Aztecs and Zapotecs: The Day of the Dead and the Cosmic
Phantoms of Malcolm Lowry
Nigel H. Foxcroft,
University of Brighton
Introduction
Inspired by a field-trip to Mexico in October – November 2010
for the Day of the Dead festival, this paper advances the thesis of my
2009 Malcolm Lowry Centenary International Conference paper on
“Souls and Shamans: The Cosmopolitan Psychology of Malcolm
Lowry” presented at UBC, Vancouver.1 Indeed, it gives further
consideration to the cultural, psychological, and spiritual links
between Lowry’s terrestrial, subterranean, cosmic, and aquatic
worldviews.
In assessing the interface between the material and spiritual
domains of the Aztecs and the Oaxacan Zapotecs, this research
examines the subconscious dimensions of the Mexican Day of the
Dead festival witnessed by Malcolm Lowry. In so doing, it
investigates various anthropological, cultural, and ethnographic
influences. With their sources in pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican
rituals, these stimuli are reflected in Lowry’s Under the Volcano
(1947), Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid (1968), La
Mordida (1996), and The Forest Path to the Spring (1961).
In analyzing his preoccupation with seeking atonement with
the spirits of the dead, this paper aims to clarify Lowry’s recognition
of the need to repent for the debts of the past and for the sins of
mankind. It also attempts to penetrate his insight into Mexican
cultural heritage by determining synergies in his worldview with the
cosmic, shamanic, and animistic concepts of the universe, reflected
in the divine consciousness of the Aztec and Zapotec civilizations.
2
From the Aztecs to the Zapotecs: A Psychogeographical Pursuit
of the Spirits of Civilization
Malcolm Lowry’s multifaceted, prismatic perception of his
environment empowers him to encapsulate in his work an intriguing
combination of terrestrial, temporal images, on the one hand, with
celestial, spiritual dimensions, on the other. A reinterpretation of his
vision
of
the
world
reveals
various
anthropological,
psychogeographic, and psychoanalytical forces at work in his
complex approach to what was to become Jacob Bronowski’s Ascent
of Man.2 Furthermore, Lowry was intrigued by the ethnographic
research promulgated in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and
Religion (1890-1915) by Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941), the
Scottish anthropologist, folklorist, and classicist. Indeed, in his letters
Lowry refers directly to this work – one which bears witness to the
commemoration of the souls of the dead by what Frazer calls the
“Miztecs of Mexico,” that is, the Mixtecs of Oaxaca and its environs.3
Entranced by the Mexican Día de los Muertos, or Day of the
Dead celebration which he observed in November 1936 in
Quauhnahuac – known today by its Hispanicized version of
Cuernavaca – Lowry launches his multi-layered novel, Under the
Volcano with a psychogeographical portrait of a city haunted by “the
ghosts
of
ruined
gamblers”.4
In
what
transforms
into
a
psychologically profound vision of the world, perceived by an
esoterically enigmatic, Cabbala-inspired state of consciousness, the
reader is propelled into the inner depths of Lowry’s snapshot of
civilization.5 However, it is a domain in which dwell strange
combinations of numbers and bizarre coincidences of events which
ostensibly determine the fate of mankind. Gradually, we are exposed
to a mind-set which fosters beliefs akin to those held by both the
Aztecs and, indeed, the Zapotecs who endeavoured to predict five
3
unlucky, unnamed days in their 365-day solar calendar. Stimulated
by the impact of a particular American author and science critic,
Lowry
justifies
his
numeric
beliefs
by
declaring,
in
his
correspondence, that he has known “of no writer who has made the
inexplicable seem more dramatic than Charles Fort” and proceeds to
surmise that the cosmos is composed of certain immortal,
mathematically-rooted patterns of existence.6
A prolific reader of world literature, Lowry was captivated by
travel. Following in the footsteps of D. H. Lawrence in pursuit of
adventure and cultural paradise, he was lured to Mexico twice – once
in 1936-38 and again in 1945 – lodging in the cities of Cuernavaca
and Oaxaca. Embarking upon a transcendental, supernatural quest
for the Garden of Eden, he traced the cultural and historical origins of
modern Mexico back to the Aztecs. Mesmerized by the cosmological
legacy which they shared with the Zapotecs, he drew upon his lifelong interest in social, cultural, and linguistic anthropology as a way
of comprehending the Spanish impact on Aztec civilization. Of
special appeal were the consequences for his Mexican Garden of
Eden of Hernán Cortés’s conquest and skilful subjugation of the
Aztec Empire in 1519-21. In this respect, Lowry was enthralled by the
ongoing dilemma facing the native Aztec and Zapotec civilizations:
how to preserve their heritage while adjusting to a new politicocultural, Hispanic environment – a situation which led to a fusion of
traditions in the Day of the Dead festival.
