There is a good discussion of some of the scholarly issues by Alberto Mendo at http://www-mcnair.berkeley.edu/2003journal/AMendo.html and I don’t plan to replicate his efforts here. Wikipedia also has a fair article, which at this writing also includes a photo of a modern painted statue of Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl that can be found at Amatlan, in the state of Morelos. There, a plaque commemorates his childhood in the village, following his birth nearby on May 4, 843 CE. I doubt there is much basis for this exact date, but it does make him a Taurus, and since this sign is ruled by Venus, I like the conceit of such specifics. Legend has him dying by immolating himself somewhere on the Gulf Coast, and transforming into Venus, the Morning Star. As Mendo explains, the motions of Venus governed the calendars of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples, whose descendants still inhabit central Mexico.
Tula is not visited as much as other sites around Mexico City. Everyone has gone on the bus to splendid Teotihuacan, but hardly anybody seemed to have made it an hour or so up the highway to Tula, the ancient Toltec capital. “I hear it’s nice,” was the standard response in Mexico City. Which it is, even if the petrochemicals plant a mile away does interfere a little with the ambience.
I’ll cut to the chase and say I felt Quetzalcoatl’s presence at Tula. I’d been trying to contact the deeper mood of the place for about an hour, and finally felt tuned in enough to begin an inner colloquy with the presiding spirit. Such things can be as questionable a means of ‘research’ as any other intuitive method of information gathering (the esoteric ‘prophecies’ the subconscious produces at such times need to be ditched ASAP) yet I’ve often found key historical details have come through that I could verify from later reading.
When I was leaving across the ancient market plaza, and I asked what Quetzalcoatl could explain or show of himself, I kicked almost immediately into the sense of an overarching presence of great power. The sky-god aspect of his nature was very vivid, like the Lawgiver of the Jews yet more in tune with the natural world. Three weeks later, I’m still coming to terms with what I felt there. Part of the colloquy that preceded this visionary influx had been about human sacrifice, and for a short while I understood enough of the Toltec worldview to accept it as a valid thing.
Inevitably, my post-Christian sensibilities took over quite quickly. But briefly I had entered into the less individuated consciousness of people in such a society, combined with an awareness that any death in those times - from scorpion sting or snake-bite, wasting disease or war injury - could be agonising, so the short minutes of pain a sacrificio endured seemed a not unreasonable alternative.
There is a word in Nahuatl, tonalli, which is closely comparable to the Qabalistic idea of the nephesh: the animal or vital soul that is the animating principle of any creature. It has some affinities with Freud’s id. The Toltecs and other peoples of pre-Columbian Mexico felt it was the essential energy of the universe. Humans had to render it unto their gods, and the gods in turn conferred it upon the world. There was no certainty in the Toltec cosmos, even if they did understand the planetary motions of Venus over a time-period of a century or more. But since fear tended to concentrate tonalli in the heart, ritual cardioectomy was a good way of supplying the gods with the fuel they needed to keep all this cosmic motion going.
What was missing, clearly, was the next level up, the ruach, which is the individual reasoning consciousness. Christianity’s role, in large measure, was to bring ruach-consciousness into being, and to emphasise the primacy of the individual human life. The real clash between Mexicans and Spaniards came from the introduction of this notion (if not often its full practice) as much as a disparity in military technology.
The current phase of human history, Thelemites hold, involves a movement to include conscious awareness of the still higher spiritual consciousness, the neshamah. This development takes our (relatively) individuated ruach-state as its jumping-off point, and is based around the constantly self-renewing energy of the archetypal figure of the Crowned and Conquering Child.
The various ways to elucidate this teaching can be addressed another time, but what caught my eye in Mendo’s piece was his translation of ‘Topiltzin’, which is ‘sacred or revered child’. Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl spoke against human sacrifice, and clearly had an emerging ruach-consciousness, even if it was not appreciated nor understood at the time. He promised to return at some point, presumably when his message would be heard.
As noted above, I am no fan of prophecies, which usually seem to be compensatory wish-fulfilment fantasies. But I am intrigued by what I felt or saw in the plaza at Tula, and the obvious reverence for Quetzalcoatl many people still feel. I found the encounter alarming, but not in the sense of an unwelcome intrusion, simply of one inspiring necessary awe.
The serpent image, in all its gnostic ambiguity, is a compelling one, both frightening and encouraging, destructive and illuminating, and it has many Qabalistic analogues. I don't know what the Plumed Serpent may have to offer today, but I'm intrigued to find out.