At the intersection with another wide straight avenue, Mihua glances down to the left and sees towering pyramids and crowds of people. The ceremonial precinct dwarfs any that he has seen before, but he remembers his father's instruction not to be fooled by the district precincts in Tenochtitlan. This is only the center of one of the four great quarters of the city, not the heart of the city that is his destination. Crossing the street, servant and master enter what appears to be a new calpolli. Mihua had noticed professional carriers hauling heavy loads of copper and gold to workshops in the last neighborhood. A glimpse of the end of a procession in honor of the god Xipe Totec, patron of metalworkers, confirms his opinion that they had just passed a metalworker's calpolli. In this new neighborhood, yards are surrounded by high walls. Some men emerge from a doorway, and Mihua looks in and sees a large, well-built house of a single story. The men are well dressed and prosperous-looking, but they wear the clothing of commoners, not nobles. These must be the famous pochteca. Mihua has heard that the city also contains neighborhoods composed entirely of foreigners where people speak strange languages and dress oddly, but he has yet to see any of these people along the main west avenue.
The approach to the center of Tenochtitlan is signaled by larger crowds of people in the streets and plazas and by the increasingly grandiose architecture of nobles' palaces, temple-pyramids, and other government buildings. The huge Templo Mayor up ahead of the visitors looms over the center of the city, the blood on its stairs visible from a great distance. The travelers have arrived at the wall of the sacred precinct and the end of the avenue. Just outside the precinct are several palaces of the Mexica tlatoque. Mihua is awed not only at the size and luxury of these compounds (far larger than his father's royal palace back home), but also at their number. Each Mexica tlatoani has built his own palace, leaving the homes of his predecessors as monuments to the greatness of the dynasty. Mihua has heard rumors of this practice, which is contrary to the usual Aztec custom of using the same palace for successive kings. He locates the correct palace from his father's instructions and enters the outer courtyard, where he asks directions of an important-looking official. Just then his second cousin, a low-ranking member of the Mexica royal family, arrives and the two young lords head for the sacred precinct to witness a gladiator sacrifice. Mihua's servant stays at the palace to help with various tasks until his lord returns.
The sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan, larger than some provincial towns, greatly impresses Mihua. The walled compound measures about 500 m on a side.17 Inside he can see numerous temples, altars, shrines, schools, and assembly halls, dominated by the towering twin-stair Templo Mayor pyramid (figure 1.1). He knows that at any time of day, some ceremony is taking place, either a public spectacle such as a sacrifice or procession, or a private ritual by priests, warriors, or other important persons. The size and grandeur of this inner sacred city overwhelms the provincial visitor, who stops to stare. His cousin is amused at this typical newcomer's reaction to the sacred precinct. In Yautepec and other provincial capitals, the state religion is served by a single, modest temple-pyramid located on the central public plaza; here in Tenochtitlan religion occupies its own inner city, closed off from public view and even separated by a wall from the palace of the emperor. These Mexica gods must be powerful indeed, Mihua thinks.
Chapter nine
Creation, Death, and the Gods
How the gods had their beginning and where they began is not well known. But this is plain, [that] there at Teotihuacan. . . when yet there was darkness, there all the gods gathered themselves together, and they debated who would bear the burden, who would carry on his back – would become – the sun. And when the sun came to arise, then all [the gods] died that the sun might come unto being . . . And thus the ancient ones thought it to be.
Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex
A fundamental idea of Aztec religion was that the gods sacrificed themselves in order to benefit humankind. In one myth the gods threw themselves into a huge fire to create the sun; in another they spilled their own blood in order to create people. These myths established a reciprocal relationship of obligations between humankind and the gods – and these obligations could be repaid only only through offerings of human blood and life. Human sacrifice and bloodletting, also known as autosacrifice, were primary forms of ritual in Aztec society.
