"Great and Venerable Mechanism of the Universe"
AZTEC CALENDAR
| For
those of you that would like to understand the Native Calendar a little better, there is
an animation at the bottom of the page that show how the gears turn. The first thing
to realize is that the calendar count was universal to the Americas, used by the Zapotec,
Huastec, Toltec, Aztec, Maya, Nahuas, etc... and utilizes the same mechanics. The
Aztec Calendar is no less accurate than the Mayan Calendar and conversely. The Nahua legend of Quetzalcoatl tells of a single
person responsible for teaching the calendar count to migrants that came from the North.
Apparently the folks from the South had been using it longer. Since its
very early days around 200 BC, the place we know as Teotihuacan, was tracking time.
Most likely the number 20 was used for an easy way to keep track of days with
a finger and toe counting system.
But what is harder to comprehend, is how the number 13 closely matches the prime dividend
of a complete cycle of the Earth's axis as it spins. This seems to capture the fundamental
frequency or pulse of the Earth in relationship to the general solar system. More
specifically, a complete axis precession takes 25,720 years, according to our best modern
measurements. The 13 x 20 concept yields 36,000 cycles of 260 to make up 25,625
years. That is a very close correlation.
For a research tool, information that was gathered over the course of 25 years was
filtered down and compiled into the Aztec Calendar Handbook. By
having scattered facts in one location, made it easier to sort through volumes of
seemingly disparate information. The book evolved as new information could be meshed
with the existing collection. The 3rd edition helped solve the "riddle" of
the calendar, yielding the 4th edition. |
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What we know about the advanced
cultures of Mesoamerica is, they:
.
1) Marked time by; 260 days, 360 + 5 days, 52 years + 13 days
2) Called the calendar; the Two that Is One
3) Were aware that our Sun was a star and the stars were other suns
4) Knew about the precession of the Earth's axis
5) Navigated oceans by the stars |
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While developing the mechanics for a working calendar, solving a simple gear
problem brought forth a breakthrough in the exact understanding of how
these two calendars worked together, which is explained below.
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The
Two That Is One . . . is what
the day-counters called their calendar.
.
"Montezuma gave to Cortes, among many other vast treasures, a disk of gold
that was the sun as large as a
cartwheel and an equally large moon of silver. Cortes had them melted down
into ingot." Bernal Diaz .
 
What
follows below is an animated diagram showing how two calendars
were used to generate
a single date and how they calibrated each other.
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