The Cosmic Phantoms of the Mexican Día de los Muertos, or
Day of the Dead
In Aztec culture, death – as “a mirror of life” - is a symbolic
celebration, necessitating an offering, or sacrifice to satisfy the gods
and to nourish the souls of the deceased on their underworld journey
4
into the afterlife.7 It was deemed a great honour to be a sacrifice, for,
as Jacques Soustelle has claimed, it was “believed that each human
being was, by predestination, inserted into a divine order, ‘the grasp
of the omnipotent machine’”.8 The Aztecs cherished the eternal
Ferris wheel of life by practising the extraction of the pulsating heart
of a ‘volunteer’, or, rather, a victim, with the intention of placating the
gods and, hence, sustaining the universe.
Associated
with
pre-Columbian,
Mesoamerican
rituals
connecting the living with the fallen, the Day of the Dead festival
derives its traditions too from shamanic and cosmic perspectives akin
to those preserved by the modern-day, animist tribes of northern
Mexico. In this respect, the Huichol (and the Yaqui) worship and
communicate with numerous gods and spirits, giving thanks to
Christian images, such as to the figurine of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
In Under the Volcano this effigy appears as “the Consul’s longing”
where it “was so great his soul was locked with the essence of the
place”.9 In Dark as the Grave the revival of Sigbjørn’s faith is
facilitated both by “the mediating influence of the dead” and by the
statuette “of […] the Holy Virgin” which attracts the attention of
Primrose and Sigbjørn “as a model ... dressed in bright print and
carrying in one hand a lamp”.10 Moreover, it precipitates an acute
“feeling of something Renaissance,” emphasizing the need for
cultural and spiritual renewal.11
Rebirth for Lowry is closely connected to movements of the
Pleiades (or Seven Sisters) star cluster which interfaces with the Day
of the Dead and the 260-day ritual cycle of the Aztec and Zapotec
calendar year. In this respect, Lowry informed the editor of the
Vancouver Sun of his following discovery regarding the Pleiades:
The Egyptians, the Aztecs, the Japanese all
worshipped them. And the Festival of All Hallows, All
5
Saints Day, the Mexican Day of the Dead etc. are all
associated with the culmination of the Pleiades. It is
thought [...] that these universal memorial services
commemorate a great cataclysm that occurred in
ancient times.12
Furthermore, in Under the Volcano the Consul’s ex-wife, Yvonne shamed for eternity for her extra-marital affairs with Hugh and M.
Jacques Laruelle – ironically imagines “herself voyaging straight up
through the stars to the Pleiades,” as was the case with Merope, the
faintest of the mythical Seven Sisters.13 Hence, it is the Pleiades –
and the date of their first appearance in the sky - which link Aztec
and Zapotec beliefs, as has been suggested by Clemente Vicente
M.14
As a commemorative ritual, the Day of the Dead not only sets
the scene but also provides a key to comprehending the true
significance of Under the Volcano. Of pre-Hispanic, pagan-spiritual
origin, this festival - deeply rooted as it is in ancient Aztec civilization
– has been enriched by subsequent Spanish-Catholic influences.
Held on 2 November each year, it comes after the commemoration of
deceased children and infants on 1 November, known as the Day of
the Innocents, or Little Angels. With its bright masks and skulls, vivid
costumes, loud singing and dancing, and the display of orange
marigolds and the favourite dishes and drinks of the deceased
alongside their graves, this fete yearns to connect the living with the
spirits of the dead. These evocative images are reproduced by Lowry
in Under the Volcano which opens with Dr Vigil and M. Jacques
Laruelle reminiscing about Yvonne and Geoffrey Firmin, now
deceased, but immortalized in the events of the Day of the Dead. As
with the Consul, the Aztecs too believed that, on this very day, the
souls of the deceased – symbols of rebirth - journey back from the
underworld to greet the land of the mortals.
