Aztec religion

“ Before a century had elapsed, the descendants of these same Spaniards discerned in the mysteries of the Aztec religion the features, obscured and defaced, indeed, of the Jewish and Christian revelations! Such were the opposite conclusions of the unlettered soldier and of the scholar. A philosopher, untouched by superstition, might well doubt which of the two was the most extraordinary. ”

“ The religion of the Mexicans was a compound of morality and cruelty so astonishing that its two aspects have been explained as the contributions of two separate races. The wild Aztecs from the north are credited with having brought to a high pitch of organised ritual the ferocious customs of the Red Indians. The tortures which the tribes inflicted on captives taken in war were transmuted into the cannibal sacrifices and orgies of bloodshed with which the Aztec temples reeked. ”

“ A less lovely set of Olympians than the Aztec gods it is difficult to conceive. Yet, making every allowance for Catholic after-thoughts, there can be no doubt that the prayers, penances and confessions described at length by Sahagun indicate a firm Mexican belief that even these strange deities "made for righteousness," loved good, and, in this world and the next, punished evil. However it happened, whatever accidents of history or of mixture of the races in the dim past caused it, the Aztecs carried to extremes the religious and the mythical ideas. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the Aztec gods, though bedizened with the attributes of mortal conjurors, and with the fur and feathers of totems, are, for the most part, the departmental deities of polytheism, each ruling over some province of nature or of human activity. ”

“ The priests marched at the head of the soldiers, and bore Aztec idols on their backs. On the eve of a battle they kindled fresh fire by the friction of wood; and it was they who gave the signal of attack. These wars had pillage and conquest as their object, but also and very specially the capture of victims to sacrifice to the Aztec gods. For the Aztecs pushed the superstitious practice of human sacrifice to absolute frenzy. It was to these horrible sacrifices that they attributed their successes in war and the prosperity of their empire. ”

“ The Mexican theology indulged in two kinds of sacrifice, one of which was an ordinary offering of a common victim, while the other, or gladiatorial sacrifice, was only used for captives of extraordinary courage and bravery.
When we recollect the fact that the Aztec tribe was an intruder into the valley of Anahuac, and that it laid the foundations of its capital in the midst of enemies, we are not surprised that so hardy a race, from the northern hive, was both warlike in its habits and sanguinary in its religion. ”

“ Their social dances are inspired by ancient customs and are the outbursts of the dormant, barbaric rites of a religion which these people were forced to abandon by their conquering masters, the Spaniards. Outwardly and visibly Christians, taught to observe the customs of the Roman Catholic Church and to conform to its ritual, these people, who were the scum and overflow from villages of Pueblo Indians, were yet Aztec heathens in the consciousness of their souls and inclination of their hearts. ”

“ In examining the history of the Aztecs, and noticing the mixture of civilization which adorned their public and private life, and the barbarism which characterized their merciless religion, we have been convinced that the Aztec rite of sacrifice originated, in the infancy of the state in a national necessity, and, at length, under the influence of superstition and policy, grew into an ordinance of faith and worship The Common Sacrifice, offered in the Aztec temples was performed by a chief priest, and six assistants. ”

“ In his opinion, Mictlanteuctli represents the entire Aztec theogony, for has not his white priest kept the name of this god green in his memory? All the other gods have been forgotten; their personalities [116] have been absorbed into that of the god of hell, for he has had advertisers in the shape of Catholic priests ever since the fall of the Aztec Empire! Take the case of the Peruvians. Although the Place of Gold and the beautiful Virgins of the Sun are not even memories to the descendants of the Incas, the religion which gave rise to them is not wholly forgotten ”

“ From their small beginning as a handful of hunted creatures, hiding in the rushes of a swamp, they had grown to be an all-powerful nation, carrying a triumphant warfare throughout the land, and enlarging their boundaries with every triumph. The shocking features of their sanguinary religion make them odious to our minds. It is difficult to accommodate it to the gentle SCULPTURE REPRESENTING HUMAN SACRIFICE.
traits of the Aztec character, which shows them to be of domestic tastes, affectionate and mild in temper. ”

“ The mere fact that its members possessed the power of selecting victims for sacrifice must have been sufficient to place them in an almost unassailable position, and their prophetic utterances, founded upon the art of divination—so great a feature in the life of the Aztec people, who depended upon it from the cradle to the grave—probably assisted them in maintaining their hold upon the popular imagination. ”

“ Their surprise was heightened, when they witnessed a religious rite which reminded them of the Christian communion. On these occasions, an image of the tutelary deity of the Aztecs was made of flour of maize mixed with blood, and, after consecration by the priests, was distributed among the people, who, as they ate it, 'showed signs of humiliation and sorrow, declaring it was the flesh of the Deity.' How could the Roman Catholic fail to recognize the awful ceremony of the eucharist? . . . . . With the same feeling they witnessed another ceremony, that of the Aztec baptism. ”

“ It is more likely to think that only by force they could implant it and that the spirituality of some aspects of the aztec life should come from an ancient tradition, betrayed in it’s his essence for the benefit of a temporary structure dominated by a ruthless will to power". ”

“ In Mexico, idolatry had attained to its full barbaric development. As in the Aztec mind the world swarmed with spiritual deities, so their material representatives, the idols, stood in the houses at the corners of the streets, on every hill and rock, to receive from passers-by some little offering—a nosegay, a whiff of incense, a drop or two of blood; while in the temples more huge and elaborate images enjoyed the dances and processions in their honour, were fed by the bloody sacrifice of men and beasts, and received the tribute and reverence paid to the great national gods. ”

