Question: How do you handle interaction between the Toltec and Aztec pantheon, or is there not much of a Toltec pantheon left?
Sadly for them, the Toltec pantheon is pretty much catsmeat at this point; Huitzilopochtli certainly delivered on Quetzalcoatl's and Tezcatlipoca's prophecies when he and the Mexica curbstomped the living shit out of Tollan. Historians are not even really sure there ever was such a people as the Toltec (as distinct from the Zapotec/Mixtec/Huastec and so on) or if the Mexica invented them as part of their mythology, that's how thoroughly they are no longer doing business.
The sole remaining person who can really convincingly claim to be Toltec is Quetzalcoatl himself, who may or may not have been king of the Toltecs and their chief deity at the time that they were destroyed by the Mexica (depending on whether or not you like the idea of Quetzalcoatl the hero and Quetzalcoatl the god being the same guy). Some of the other Aztlanti were probably worshiped in Tollan (like Tlaloc, for example... dude has his toothy fingers in every pantheon aroud there), but Quetzalcoatl is really the representative of their culture, and it's not coincidental that he's a culture-teacher and figure of learning for the Aztecs, who considered Toltec civilization an awesome thing to plunder for their own edification.
While a resurrection of the Toltecs would certainly be an interesting plot, the lack of Toltec gods to draw from means you'd need to either invent a bunch of them from nothing or borrow deities from other local pantheons to make up their ranks. I'd suggest the second, as it's more likely to be close to the truth; "Toltecs" is probably just what the Mexica referred to the people they'd just conquered as, rather than what the people referred to themselves as.
Which is ironic, considering that the Mexica themselves are now referred to as Aztec despite never having called themselves that, either. Mesoamerica's long, proud tradition of conquerors attempting to totally rewrite history continues.
The funniest thing about the whole Toltec thing is that while Tollan/Tula IS a real city, it does not nearly live up to the hype. Reading Nahua accounts of how the city was the best place EVAR, you'd think that it would look somewhat more impressive. If anything, Tula's kind of like the cheap knockoff version of Chichen Itza, the Yucatec Maya city.
ReplyDeleteAlso, wouldn't Tezcatlipoca also be considered a Toltec deity? Y'know, what with Quetzalcoatl's reign basically being a pissing contest between the two?
I think you definitely could take the approach that Tezcatlipoca is also Toltec, but he always seemed to me more of an outside force - he comes in from "elsewhere" to make Quetzalcoatl's life miserable, and returns to that murky elsewhere when mission is accomplished. Then again, the whole Enemy of Both Sides thing makes it very easy for him to be a douchebag from whatever angle suits him that day.
DeleteYeah, the Nahua building up the Toltec society as this amazing paradise they totally better embody reminds me a lot of the Roman empire modeling a ton of their stuff on the Greeks and loudly proclaiming how great it was; it's an odd cultural decision to venerate a previous culture. Makes more sense in the case of the Mexica, I think, who were mostly nomadic mercenaries and didn't have a lot in the way of permanent culture and monuments; it might have just been most expedient to take the "Toltecs"' over in spirit as well as literally rather than building from scratch.
I've also heard a lot of scholarly theorizing that the Toltecs are really a reference to the lost civilization of Teotihuacan, but nobody seems to have much more than pipe dreams and hope to support that one. It's a neat theory, though.