!!!Tezcatlipoca
Tezcatlipoca was one of the most important gods in the Aztec pantheon. Originally adopted from the Toltecs, Tezcatlipoca is with the horned owl and the jaguar, the latter of which he is known to shapeshift into its form at will. This explains his association with the first day of the thirteen-day Aztec calendar which is represented by a jaguar. In addition to his shapeshifting ability, Tezcatlipoca also appeared as several different gods who were aspects of his identity. Complicated, right? We’ll explain that part in a later section. Ultimately, Tezcatlipoca was an __omnipresent__, able to be in all places at once, god known for his mercurial temperament, bestowing good or bad fortune on a whim.
!!! Co-creator of the Fifth Sun
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Blue Tezcatlipoca: Also referred to as the Hummingbird Sorcerer, associated with the sun and the city of Tenochtitlan.
White Tezcatlipoca: Also referred to as the Plumed Serpent, a reference to his sibling and rival Quetzalcoatl, and patron god of the Cholula Aztecs.
!!!Slaying the God
The Aztecs had an interesting way of honoring Tezcatlipoca, as well as some of the other gods, they sacrificed a living representative of the god. Each year, priests would choose a healthy young man, free from any scar or blemish, and ritually make him the representative of Tezcatlipoca on earth. The official title of the young man was __Ixiptla__. For a year, he would live in the height of luxury showered by gifts, women, and banquets in his honor. At the end of the year, he would climb the steps of the temple where the priest would be waiting to sacrifice him by ripping his heart out of his chest. You might ask why someone would allow such a thing, but among the Aztecs, it was an honor to be chosen and the height of sacred duty to serve as the god for a year and die at the appropriate
A well-known Meso-American deity, Huitzilopochtli, is the Aztec god of war and human sacrifice. It is written that he had a constant battle with evil within himself and required human sacrifice for nourishment. It is believed that Huitzilopochtli’s mother, Coatlicue, an Aztec earth goddess, conceived him after she kept a ball of hummingbird feathers in her bosom that had fallen from the sky. Huitzilopochtli’s sister, Coyolxauhqui, plotted to kill her mother after discovering the shameful way she had become impregnated. When his mother was decapitated, Huitzilopochtli burst from the womb and killed his sister Coyolxauhqui ...
At the root of these interesting rituals, were the beliefs that the gods needed to be nourished by human beings. This was accomplished through human blood. They did this through a practice called bloodletting. Bloodletting is intentionally harming and drawing blood from the body. Those who were higher in status within the Aztec religion were expected to give the most blood during these Aztec rituals.
One of the main things the Aztecs are known for are their human sacrifice rituals. They believed that life and balance would not be possible without offering sacrificial blood to the gods since the gods sacrificed themselves to give them the sun. Burying the dead was seen as an act of feeding the earth. The Aztecs preformed two rituals for the dead, the first being for children and the second being for adults. The ritual for adults put special focus on warriors who died in
During 1325 a newly homeless Aztec tribe who were chased away by the angry ruler/father of a princess they sacrificed to the sun god, were traveling through swamps . they saw a small island with an eagle perched on a cactus eating a snake. This was told to be a sign of where the tribe was to create their new home. This new city was named Tenochtitlan. Soon this will become the capital of the Aztec empire. Tenochtitlan started out with only a temple to worship the war god Huitzilopochtli, and huts for the tribesmen.
In 1510, Montezuma turned his attention to a series of revolts and revolutionary flare-ups in the Aztec territories. These battles only increased the size of the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs also continued their Flower Wars with the Tlaxcatlecans to provide human sacrifices to their god Huitzilopochtli. Around the same time, Montezuma’s oracles passed information that there were strangers in the midst. In fact, his astrologer priests foretold of the coming of Quetzalcóatl, a white bearded god who was believed to eventually reclaim their empire. Reputed claims of Whit...
Read those last few words again. As said in the popular children’s show Sesame Street, “one of these things is not like the other”. The integration of human sacrifice into Aztec culture was not nearly as subtle as written above, though: The most important Aztec deity in their whole religion, Huitzilopochtli, was the sun god. According to Aztec creation myths, Huitzilopochtli required a great deal of power to raise the sun every morning and keep the night from overpowering for too long. This strength was drawn from regular consumption of human blood and heart.
