Calvillo said, “It is rich in symbolism about the communion of the church in showing that what little is left of the human being on earth can join with remains of other brothers and sisters, beyond religious beliefs and social positions in a respectful and dignified setting.”

Inside an austere 16th century marble- floored chapel devoid of pews, or chairs, Cuernavaca’s cinerarium is a marble vault 2 meters high, 2 meters wide and 5 meters long. Three small steps allow access to a 15 centimeter-diameter aperture where ashes are poured. Plankey calculates the cinerarium is large enough to hold ashes of 50,000 bodies.

Although Plankey came upon this idea on his own and has mulled over it for three decades, he readily admits googling to find out if community cinerariums exist anywhere else. He found that former Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio built several in his archdiocese where cinerariums are an economical option for poor families to bury their dead and still have a place to return to honor their loved ones.

With company like that I doubt there will be any criticism of the mixing of the ashes. But, if there is, I’d refer those critics to ancient Mesoamerican lore, which maintains that our humanity owes its existence to the commingling of bones of the deceased.

Ancient Mesoamericans knew that the gods are dependent on people for their sustenance. When the fourth sun refused to return, the fourth humanity died off and the gods’ existence was in jeopardy.
Once the gods had created a fifth sun, Quetzalcoatl — the feathered serpent — traveled to the realm of the dead at the lowest level of the underworld to find the bones of his father and mother and from them create a new humanity.

The god of death did not willingly give up his acquisitions and was prepared to catch Quetzalcoatl on a technicality. “You are authorized to take the bones, but you were never authorized to touch the bones. If you can take them without touching them you’re welcome to them.”

Quetzalcoatl decided the ends justify the means and stole the bones. His dog identified the two sets of bones he needed and Quetzalcoatl carefully picked them up. The god of death chased him; Quetzalcoatl ran. In darkness he tripped on a rock in the path. Mother’s bones got mixed with father’s bones and some shattered. Hastily Quetzalcoatl gathered them into a bag hanging over his shoulder, making it out to this level of flat earth we live on, just in the nick of time.

Quetzalcoatl sprinkled some of his own blood on the bones bringing them to life and creating the humanity of which we are a part. But because the bones got mixed up a mother never knows if her baby will be a boy or a girl. Because some broke some people are shorter in stature and some are taller.

Nevertheless, rich or poor we can go to the graves of our loved ones, cover them with flowers and for a moment bring them back to memory and to life.

Each year during Days of the Dead I honor John Spencer an English ex-pat, artist, poet, who is buried in Cuernavaca. Decorating his tomb is a festive occasion to which all are invited. If you’re interested in participating please email me.

Easily missed sanctuaries hold a vast and important history

When exploring any of Mexico’s 16th century cathedrals, make sure to visit the side chapels. Arrayed the length of both sides of the sanctuary, frequently side chapels are dedicated to a person or object of local veneration. These can be quirky figures who are not embraced by the Catholic Church in general yet were sanctioned by the bishop of the local diocese.

My favorite is the chapel of the Cross of Huatulco in Oaxaca’s cathedral. That little chapel houses a most unusual story. It pulls together Quetzalcoatl, Apostle Saint Thomas, English pirates on round-the-world voyages, and two beatified Indigenous Mexicans, all in a space of no more than thirty square meters.

There was a marvelous text describing the Cross of Huatulco but it was removed in the early 2000s when the chapel was re-dedicated to honor Juan Bautista and Jacinto de los Ángeles. They were Indigenous leaders martyred in Oaxaca in 1700 and beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2002. There is now a life sized painting of them standing side by side looking like a Grant Wood “American Gothic” portrait with Andy Warhol colors.

The now-missing text described an event occurring long before the arrival of the Spaniards with their Christian religion. “Since time immemorial the Indigenous people of Huatulco knew of a cross on the beach which they venerated because it could heal them of their afflictions. It had been carried there by an elderly man arriving from the direction of Peru. He spoke kindly to the local people in their own language – Mixtec.”

