Mexico

Előszó

PROLOGUE The face of creation To see Mexico from the air is to look upon the face of creation. Our everyday, earthbound vision takes flight and is transformed into a vision of the elements. This book is a portrait of water and fire, of wind and earthquake, of the moon and the sun. Not just one sun, but the five suns of ancient Mexican cosmogony. First comes the Sun of Water, which presides over the creation of the world and ends in the storms and floods that foretell the coming eras -Sun of Earth, Sun of Wind and Sun of Fire- each ending in catastrophe until we arrive at the fifth sun, our own, which awaits the final cataclysm. This beautiful book confirms that ancient, aboriginal vision of the four elements succeeding one another in what was ultimately a circular movement. But the images of these photographs allow us to see beyond that spiraling circle to something even more beautiful: a circle, yes, and a spirál, but above all, a vision of the elements of creation in simultaneous interplay. SUN OF WATER Coursing through these pages are serpentine rivers, mere threads of fertility in the midst of deserts, opulent tropical undulations pouring slow and wide into the sea. Over the flowing waters of the Papaloapan, river of butterflies, over the still waters of Laké Patzcuaro, furrowed by dragonflies, flutters the goddess Itzpapalotl, a star in the Aztec pantheon. Her very name, "Obsidian Butterflyjf,5 resounds with the ambiguity of all the elements, her fragile multicolored wing at once a fearful sacrificial knife. She is the first sign of creation, proclaimed by the fleeting, liquid element. It is not the nature of water to be always piacid, and when it lies as Vissza