Carrasco interprets Quetzalcoatl as a god in many contexts (calendar, wind, creation, morning-star, and rulership), whose cult was attested since Teotihuacán, in some parts of Mesoamerica during more than a thousand years in the Aztec historical tradition. The “irony of empire” is explained by “Aztec dependency on the Toltec tradition for legitimacy and their application of the myth of Quetzalcoatl’s return” (p. 5) to the appearance of Cortés in 1519. Interpreted by the Aztecs, the return of Quetzalcoatl found Moctezuma a fallen and disgraced ruler (p. 200). The conquest “uncovered an atmosphere of instability and cultural inferiority that had apparently plagued the Aztec capital since its foundation” (p. 156).
To arrive at this conclusion, Carrasco reviews evidence from preconquest texts and figurai art, and recent historical writings. The introduction applies a quotation from Jacques Soustelle’s Daily Life of the Aztecs to a concept of Aztec Mexico as “mosaics and centers” of settlement. Present opinion, however, is that in urban geography Aztec Mexico was less like a mosaic than a discontinuous map of scattered peoples, whence tribute was taken to a center such as Tenochtitlán. Chapter 1, “From Storybook to Encyclopedia,” begins with preconquest manuscripts (Codex Vienna) and ends with B. de Sahagún and D. Durán, treating all these sources with what Carrasco calls “hermeneutic suspicion” (p. 47). Chapter 2 sifts out the usable evidence on myths and prophecies concerning Quetzalcoatl. Here Carrasco depends in addition on the methods of various kinds of historians of religion.
Mircea Eliade is cited as frequently as H. B. Nicholson, anthropologist and leading authority on Aztec cultural history. This reviewer disagrees with Eliade’s opinion that myth reveals exemplary models for all human rites and activities. Another school of the history of religions (W. Robertson Smith and Arild Hvidtfeldt) maintains that ritual has ontological and phylogenetic priority over myth. Both “new archaeologists,” such as L. R. Binford, and neurologists (E. G. D’Aquili) are in agreement.
Chapter 3 continues the theme of Tollan, as the archetype for Tenochtitlán, in successive cities (Teotihuacán, Cholula, Xochicalco, Chichen Itzá, and Tula) all in the Toltec tradition of Tollan. Chapter 4 retells the return of Quetzalcoatl as the story of the failure of Aztec polity, or the “irony of empire.”
Carrasco writes to reach anthropologists, historians of religions, and urban geographers, in an argument with steps clearly summarized, although sometimes in terms of unclear reference (paradigm, mythogem, mosaic, hermeneutics) or doubtful relevance (amazing, genius, brilliant, creative). Despite these few false notes, the account is suitable for university use, though not always near the cutting edge of thought elsewhere that he has chosen.
