Customer Reviews

Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: The Once and Future Lord of the Toltecs (Mesoamerican Worlds)

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With all of the books on Amazon purporting to relate "Toltec warrior wisdom," the teachings of Quetzalcoatl, and related New Age nonsense, this book is an important and much-needed breath of fresh air.

The author, H. B. Nicholson, is a distinguished, emeritus anthropologist at UCLA with more than 200 scholarly books and articles to his credit. Unlike many of the purported gurus one can encounter in "Toltec Wisdom" books and on the worldwide web, Nicholson has been steeped in the actual history, mythology and religious outlook of the Toltec civilization since long before Carlos Castaneda ever took his first anthropology course. (And, of course, it bears mentioning that Castaneda himself worked with a Yaqui shaman, not a Toltec one.)

Nicholson wrote his PhD thesis (Harvard University, 1957) on the many difficulties of understanding the fragmentary, frequently contradictory but nevertheless fascinating historical accounts concerning Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl -- a character whose actual historical exploits and philosophical tenets the later Aztecs and Maya would embroider with much myth and legendry, but who nevertheless continues to loom large as a kind of King Arthur of Ancient Mexico: "the once and future lord of the Toltecs," as Nicholson writes.

What set Nicholson's work apart from earlier treatments of Quetzalcoatl was that he laboriously sorted, classified and analyzed all of the historical documents surrounding this important figure, even making full translations of the Spanish, Nahuatl (Aztec) and Mayan accounts. But his dissertation was unfortunately never published, and for decades scholars had to rely on mimeographed versions of Nicholson's thesis to read his account of the exploits of Quetzalcoatl (or, as with this reviewer, had to sneak into Harvard's Tozzer library to make a clandestine photocopy of the protesting buckram-covered tome). But thankfully that is all in the past. This book is a cautiously-updated version of Nicholson's thesis (much of the new material appears in a foreword, and the largely unadulterated original text follows), and can be read with much profit by anyone with an interest in Toltec history, culture and thought.

I would particularly urge any and all Toltec "warrior seers" and "power stalkers" to take a long and earnest look at this important book -- that is, if they do indeed have any genuine interest in what the Toltecs (rather than a Yaqui shaman, as interpreted and channeled by Castaneda and latter-day devotees) actually thought about anything.

H.B. Nicholson passed away March 2, 2007. I can state unequivocally that he was the most brilliant Meso-American scholar of his time. He retained his knowledge and clarity to the very end. There has never been another Archeolgist/Scholar who so loved all things Meso-American.

H.B. Nicholson was my father-in-law and my inspiration in my quest for my M.A. in Paleo-Indian Archeology. He is deeply missed.