The Origin of Toltecs
Original source: https://www.toltec-legacy.org/study
Reference: Warriors' Journeys - article 191
Index entry: Toltec, the, meaning of, article on
For many people, the term Toltec refers to a Mesoamerican culture (dating back to the middle ages in Mexico area). It is also widely associated with the practices of sorcery/shamanism, deriving from a popular misreading of the books of Carlos Castaneda.
However, for a vast expanse of time and in various parts of the world, Toltec has meant "A man or woman of knowledge." In the Toltec context, the pursuit of true knowledge bears no relation to the practices of sorcery/shamanism with which the word Toltec is today so often associated. In relation to this, it is important to know that the origins of the word Toltec are much older than is generally credited - even by our modern-day shamans.
Since most current popular views have been erroneously based upon a misreading of the books of anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, it may be useful to look at what is actually contained in his books, beginning with what is said about the origins and true meaning of the word Toltec, and moving on to what is said about the practices of sorcery/shamanism.
In "The Fire From Within," we find the following statement concerning the Toltec tradition, and in particular the mastery of awareness:
"In this case the action at hand was, naturally, the elucidation of the mastery of awareness. Don Juan understood the mastery of awareness as being the modern-day version of an extremely old tradition, which he called the tradition of the ancient Toltec seers."
Don Juan, Castaneda's teacher, and a true nagal of this Toltec tradition goes on to clarify: "Ages before the Spaniards came to Mexico," he said, "there were extraordinary Toltec seers, men capable of inconceivable deeds. They were the last link in a chain of knowledge that extended over thousands of years."
Castaneda then continues; "Don Juan explained then that his use of the term "Toltec" did not correspond to what I understood it to mean. To me it meant a culture, the Toltec Empire. To him, the term "Toltec" meant "man of knowledge."
"He said that in the time he was referring to, centuries or perhaps even millennia before the Spanish Conquest, all such men of knowledge lived within a vast geographical area, north and south of the valley of Mexico, and were employed in specific lines of work: curing, bewitching, storytelling, dancing, being an oracle, preparing food and drink. Those lines of work fostered specific wisdom, wisdom that distinguished them from average men. These Toltecs, moreover, were also people who fitted into the structure of everyday life, very much as doctors, artists, teachers, priests, and merchants in our own time do."
In "The Second Ring of Power", one of Castaneda's fellow-apprentices explains more about the true meaning of the word Toltec: ""The Nagual told us that we are Toltecs. All of us are Toltecs. He said that a Toltec is the receiver and holder of mysteries. The Nagual and Genaro are Toltecs. They gave us their special luminosity and their mysteries. We received their mysteries and now we hold them."
"His usage of the word Toltec baffled me. I was familiar only with its anthropological meaning. In that context, it always refers to a culture of Nahuatl-speaking people in central and southern Mexico which was already extinct at the time of the Conquest.
"Why did he call us Toltecs." I asked, not knowing what else to say.
"Because that's what we are. Instead of saying that we are sorcerers or witches, he said that we are Toltecs.""
Further in the same book, another fellow-apprentice confirms and amplifies this meaning:
""The Nagual told me that sorcerers used to be called Toltecs in his benefactor's language," she replied.
"And what language was that, Gorda."
"He never told me. But he and Genaro used to speak a language that none of us could understand. And here, between all of us, we understand four Indian languages."
"Did don Genaro also say that he was a Toltec."
"His benefactor was the same man, so he also said the same thing."
"From la Gorda's responses I could surmise that she either did not know a great deal on the subject or she did not want to talk to me about it. I confronted her with my conclusions. She confessed that she had never paid much attention to it and wondered why I was putting so much value on it. I practically gave her a lecture on the ethnography of central Mexico.
"A sorcerer is a Toltec when that sorcerer has received the mysteries of stalking and dreaming," she said casually. "The Nagual and Genaro received those mysteries from their benefactor and then they held them in their bodies. We are doing the same, and because of that we are Toltecs like the Nagual and Genaro.""
The clear conclusion from these excerpts is; firstly, that the word Toltec has a very different meaning to that currently attributed to it; secondly, that it is far older than is usually postulated; and thirdly that it was in current use, not only at the time of the Spanish conquests, but also at the time that Castaneda wrote his books. Therefore, in its wider sense, it is incorrect to state that the term Toltec simply refers to a Mesoamerican civilisation - a civilisation that was already extinct well before the time of the Conquest.