6
Contacting the Dead: The Impact of Shamans and the Cabbala
Motivated by his encounters with Charles Robert StansfeldJones (1886-1950), alias Frater Achad, Lowry portrays the Consul of
Under the Volcano as a “dark magician in his visioned cave,”
regularly consulting Elizabethan plays and “numerous cabbalistic and
alchemical books”.15 Indeed, the Consul possesses an esoteric,
hermetic knowledge acquired by an assumed, shamanic ability to
contact “the spirits of ancestors and the controlling forces of the
natural world, or gods” in his trance-like state of consciousness.16 On
his mystic crusade - a spiritual mission to discover death in life and
life in death – he attempts to use the wisdom of the Cabbala to
aspire, hallucinogenically, to a higher dimension of supreme truth
and salvation by opening sacred portals connecting the natural and
supernatural realms.17 It is through meditation and the imbibition of
mescal and pulque – an ancient, sacred, ritualistic, alcoholic drink
produced from the agave – that he transforms into a witch-doctor or
shamanic
priest,
attempting
to
perform
ecstatic
“rituals
of
supernatural communication”.18
Seeking a harmonious cosmic order, the Consul endeavours
to maintain a balance between the material and spiritual worlds. He
aims to confer with the gods to avert misfortune, as did the Aztecs
and the Zapotecs.19 On the one hand, Mercia Eliade (1907-86)
assumes that a “primitive magician, the medicine man or shaman, is
not only a sick man, he is, above all, a sick man who has been cured,
who has succeeded in curing himself”.20 However, in the Consul’s
case, his dabbling with the laws of nature has culminated not in an
attainment of the transcendental power of love, but in the loss of “the
knowledge of the Mysteries”.21 Unfortunately, he has become a
victim of his own cabbalistic magic, as Lowry reveals when he
explains:
7
The garden can be seen not only as the world, or the
Garden of Eden, but legitimately as the Cabbala itself,
and the abuse of wine […] is identified in the Cabbala
with the abuse of magical powers […] à la Childe
Harolde.22
From Cuernavaca to Oaxaca in the Quest for the Elixir of Life
As with the Consul in Under the Volcano, a priest on a
pilgrimage, Lowry too embarks upon a quest for the Holy Grail of
Central Mesoamerican civilization. In his search for veracity,
enlightenment, and redemption, he endeavours to cure the world by
discovering a shamanic elixir of life.23 He is enchanted by Oaxaca to
which he travels, referring to it in his letters as “the most lovely town
in the world & with some of the most lovely people in it”.24 On his
expedition he encounters the multilingual Zapotec, Juan Fernando
Márquez whom he befriends and whose shamanic phantom he later
retraces to Oaxaca. According to Douglas Day, as well as being a
messenger for the Ejidal Bank and a dipsomaniac linguist, Juan
Fernando possesses the expertise of a doctor, translator, adventurer,
and chemist – that is, all the skills which our Consul is attempting to
master.25
The real-life figures of Márquez and Fernando Atonalzin of
Lowry’s “Garden of Etla” serve as models for the fictional Juan
Fernando Martínez.26 In Dark as the Grave Martínez, a former friend
and guardian spirit of Sigbjørn Wilderness, is the joint reincarnation
both of the legendary Juan Cerillo and of Dr Vigil in Under the
Volcano. Indeed, it is Martínez whom Sigbjørn pursues on his return
journey with his wife from Vancouver to Cuernavaca to exorcize the
ghosts, or phantoms which have been plaguing him since his last
visit to Oaxaca.27 Whereas Primrose encourages him to attain a state
8
of harmony with life, Martínez enables him to do so with death and,
paradoxically, with the natural environment, providing a cathartic
medium for spiritual transformation, as a phoenix of renaissance.
Sigbjørn is also aided by a ritualistic, voodoo cross which is depicted
as a means of enabling the spirits of the dead, transformed into
gods, to communicate with the living.28
In his quest to uncover the genesis of the indigenous Zapotec
civilization, Sigbjørn’s trip to the high priest’s palace entails a
physical descent to Mitla’s prehistoric, cruciform tombs, right down to
the subterranean Column of Death. Indeed, derived from “Mictlan”,
Mitla represents the land of the dead.29 On a simultaneous,
metaphysical journey, Sigbjørn is transported to the underworld of
Zapotec mythology. Luckily, he is to survive the potential perils of the
lunar eclipse, Maximilian’s Palace (transposed to Oaxaca from
Cuernavaca), and the temple of Mitla (“the City of the Moon”).
