All the peoples of the world have tried, through various techniques that can be described as magical, to predict the future, find out the cause of misfortune or illness, or locate lost persons or objects. The techniques employed are numerous, many of them have fallen into disarray. However, others are still practiced today and of great importance: astrology, chiropractic, tarot cards, the interpretation of dreams, and the invocation of spirits, among many others. For the purposes of this work, we will study divination through the use of maize in Mesoamerica, in particular, the particular the method of shedding and decoding the combinations generated once the grains are scattered.
There was no material sustenance more important for pre-Hispanic cultures than corn. The original grain of America not only meant the food base of the Nahua peoples of the Valley of Mexico, Maya, and the cultures of the Gulf and the rest of Mesoamerica. The discovery, improvement, and domestication of the plant were also decisive for its appearance and development: as peoples whose ancestors passed from a stage of nomadic hunter-gatherers to the establishment of a sedentary society dedicated to agriculture (Stross, 2006). The inhabitants found in each species, cob and form of preparation much more than the daily sustenance.
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Maize influenced the pre-Hispanic imagination to the creation of a set of stories, stories, and legends aimed at giving meaning to the earthly life of the original inhabitants from their material conditions. Various myths of creation for Mesoamerican peoples found inspiration in the grain, elevated to sacred by its quality as a matter of man in the ‘Popol-Vuh’ of the Quiche Maya, or as a gift of Quetzalcoatl in the Mexican myth of its origin.
Among all things that escape human knowledge, the curiosity and intrigue inherent in destiny and its vicissitudes were no exceptions for pre-Hispanic men and women.). An art that followed the trajectory of the stars in the celestial vault, passing through the meticulous observation of the fire, the behavior of the living beings of the immediate environment or the divination through epiphanies or the result of dreams and dream trips induced by the consumption of hallucinogenic fungi. However, the most commonly used method was divination through maize. Nahuatl cultures used this technique to know the designs of the future, as a divine sign of everything that did not depend on the man and as such, remained in the hands of the gods. The reading of the corn kernels had different meanings, from discovering the state of health of an individual, to find lost objects. This divination was intimately related to the ritual calendar, especially with the tonalpohualli , the ‘book of destinies.’
One procedure of divination is described in the Codex Tudela: a few grains of corn and beans, and if the first fell in the midst of a vacuous [empty] field like a field so that they were about, it was a sign that they were going to bury [the sick]. If the corn kernels were separated half to one part and half to another, so that a right stripe could be made in between, without touching any grain, it was a sign that the disease had withdrawn from the sick and healed (Rojas, 2016). To achieve such prognoses, the most beautiful grains of the corn were chosen and thrown in the manner of dice, dropped on a surface designated for that purpose. It was sometimes accompanied by beans, coconut shells or other symbolic elements and special attention was paid to the sense and forms in which the corn fell once thrown (Bassie-Sweet, 1999).
A variant was to throw them into a shell or a vessel with water, where the designs depended on the way they floated or sank. The men and women of the pre-Hispanic cultures used this practice with special devotion as a mechanism to understand the diseases and the tragic or positive outcome of those who suffered. Beyond a rudimentary technique, it was a faithful expression of the thoughts of the original peoples before the future, a constant preoccupation in the ancient cultures of the whole world.
Being that maize was a core part of the Mesoamerican culture, and the sacred food par excellence, it is not surprising that this was fundamental in the magical tradition of these lands. The corn has been used for divination purposes by many indigenous groups for millennia, mostly to find lost people or objects, knowing the future, and especially to explain, diagnose and find the cure of diseases. The art of ‘reading the corn’ appears in certain pre-Hispanic codices, which proves its importance in the Mesoamerican culture. In the case of Franciscan missionary, Toribio de Benavente , known as Motolinia , who also officiated as a historian, he refers to divinatory art through the corn. They threw a handful of corn as thick as they could have and threw it seven or eight times as they threw the dice, and if some grain remained upright, they said that it was a sign of death. Likewise, if anyone was lost [thing] or animal or bird, they did certain witchcraft with corn, and looked at a basin of water, and said that there they saw what he had. If it was a living thing, it made them understand whether it was dead or alive.
The importance of divination through corn is so great that it is even present in the oldest Mesoamerican myths about the creation of humanity. After the gods, Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacíhuatl created to the four Tezcatlipocas, by orders of Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli I, who after creating the fire and ‘half sun’: Then they made a man and a woman: the man was told Uxumuco and her, Cipactónal. And they commanded them to till the earth, and she to weave and weave. And that from them the materials would be born, and that they would not enjoy themselves, but would always work. And the gods gave her certain grains of corn so that with them he could cure and use witchcraft and witchcraft, and so today women wear them. Also, in the Popul Vuh, it is narrated that the elders Ixmucané and Ixpicayoc cast the lot of corn and tz'ite to know the material with which the new men had to be made.
In conclusion, the divination through maize reveals the importance that the grain had and has for Mesoamerican peoples. In addition, its sacredness became the ideal object for the practices, related in turn with the body human, to which it gave matter, neither more nor less. That said, it may be noted that divination by maize had a key role since pre - Hispanic times for the people of Mesoamerica.
References
Bassie-Sweet, K. (1999). Corn deities and the complementary male/female principle. Tercera Mesa Redonda de Palenque .
Rojas, A. (2016). Reading Maize: a narrative and psychological approach to the study of divination in Mesoamerica. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies , 15 (43), 102.
Stross, B. (2006). Maize in word and image in Southeastern Mesoamerica.