The text went on to say, “The Cross, according to tradition, was brought by the Apostle Saint Thomas, called Quetzalcoatl.” My! That in a Catholic cathedral!

Don’t think I’m making this up. Back before digital cameras I asked a member of one of my study groups to take a photo of the chapel as well as text. Not an easy feat in the dimly-lit sanctuary while respecting the no-flash rule.

Think of Quetzalcoatl as a changing god of Mesoamerican mythology, a god that is always on our side. He gave the sun a gift of his own blood so as to keep it moving and creating day and night. From the bones of his mother and father sprinkled with his own blood Quetzalcoatl created our humanity. People didn’t fear Quetzalcoatl as they did so many of their other gods.

Quetzalcoatl’s name is a play on words. It means “precious twin” or, more properly, “precious duality” because quetzal feathers were highly valued and coatl is the Nahuatl word for twin as well as serpent. Thomas, the name of the Apostle “known as Quetzalcoatl”, also means twin.

There is a real-life character known as Quetzalcoatl who may have been the one bearing the cross. Ce-Acatl was a preist to the god Quetzalcoatl who became the Emperor of the Toltecs. In 999 the 52-year old emperor, the link between people and their most beloved god and thought of by many as a god-person, departed Tula in self-imposed exile.

The chapel in Oaxaca shows that the archbishop of Oaxaca endorsed the idea of St. Thomas/Quetzalcoatl bearing the cross. Higher-ups did too. Pope John Paul II said at the Aztec Stadium in Mexico City in 1999, “A thousand years ago today, Quetzalcoatl was a precursor of evangelization in these realms. As he neared death, he clutched in his hands a cross.”

So how do Sir Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish fit into the picture? Both were privateers who put down anchor in Huatulco, an area of nine bays on Oaxaca’s Pacific coast.

Francis Drake stopped at Huatulco in 1579. Thomas Cavendish stopped there in 1587. Both ransacked the port and made off with cattle and other supplies.

Cavendish went further than Drake. He went after the cross of Huatulco planted in the sand. Cavendish ordered his men to cut down the cross with saws and axes. They couldn’t. He then ordered one end of a rope be tied around the cross and the other around a mast of his ship Desire. They tried under full sail to yank it out of the beach. They couldn’t. The ship came to a standstill when the rope went taut. Finally he tried to burn the cross. It wouldn’t burn. Giving up, Cavendish set off on more profitable pursuits.

People marveled at the resiliency of the cross, and took slivers as relics. The bishop of Oaxaca at the time feared the cross would be whittled down to nothing and ordered it brought to the city of Oaxaca. For him it came out of the sand with little effort.

He made smaller crosses from the original. One was sent to Pope Paul V. Another was sent to the Santo Domingo Church in Puebla. A third is in the Merced Monastery in Mexico City.

A fourth is still proudly displayed in the side chapel in Oaxaca above the heads of the martyrs Juan and Jacinto. Check it out.

Writing an icon

This week a wonderful cultural blend is happening in Cuernavaca. A group from Southern California is joining with Episcopalians in Cuernavaca to learn the Russian tradition of icon painting while visiting places with Mexican iconic art.

They are not actually coming here to learn to paint icons, they are coming to learn to write icons. Workshop participant Mike Roeder, an icon collector and scholar himself, explained “the verb ‘to write’ an icon has been adopted by English speakers partly because icons in the Orthodox or Russian tradition depict various aspects of the life of Christ who is also known as The Word. Iconographers are expressing ‘the word’ in their work and thus iconography is a cross between painting and writing.

The Russian language has many words for paint but Russians use the verb to write to mean ‘to paint meaningfully.’   Russians would say that icons are theology expressed in line and color.  Icon, in the original Christian sense, meant a visible image of the invisible – God.”  Creating an icon is a spiritual discipline as well as an artistic effort.

