7 Rabbit (1018). Here began the sacrifice of the human streamers. At that time, in the time of 7 Rabbit, a great famine occurred. What is said is that the Toltecs were seven-rabbited. It was a seven-year famine, a famine that caused much suffering and death.
It was then that the sorcerers requisitioned Huemac’s own children and went and left them in the waters of Xochiquetzal and on Huitzco and on Xicocotl, thus making payment with little children. This was the first time that the sacrifice of human streamers occurred.17
We have already encountered Huemac as one of the Aztec kings mentioned in the Codex Chimalpopoca, but now we learn of another presence behind the practice of human sacrifice: sorcerers, in addition to devils. In other words, the Aztec mythology is suggesting that we are looking at the activity of an initiated elite. And once again, sacrifice is referred to as a payment. It is thus difficult to avoid the conclusion that the “devils” were the ones demanding payment.
However, of all the suggestive passages in the Codex that refer to human sacrifice, one in particular stands out above all the rest for the breadth of its implications.
Well, it is told and related that many times during the life of Quetzlcoatl, sorcerers tried to ridicule him into making the human payment, into taking human lives. But he always refused. He did not consent, because he greatly loved his subjects, who were Toltecs. Snakes, birds, and butterflies that he killed were what his sacrifices always were.
And it is told and related that with this he wore out the sorcerers’ patience. So it was then that they started to ridicule him and make fun of him, the sorcerers saying they wanted to torment Quetzlcoatl and make him run away.
And it became true. It happened.
…
Then they tell how Quetzlcoatl departed. It was when he refused to obey the sorcerers about making the human payment, about sarificing humans. Then the sorcerers deliberated among themselves, they whose names were Texcatlipoca, Ihuimecatly, and Toltecatly. They said, “He must leave his city. We shall live there.”18
This is a significant passage, for in it one finds the clear outlines of a peculiar story emerging:
1) The “old order,” represented by Quetzlcoatl, which refuses to institute human sacrifice;
2) The “new order” represented by three sorcerers, who eventually force Quetzlcoatl to abandon his city and take it over. These three sorcerers, along with King Quetzlcoatl, represent yet another variation, perhaps, of the Aztec version of the Hiram Abiff story, with the dedication of a temple by sacrifice;
3) Sacrifice is again referred to as a “payment,” a debt, and Quetzlcoatl’s refusal to institute the practice is, perhaps, suggestive of the fact that he did not accept the whole notion of payment and debt to begin with.
To put it succinctly, it would appear that one is looking at two ideologies, two conceptions, of the place of mankind within the vast “cosmic machine,” an older one, and a newer one, represented by Queztlcoatl and the sorcerers respectively. Those sorcerers were elsewhere called “devils,” and one in particular, “Yaotl,” was behind the practice.
All of this occurs in the post-Flood world of the Fifth Sun, so it is important to note one final thing. After the flood, the gods create “a new sun from the flames of the ‘spirit oven’ at Teotihuacan…”19 The notion of sacrifice, in other words, was deeply tied to the most mysterious site on the world Grid in all of the Americas, as it was also tied to the notion of a recreation, a revitalization, of the sun and celestial machinery itself.
But before we look at the implications of these ideas at Teotihuacan, a closer look at the notion of sacrifice, payment, and debt in the culture that confronted the Aztecs is in order.
B. Sacrificial Atonement in Latin Christianity:
Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo
All across Western Europe, from whence the Conquistadores came, sacrifice was being offered in all the hamlet chapels, parish churches, deaneries, monasteries, and cathedrals of Europe: the sacrifice of the mass. Moreover, it would not take a great deal to show that many of these chapels, churches, and cathedrals were built over old pagan shrines or cult centers, occupying places on the world Grid. In brief, the sacrifice of the mass was understood to be a supremely alchemical act, the transubstantiation of earthly bread and wine into the heavenly body and blood of Christ, which had been sacrificed to God the Father at the Crucifixion. It was an act that made that sacrifice really present.
Two cultures, both of them practicing sacrifice of some sort, thus confronted each other, and though it could be said that the Spanish were hardly practicing actual human sacrifice, a closer look at the theological doctrine underlying Western Latin Christian belief will reveal that there was no great broad conceptual ocean dividing the two cultures, but rather the reverse, that much of the language and conceptulization behind both cultures’ practice and belief was the same.
For the western Latin Church, the constellation of ideas surrounding the sacrifice of Christ were most completely enunciated by the 11th century theologian, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), in a work entitled Cur Deus Homo, or Why the God-Man? Here, the “logic” of sacrifice, debt, and payment is laid out clearly, and with a cold-bloodedness that lies just hidden beneath the surface language of piety.