The earliest Mesoamerican religions focused on agricultural fertility and worship of the sun. The great Classic-period civilizations of the Maya and Teotihuacan harnessed these themes to the goals of the state through selective use of human sacrifice and bloodletting. The Aztecs borrowed much of their religion from their predecessors at Teotihuacan and Tula, but the Aztlan migrants also brought their own gods and rituals with them. Aztec religion was a complex blend of these two traditions, unified by emphases on blood, sacrifice, and debt payment. With their rise to power following the Tepanec war, the Mexica rulers and priests began a deliberate program of transformation of their religion to link the gods, myths, and ceremonies even more strongly to the interests of the state and empire.
Myths of creation provide an entry into the complexities of Aztec religion. The Aztecs had numerous diverse, even contradictory, myths describing the creation of the world, the gods, people, and things. Four of these myths are presented here to illustrate some of the fundamental concepts of Aztec ritual and belief.1
Myths of Creation
The Four Suns and the Destruction of the World
At the beginning of creation there was an original high god, Ometeotl (“Two-Deity”), who existed in both a male form, Ometecuhtli (“Two-Lord”), and a female form, Omecihuatl (“Two-Lady”).2 This couple produced four sons: Tezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec, Quetzalcoatl, and Huitzilopochtli. The latter two were given the task of creating the earth, other gods, and people. With the births of these four gods, a cycle of creation and destruction began that continues to the present day.
There have been four previous ages or “suns,” each controlled by a different god and peopled by a distinctive race. Each sun was destroyed by a different cataclysm. The god Tezcatlipoca presided over the first sun, when a race of giants roamed the earth. This sun was destroyed by jaguars who ate the giants and destroyed the earth. During the second sun, presided over by Quetzalcoatl, humans who lived on acorns populated the earth. This sun was destroyed by hurricanes, and the people were transformed into monkeys. People of the third sun, under the god Tlaloc, ate aquatic seeds. The world was destroyed by a fiery rain, and humans were turned into dogs, turkeys, and butterflies. The fourth sun, presided over by Chalchiuhtlicue, was a time of gatherers who ate wild seeds. They were turned into fish in a great flood.
The fifth sun is the age we still live in today. Its presiding deity is Tonatiuh, the sun god, and its people are maize-eaters. According to Aztec myth, this world too will be destroyed, by earthquakes, and its people will be devoured by sky monsters. The destruction of a world age or sun can only come at the end of a 52-year cycle known as the calendar round (see chapter 10), but the number of cycles that will pass before the cataclysm is unknown. Therefore, when a cycle was completed, and the sun began to rise on the first day of a new calendar round, the Aztecs celebrated a ritual known as the New Fire ceremony to give thanks for another cycle of existence. The last New Fire ceremony was conducted in 1507. If the Aztec calendar is projected forward, nine cycles have been completed since that date, and our current cycle will end in AD 2027 (see discussion of the end of the world in chapter 10).
Quetzalcoatl and the Bones of the Ancestors
The creation of the fifth sun, the current age, fell to Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. In one version of this myth, the two gods found the earth completely covered with water from the flood that ended the fourth sun. The giant earth monster Tlaltecuhtli (“Earth Lord”), a crocodile-like creature, swam in the sea searching for flesh to eat. The gods turned themselves into serpents, entered the sea, and tore Tlaltecuhtli in half. The upper part of her body
became the land, and the lower part was thrown into the sky to become the stars and heavens. Plants and animals grow from the back of Tlaltecuhtli and rivers pour from her body (see figure 2.12 for a depiction of Tlaltecuhtli).
With the land and sky in place, the gods were ready to create people. They sent Quetzalcoatl to the underworld, Mictlan (“Place of the dead”), to retrieve the bones of the people from the fourth sun:
And then Quetzalcoatl went to Mictlan. He approached Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl [Lord and Lady of the underworld]; at once he spoke to them:
“I come in search of the precious bones in your possession. I have come for them.”
And Mictlantecuhtli asked of him, “What shall you do with them, Quetzalcoatl?”
And once again Quetzalcoatl said, “The gods are anxious that someone should inhabit the earth.”
And Mictlantecuhtli replied, “Very well, sound my shell horn and go around my circular realm four times.”
