An early colonial narrative in the central Mexican Nahuatl language describes a striking scene in which a wise person, referred to as a tlaiximatini, or "experiential knower," climbs to a point high on the land in the pre-dawn darkness (Fig. 1).1 Likely drawn from Nahua oral tradition, the episode appears twice in the Florentine Codex, or Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, a twelve-book work written in central Mexico between 1575 and 1577.2 The first version appears in Book 10, on people, and describes the practice as a form of knowledge used by the ancient Toltec people. The second, in slightly modified form, appears in Book 11, on the natural world, as an account of how wise people among the Nahuas located precious stones.
Florentine Codex: Book 10: Book 10: The People (Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of N
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