In relation to the current use of the term Toltec as meaning "a man or woman of knowledge," in "The Fire From Within," Don Juan specifically states; ""I am a warrior who sees. In fact, all of us are los nuevos videntes: the new seers." Later, Castaneda questions him on what he means by this:
""Were there a great many new seers during the Conquest." I asked.
"At the beginning there were. Near the end there were only a handful. The rest had been exterminated."
"What about it our day, don Juan." I asked.
"There are a few. They are scattered all over, you understand."
Outside of Castaneda himself, there is much evidence that points clearly to the fact that the term Toltec was more widely used and also older than currently stated.
Miguel León-Portilla is a Mexican anthropologist and historian, and an authority on Nahuatl thought and literature. He has maintained that in Nahua legend, the Toltec were the originators of all civilisation.
This points clearly to the much older origins of the Toltecs and fits in with much other historical evidence, firstly relating to the Nahua, and secondly to the earlier history of the Toltecs.
In terms of earlier Nahuatl migrations into the Valley of Mexico, Tlakaelel (Francisco Jímenez Sánchez) has found persuasive evidence throughout the American continent of an ancient Toltec migration known as the Four Arrows, since it went in four different directions. His theories are supported by many petroglyphs; as well as place names, such as Tulare and Tularosa, which are Nahuatl in origin rather than Spanish or English.
In addition to these, many old maps also support the theories of older and more widespread origins. Thus, according to Roberto Rodriguez & Patrisia Gonzales in "The Story of Maps: Mesoamerica in North America," virtually all early chroniclers agreed that the Aztec/Mexica were the last in a series of migrating waves of nations/tribes to migrate from somewhere in the north.
Most allude to three major waves; first the Toltecas, then the Chichimecas, then the Azteca/Mexica nations, which purportedly migrated with seven other peoples. Of particular note is the fact that many chroniclers do cite an earlier migration of the Nahuatl-speaking peoples as having come from across the ocean, landing in what is today the Panuco River. Half the people purportedly went north, the other half went south.
Charles A. Shook, (1876-1939) in his book, "Cumorah Revisited," takes the matter further: "With this century [6th] we have the advent of the Toltecs into Mexico. They were a Nahuan tribe and the most prominent representative of that people's culture of which we have any record. The unanimous testimony of tradition is that they came from the north, from the mysterious Hue Hue Tlapallan (Old Old Red Land), the nursery of the Nahua people, which has been variously located. Briart locates it near Lake Tulare in California; Becker, on the Rio Colorado; and Baldwin, Short and Foster in the Mississippi Valley."
How did these Toltecs arrive there. In "Atlantis - The Antediluvian World," by Ignatius Donnelly, we find the following account:
"The native Mexican historian, Ixtlilxochitl, gave this as the Toltec legend of the Flood:
"It is found in the histories of the Toltecs that this age and first world, as they call it, lasted 1716 years; that men were destroyed by tremendous rains and lightning from the sky, and even all the land, without the exception of anything, and the highest mountains, were covered up and submerged in water fifteen cubits (caxtolmolatli); and here they added other fables of how men came to multiply from the few who escaped from this destruction in a "toptlipetlocali;" that this word nearly signifies a close chest; and how, after men had multiplied, they erected a very high "zacuali," which is to-day a tower of great height, in order to take refuge in it should the second world (age) be destroyed. Presently their languages were confused, and, not being able to understand each other, they went to different parts of the earth.
"The Toltecs, consisting of seven friends, with their wives, who understood the same language, came to these parts, having first passed great land and seas, having lived in caves, and having endured great hardships in order to reach this land; . . . they wandered 104 years through different parts of the world before they reached Hue Hue Tlapalan, which was in Ce Tecpatl, 520 years after the Flood." ("Ixtlilxochitl Relaciones," in Kingsborough's "Mex. Ant.," vol. ix., pp. 321, 322.)'
If we look even further afield than these mainly historical and anthropological sources, we can find many references to the term Toltec in a number of ancient mystical traditions. These point to much older origins still.
For example, in Rudolph Steiner's "Cosmic Memory (Prehistory of Earth and Man)" we find this allusion: "This kind of social communal life became fully developed only among the third subrace, the Toltec."
The topic of the earlier origins is more fully developed in a wide variety of Theosophical texts.
In "The Secret Doctrine" H.P. Blavatsky also alludes to these ancient origins when she discusses the existence of a very ancient book: "…there was a time when its language (the Sen-zar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis…"
It is in "The Secret Doctrine" that one finds a clue as to why there are not more written records of our early history - records that might also reveal the true nature and extent of the Secret Mysteries, which have become appropriated and debased to form what we have come to think of as our religions. There it is said; "It has been claimed in all ages that ever since the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, every work of a character that might have led the profane to the ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the mysteries of the Secret Science, was, owing to the combined efforts of the brotherhoods, diligently searched for. It is added, moreover, by those who know, that once found, save three copies left and stored safely away, such works were all destroyed."