But his shell horn had no holes.3
The false conch horn was the first of several tricks that Mictlantecuhtli used to block Quetzalcoatl's mission. Quetzalcoatl called upon worms to drill a hole in the shell, and bees to make the horn play. When Mictlantecuhtli heard the horn, he at first allowed Quetzalcoatl to gather the bones, but later changed his mind. His helper spirits dug a hole, and a quail appeared and startled Quetzalcoatl, who tripped and lost consciousness. The bones were scattered and broken, and the quail chewed on them. Quetzalcoatl finally rose, gathered up the bones, and escaped from Mictlan.
Quetzalcoatl carried the bones to Tamoanchan, a place of paradise. The old goddess Cihuacoatl (“Woman Serpent”) ground them on a metate and placed the powder in a jade bowl. Quetzalcoatl and the other gods gathered around and shed their blood upon the ground bones, and the first people of the fifth sun were made.
The Birth of the Sun at Teotihuacan
Once the earth, people, and maize had been created, the gods gathered in the darkness at Teotihuacan to bring forth the sun. Two gods were chosen for the task: Tecciztecatl, a rich, powerful, and haughty lord, and Nanahuatzin, a weak, poor, scab-covered god. A huge pyre was built for a fire sacrifice. The gods called upon Tecciztecatl to throw himself into the fire. Four times he attempted to do their bidding, only to stop short. Then Nanahuatzin gathered his resolve, ran, and leaped into the flames, where his body was quickly burned up. Shamed at his earlier timidity, Tecciztecatl also jumped into the fire, followed by an eagle and a jaguar. For their bravery, these two animals became warriors, patrons of the two major Aztec military orders.
A great light appeared as Nanahuatzin rose in the east as Tonatiuh, the sun god. Then Tecciztecatl also rose as a second sun. The gods worried that the world would be too bright, so they threw a rabbit at Tecciztecatl to dim his light. He became the moon, on whose surface a rabbit can still be seen today. But the sun did not move in the sky. The gods sent a falcon to ask Tonatiuh why he did not move. He replied, “Why? Because I'm asking for their blood, their color, their precious substance.”4 The gods realized they must sacrifice themselves to make the sun move across the sky. Quetzalcoatl performed the deed, cutting open the chests of the gods and removing their hearts to offer up to Tonatiuh. And so the sun assumed its correct path across the sky. The Aztecs believed that just as these gods sacrificed themselves for the sun, so too people had to provide blood and hearts to keep the sun going.
The Heroic Birth of Huitzilopochtli
The goddess Coatlicue (“Serpent Skirt”) was doing penance and sweeping at Coatepec (“Serpent Hill”) when she saw a ball of feathers float down from the sky. She took the feathers and placed them inside her shirt. When she finished sweeping, Coatlicue went to remove the feathers, but they were gone. In fact, they had impregnated the goddess. Her children, the Centzon Huitznahua (“The Four Hundred Southerners”) became aware of her pregnancy:
And when the Centzon Huitznahua saw that their mother was already with child, they were very wrathful. They said, “Who brought this about? Who hath made her heavy with child? She hath dishonored and shamed us!”
And their elder sister, Coyolxauhqui, said to them, “My elder brothers, she hath affronted us; we must slay our mother, the wicked one who is already with child . . . ”
And when Coatlicue learned of this, she was sorely afraid and deeply saddened. And her child, who was in her womb, comforted her. He spoke and said to her: “Have no fear; already I know [what I must do].”5
Coyolxauhqui and her siblings dressed for war and climbed the hill of Coatepec toward Coatlicue. Just as they reached the summit, Coatlicue gave birth to Huitzilopochtli. The newborn god was fully mature and ready for battle with his shield, darts, war paint, and Xiuhcoatl (fire-serpent weapon).
Then with it [the Xiuhcoatl] he pierced Coyolxauhqui, and then he quickly struck off her head. It came to rest there on the slope of Coatepec. And her body went falling below; it went crashing in pieces; in various places her arms, her legs, and her body kept falling.6
Huitzilopochtli then chased the Centzon Huitznahua and killed most of them.
