Some remarks on the space and time of the “center” in aztec religion

Resumen

The intimate connection of space and time has long been recognized as a distinctive feature of Aztec cosmology. The day-quadrant associations of the tonalpohualli provide perhaps the clearest exampIe of what Miguel León-Portilla has called the "spatialization of time" —the tendency to represent periods of time according to areas of space, and vice versa. León-Portilla, J. E. S. Thompson, Jacques Soustelle and others have documented the associations of the days, trecenas, years and thirteen year periods of the calendars with the quadrants of the universe and their colors, powers, sexual connotations and other qualities. To the extent that the calendars related periods of time to extensions in space they were compasses and cosmographs, functioning not only to measure the lapse of time but also to provide an orientation for those who lived according to them in an orderly and harmonious cosmos.