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican people that lived in the area of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th century. It is said that Aztecs came from a place called Aztlan. Aztlan was the Aztec's homeland, nobody knows exactly where it was, but it is believed that Aztlan lies somewhere to the north of Mexico. Some experts claim that Aztlan is a mythical place. According to Aztec legends Huitzilopochtli, their god of war and of the sun, told them to leave Aztlan and to wander until they saw an eagle on a cactus budding out of a rock and eating a snake. The Aztecs traveled many years to find the legend that Huitzilopochtli had told. They left Aztlan in the 12th century. They built their settlements in the Valley of Mexico by Lake Texcoco. There were other Indian tribes living in the area when the Aztecs arrived. The Aztecs called their settlement Tenochtitlan. By the time they settled after two centuries of voyage they called themselves by a different name, the Mexica, but the term Aztec has been used as a ...
Grandjeat, Charles Yves. “ Nationalism, History and Myth: The Masks of Aztlan,” Confluencia, Vol6, No. 1 (Fall 1990):19-32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27921957
...presenting Aztec gods). The eagle represented the images of the sun while descending and the jaguar represented the death of the sun (when the sun was not present in the sky). “This solar association refers to the Aztec warrior’s primary function, acquiring victims to nourish the sun” (Pasztory, 82). The ixcahuac, obsidian stone knives can be found in the Museo Nacional de Antropoligia, Mexico.
They provided this ritual for the son god. The most gruesome ritual was, when four priests would take the offering and hold both ankles, and all angles. While they held the person another priest would slice into the mans torso, break apart his ribs, and hold his still beating up like a trophy for all the crowd to see it. It was a way to show the god they were loyal. They then took both hands, and feet from the cold dead body, and sent it down the steps for the community to consume. During that part of the practice the remaining parts were throw into a vat of slit tongue snakes to feast on. On an average 50 thousand main arteries (hearts) were given to the sun god. The priests also purchased babies for the same ritual.
The Aztec civilization was a very complex society that was feared and known well for their various gory sacrifices done to please their many gods in their polytheistic religion. The much feared civilization began by the exile of one of the two Toltec leaders, which lead to the decline of the Toltec state that was later replaced by Mexica, or the Aztecs. According to the Aztecs, the land chosen to build their main city was chosen by the portrayal of an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its mouth. Through military might, the Aztecs managed to become the most powerful civilization in the mid-fourteenth century. They maintained their power through military might and the fear they caused other civilizations because of the human sacrifices they performed on their captured victims.
The Templo Mayor is the center of Tenochtitlan and houses many of the statues representing the Aztec deities
Why did the culture and customs require human blood to survive? How did high Aztec society view these sacrifice? These answers are easy to obtain using anthropology and archeology and historical documents from the time such as the infamous letters of Cortez. To the first question o why did the Aztecs practice human sacrifice to understand the reasons one must understand their epic religious beliefs. The Aztecs thought the world would end if they did not sacrifice human blood to their gods. The Gods were always locked in an epic battle and needed human blood to keep the universe from being destroyed. According to Aztec mythology, this world was the fifth and last universe so human blood was needed to continue the universe and prevent its destruction. The world had been destroyed four times before by the gods and it was up to the Aztecs who thought they were in the center of the world to stop its
The children which were the stars and Coyotxauhqu became jealous and feared that now they would no longer be as important to her and decided the murder her. The children decapitated the Coatlicue which cause the new born child Huitzilopotchi to be born in armor and seek vengeance upon his siblings. He threw his sisters body down the mountain and tossed her head into the air to become the moon. This myth was used by the Aztecs as a metaphors as to why the sun, moon, and stars are how they are now, but also to show how Huitzilopotchi became the sun god telling how the sun and moon came into place. The Aztec people traveled until they found a cactus with an eagle nesting obeying Huilzilopotchli command and settled there which is now known as Tenochtitlan. After the fall of the Aztec, the work was found by Christians and reburied because of the assumption that it represented something evil. The art was not supposed to be viewed as evil but to show the Coatlicue as part human, part earth animal, and animal that represented life and death. The goddess played a
In 1531, ten years after the capture of Mexico City, a poor Indian named Juan Diego left his house to attend divine service in the beginning of December. On his way he passed the hill of Tepeyacac ("Hill of the Nose", in Nahuatl) and he heard beautiful music from the top of the hill. The music was heavenly; he heard the most beautiful songbirds singing soft and pleasant. He wondered if he was worthy of hearing such beautiful music, and if maybe it was a dream. He thought he might have died and gone to heaven. Over the sounds of birds Juan heard a voice from the hilltop; however, it did not frighten him. In fact he was strangely set at ease by the voice. He climbed the hill in search of the mysterious voice. When he reached the top of the hill he saw a magnificent woman who appeared to glow like nothing he had ever seen before. She radiated like the sun, and the stones that she was standing on were like gems beneath her feet. The foliage surrounding the magnificent woman was full of translucent colors that glimmered in the radiating light.