This mythological event was commemorated on a large carved stone, which depicts Coyolxauhqui's dismembered body (figure 9.1). The Coyolxauhqui stone was part of a buried offering placed in front of the stairway to Huitzilopochtli's shrine on the Templo Mayor. The pyramid itself was referred to as Coatepec, and the human sacrifices that occurred on its summit reenacted Huitzilopochtli's victory over Coyolxauhqui.
Figure 9.1 Large stone disk showing Coyolxauhqui's dismembered body (diameter 3.25 m) (drawing by Emily Umberger; reproduced with permission)
Aztec Religion: Historical Background
There is a discrepancy between two of the myths recounted above: in the first myth, Huitzilopochtli is said to have been created by Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl; in the last, he was born from the womb of Coatlicue. Was Huitzilopochtli a high creator god, or just another patron deity? This is only one example of numerous inconsistencies and contradictions found in the corpus of Aztec myths and religious accounts. Aztec religion appears to us today as a highly complex and confusing system of gods, myths, rituals, and beliefs. Part of this complexity originated in the incomplete fusion of different historical religious traditions and in the incomplete processes of imperial manipulation and transformation promoted by the Mexica kings. But another source of confusion about Aztec religion derives from the accounts of the sixteenth-century chroniclers who may not have fully understood all of the beliefs and practices that they recorded. Unfortunately their information on religion came not from the experts – Aztec priests – but from laymen. In fact, no Aztec priest ever explained his or her religion to a Spanish chronicler. For these and other reasons the religion of the Aztecs was complex, dynamic, and confusing, and today we can only claim a very partial and incomplete understanding of it.7
The major inspirations for the development of the Aztec gods, myths, and rituals were the traditions of earlier central Mexican civilizations (particularly Teotihuacan), the Aztlan migrants from northern Mexico, and the peoples conquered by the expanding Aztec Empire. A number of Aztec gods can be traced back to Classic-period Teotihuacan. Carvings on the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, for example, depict two of these deities (figure 9.2). The feathered serpent was either Quetzalcoatl or an earlier form of this god, and the goggle-eyed figure, known as the storm god at Teotihuacan, may have been an early form of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, or perhaps Xiuhcoatl.8
Figure 9.2 Classic-period antecedents of the Aztec gods Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl from the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan (photograph by Michael E. Smith)
Other gods were brought to central Mexico by the Aztlan migrants. Huitzilopochtli, whose primary associations were with blood and warfare, had been the patron deity of the Mexica from the time of their migration from Aztlan. The ascension of the Mexica to power was accompanied by the elevation of Huitzilopochtli from a simple patron god to a powerful high god. Tlacaelel, adviser to the Mexica kings, “wen
t about persuading the people that their supreme god was Huitzilopochtli.”9 The two temples atop the Templo Mayor pyramid were dedicated to Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli. These central temples of the Aztec Empire symbolized the social and cultural blend that made up the Aztec world: Tlaloc, the ancient central Mexican god of rain and fertility, sat next to Huitzilopochtli, the newly arrived Mexica god of warfare and sacrifice. Some gods also were adopted from conquered peoples and integrated into the imperial pantheon of Tenochtitlan. The idols of these gods were removed from their home temples and set up in the Coacalco, a special temple that was a kind of museum or prison for foreign gods.
The Gods
The Teotl Concept
The Nahuatl term teotl means “deity” or “sacred power.” This is a complex and multifaceted concept that does not fit well with modern preconceptions of ancient polytheistic religion. We tend to think of ancient gods in terms of the Greek pantheon. Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, and the other Greek gods were very human-like with their own unique personalities, powers, and domains. They often took human form and entered society undetected. Aztec gods, on the other hand, are better viewed as invisible spirits or forces whose roles, natures, and forms blended together. Each deity had certain characteristic attributes or insignia. Many of these, such as hats, pendants, clothing, and jewelry, were shared by more than one god. As a result scholars often disagree over the correct identification of gods in the codices or sculptures. Gods were sometimes depicted in human form, and on ritual occasions, people impersonated deities by dressing in their insignia. One would never have mistaken a god for a person, however.
The Aztecs Page 23