The first indicator that even Christ Himself is viewed as but a cog in a vast sacrificial “machine” is found in the opening lines of the Cur Deus Homo, the very lines that formed the epigraph to this chapter: “…in fine, leaving Christ out of view (as if nothing had ever been known of him), it proves, by absolute reasons, the impossibility that any man should be saved without him.”20 In other words, once Christ is out of view, then it is the “absolute reasons” that form the basis of the machine of sacrifice into which Christ steps as “the essential cog.”
A reading of a few select passages will make this clear.
1. Debt and Will
The Cur Deus Homo is laid out as a set of dialogues between Anselm and his pupil, Boso. We begin our examination of the logic of sacrifice in Anselm with this exchange between the archbishop and his student in chapter IX of the Cur Deus:
Boso: …How it was of his own accord that he died, and what this means: “he was made obedient even unto death; “ and: “for which cause God hath highly exalted him;” and: “I came not to do my own will; “ and: “he spared not his own Son;” and: “not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
Anselm: It seems to me that you do not rightly understand the difference between what he did at the demand of obedience, and what he suffered, not demanded by obedience, but inflicted on him, because he kept his obedience perfect.
…
That man, therefore, owed this obedience to God the Father, humanity to Deity; and the Father claimed it from him.
Boso: …For death was inflicted on him for his perseverance in obedience and he endured it; but I do not understand how it is that obedience did not demand this.
…
Anselm: …It may, indeed be said, that the Father commanded him to die, when he enjoined that upon him on account of which he met death…And this, since none other could accomplish it, availed as much with the Son, who so earnestly desired the salvation of man, as if the Father had commanded him to die; and, therefore, “as the Father gave him commandment, so he did, and the cup which the Father gave to him he drank, being obedient even unto death.”
Note the curious statement “since none other could accomplish it,” a statement that many interpreters take as referring to the insufficiency and weakness of the human will and its inability not to sin. Christ, as a “perfect man” presumably does not suffer this weakness, and therefore, is able to offer a perfect obedience.
But this would be to reduce Anselm’s argument, for this is not the only “absolute reason” that he has in mind.
2. Debt, Payment, and Satisfaction
That “absolute reason” is revealed by what Anselm has to say about the ideas of debt, payment, and satisfaction in chapter twelve of
the Cur Deus:
Anselm: Let us return and consider whether it were proper for God to put away sins by compassion alone, without any payment of the honor taken from him.
…
But if sin is neither paid for nor punished, it is subject to no law.
Here the notion of payment and debt becomes more fully defined: it is a “payment for the honor taken” from God by man.
This is further elaborated in chapter nineteen:
Anselm: Therefore, consider it settled that, without satisfaction, that is, without voluntary payment of the debt, God can neither pass by the sin unpunished, nor can the sinner attain that happiness, or happiness like that, which he had before he sinned; for man cannot in this way be restored, or become such as he was before he sinned.
Boso: …For, if we pay our debt, why do we pray God to put it away? Is not God unjust to demand what has already been paid? But if we do not make payment, why do we supplicate in vain that he will do what he cannot do, because it is unbecoming?
Anselm: He who does not pay says in vain: “Pardon”; but he who pays makes supplication, because prayer is properly connected with the payment; for God owes no man anything, but every creature owes God…
Here the language of “debt” and “payment” has come fully out into the open, but note, that in the implicit logic of Anselm’s argument, both God and man are caught as cogs in a machine of higher logic, that of an abstract justice demanding punishment and satisfaction for sin. Lest this point be missed, Anselm is really saying that there is no intrinsic forgiveness whatsoever; there is no fiat of forgiveness without the shedding of blood.
This gruesome logic is elaborated even further in chapters twenty through twenty-three:
Anselm: Neither, I think, will you doubt this, that satisfaction should be proportionate to guilt.
…
When you render anything to God which you owe him, irrespective of your past sin, you should not reckon this as the debt which you owe for sin. But you owe God every one of those things which you have mentioned….
Boso: Truly I dare not say that in all these things I pay any portion of my debt to God.
Anselm: How then do you pay God for your transgression?
Boso: If in justice I owe God myself and all my powers, even when I do not sin, I have nothing left to render to him for my sin.
Anselm: What will become of you then? How will you be saved?
…
(We) set aside Christ and his religion as if they did not exist, when we proposed to inquire whether his coming were necessary to man’s salvation.
(CHAPTER XXI)
…
Anselm: Therefore you make no satisfaction unless you restore something greater than the amount of that obligation, which should restrain you from committing the sin.
Here the implicit logic is finally revealed, for mankind owes a debt that he cannot repay, yet, since it is mankind that owes the debt, he must repay.
And this leads to the heart of the logic of Anselm’s “machine of sacrifice.”