Early Christian icons dating to within 100 years of the life of Jesus have been found in Egypt and Crete.  As Christianity spread iconography also spread east and west, growing particularly strong in the Byzantine Empire. Icons are written to tell a story in an unfolding of dark to light… ignorance to truth.

The workshop is taught by U.S. iconographer Teresa Harrison. Teresa has been painting icons for over 20 years and has a large commission installed in St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. She learned from Philip Zimmerman, a Pennsylvania icon writer in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and from master iconographer Ksenia Pokrovsky, a self-taught Russian iconographer who was instrumental in reviving icon painting after repression during the Soviet era.

I’m delighted to take the group to places to see both ancient Mesoamerican and modern Mexican iconic depictions. I’m especially delighted to hear from workshop organizer Carol Hopkins, my collaborator on Charlie’s Digs, that people were turned away because the workshop was filled—a welcomed change from a couple of years ago when it was harder to attract people to travel to Mexico. I think this bodes well for the resurgence of tourism in Mexico.

Mexico is appropriately rich with icons. In Cuernavaca’s Cortez Palace participants will see and follow Diego Rivera’s iconic story of Mexico from the conquest to the Revolution.  At Xochicalco’s Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent the story will unfold depicting Quetzalcoatl as patron god of a meeting of astronomer-priests gathered to adjust the Mesoamerican calendar.

Mexico’s famed Anthropology Museum also tells a story. I particularly like the way one can wend from room to room following Quetzalcoatl. He’s first portrayed as The Feathered Serpent, then transforms from god to person and then to god-person.  Cuernavaca’s Cathedral, which is housed in a 16th century Franciscan church and monastery, reveals the story leading to the martyrdom of Mexico’s first native-born saint -- San Felipe de Jesus.

The workshop, held at the La Mancha B&B in Cuernavaca, begins each morning with prayer and celebration of the Eucharist. Then following breakfast the group will discuss various facets of icon writing, the history of icons, and the spiritual implications of icon writing.  Participants will “write” their icons mostly in silence or accompanied by Gregorian chanting.

Participants from the U.S. are residents of Southern California.   Those from Mexico are members of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Cuernavaca.  The workshop is also coordinated by The Reverend Tamara Newell, formerly of Christ Church, Mexico City and retired from St. Michaels. Reverend Newell was the first female Episcopalian priest ordained in Latin America.

At the workshop several different icons are being written.  In honor of Mexico’s beloved Guadalupe some have elected to create icons of Our Lady.  Mike Roeder is working on John the Baptist.  Others are focusing on St. Francis, and several who have walked the Camino de Santiago Compostela are writing St. James. Others are reproducing the beautiful, mysterious 6th century icon of The Sinai Christ, housed at St. Catherine’s in Egypt at the base of Mt. Sinai.

Ms. Harrison says “Iconography has spread the Christian faith for centuries; it’s fascinating to be in a culture where a different form of iconography has been used to maintain a cultural history of its people.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to come to Mexico with dear friends and share the experience with residents of Mexico.”

In further conversation with Ms. Harrison I discovered that our paths had previously crossed in of all places Barranquilla, Colombia where we attended the Karl C. Parrish Elementary School at the same time.  My only incursion into oil painting was in Mrs. Rozzano’s fourth grade class.  My painting from that class hangs to this day in my study.  Can Teresa’s love for art be traced back to Mrs. Rozzano?

You are invited to meet the workshop’s iconographers at St. Michael’s and All Angels Church in Cuernavaca, at 10 a.m. Sunday, January 12 when their icons will be presented and blessed.

Legends of Mexico video

Charlie Goff on Legends of Mexico from Cemanahuac on Vimeo.

Jigsaw Puzzle at Xochicalco

For 37 years I have led study groups to Xochicalco in Morelos, one of my favorite archeological sites. The stellar Temple of the Plumed Serpent (Quetzalcóatl) is a masterpiece with its carved relief depicting what many scholars believe records a meeting of Mesoamerican astronomers, hosted by Mayas in a city far from their homeland.

