THE COSMIC TREE ON THE CENTRAL-AMERICAN TRADITION

Abstract

The Central-American religious tradition includes peoples of a profound temporality and a vast spatiality. Amongst them are the first farmers, the Olmecs, Mayas, Zapotecs, Toltecs, Mixtecs, Huastecs, Aztecs, and the present indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America that have conserved their religious beliefs and practices. This paper deals with the cosmic tree, which appears in two complementary forms: one is the cosmic axis, which sinks its roots into the dead’s world and raise its branches up to the upper heavens; the other is constituted by its projections, four trees of four different colours in each one of the extremes of the world. The role of the cosmic tree is very important. It is the place of birth of the different types of beings (men included). On the other hand, the different divine forces that constitute time flow, in an orderly way, through the side trees. The warm, and male forces of heaven join the cold, dark and female forces of the dead’s world inside the trunks of the four trees, and come out in a levogyrous sequence as days, thirteenths, twentieths and years. These forces constitute destiny. The paper will present some myths relating to the installation of the trees of time and to the alternation of the divine forces ordered in the calendar.