3. Infinite Debt, Infinite Payment, and the Internal
Logic of the Sacrifice of Christ According to Anselm
Mankind owes a debt that is, in effect, infinite, since his sin was — as was seen in the citations above — an affront to the honor of God, an honor one can only assume was infinite, like God Himself. Because of this, the infinite debt can only be “paid off” or “satisfied” by an infinite payment, yet, mankind had to pay it, since he himself owed it. And thus we come to the heart of the Cur Deus Homo, the Why the God-Man, for only God, by coming man, could both satisfy, and pay, the abstract infinite debt, as is enunciated in Book II, chapters six and seven of the Cur Deus:
Anselm: But this cannot be effected, except the price paid to God for the sin of man be something greater than all the universe besides God.
Boso: So it appears.
Anselm: Moreover, it is necessary that he who can give God anything of his own which is more valuable than all things in the possession of God, must be greater than all else but God himself.
Boso: I cannot deny it.
Anselm: Therefore none but God can make this satisfaction.
Boso: So it appears.
Anselm: But none but a man ought to do this, other wise man does not make the satisfaction.
Boso: Nothing seems more just.
(CHAPTER VII)
Anselm: … For God will not do it, because he has no debt to pay; and man will not do it, because he cannot. Therefore, in order that the God-man may perform this, it is necessary that the same being should be perfect God and perfect man, in order to make this atonement.
And with those statements, Anselm has reduced God, man, and Christ as cogs in a kind of “accounting” adjustment as vast cogs in an impersonal machine of justice and sacrifice. Anselm “wins” the argument, and his disciple Boso summarizes this principle in chapter eighteen of Book Two:
Boso: …And you, by numerous and positive reasons, have shown that the restoring of mankind ought not to take place, and could not, without man paid the debt which he owed God for his sin. And this debt was so great that, while none but man must solve the debt, none but God was able to do it; so that he who does it must be both God and man. And hence arises a necessity that God should take man into unity with his own person; so that he who in his own nature was bound to pay the debt, but could not, might be able to do it in the person of God.
Pause and consider quite carefully what this means. On Anselm’s view, God is a banker, and Christ is less a person than an action of sacrifice balancing the books; all other aspects of the life and teaching of Christ are, really, merely superfluous to this overriding sacrificial necessity. On this view, even life itself is an indebtedness, and this reveals the flaw in Anselm’s logic, for if life itself is an indebtedness, could mankind ever sufficiently “honor God” to pay back the debt of life?
There is, of course, a further flaw in Anselm, and it is a moral one, for it makes God the Father demand the death-by-torture of his own Son to satisfy an affront to His honor, an act that, even on human terms, seems neither just nor befitting a “God of Love,” and an action few, if any, human fathers would ever demand.
We are dealing, in short, with a kind of closed “economico- theological” system, with God’s honor as the interest, and mankind the principal and collateral on it.
With this view of mankind as a mechanism in a machine, let us now return to the Aztecs, to Teotihuacan, and look more closely at the possible physics connections.
C. Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan may rightly be said to be the Giza of the Americas. Its massive Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon dominate the Valley of Mexico, and their names themselves are both specifically mentioned in the local native lore, and were adopted by the Aztecs themselves when they moved into the Valley.21 The name Teotihuacan itself means “city of the gods.” Indeed, the emperor Montezuma himself thought that the Pyramid of the Sun was the “original primeval mound marking the spot where creation had been set in motion at the beginning of the present epoch of the earth.”22 In this, as we shall discover, the Aztecs echoed the Egyptians, who also regarded their great pyramids at Giza as representing the primeval mountains of creation.
In other words, the pyramids of Teotihuacan and in particular the Pyramid of the Sun were regarded as somehow fundamentally connected to the cosmological processes of creation itself. For the Aztecs, as for the Egytptians, they were, in some rudimentary sense, understood to be machines manipulating the physics of the cosmological process of creation and destruction itself at the highest, topological level.
However, for the Aztecs, unlike for the Egyptians, that manipulation was accomplished through the barbaric practice of human sacrifice, a practice overseen by priests who, according to Nahuatl tradition, directed sacrifices as part of the ritual of immortality and ascension connected with the pyramids.23 Before proceeding to a more detailed examination, it is worth speculating on why
sacrifice was thought, in some manner, to be connected with pyramids, immortality, and the manipulation of the medium.
We have already noted that pyramids were understood by the Meso-Americans, in some rudimentary form, as machines directly linked to the cosmological processes of creation, to a physics. As I have also noted in my book The Cosmic War, some of the ancient technologies seem to have been operable, or were perceived as being operable, only in close conjunction or actual physical contact with their possessors.24 It is also known that the Aztecs in particular practiced human sacrifice with what may best be described as reckless abandon, as if, somehow, the sheer numbers and emotional trauma associated with them somehow enhanced the effect - whatever it was perceived to be - of the practice. Taking the Aztec and Mayan myths as our clue, we may conclude that at some point during the development of the Grid, that an elite arose - or perhaps simply asserted itself - that understood that there was a direct effect of consciousness upon the physical medium, and through the practice of massive human sacrifice, was attempting literally to “traumatize” or “shock” it.
Grid of the Gods Page 23