Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

  It is likely that our sources have not told us all that there was to tell. Were the emperors and the dignitaries, for example, to go to Mictlan, even if they did die in their beds? What about the priests, who do not appear to come under any of the known headings? It is difficult to conceive that no after-life was envisaged for them. As Uitzilopochtli is shown as the guarantor of the warriors' resurrection and Tlaloc of his peoples', then perhaps Quetzalcoatl, the prototype of the priest, had a future life in store for the ecclesiastics. However that may be, the prime decision of the creating pair, the Lord and the Lady of the Duality, established the ineluctable fate not only of each man's earthly life but also of his eternity. Everything depended upon the sign under which he was born. And it was this belief in signs, the expressions of fate, that had the greatest influence upon the life of every Mexican.

  DESTINIES AND SIGNS

  From the Mayas, who seem to have been positively hypnotised by time and its majestic passage, onwards, all the civilised nations of Mexico and Central America worked out complex chronological systems, and this for two purposes: the first was to find fixed points in order to understand and foresee the succession of natural phenomena, the seasons and the movements of the stars, and so to regulate the rites that were necessary to their proper sequence; the second was to determine the fate of each man and the fortunes of each undertaking by means of a body of portents which made up a coherent whole quite as 'scientific' for those people as our rational explanations of the world are for us.

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  The solar year, xiuitl, of 365 days, was divided into 18 months of 20 days, to which were added 5 'hollow' days, thought of as exceedingly unfortunate. Each of these months had a name which had reference either to a natural phenomenon or, more often, to the rites which were to be celebrated during it.

  The year itself was named after the first day in it: the name was taken from the divinatory calendar, and it already contained concealed within it the potential good or evil of the year.

  Given that the number of days in the year, less the hollow days, is 360 and therefore divisible by 20, it is clear that if the year began let us say with the sign acatl, the first of the intercalary days had the same sign. But as there were four other intercalary days, the first day of the following year was therefore separated by five intervals from that of the preceding year. As 20 divided by 5 is 4, there were only four signs that could be used for the beginning of the year. In the days of the Aztecs these were the four signs acatl, tecpatl, calli and tochtli.

  The thirteen fundamental numerals of the divinatory calendar combined with the four signs to allow 13 x 4 = 52 beginnings of the year. It was only at the end of this series that the same numeral and the same sign would recur; and then they set about 'binding the years' by lighting the new fire. This period of 52 years, which is sometimes called the Mexican century, was represented by a bundle of stalks tied together.

  The Aztecs had learnt, probably from their Pueblan or Mixtec neighbours, to observe the apparent revolution of the planet Venus. Five years of Venus are the same as eight years of the sun. These years were counted by means of the signs of the divinatory calendar. The two accounts, that of the years of Venus and that of the years of the sun, coincided only after 65 of the first, which are the equivalent of 104 of the second -- that is to say, at the end of two earthly 'centuries'. This was the longest period in Mexican chronology, and it was called ce ueuetiliztli, 'one old age'. 30

  As for the tonalpoualli 31 or divinatory calendar itself, the

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  Aztecs, like the other Mexican nations, based it upon the combination of 13 numbers, 1-13, and 20 names:

  cipactli: crocodile or aquatic monster eecatl: wind calli: house cuetzpalin: lizard coatl: snake miquiztli: death mazatl: deer tochtli: rabbit atl: water itzcuintli: dog ozomatli: monkey malinalli: dead grass acatl: reed ocelotl: ocelot quauhtli: eagle cozcaquauhtli: vulture ollin: motion, or earthquake tecpatl: flint quiauitl: rain xochitl: flower.

  Each name of a day was represented by a sign. The combination of the 13 numbers and the 20 signs gave a series of 260 days, the duration of the divinatory year, which, beginning at 1 cipactli ended on the day 13 xochitl, running without interruption and without the same sign ever bearing the same figure. The continuous sequence of dates in the divinatory calendar and that of the dates in the solar year had no influence upon one another at all. Every day could be named by reference to the two systems: for example, 8 cipactli, 3 toxcatl -- that is, the eighth day of the group of thirteen days which begins with 1 ocelotl, which is at the same time the third day of the fifth month toxcatl.

  The divinatory year of 260 days split up naturally into 20 groups of 13, each of which began with the figure 1 with a different sign appropriated to it: 1 cipactli, 1 ocelotl, 1 mazatl, etc., and so on until the last, 1 tochtli. 32 Each of these groups was considered as a whole fortunate, unfortunate or

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  indifferent, according to the sense of its first day; but besides this each of the days might be good, bad or neutral according to its distinguishing number and sign. The days which had the numbers 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13 were held to be generally favourable, and those with the figure 9 unfavourable. But the influence of the figures had to be combined with that of the signs, and the divinatory calendar was in fact made up of a table of 260 special cases.

