The Goddesses of Water

All beginnings are empty, dawns to be filled with symbols, sediments, and imaginings from remnants of history, gathering from many sources. In August 2021 we celebrate the founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1321 by the Aztecs, who came from mythical Aztlan, the place where they became children of the Fifth Sun. This was the origin of a tradition that has taken us centuries to reconstruct and understand. This collection of poems by Jeannette L. Clariond endows the Aztec creation myth with further meaning by reinterpreting the tale of Coyolxauhqui, the goddess of the moon: calendars, stars, pyramids, paintings, murals, ceramics, fabrics, colours-everything in this book takes on new meaning in her poetic language. In Samantha Schnee's translation, Coyolxauhqui makes a symbolic journey-via the phases of the Moon-from her arrival in America by the Bering Strait "with jade beneath her tongue" to Mexico today. 500 years ago, in 1521, 200 years after the founding of the great city, a meeting of two worlds took place: Hernan Cortes set foot in Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. What did he see? What part of this history is it necessary to reilluminate? Ever since the anthropological and archaeological discoveries in the second half of the 19th century, those who wish to understand this culture have looked to the codices preserved in museums around the world to comprehend the thought, the philosophy, and the cosmology of the Aztecs more deeply. The Goddesses of Water uses the myth of the phases of the Moon to illuminate our awareness of the femicides all across Mexico: The time has come to uncry the wound / for the body to flower once more.