Overlooked by many is a collection of large carved stones near the temple – most likely stones that fit into blank spaces on the temple face. Each time I lead a group I pose the challenge that someone in that group might figure out where these stones fit, as if they were pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Albeit a heavy jigsaw puzzle. I even suggest it might be a worthy Ph.D. project. So far no one has taken the bait.

In 1910 archeologist Leopoldo Batres first worked on that colossal jigsaw puzzle located on an unusually high hilltop surrounded by flatlands in central Morelos. When Batres looked down into the valley he could see sugar haciendas in every direction. I doubt Batres, or even the hacendados themselves, were aware that the festering social unrest among workers on those plantations was about to erupt into the southern front of the Mexican Revolution. A year later Emiliano Zapata was a household name and the nation would plunge into a decade-long war that decimated the population of Mexico. A century later Emiliano Zapata remains a symbol of demands for social justice throughout the world.

Batres remained focused on the hilltop and the huge project he had started – putting Xochicalco’s Quetzalcóatl Temple back together stone by stone.

President Porfirio Díaz had appointed Batres, his personal friend, curator of archeology for the republic. Despite Díaz’ patronage and friendship Batres voiced a common complaint among archeologists – not enough funding. In order to make good use of the funding he did receive Batres demanded a full day’s work of his crew and awakened them before dawn with a cannon blast. He was reportedly quite a sight. Photos of the time show him sitting in a prominent place where he would shout out orders while dressed in a three-piece suit, monocle, and top hat.

Batres also worked at other important archeological sites, including Mitla, Teotihuacan, and the Templo Mayor. He is often criticized for his heavy-handed excavation and restoration techniques. At Teotihuacan he was under tremendous time pressure to restore the Pyramid of the Sun in time for the hundredth anniversary of Mexico’s independence from Spain on September 16, 1910. To hasten the project he used Alfred Nobel’s recent invention – dynamite. Batres claimed he only used small charges of dynamite to remove accumulated soil and vegetation. However, it was one of his “scientific explosions” that blew the temple off the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.

Batres’ restoration at Xochicalco was much more precise since there is only one place where each sculptured stone can fit. This jigsaw-puzzle nature of the restoration project guided Batres in restoring the slope and panel design of the temple – a trademark of Teotihuacan’s architecture and evidence that during most of its history Xochicalco functioned under the tutelage of much larger Teotihuacan.

After Teotihuacan’s collapse around 750 A.D., Xochicalco continued using Teotihuacan’s style of architecture, embellishing it with a cornice along the top of the horizontal panel. As Batres discovered, there was no other place for those triangular carved stones.

For most of the year the sun beats down on the south side of Quetzalcóatl’s Temple, causing it to expand and contract much more than the north side. Only from mid May – starting this week – through July is there direct sunlight on the north side of the temple. Consequently, it has fewer missing puzzle pieces and the carving is in much better condition.

I have always wondered how the deteriorated south side fits in with the rest. What more would we learn about the meeting of astronomers if the south side were properly restored?

The pyramid has what seems to be repetitive carvings of astronomer-priests sitting cross-legged among the undulations of the feathered serpent. Closer observation shows they are actually individualized portraits. Older participants have wrinkled and sunken cheeks, younger ones more youthful faces. Some keep their lips tightly clenched, and others’ more relaxed faces show their teeth. Fingers and toes are carefully carved; jewelry and feathered headdresses accurately portrayed. Deformed foreheads give away Maya ethnicity. Other astronomer priests are from various ethnic groups and each is accompanied by an emblem glyph of his city.

With today’s technology it would be possible to complete Batres’ jigsaw puzzle in a virtual way. No heavy lifting. On a computer screen, photographs of the sculptured stones piled just south of the temple could be moved around over a photograph of the temple itself and repositioned in their proper places. Will a reader visit Xochicalco, take the photos, and achieve archeological fame? All I’ve ever asked is that “thanks to Charlie for the idea” be included in the introduction to the thesis.

