Renowned author Paulo Coelho has written a lot about signs, but more specifically, signs from the universe. In an interview, he said, “Everything in life is an omen. There is a universal language, understood by everybody, but already forgotten”, and this made me question are even such things as “signs”, or are they merely a figment of our imagination?
Coura commented on how people can interpret the same signs in very different ways based on where they are coming from; the Indians interpreted dark clouds as an evil omen, they meant death was nearing, while for the Spaniards the dark clouds just meant it was going to rain. Along the same line of thought, desperate times call for desperate measures, leading people see signs where there are none. When the Aztecs called on the gods for signs after the Noche Triste, the gods did not answer back, which resulted in the Aztecs deeming them as silent or dead, for the rest of the people deemed this as a sign of surrendering, for the gods themselves had surrendered. Moreover, some people then saw Montezuma as the sign giver himself. Montezuma died? It was time for the Aztec empire to surrender and fall. You see this same pattern whenever people find themselves torn between two paths, without any preference for either, or just not wanting to feel guilty for their choice. For a college student, rain is a definite sign that he or she should skip class. Unsure whether you should buy a pizza or a hotdog at a game? Literally even a person tripping on a hotdog and falling will count as a sign for you. You started your morning with a flat tire? It’s already going to be a bad day; and so on and so forth. So then what if signs did cause the Aztecs’ defeat? The Spaniards thought they received a sign to go sail across the world and conquer and colonize new lands and people respectively, but they were really just looking for something to justify their materialistic desires. And of course, blame it on a sign from God, who’s going to refute that when even the priests and the Crown are in on this too? This then draws back to Coelho’s opinion on the existence of a universal language understood by everyone that has eventually passed on to be forgotten. Everything was an omen back then because of the religious priorities in civilizations and societies, but now that religion is not considered the top priority in societies, this “universal language” has been become harder to decipher.
2 Comments
11/26/2018 07:16:15 pm
This is a super interesting take! I agree that in religious societies many things are interpreted as signs, because of the understanding that a deity is always using signs to communicate with Earth. Religion was definitely a cause in the Aztec's downfall because a lot of faith was placed in omens and signs, while the Spaniards figured out how to manipulate them. However, the Spaniards were also able to use deception through other means, because Aztecs did not solely rely on signs.
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Anneli T Sánchez
12/4/2018 08:44:45 am
I agree! I would argue that signs were not the cause of the Aztecs' defeat too, but I thought it would be interesting to present a counterargument. I do think that the Spaniards were able to defeat them, as you say, through means of manipulation, deception, among other things, given that they did not solely rely on these "signs". It's interesting to see how history portrays their downfall in one manner, but we could all really understand this notion of how it was much more than that while seeing as to why something so simple, and widely thought of as irrelevant, as signs, would have such a big difference.
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