“ The existence of an Aztec ritual and priesthood would lead us to expect among them a closer connection of religious rites with the gentes than is found among the Iroquois; but their religious beliefs and observances are under the same cloud of obscurity as their social organization. ”

“ Many of the noble, learned, and priestly classes of Aztecs perished at the conquest. The survivors were more or less converted to Catholicism, and in their writings put the best face possible on the native religion. Like the Spanish clergy, their instructors, they were inclined to explain away their national gods by a system of euhemerism, by taking it for granted that the gods and culture-heroes had originally been ordinary men, worshipped after their decease. ”

“ Any one at all familiar with the curious pictographic manuscripts of the ancient Mexicans will see at a glance that we have here a sacrificial scene, in which a priest seems to be engaged in the sacrifice of a human being. In the extraordinary manuscripts of the ancient Aztecs we have many parallels to this design. So closely does it approach the Aztec type that, although no duplicate can be found in any of the codices, there is not a single idea, a single member or ornament that has not its analogue in the Mexican manuscripts. ”

“ In him love to the individual and hate to the Spanish race were so interwoven, that it would have been impossible for himself to foresee how he should act on any occasion which might afford scope for either passion. He was an Aztec by birth, of the race of the priesthood, young, accustomed to arms, and learned in the lore of his race; at heart a worshipper of their idols, though a forced baptism, and the necessities of a captive, made him nominally a Christian. ”

“ Their priests taught that the wicked were sent after death to expiate their sins in a region of eternal darkness. Those who died of certain diseases were entitled, after death, to a state of indolent contentment; but the Aztec paradise, like the Elysium of the Greeks and Romans, was reserved for their warriors and heroes. In this class were included those who were offered in sacrifice. These privileged souls passed at once into the presence of the Sun, whom they accompanied with songs and choral dances in his journey through the heavens. ”

“ The cause of humanity, indeed, has gained. They live under a better system of laws, a more assured tranquillity, a purer faith.{64} But all does not avail. Their civilization was of the hardy character which belongs to the wilderness. The fierce virtues of the Aztec were all his own. They refused to submit to European culture,—to be engrafted on a foreign stock. ”

“ MEXICAN MYTHOLOGY—THE SACERDOTAL ORDER—THE TEMPLES—HUMAN SACRIFICES THE civil polity of the Aztecs is so closely blended with their religion that without understanding the latter it is impossible to form correct ideas of their government or their social institutions. I shall pass over, for the present, some remarkable traditions, bearing a singular resemblance to those found in the Scriptures, and endeavor to give a brief sketch of their mythology and their careful provisions for maintaining a national worship. ”

“ From the moment of his coronation the Aztec sovereign lived in an atmosphere of adulation unknown to the mightiest potentate of the old world. Reverenced as a god, the
haughtiest nobles, sovereigns in their own land, humbled themselves before him; absolute in power, the fate of thousands depended upon a gesture of his hand. ”

“ With the progress of mankind out of the Lower into the [Pg 83] Middle, and more especially out of the latter into the Upper Status of barbarism, the gens became more the centre of religious influence and the source of religious development. We have only the grosser part of the Aztec religious system; but in addition to national gods, there seem to have been other gods, belonging to smaller divisions of the people than the phratries. ”

“ In their religion, the Aztecs recognised a Supreme Creator and Lord of the universe, "without whom man is as nothing," "invisible, incorporeal, one God, of perfect perfection and purity," "under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence." But beside Him they recognised numerous gods, who presided over the changes of the seasons, and the various occupations of man, and in whose honour they practised bloody rites. ”

“ Subject to this very loose supervision, each city was permitted to exercise its own particular form of worship, and, as has been shown, the Aztec were always ready to adopt the worship of the gods of their neighbours. The ceremonial garb of priests in general consisted of black body-paint, sometimes with designs in ochre, and a black mantle; their hair was never cut, and the lobes of their ears were invariably torn in shreds owing to constant practice of the penitential rite of blood-letting. ”

“ Purity of life in the Mexican priestesses. Father Acosta's opinion thereon. Tartary, Rome, and Mexico have something common in culture. Education of youth. Policy of the priesthood. Reflections thereupon. Teocallis or houses of God. Worship. Festivals. Human sacrifice. No sexual deities or rites. Question of credibility—God and the Devil act alike! Aztecs and Europeans compared. Christians have offered human sacrifice from the time of Peter downwards. Transubstantiation is a cannibal doctrine. Christian gods in Mexico as bad as the Aztec deities. History of Peru. The policy of its rulers. ”

“ But the divinities who are thus important cosmically are not in like measure important politically, nor indeed mythologically, since the great gods of the Aztec, like those of other consciously political peoples, were those that presided over the activities of statecraft—war and agriculture and political destiny. ”

“ There were clan and tribal, city and national gods, not only of the victorious race, but of their confederates and subjects, for the Aztec followed the custom of pagan conquerors, holding it safest to honour the deities native to the land ”

“ Of course we see the rise of the Aztec nation, a small cycle, but like the Gothic upon the Roman, it comes at the end of the general American break-up—an incursion of barbarians settling on and preserving for us fragments of the culture that preceded them, just as has happened over and over again all over the world. ”

“ Their dark countenances and long hair, their vestments and arms, were all of an Aztec character; yet a second and more scrutinizing glance made it apparent, that one, at least, if not two of them, was of another and nobler race. ”

“ The religion of the Aztecs, like that of the Mayas, was a polytheism in which special divinities controlled the powers of nature and the activities of men. The gods were perhaps further advanced towards human form and attributes than were those of the earlier culture to the south, but definite characterization was still accomplished by grotesque features and certain animal connections were still evident. ”