Native America

In the Nahua worldview-- the Aztecs, if you may-- thought that the forces that created the universe, they are polar forces. One came from underneath the earth. It is the humidity, the darkness, the feminine side of the universe. The other came from the lightness and the heat, and the dryness of the sun. And those two forces combined created the world. So what they are doing in their paintings is actually using paints that have that power that is called "tonalli" in Nahuatl. That means the heat, the energy of the sun. All the flowers grow because the sun is shining on them. You know, it's the light that makes them grow. Also, the insects, or the trees-- the bark of the trees. They are all embedded in the nature of the sun. So that is the force there. And they were also using the other side of the universe, this feminine, more humid and dark side, which are the minerals. For instance, when they painted the moon, they painted it with a white pigment that is described as to be taken from underneath the lake, a very underworld place. And they painted the rabbit. Instead of painting it with the brown that is usually made with flowers and bark, they painted it with a mineral, and they added to that mineral, which is manganese, cinnabar. It is a red pigment that is used in Mesoamerica to give offerings-- dead offerings-- to our ancestors. So what they are doing there is that they are using pigments that have the strength, the force, and the symbolism of the underworld, of the earth. By doing that, they are creating a moon that is actually a moon, because in their view, the moon is the sun of the underworld, of the night. So, that is what they were doing. They were actually creating images that had an energy in themselves. We would call it a presence, a life. They are not only ornaments, but they are a life with a specific energy. So the Florentine Codex, and the images within it, actually preserve the world that was coming to an end when it was being made.