  Furthermore, each group of thirteen was assigned to one or to two gods: the sun and the moon for the group 1 miquiztli, Patecatl, god of drink and drunkenness, for the group 1 quiauitl; the planet Venus and the god of the dead for the group 1 coatl, etc. Finally, nine deities, 'the lords of the night', made up a series parallel with that of the signs and running in an uninterrupted sequence beside them: their particular influence had certainly to be taken into account in the soothsayer's appreciation of any given day.

  It was also necessary to reckon with the influence peculiar to the year itself, and likewise that which the cardinal points of space might have upon the signs. For the Mexicans thought of the world as a kind of Maltese cross, 33 the east uppermost, the north on the right, the west below and the south on the left. The twenty signs for days were divided into four sets of five, each ruled by one of the cardinal points: for example, the signs cipactli and acatl belonged to the east, ocelotl and tecpatl to the north, mazatl and calli to the west, and xochitl and tochtli to the south. 34

  After this, each cardinal point in succession ruled one day, following the order east, north, west, south; and also one year, also following the order acatl (east), tecpatl (north), calli (west) and tochtli (south). Because of this the day or the year was imbued with the qualities ascribed to each quarter -- fertility and abundance to the east, barren aridity to the north, falling-off, old age and death to the west (setting sun), and a neutral character to the south. As for the groups of thirteen, they too underwent the influence of the cardinal points, and in the same order; for the first belonged to the east, the second to the north, the third to the west, the fourth to the south, and so on continuously.

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  Thus the spatial influences which ruled time fitted into one another like so many hollow wooden Russian dolls: or rather it may be said that Mexican philosophy did not conceive one abstract space and one abstract time, homogeneous and separate media, but rather on the other hand concrete multiplicities of time and space, single points and happenings, disparate and unique. The qualities peculiar to each of these 'moment-loci', expressed by the sign which indicated the days in the tonalpoualli, follow one another cyclically in an abrupt, total change according to a determinate rhythm, in conformity with an everlasting order.

  When the Duality decides that a man shall be born or 'come down' (temo) he consequently finds himself inserted automatically into this order and in the grasp of the omnipotent machine. The sign of the day of his birth will govern him until the day of his death -- it will even decide his death and so his after-life: it will decide whether he is to die as a sacrifice and thus join the splendid reti
nue of the sun, or to be drowned and so inhabit the unendingly happy Tlalocan, or to be consigned to the void in the shadowy hereafter of Mictlan. His whole fate is subjected to the strictest predestination.

  There were certainly attempts at correcting fate, however. If a child were born under an unfortunate sign, some days were allowed to go by before naming him, until a fortunate sign should come. It was also conceded that by dint of penance, privation and self-control a man might escape the evil influences which doomed him, for example, to drunkenness, gambling and debauchery. But it does not seem that there was ever much hope of avoiding the inexorable operation of the signs. They were at the base of everything, the fate of individuals and the fate of communities; and the gods themselves were not free -- it was because the sign 1 acatl ruled the destiny of Quetzalcoatl that he had to appear in the east in the shape of the morning star. 35

  Consequently the life of the Mexican was dominated by the portents drawn from the tonalamatl. The merchants waited for the day 1 coatl to begin their journey towards the

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  remote countries of the south, because this sign promised them success and prosperity. Those who were born in the group 1 ocelotl would die as prisoners of war. Painters and scribes and weaving-women particularly honoured the sign 7 xochitl, which was favourable to them.

  He who was born under the sign 2 tochtli would be a drunkard, and he who was born under the sign 4 itzcuintli would be prosperous and rich even if he never did anything. 1 miquiztli was favourable for slaves; 4 eecatl for wizards and black magic; 1 calli for doctors and midwives. On the day 4 ollin the dignitaries sacrificed birds to the sun: on 1 acatl they offered flowers, incense and tobacco to Quetzalcoatl. It would not be too much to say that no Aztec, whatever his state or calling, could do without the services of the diviners, or undertake any enterprise without knowing the signs.

  Minds that were so very much under the dominion of fate could not but be uncommonly sensitive to omens, whether they were drawn from little everyday happenings or from extraordinary phenomena. An unaccustomed noise in the mountains, the cry of an owl, a rabbit running into a house or a wolf crossing the road foretold disaster. 36

  The night, so favourable to ghosts, filled itself with fantastic monsters, dwarfish women with flowing hair, death's-heads that ran after travellers, footless, headless creatures that moaned as they rolled upon the ground, 'and those who saw them were persuaded or were convinced that they would be killed in war or would presently die of an illness, or that some misfortune was about to fall upon them'. 37

  Other portents foretold wars or defeats. These omens were those extraordinary kind of events that the Romans called portenta and the Aztecs tetzauitl. On the eve of the battle which ended in the victory of the Mexicans a dog spoke to tell its master, an old man of Tlatelolco, of the misfortunes that were about to descend upon his town. The angry old man having killed his dog, a uexolotl, or turkey, which was spreading its tail in the courtyard of his house, opened its beak and spoke. The old man of Tlatelolco

