{"id":2776,"date":"2011-06-18T13:50:22","date_gmt":"2011-06-18T19:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2776"},"modified":"2013-06-13T12:24:28","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T18:24:28","slug":"talking-about-tlaloc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2776","title":{"rendered":"Talking about Tlaloc"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Feather<\/a>

Bundle of turkey, Steller’s jay, and flicker feathers placed in a dry spring basin.<\/p><\/div>\n

On Friday morning, April 29, back from a early morning fire call (shed + trash + grasses at the edge of the prairie), I climbed the ridge behind the house and made an offering to Tlaloc, the god of rain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(I think I need to make a lot more of them, given that it has not rained for a month.)<\/p>\n

Later that day the Sand Gulch Fire exploded<\/a>, forcing us to evacuate our house and spend the night in our pop-up camping trailer parked next to the fire station. But the next day it snowed four inches, helping to bring the fire under control.<\/p>\n

The desert ecologist and nature writer Craig Childs got me thinking about Tlaloc a while ago with some evocative passages in his book House of Rain<\/em>, which I reviewed on the other blog here<\/a> (also referenced in this post<\/a>).<\/p>\n

At high, prominent springs or caves in Guatemala or the Yucat\u00e1n,\u00a0 one is likely to find the head of a decapitated rooster (replacing the turkey, which was commonly used in the past) along with pools of melted wax from votive candles (365).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This post kicks off my discussion about being an American Eclectic Witch reviving the cult of Tlaloc on a household basis\u2014no stepped pyramids here, just real mountains.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tlaloc<\/p><\/div>\n

Both Aztec depictions of Tlaloc and Mayan depictions of the equivalent deity, Chaac (if you follow a sort of interpretatio azteca<\/em><\/a>), leave me cold aesthetically, for all that they are richly symbolic. But one thing at a time\u2014perhaps I can find one done in the style of pop-Mexican calendar art. <\/a><\/p>\n

The worship of the gods can change over time\u2014consider this “feast of St. Tlaloc<\/a>.” We could do that!<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday morning, April 29, back from a early morning fire call (shed + trash + grasses at the edge of the prairie), I climbed the ridge behind the house and made an offering to Tlaloc, the god of rain. (I think I need to make a lot more of them, given that it has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,118,186,23,41,32,40,149],"class_list":["post-2776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-arizona","tag-bioregion","tag-colorado","tag-mexico","tag-new-mexico","tag-polytheism","tag-tlaloc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-IM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1875,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1875","url_meta":{"origin":2776,"position":0},"title":"Get Right with Tlaloc","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"On a recent trip to look at some Anasazi \/ Ancestral Puebloan ruins in northeast Arizona, I took Craig Childs' book House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest as my guide book. Driving and backpacking from southwest Colorado down into Sonora, Mexico, over a period of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2824,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2824","url_meta":{"origin":2776,"position":1},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In her comment on my first Tlaloc post, Hecate Demetersdatter asks,\u00a0 \"What was\/is it about Tlaloc that called\/calls to you?\" It was my reading and re-reading of Craig Childs' House of Rain that made me conscious of how important a deity Tlaloc (under various names) had been from antiquity to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/tlaloc-culvert_sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3043,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3043","url_meta":{"origin":2776,"position":2},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 3","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As I wrote about earlier, I have been maintaining a small shrine to the rain god Tlaloc under a nearby county-road bridge. Our creek\u2014currently dry except for a couple of beaver ponds upstream\u2014goes through a culvert there, one big enough for me to walk through standing straight. When my shrine\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/tlaloc_dagger-300x193.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5529,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5529","url_meta":{"origin":2776,"position":3},"title":"An Offering to Tlaloc in the Burned-Over Forest","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week M. and I climbed over the ridge to \"Camera Trap Spring\" (our personal name for it) to leave an offering to Tlaloc. Thing have changed a little bit since a year ago. The ground is black with ash. Stones have cracked from the heat of a forest fire.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"bioregion\"","block_context":{"text":"bioregion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=bioregion"},"img":{"alt_text":"offering_at_spring_sm","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4372,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4372","url_meta":{"origin":2776,"position":4},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 5","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I think it is time to rebuild the shrine to Tlaloc under the bridge \u2014 the one that was mysteriously augmented last summer.\u00a0 I had taken it down before the spring run-off, which is just a memory now. Once the heat abates a little, I need to hike back over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3426,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3426","url_meta":{"origin":2776,"position":5},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 4","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Last June, as our creek began to dry up, I blogged about building a little shrine to Tlaloc, \"god of the hydrological cycle\" as Craig Childs described him, in a big culvert under our county road. It snowed, nearly a foot on October 26. The combination of trees pulling up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2776"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5633,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776\/revisions\/5633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}