Everything that now remains in the public domain is but the palest shadow of what had existed before. Today we know that the need for secrecy has served its purpose. However, whilst many of the ancient secrets are starting to be revealed, the plain fact is that because of the widespread destruction of virtually all the ancient records, there is little hard evidence available to relate these truths to what has happened in the past.
Having said that, a fair amount of indications exist within Theosophical literature for the diligent researcher into ancient history. In terms of an additional hint about the earlier Toltec migrations, though, it will suffice to quote a short passage from the work by Lieut-Col. A.E. Powell called, "The Solar System." "The Toltecs, having emigrated chiefly to the west, spread abroad and flourished on what are now the continents of North and South America. The Peruvian empire under their Inca sovereigns, about 14,000 years ago, may be regarded as a traditional though faint echo of the golden age of the Toltecs on the mother-continent of Atlantis."
By an Apprentice Scholar
We have thus far approached the origin of Toltecs from different sources and to make the picture complete we will share here also a part of the chapter 1 from the book “The Return of the Warriors” written by Théun Mares:
ORIGIN OF THE TOLTEC WARRIORS AND THEIR KNOWLEDGE
“There are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of thoughtful and solitary students, who pass their lives in obscurity, far from the rumours of the world, studying the great problems of the physical and spiritual universes. They have their secret records in which are preserved the fruits of the scholastic labours of the long line of recluses whose successors they are.”
H.P. BLAVATSKY
For those amongst us who prefer things to be done in the accepted manner, let me begin this account in the age-old fashion which I am sure will more than likely be deemed proper for a tale such as this.
Once upon a time..............eighteen million years ago, several groups of people, who would by today’s standards be known as priests and priestesses of the ancient temples of humanity, came to this world together with mankind as we know mankind today. How this all came about and from where mankind originated are questions that go far beyond the scope of this book, but what can be said is that the arrival of man upon this planet was something akin to a semi-voluntary exile from his home-world. This planet, however, imposed such severe limitations upon the life-forms which came here that man became utterly immersed in that prison we have come to call matter. So drastic was the effect of this that man even forgot his home-world and who and what he really is. Lost and bewildered, mankind turned to the priests and priestesses for spiritual guidance, only to find that they too had been affected in the same adverse way as the rest of mankind. This was a dark period of seemingly endless struggle and hopelessness.
All of this took place in that far distant time when humanity was at that stage of evolution which is today known as Lemurian and was living upon the ancient continent of Shalmali. The immersion in matter, and man’s struggle against the debilitating effect of this, took place over millions of years. In this time there were seven sub-races born within the civilization of Lemuria. The fourth sub-race of the Lemurians was known as the Barhishads, or Divine Hermaphrodites, and it was from these that there was born the Rmoahal Race, the first sub-race of the Atlanteans. From the Rmoahals were born the Tlavatli, and it was from within this stock that the priests and priestesses of old began to incarnate and slowly to regain some of their former memories.
As they gradually regained their memories, so the priests and priestesses once again began to lead their people, and so it was that they became known as Toltecs, meaning men and women of knowledge. As more of their memories were restored, the Toltecs then took it upon themselves to lead mankind back to its true home as soon as this was possible. Thus it was that they also became known as warriors of the Spirit fighting for freedom.
So this was how the history of the Toltec warriors began upon this planet in an era when mankind was just beginning to measure time as we know time today. On recalling their former training, the Toltecs began developing the ability to see, for they were equipped with what is today known as the third eye. It was only in the period of becoming immersed in matter and the resultant loss of memory that the Toltec seers experienced a temporary psychic blindness. However, once some of them began to remember, this natural ability to see returned and enabled them rapidly to recall the former knowledge they had acquired upon their home-world.
This knowledge consisted almost entirely of what is called will-power, mathematics, astronomy and astrology. So adept were the Toltecs in the use of will-power that they had no difficulty in levitating either themselves or solid objects of immense size and weight, and it was this ability which was much later used to build structures such as the Great Pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge in England.
The Toltecs then started to teach their fellow men the mundane but practical crafts required for physical prosperity, such as fishing, hunting, cooking, healing, building, the fundamentals of mathematics, and many of the arts, notably sculpture. The Toltecs had one serious problem though, for although their knowledge was extremely comprehensive, it was as yet entirely atavistic and of another world.
