528 UNIT 4 MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL FEATURES
(see Box 14.2 on Thomas Gage’s seventeenth-century report from Guatemala). The co-
essence and its role in individual destiny were once, apparently, determined by calen-
drical reckoning (birthdate and associated deities). Today, this belief system is made
to “speak” via dream interpretation, pulsing of the wrist (allowing the blood to speak),
and divination. In both the ancient and the modern eras, the coessence embodies, ex-
alts, and constrains individual power and destiny, for these forces are in essence “from
elsewhere.” Since this idea constitutes a conceptual foundation for a kind of predesti-
nation, it is not unreasonable to link it with a certain skepticism about the capacity of
individuals to “make their own way in the world” through their own volition. We know
that this belief is strong in Indian communities of the region today. It may also be
found to characterize certain aspects of the world view of non-Indians, particularly in
Mexico and Guatemala.Cyclical Time as a Sacred Entity
Whether in its macroform as a four- or five-part grand creation and restoration cycle
that constitutes all of history, or in its microform as the metaphor of the day as a
minimal cycle of heat, in its calendrical mode, in its astronomical mode, in its ritual
mode, or in the smallest nuances of verbal metaphor and poetics, it is clear that sa-
cred, cyclical solar time has held powerful sway in both the ancient and the con-
temporary Mesoamerican universe. (See the earlier extract from Miguel
León-Portilla.) Other natural and cultural cycles—such as the human life cycle, the
human gestation cycle, the agricultural cycle, and the festival cycle—are all laced
into the daily and annual solar cycles to create a cosmos that places humankind in
an inherited, a sacred, a temporal order that demands human maintenance. This is
not a system in which the human will is free to indulge its whims or to innovate in
the hope of achieving personal or collective gain. It is obvious that this ideological
premise occupies a key position in questions of continuity and change in the
Mesoamerican present and future, for it possesses, in addition to its cyclical princi-
ples, a cumulative, progressive component. But this progressive, linear component
is not selfishly pragmatic and not necessarily subject to the human will. It is a spiral
that cannot move forward without contemplating and retracing its past positions
and prior forms. Competing ideologies, such as Protestantism, Marxism, Reform
Catholicism, and Developmentalism, must either acknowledge and accommodate
this ancient ideology or must demand its eradication. Comfortable coexistence is
unlikely, for many of the new ideologies are linear, progressive, secular, and prag-
matic. The old Mesoamerican temporal order, in both its cyclical and linear modes,
is sacred and highly patterned.The Structure of the Vertical and Horizontal Cosmos
Both ancient and modern Mesoamerican communities recognize a consistent de-
limitation of sky, earth, and underworld in the spatial layout of the cosmos, with me-
diation among these realms as a key intellectual, political, and religious activity. With
successful mediation come power, wisdom, even personal health and community sur-
vival. Some variant of this spatial structure, with subunit segmentation and corre-
sponding cardinal directional symbolism, occurs throughout pre-Columbian