In 1978, utility workers in Mexico City clanked their equipment on... something. Earth itself is our most primitive archive. Digging and more digging revealed a 10-foot figure writhing in agony. But what the workers had really uncovered was a centuries-old legend of the Mexica people, often called the Aztecs.

Coyolxauhqui and her 400 brothers learned that their goddess mother was pregnant again. Furious, they rushed to the great mountain to murder her. As they arrived, their mother gave birth to Huitzilopochtli – born as an adult in full battle gear and wielding Xiuhcoatl, the fire serpent, as his weapon.

Huitzilopochtli, the sun god, beheaded his sister and heaved her body off the mountain, where it broke into pieces depicted on the stone. Her head transformed into the moon. And after Huitzilopochtli pursued and killed his 400 brothers, they were cast as stars across the sky.

This is one of many stories I learned while writing and producing a live, nonfiction stage show about the art and cultures of Mesoamerica that premiered earlier this month.

Such gory details lend themselves to October, but the origin story contains more eternal meanings: a contemplation of harmony, where neither daylight nor darkness maintains uninterrupted sovereignty, the two connected not simply as opposites but as siblings.

So why do longer autumn nights translate into spooks and scares?

Despite living every day within the passage of time, perhaps the sight of time made manifest terrifies us. The colors of the leaves change like witchcraft, and we see their withering silhouettes as the bygone months and years against a sunset that foretells haunted happenings.
 

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This newsletter was written on the traditional lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank.