The Pyramid of Fire read by Martin Matz

In 1995, after Marty sent me his translation of the Aztec document that he calls The Pyramid of Fire, I set to work to put it into context and decipher some of the complex internal references to deities, day-signs, and astronomy. I found an amazingly coherent - and incredibly complex - cosmovision that is completely in keeping with what specialists already know about pre-Conquest Nahuatl and Mazatec religion. But the value of Pyramid of Fire lies in the fact that a Mazatec shaman read and interpreted the text for Marty, who dutifully recorded his words and later translated them prosaically into good - actually, great - English. This Aztec book was a picture book, and it requires the astute mind of one steeped in the ancient lore to interpret it correctly. Marty's friend, the Mazatec shaman, had received the book from his abuelos, his grandfathers, and it had no doubt been passed down the family line for some 500 years. The point is that in Marty's translation and reading of the 13-page codex, we have a faithful rendering of the intended meaning as given by the book's lineal caretaker! No other Mesoamerican document, save the Quiché Popol Vuh, comes close to supplying us with such a direct voice of wisdom from the ancient times.

I was bemused and frustrated when I realized that, in the copy Marty had sent me, the 13th page was missing. Marty explained that, after his multi-decades-long sojourne through Mexico and Asia, many of his belongings were scattered, lent out, and generally difficult to track down. Thus it appeared that the 13th page - which Marty said was about the New Fire ceremony and culimnated the profound meaning of the Pyramid of Fire - was lost forever. However, just recently Marty contacted me after a two-year hiatus in communication and said that a tape of him reading the Pyramid of Fire had surfaced - and it included the 13th page! (The tape, recorded on a wire recorder in San Francisco some 40 or so years ago, originally contained a reading by Marty's more infamous Beat colleague, Jack Kerouac. However, this section has been edited out of the CD.) And so the 13th page has resurfaced, and I must say that despite having immersed myself in interpreting and deciphering the Pyramid of Fire five years ago, when I recently got the tape of Marty's reading and popped it in the player, the depth and profundity of this unknown Aztec document struck me like a ton of bricks, or, perhaps I should say, like a sweet lungful of finely cheffed poppy blood . . .