The Mexica New Year, Themes for 2021, and the Dawn of the Sixth Sun
Happy Mexica New Year! Mah moyolihcatzin. May your venerable heart make itself present.
The Mexica (Aztec) calendar, based on the cycles of the sun, celebrates the start of 2021 on March 12th. Whether or not this event is one with which you are familiar, the complex system of astrology and prophecy, coming from the more Southern regions of Anahuac has much to offer us in terms of illuminating the themes, opportunities, and challenges of each year. Though this is the case every year, it is especially true in 2021, because the oral tradition and calendar hold well over 500 years of planning and preparation for the exact moment we are living now.
This is the same calendar passed down from the earlier Mayan culture, however the Mexica were the last group to make adaptations and corrections, based on a continuous discipline of observing the movements of the cosmos and making detailed interpretations, over the course of generations Most people have encountered some reference to Mayan predictions about the end of the world in 2012, and some were even disappointed when life as we knew it continued, after that date came and went. The predictions, however, were not describing a final end to life on earth, but rather the end of a 6,625 year cycle, known as a Sun. and the start of a new one, with contrasting themes. The Mexica understood this particular change of Suns as a process beginning in 2012, to be followed by nine years of movement through our collective Underworlds, nine distinct areas of our unconscious where our mind and energy can become trapped by problems such as repetitive-destructive patterns, ancestral traumas, fear of change, heavy emotions, and addiction to suffering, compelling us to play out these themes in our dreams and in our lives, thereby perpetuating the cycle. Though each year of the nine has presented a particular challenge to acknowledge and heal within ourselves, and within the collective, the years predicted to be the most difficult of the transition between Suns were 2020 and 2021. The lunar eclipse of May 2021, however, is also the moment that we move fully into the influence of the Sixth Sun, and begin to experience the profound energies that it brings, including the rise of the feminine forces and the opportunity to awaken to the gifts of inner knowledge, dreaming, and the re-enchantment of our world. This time we’re living is a change of the dream of the earth, a cosmic event wherein a new evolution for humankind becomes possible. Transitional times are not easy, but neither were the aspects of the Fifth Sun, which ruled almost all of our recorded history and the reality we have known all our lives.
Before describing the themes of the year and the new Sun, it is respectful to acknowledge that so much of what survived from the Mexica culture did so because of the selfless, and intentional sacrifice of a people who believed the knowledge they had collected was more important than their individual lives. When the Spanish invasion, and the new illnesses it introduced, had all but decimated the warrior culture, the last, and still quite young, ruler-priest of the Mexica saw that to continue fighting meant certain death to their lineage and culture, and urged the people to surrender, accepting the degradation of their way of life, in order to survive. He urged them instead to hide their true treasure, their sacred knowledge, and to pass it down in secret from father to son and mother to daughter within the oral tradition, in order to make it available in 2012, nearly 500 years in the future, when the transition to the Sixth Sun would begin, and the descendants of all races, having lived for generations in a Sun that did not look to what was hidden to the light, might benefit from the knowledge and spiritual practices of the past. He made a powerful speech to the people, and they consented, knowing that the Spanish saw them as animals without souls, and all that they were would perish externally, to be kept alive in memory. And still, the tradition almost died too, as women and men of knowledge and practitioners of mysticism were hunted, under the laws of the Inquisition, during the time that Catholicism was enforced. What I’ve referenced here is illustrated in the poetic words and predictions of the last Tlatohuani, the Mexica social and spiritual leader, or “bearer of the word,” Cuahtemoctzin, who at the end of the Mexica empire predicted that the Indigenous nations of the Americas would sleep for 500 years and then reawaken at the significant change of epoch called the Dawn of the Sixth Sun.
The following is an excerpt from his words, carved into stone and available to be seen in the main square of Mexico City, El Zócalo, the place where remnants of the primary Mexica temple still exist. Though it’s too much to explain here the full meaning of the cycle of Suns, or to include the entire poem, in these words we may see a mirror for our own times, and certainly an inside expression of the story of colonization and the perseverance of Indigenous mind that we know from the lens of observed history:
...The shadows of the night descend.
The moon and the stars are the winners of the cosmic battle, in their fight against the light of the day.
Abysses of destiny, the life of beings in labyrinths of inescapable mystery.
Let us all go and leave the streets deserted, disappearing from the marketplaces and from their paths.
Let us lock ourselves up in our houses, turning our eternal ideals into fortresses, lost in this deep solitude, in a pointless dialogue inside this great void.
Let us preserve in our hearts the wisdom and love contained in the códices (the scriptures), the teocalli (the temples), the tepochcalli (the pelota/sacred ballgame courts), the cuicacalli (the buildings for dancing, singing, and the arts),
until the Sixth Sun appears again, from the bosom of our future women.
Mother Tonantzin Iztaccíhuatl (the Mother Earth in the form of a sacred feminine mountain and extinct volcano), asleep today with white mantles and green forests, shall awaken tomorrow between thunderclaps and redeeming lightnings of authentic freedom.
