Message #116073

[Bianca]

A winged bird of a kind never seen before was reportedly captured by fishermen in Lake Texcoco and brought before Moctezuma.

This bird, a crane or swan-like creature, bore on its head a round mirror through which the stars could be seen quite clearly, particularly the Gemini constellation.

Needless to say, such a creature was perceived as the direst omen so far by Moctezuma's astrologers. But the emperor was undaunted. He took a second look into the "mirror" (a TV monitor?) and witnessed a vast number of people harnessed as if for war, astride strange deerlike beasts (the Aztecs had never seen horses).

Other sages were summoned to examine the remarkable creature, but as is the case with all paranormal creatures (the occupants of what Loch Ness monster researcher Ted Holiday aptly referred to as "the phantom menagerie"), the mystery-bird vanished into thin air.

But that was no problem, for the eighth omen involved the two-headed monster-men known as Tlacanzolli (literally, "split men" in Nahuatl). These creatures were seen at many places and times throughout the Aztec realm, and were considered a sign of the impending change to come, and the
new manner of beings that would inhabit such a world.

On repeated occasions, these monsters were actually captured and brought to the imperial palace (picture Bigfoot being brought to the White House, or Springheel Jack brought in irons before Queen Victoria). In true paranormal form, the creatures would dissolve into nothing before allowing the Aztec equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences to dissect them.

Corroboration for this supernatural free-for-all that culminated in Cortes's conquest of Mexico comes from the Aztecs' bitter enemies, the aforementioned Tlaxcalans, who aligned their interests with those of the invaders and cemented their allegiance through marriages between Conquistadores and Tlaxcalan women.

For well over a year, the horizon became filled with a strange brightness which filled the natives with fear. No explanation was found for this, nor to a more impressing "funnel cloud" which rose from the high reaches of the Sierra Matlalcueye into the heavens.

    The presence of a bona fide "flying saucer" is confirmed in two Nahuatl codexes: in 1492, a succession of terrible earthquakes and a solar eclipse was followed by the appearance of the dreaded Moyohualitohua ("He Who Speaks in the Night") -- an enormous "shield" that boomed dire warnings at the Aztecs and their vassals.

    As impressive as all these events may seem to us, they are merely curiosities when we realize that Mexico may have well been visited millennia before the Aztecs by the very beings they would later come to consider as their deities.