Indeed, it is in the romantic setting of the Hotel La Luna on the Playa
La Boquilla near Puerto Ángel on Oaxaca’s Pacific Coast that he is
reunited with Primrose, who is portrayed as a lunar-goddess
reborn.30
Enshrined in the worship of the deities of the Sun and the
Moon, as is evident from the excavations of the pyramids at Monte
Albán (dating back to 500 B.C.) and at Teotihuacan (to 100 A.D.),
these cosmic enigmas and ancient rituals captivated Lowry who
modestly acknowledges that he “did, however, live in Oaxaca for a
time, among the ruins of Monte Albán and Mitla”.31 Named after a
Mexican tree whose wood and flowers are white like the moon at
night, Monte Albán, or ‘White Mountain’ - as well as being a
significant socio-economic and political centre - was famous too for
its astronomical Building J, enlivened by the veneration of Zapotec
gods.
9
Conclusion
With their roots in the rituals of ancient Aztec and Zapotec
culture and civilization, as illustrated by the Mexican Day of the
Dead, Under the Volcano and Dark as the Grave provide us with a
mirror of Malcolm Lowry’s cosmic and shamanic phantoms. In his
strife for cultural healing and spiritual regeneration, by entering “the
soul of a past self” through Sigbjørn Wilderness in Dark as the
Grave, he comes to terms with the haunting spectres of his
psychogeographic heritage. He does likewise in The Forest Path to
the Spring when, having conjured up an animistic cougar, or puma,
Sigbjørn confronts the wild forces of existence by means of a
shamanic flight back to his Lowrian Wallasey childhood.32 The use of
the pan-Mesoamerican shamanistic practise of nagual - whereby a
human being is transformed magically into animal form - is
reminiscent of the Consul’s afterlife companion, or guardian angel, in
Under the Volcano where “somebody threw a dead dog after him
down the ravine”.33 This action provides the Consul both with
protection against evil spirits and a means of conveyance to the
supernatural underworld, in accordance with Aztec and shamanic
customs.
As a culmination of Malcolm Lowry’s moral and spiritual
trajectory, it is the sensuous lyrical novella of The Forest Path to the
Spring which offers us a Utopian, harmonious glimpse of his
aqueduct across the domains of the living and the paranormal
underworld of the dead. Spanning the natural environment and the
cosmos, it shrouds the fluvial, transformational emblem of Eridanus,
the “river of life: river of youth: river of death”.34 Cascading from Dark
as the Grave, Eridanus - the mythological gateway to Hades - acts
as an axis mundi. “Imbued with a life-force or soul,” it bridges all
10
three levels of the shamanic cosmos, as does the Day of the Dead.35
In this respect, many Mesoamericans visualized the underworld as
rotating on its axis at sunset, transformed from being a subterranean
realm into the night sky. Hence, the stars and other celestial bodies
were perceived by the Aztecs and Zapotecs as “inhabitants of the
supernatural otherworld”.36 In The Forest Path we witness a rebirth in
Man’s relationship with his environment: we are beckoned to heed
the
aquatic,
centrifugal
rhythms
of
an
elliptical
universe,
reverberating in the Chinese concept of the Tao, the Way.37
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Endnotes
1
Funding by the University of Brighton - in the form of the award of a onesemester research sabbatical - is acknowledged as having made possible
this paper, an earlier version of which was delivered at the 2009 Malcolm
Lowry Centenary International Conference, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 23 – 25 July, 2009.
2
Bronowski (1908-74) and Lowry were Cambridge contemporaries, both
actively involved with the literary magazine, The Experiment (1928-31), to
which Lowry refers in his letters: see Grace, Sursum Corda!, I, 70 and 120.
He directly cites Bronowski, the eminent mathematician, biologist, and
science historian (I, 75).
3
Lowry, Sursum Corda!, II, 364 and 379. See also Frazer, 377.
4
Lowry, Under the Volcano, 9.