She will resurrect amidst whirlwinds, emotional currents, and burning flames of light.
The mother country that was once burnt shall shine with the new Sun that will save Mexico (the place of the navel of the moon).
She will be born from the blood spilt across green lands and white cotton fields; the hope in the One Life shall shine, far beyond our temporal death...
(from Dawn of the Sixth Sun, Sergio Magaña Ocelocoyotl)
In this emerging year, we come fully into the influence of the Sixth Sun, which has some very promising aspects, not unlike what has been described within the predictions for the Age of Aquarius, yet with some significant nuances. We have just passed passed through the Nemontemi, the 5 days out of the count of the solar year from March 6-11, meant for fasting, ceremony, and recapitulation, a cleansing of that which we do not want to carry into the next cycle. We have now left the year called 8 Tecpatl (Flint or Obsidian Knife), which signified both healing, and meeting the hard consequences of our past actions, pushing us to see and to live what we have created with our words, thoughts, and actions, on individual and collective levels. The transit between Suns this past year also moved us through the 8th Underworld, called the Complete Darkness, where we are forced to stop our movement, to face uncertainty and what is hidden from the light to us, and where we cannot see the path forward in certain areas, meaning we are limited from creating there. Furthermore, there was a prediction of expressions of imbalance from the earth in 2020, which can manifest in the areas of virus and bacteria, natural disasters, and contractions in abundance, as we well know. We are now entering into a year called 9 Calli (House), which signifies an emergence of our underworlds, or shadow aspects, in the territory of our human structures: our bodies, families, countries, and earth. What it suggests is that we are moving into a year where the emotional consequences of the traumas and division of this past year may catch up to us individually and collectively, wherein humans face or play out their shadow aspects in the collective arena and in family structures.
In terms of the transit of Suns, we have moved into the 9th Underworld, the one called the Complete Peace. This can be positive, signifying the level at which one has solved the other 8, or it can manifest in its shadow side, as a forced peace, when one is trapped, as in a cage, and therefore must surrender. Doing one’s inner work to see clearly and cleanse the more destructive aspects of the unconscious will determine which face this Underworld shows us. Furthermore, there is a prediction that solar waves will move closer to the earth this year, interrupting the reliability of the technologies on which we currently lean. This may be meant to push people who are gazing into the virtual realm, as a half step towards internal examination, to truly look within and embrace, not just the virtual, but the dreaming layers of reality. Within these two years, divisions in society between those who embrace the energies of the new Sun and those who resist are said to manifest as social protests and violence, and this continues to unfold.
The Fifth Sun was called the Sun of Justice, or the Angry Sun. It was a Sun of the Tonal, or day influence, of the Masculine, of one group dominating or exploiting another, creating rage, and of the search for satisfaction and power outside of ourselves. This was a time, not of spirituality, but of the power and influence of religion, imperialism, materialism, and of the degradation of the feminine forces, as well as of women, plants and animals. In this Sun, magic, mysticism and the unseen aspects of life were suppressed, and during this time we have seen colonization, inquisition, war, genocide, industrialization, slavery, racism, sexism and capitalism, as some of the predominant forces.
The Sixth Sun is predicted to be just the opposite. Named the White Sun, The Flower Sun, and the Sun of Quetzalcoatl, It’s influence is entirely of the night, of the Nahual, or dreaming aspect of life, of the Feminine forces, of magic, mysticism, and looking deeply within for meaning and satisfaction. In this Sun, the power that we have put outside of ourselves is meant to come inside, and the sacred knowledge that was once held in the hands of the people in power, and the few chosen for a life of mysticism, becomes available for all, moving humankind towards spiritual evolution. This is the meaning of the prophecy described as the return of the Quequetzalcoatl, the time where many will choose the path of the feathered serpent, the essence of awakening one’s energy centers and embracing knowledge and growth towards enlightenment. We are also meant to see the rise of the Mamalinalli, the ones who will relearn the mystic traditions of the Feminine, including the medicine of plants, magic, the Obsidian mirror, intuition, and dreaming, which will now be supported by the Earth and the Cosmic Order, in a manner that it had not been in the past. This change has been building gradually, the way that night gives way to dawn and day fades into night, yet it is also described as a sudden and definitive transformation, wherein everyone will change, a metaphoric, if not literal, earthquake. These are the energies that we will be stepping into more fully this year, starting in mid May, as we leave the transitional time and enter the Sixth Sun, a movement which is predicted to intensify even more in 2026.
May you live and dream in alignment with the beautiful qualities of the Sixth Sun, walking hand in hand with the earth, the moon and the night. May the final stages of the transition treat you gently. And, may the predictions and sacrifices of the past illuminate the path ahead in a sacred manner.
Nimitztlazohtla noicniuhtzin. I love and appreciate you my venerable relative.
With love and care,
the eleventh house
-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez. You can find out more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com