The Toltecs had little understanding of the intricacies of life upon the physical plane, for even though they had already spent millions of years upon the earth, this time meant practically nothing to them because of their initial loss of memory. As a consequence, their knowledge of matter was limited. Toltecs at this time had no understanding of the abstract, for they saw things entirely as they were, and therefore for them everything was very clear, but nevertheless also one-sided. Due to this limitation Toltecs did not grasp the implications of duality, or its purpose. As a result, concepts such as the interrelationship and the interaction of all life, although instinctively practised by them, were not understood. In time this ignorance of the abstract was to lead to the first downfall of the Toltecs, for it gave rise to the worst form of selfishness imaginable.
For thousands of years the Toltecs led their people superbly, and the whole of their world, by then known as Atlantis, prospered in great material wealth and power. It was from this rule by the Toltecs that their world derived its name, for the word atl means ‘head’ or ‘ruler’.
The people of Atlantis had an Emperor, known as the White Emperor by virtue of the fact that his knowledge was the greatest amongst the Toltecs, and as such he was likened to a great white light. The Emperor ruled his people from the capital city of the Toltecs, known as the City of the Golden Gates.
Because the crafts they had been taught by the Toltecs were specialized, the people had been divided into clans, much like guilds, and each of these guilds was governed by a small group of Toltecs. These clans lived in cities, each city being governed by a senior Toltec who had a status equivalent to a king. These kings in turn were ruled by the Emperor, who was surrounded by a group of the more learned and powerful of the Toltecs.
As time went on, and as the knowledge of the people grew, so some of the clans, together with their kings, became ambitious for more knowledge and power. No longer content with the knowledge and the power they had, these people started to look at their neighbours and more advanced Toltecs with envy. It was not long before greed drove some of the Toltecs to start experimenting with ways in which to increase their psychic abilities in an attempt to gain superiority over others. This was the beginning of sorcery, and the practice of the black art.
Having no real grasp of the abstract, Toltecs on the whole did not understand their psychic abilities any more than a duck understands how it swims. Consequently, the Toltecs who turned their hand to sorcery began to develop the most elaborate and intricate rituals with which to boost their power.
Even though they did not realise that these rituals served no purpose other than to strengthen their will*, these sorcerers nevertheless managed to increase their power to such an extent that they began to overrun and dominate other cities and Toltecs. Rebellion and strife spread rapidly as Toltec fought Toltec for supremacy. Warfare had been discovered and launched full-scale, but as this was a war fought not only with physical weapons but also with psychic weapons, the destruction was terrible.
The White Emperor and his group of Toltec advisors were eventually driven from the City of the Golden Gates, after which the sorcerers put one of their own upon the throne.
The White Emperor, his advisors, and many of the kings, were by this time sufficiently aware of the interrelationship of all life, and could therefore foresee the consequences of sorcery. This led to the start of the great Toltec migration, for the White Emperor and his followers started to move north into Egypt, and west into North and South America in an attempt to save themselves and their people from the disasters they could foresee.
So great had become the black Toltecs’ command over the forces of nature, and so limited was their understanding of the interrelationship of all, that it did not take them long to unbalance the forces of the earth to such an extent that natural cataclysms started to occur.
The first great catastrophe struck in approximately 800,000 B.C.E. The cataclysm of earthquakes and tidal waves shattered the main continent into a great many islands of varying size and destroyed the City of the Golden Gates, together with the Black Emperor and his sorcerers. For a while this warning kept sorcery at bay, but relatively speaking it was not too long before greed once again surfaced, and in approximately 200,000 B.C.E. the second great cataclysm reduced the remains of Atlantis down to two huge islands, Daitya and Ruta.
This time the warning was not heeded for quite so long. The Toltecs upon Ruta, by then hopelessly addicted to the black art, brought about another cataclysm in 75,000 B.C.E., destroying both Ruta and Daitya, and heaving up the large island that was to become known as Poseidonis. In 9,564 B.C.E., Poseidonis also met its fate as it sank beneath massive tidal waves brought about by violent volcanic eruptions. Atlantis and her black sorcerers were finally gone forever.
At various times during the destruction of the mother continent the remnants of the Atlanteans migrated to other parts of the world, some of which had emerged as a result of the major cataclysms that destroyed Atlantis.
On the whole, these remnants, led and guided by their Toltec kings and priests, did not fare at all well. Some, however, did manage to find lands where they could settle and even flourish. Notable amongst those who prospered were the Egyptian dynasties, the Chaldeans, Peruvians, Akkadians, Tibetans, and to a lesser extent various smaller groups scattered throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.