A Chichen-Itzá Pilgrimage

Tens of thousands of people all over the world are finalizing their travel plans and getting ready to travel to Chichen-Itzá in order to be there on the spring equinox.  They'll watch a magnificent light and shadow spectacle on the side of the north-facing stairway of the Castillo, a temple most probably dedicated to Kukulcan, the Maya version of Quetzalcoatl.

The sun, on its apparent trip north, will pass over the equator in the early morning hours of March 20.  That evening, as it sets over the Yucatan Peninsula, the north-westernmost corner of the stepped pyramid will cast shadows on the outside of the 'banister' of one of the four stairways leading to the top of the pyramid.  A series of illuminated triangles will be projected on the side of the stairway.  The serpent's head at the base of the stairway will be fully illuminated -- the triangles will become the serpent's body.

If you're going, I'd suggest you do so two days before or after the equinox.  The effect will be similar and you'll be able to witness it without the crowds and masters of ceremonies sent out by the tourism department with loudspeakers to 'improve' on what the sun and ancient Maya astronomers joined forces in creating.

Take a small scissor legged folding chair or a beach towel to lie on and be comfortable.  It takes a while for the whole event to play out.  If you're not comfortable it might seem like Mr. Sun has gotten stuck in the sky.

Only two of the Castillo's four stairways have been restored.  Fortunately one of them hosts the light and shadow event.  As is characteristic of prominent post-classic temples, it sits right in the middle of a huge plaza.  When Chichen-Itza flourished it had a large population and certainly attracted large numbers of people on the equinoxes.  They most probably watched and experienced the event in awe and silence.

As the light and shadow event plays out on the Castillo there will be another light and shadow event at Chichen-Itza, at the very same time, which probably won't be witnessed by anyone.  However it will occur -- even if no one is there to see it -- in a very small space in the uppermost room of the Caracol, which probably functioned as an astronomical observatory.

Three surviving windows face into an observation chamber at the top of what was a round tower but now looks more like an upended conch shell.  The windows are square (about 50x50 cm.) with very long windowsills (about two meters).  Long windowsills restrict the view -- nevertheless a considerable expanse of horizon can be seen.  One vernal equinox, while the crowd was watching the light show on the Castillo, I was the only one in the observatory chamber of the Caracol.  The setting sun created a shadow on half the windowsill leaving the other half illuminated.  A diagonal line separated light from shadow -- a line from the right hand corner on the inside, to the left hand corner on the outside of the windowsill.  Perfectly straight -- a precise line of sight.  Marvelous. Each windowsill provides two horizontal lines of sight.  Different nights offer different events to be seen.  Modern astronomers have identified twenty astronomical events that can be seen through the Caracol's surviving windows.

Last week I described Xochicalco's observatory which allows for focused views of heavenly objects -- something the Caracol observatory cannot do since it is set up for naked eye observations along designated sightlines.  Xochicalco's observatory restricts viewing to one spot in the sky while the Caracol tower offered a full circle of views of the horizon through its multiple windows. In a simlar vein, though Xochicalco has only one observation shaft, I suspect that doorways -- now filled with rubble -- opening off the tunnel leading to the observation chamber accessed other observation rooms where shafts point to different spots in the sky.

Xochicalco's astronomers could not move their focused telescopes.  But, could they move themselves to another room -- for a different view into the sky -- just as astronomers in the Caracol could move to another window? Xocicalco's observatory, the Caracol's observation windows, and the light and shadow spectacle on the Castillo are very different yet each served ancient astronomer-priests in verifying that their calendar was synchronized with the council of the gods. That, in turn, confirmed that their offerings were being delivered to their gods at the appropriate moments in time.

Of the three, the Castillo required the greatest coordination of architects and astronomer-priests in its design.  Unlike Xochicalco's observatory and the Caracol's windows, the Castillo offered a public event for the whole population.  It is still fulfilling that function today.