5
The Cabbala, or Kabbalah refers to mystical Jewish teachings based on
an esoteric interpretation of Hebrew scripture.
6
Lowry, Sursum Corda!, I, 315-16.
7
Miller and Taube, 74.
8
Soustelle, 112, quoted in Wutz, 66.
9
Lowry, Under the Volcano, 204.
10
Lowry, Dark as the Grave, 262 and 115.
11
Ibid, 263.
12
Lowry, Sursum Corda!, II, 367.
13
Lowry, Under the Volcano, 202-03, 216, 335, and 373-74. See Doyen,
112 and Grace, “The Luminous Wheel,” 162 and 165. In Lowry’s 1949-50
screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night (1934) we are
reminded of Lowry’s vision of being “borne straight upwards into the night
sky and the stars” as an “eternal reminder also that our being and will are
elsewhere” (Mota and Tiessen, 241-42). In his correspondence Lowry
writes of “the seven sisters & the myth of the Lost Pleiad” as being “the one
cedar in the seven firs” (Lowry, Sursum Corda!, II, 367).
14
Interview held at Monte Albán on 6 November, 2010.
15
Lowry, Under the Volcano, 151, 206, 33, and 178. Treatises on science
and magic by John Dee (1527-1608), the mathematician, astronomer,
15
astrologer, and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) spring to mind.
Lowry studied the Judeo-Christian metaphysical system of the Cabbala,
participating in occult, magical practices with Stansfeld-Jones in the hamlet
of Deep Cove near Dollarton: see Bowker, 321, Day, 294-95, and Lowry,
Sursum Corda!, I, 529 and II, 201-03, 356, 360, 798, and 799.
16
Reilly, 374. See also Mellors, 131.
17
See Reilly, 374.
18
Ibid. It seems that the Consul - like Lowry himself – confuses mescal, the
alcoholic spirit distilled from the agave plant (the genus of the aloe, or
maguey) for mescaline, the psychedelic drug made from the peyote cactus.
See Mellors, 132 regarding shamanic “spiritual excursions”.
19
Aztec Gallery Guide. See also Miller and Taube, 138.
20
Eliade, Shamanism, 27, cited in Spivey, 8 and 183. See also Tucker,
“Towards a Shamanology” and Dreaming with Open Eyes.
21
Epstein, 27.
22
Lowry, Sursum Corda!, I, 595.
23
According to Mellors, a “healer of spiritual (i.e. psychological) and
psychosomatic disorders,” the “shaman tends to be a member of the
community who, having survived his own physical and/or mental illness,
seeks to cure the ills of others” (131 and 133).
24
Lowry, Sursum Corda!, I, 183.
25
See Day, 242-43 and Bowker, 235.
26
See Day, 240-44 and Lowry, Sursum Corda!, I, 176 and 187. In his
essay, “Garden of Etla” Lowry praises the Zapotec Fernando Atonalzin as
representing “a people possessing a high degree of civilization and cultural
genius,” including an “old Zapotecan religion” (45 and 46).
27
Lowry himself was constantly troubled by memories of Paul Fitte, his
university friend who committed suicide in 1929: see Bowker, 97-100 and
Lowry, Sursum Corda!, I, 3, 83, 85, and 93, and II, 701, 856, and 858.
28
In his correspondence Lowry refers to voodoo as “a religion, to be
regarded with reverence, since […] it is […] based upon […] the
supernatural as a fact that is fundamental to man himself” (Lowry, Sursum
Corda!, II, 364).
29
See Spence, 49 and 110, cited in Sugars, 155.
30
Sugars, 158.
31
Lowry, Sursum Corda!, I, 315.
32
Lowry, Forest Path, 246 and 226, and McCarthy, Forests of Symbols,
206. According to Reilly, “Classic period Maya kings validated their right to
royal power by publicly proclaiming their ability to perform the shamanic
trance journey and transform into power animals” (374).
33
Lowry, Under the Volcano, 376. For further information on nagual and
shamanic human-animal transformation, see Reilly, 374-75.
34
Lowry, Dark as the Grave, 261. See also pp. 26-27 and Lowry, Forest
Path, 231.
35
Reilly, 374.
36
Ibid, 375.
37
See Lowry, Forest Path, 285-86, Interdisciplinary Encyclopaedia, and
Tao/Dao - The Way.