SACRED COSMOLOGY *
Precolumbian Mesoamerican Symbolism 
FEDERICO GONZALEZ 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Epigraph - Preliminary Note 
Chapter   1 
 
 Introduction to Precolumbian Symbology 
Chapter   2 
 
 Mesoamerican Symbology 
Chapter   3 
 
 Symbols, Myths, and Rites 
Chapter   4 
 
 The Center and the Axis 
Chapter   5 
 
 The Precolumbian World 
Chapter   6 
 
 Some Philosophical Mistakes 
Chapter   7 
 
 Certain Peculiarities in the Vision of the World 
Chapter   8 
 
 Initiation 
Chapter   9 
 
 The Rediscovery of America 
Chapter 10 
 
 Cosmogony and Theogony 
Chapter 11 
 
 Cosmos and Deity 
Chapter 12 
 
 Falling and Rising Energies 
Chapter 13 
 
 Some Fundamental Symbols 
Chapter 14 
 
 Numerical and Geometrical Symbols 
Chapter 15 
 
 Constructive Symbols 
Chapter 16 
 
 Sacred Plants and Animals 
Chapter 17 
 
 Art and Cosmogony 
Chapter 18 
 
 Mythology and the Popol Vuh 
Chapter 19 
 
 Some Topics Bearing on the Calendars 
Chapter 20 
 
 The Mesoamerican Calendars 
 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 
The rediscovery of America five hundred years after the voyage of Admiral Columbus 
 
"A synthetic and fundamental work, which not only deals with the Precolumbian, its cosmogony and theogony, but constitutes an introduction to symbology, and sacred cosmology. Federico González offers us the opportunity to understand, in their essentials, the ancient American cultures, as well as the "primitive," archaic, and traditional cultures in general. The symbolical sacrality of nature (rocks, trees, animals, stars), myths, the architecture of the temple and the city, calendars, agriculture, maize (like wheat in other places), crafts, games, and the art of war, music and songs, paintings, tattooing, and dances, sacrifices and festivals, mold, for traditional man-in particular, here, for Precolumbians-their daily experience of the sacred, their knowledge of cosmogony, which reveals itself by way of symbols, myths, and rites, and which they know and re-create through the same-however surprised we may be at the extraordinary forms adopted by a culture that, like all that is living, acknowledges the deity-and life-in perpetual astonishment. For it is the sacred that shapes its own expression-that of the world and our own-and not the other way around according to the programming that has been imposed on us. 'These symbols are present today,' the author declares, 'only waiting to be called to life.' " 
 
NOTE  
* 

Translation of: Federico González, Los Símbolos Precolombinos: Cosmogonía, Teogonía, Cultura* (Barcelona: Ediciones Obelisco, 1989). Translator: Dr. Robert R. Barr. 

* 2nd edition, revised and fully illustrated: El Simbolismo Precolombino, Cosmovisión de las Culturas Arcaicas, Kier, Buenos Aires, 2003.)
  All illustrations are from Mesoamerican codices, except T. de Bry: Amerika (Ch. IX), and Atlas Durán (Ch. XV). 

 

PRELIMINARS