It is not the purpose of this book to give detailed accounts of all these various lines, but merely to point out how it came about that Toltecs became so scattered throughout the world. Even to this day Toltecs are found the world over, and it is due to this fact that at least some of the lines managed to survive the rigours of the subsequent centuries.
In time, most of the weaker lines lost their Toltec kings and priests, either through wars or natural causes. Where there were no descendants of the seers the people started to fall into barbaric ignorance. This same fate also befell many of the stronger lines, and in time they too were likewise impoverished.
The number of truly learned seers diminished rapidly as finding and training suitable successors became increasingly difficult. The atavistic abilities of the original seers had moreover started to die out due to the steady development of the rational mind. This development of rational thought had become necessary in order to gain greater knowledge of the abstract, of matter and of the forces of duality.
By the time Poseidonis met its end there were only a handful of natural seers left in the world, and in time these too died out. This meant that most of the Toltec descendants, although extremely knowledgeable and capable of leading, were now no longer seers.
This lack of seers was obviously a serious setback. In their endeavour to regain the abilities of their ancestors, the Toltecs used their knowledge of medicinal plants and drugs to enable them to see. The drugs worked after a fashion, but the cost to the physical body and brain from using these plants continuously was soon found to outweigh the benefits. Even so, Toltecs had no other means by which to see, and although the rate of mortality, insanity and failure kept escalating, they desperately continued with their experiments.
Dark and terrible as this time was, it nevertheless brought Toltecs face to face with the hard facts of life on the physical plane, and thus the effects brought about by the necessary development of the rational mind finally caught up with the Toltecs, exacting a heavy toll. Yet this also meant that even though Toltecs had lost their atavistic abilities, they were for the first time faced with the opportunity to discover what those abilities had really consisted of in the first place, and exactly how these worked in practice.
It was not until much later that Toltecs could see in retrospect what a gift this dark time had been, for it was during this period of constant struggle and failure that they learned to look deep within themselves and to find there faculties they never knew they possessed. Without realising it at the time, Toltecs had taken a huge step forward in their development and had in addition defined one of the fundamentals of the Toltec Path, namely that a warrior lives by challenge.
As time went on, Toltecs became more selective in their use of drugs, and therefore more proficient. The rate of failure and mortality started to decline, whilst the numbers of seers increased. But by this time Toltecs were faced with yet another problem; one which was so subtle that they did not identify what it was until it was already too late.
Toltecs had become obsessed with their desire to see to such an extent that seeing had become for them more important than knowledge itself. With this obsession, the sobriety of their former knowledge quickly became replaced by the same arrogance and self-importance that had been the downfall of the sorcerers in Atlantis. The black art had once again reared its ugly head, and now even the remaining Toltecs succumbed to sorcery. This was the era which Carlos Castaneda describes in his books as that of the Old Seers.
Using their newly rediscovered ability to see, the Old Seers began reviving most of the old practices, and it did not take them long to reinstate the rituals and incantations which had been the specialized knowledge of the sorcerers of Atlantis.
These rituals allowed the Old Seers to manipulate their awareness in such a manner that they could achieve what we today call altered states of perception. By using these rituals and entering into different states of awareness, the Old Seers learned an enormous amount, not only about themselves but also about the other life-forms, both organic (Life-forms which have biological functions) and inorganic (Life-forms which do not have biological functions), which share the planet with man. Like their Atlantean predecessors, the Old Seers were remarkably clever at amassing facts and information but, since their sense of self-importance was so great, the Old Seers used this knowledge to dominate and manipulate everyone and everything luckless enough to catch their attention.
During this period in Toltec history the Old Seers re-established themselves to a great extent within the same clan or guild systems that had been in use in ancient Atlantis. So powerful were these guilds that they invariably dominated even the leaders of the people, whether king or emperor. This was equally true regardless of where in the world Toltec history was unfolding.
In this respect it should be realised that the Toltec civilization in the Valley of Mexico as described by Carlos Castaneda was but one of many later civilizations. Historically this was the only lineage that went under the name of Toltec but, as has been explained previously, all civilizations the world over, whatever their name, had their roots in Toltec migrations from Atlantis. Therefore, at the core of all these civilizations were priest-seers trained in the Toltec tradition. As a result of this common heritage and tradition, and in spite of the fact that dates obviously vary enormously between one civilization and the next, Toltec knowledge the world over has nevertheless always unfolded in more or less an identical pattern.