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  grew angrier still, and crying 'You shall not be my omen (amonotinotetzauh)' cut the bird's head off. Then a mask for dancing that he kept hanging on the wall in his house spoke out, and the old man, disturbed by these three prodigies, went to tell the king Moquiuixtli. 'You are drunk, are you not?' said the king. But a little while later the king was struck down on the steps of his temple by the soldiers of Axayacatl. 38

  One day the fowlers of the Mexican lake brought Motecuhzoma II a strange bird that they had just caught. 'In the middle of its head this bird had a round mirror, which showed the sky and the stars . . . When Motecuhzoma looked into this mirror he saw a host of men, all armed and mounted on horses. He sent for his soothsayers and asked them "Do you know what I have seen? Here is a crowd of people coming." But before the soothsayers could reply the bird vanished.' 39

  The Codex Telleriano-Remensis depicts an immense streamer of light leaping from the earth to the stars, under the year 4 calli, or 1509. This phenomenon, which may have been the zodiacal light, was afterwards thought to have heralded the coming of the conquistadores. 'For many nights,' says Ixtlilxochitl, 'there appeared a great brightness that rose from the eastern horizon and reached the heavens; it was shaped like a pyramid, and it flamed . . . and the king of Texcoco, being extremely learned in all the sciences of the ancients, and particularly in astrology . . . concluded from this that his rule and his realm amounted to little; and at this time he ordered his captains and the commanders of his armies to put an end to the wars that they were waging.' 40

  Comets and earthquakes, which were always carefully marked down each year in the hieroglyphic manuscripts, were always considered omens of misfortune. So was the lightning that struck a temple, or waves on the lake, there being no wind to cause them, or again the voice of a woman, such as that which was heard in the air a little before the invasion, moaning and wailing. 41

  Indeed, man had but an insignificant place in the Mexican vision of the world. He was governed by predestination;

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  neither his life nor his after-life were in his own hands, and determinism ruled every phase of his short stay on earth. He was crushed under the weight of the gods and the stars: he was the prisoner of the omnipotent signs. The very world in which he made his brief struggle was no more than an ephemeral shape, one experiment among others, and like them doomed to catastrophe. Horror and horrifying monsters surrounded him on all sides: ghosts and apparitions made their dark signals of despair.

  The moral climate of ancient Mexico was soaked in pessimism. The poems of the great king Nezaualcoyotl are haunted by the idea of death and annihilation; and even when other poets celebrate the beauties of tropical nature one feels that the obsession is there and that 'it takes them by the throat even amidst the flowers'. Religion, and the art that expresses religion through sculpture, and even the manuscripts whose glyphs enclose the wisdom of this ancient people, everything crushes man with the harshness of a fate that is beyond his control.

  But their nobility resided in this, that they accepted the world as they saw it. Theirs was an active pessimism; it did not result in a discouraged idleness but in a fiery zeal for the sacred war, in ardent service of the gods, in the building of cities and the conquest of empires. Brought face to face with a pitiless universe, the Mexican did not attempt to veil it with illusions, but eked out the precarious scrap of life that the gods had granted him with an untamable strength, with labour and with blood.

  AN IMPERIAL RELIGION

  The Aztec civilisation, still young and still in its first flowering, had hardly begun when the European invasion cut short both its growth and the development and buildingup of its religious philosophy.

  Such as it was at the eve of the catastrophe, or such as we understand it to have been, it seems to us both complicated and contradictory, made up of different contributions which had not yet been assimilated and merged into a coherent system.

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  The Mexican was a receptive religion. The conquering Aztecs were only too happy to seize not only the provinces, but also the provincial gods. All foreign gods were welcome within the precincts of the great teocalli, and the priests of Tenochtitlan, eager for knowledge and curious of ritual, willingly adopted the myths and practices of the distant countries that the armies had traversed.

  This was the basis of the great misunderstanding between the Mexicans and the Spaniards. The first worshipped a great many gods and were willing to set up among them whatever the newcomers should bring: the second were the votaries of a closed religion whose churches could rise only upon the ruins of the former temples.

  The complexity of Mexican religion is explained by the complexity of society and the state. If it is a reflection of the world, if it explains the world, still above all it reflects the complex society of which it is the expression.

  Then again, it had become the religion not only of a city but of a very widely spread and diversified c
onfederation. We have little knowledge of the form that the piety of the peasants and plebeians took. There is evidence of the belief of the old agricultural nations such as the Otomí 42 in the primordial junction of sun and earth (father and mother) and this is found again among the Nahuatl Mexicans in the form of the primordial couple, the Lord and the Lady of the Duality, as well as in the invocations which are invariably addressed to the sun-father and the earth-mother.

  We also know that there were deities for districts and guilds, such as Yacatecuhtli, god of the merchants, Coyotlinaual, god of the feather-workers, Uixtociuatl, goddess of the salters, Atlaua, god of the fowlers on the lake. The stellar gods of the nomads from the north had combined with the gods of rain and agriculture which the settled tribes had worshipped since before the Christian era. And in the course of time Huaxte c gods like Tlazolteotl or Yopi gods like Xipe Totec had been brought in, together with all the little gods of drink and the harvest known as the Centzon Totochtin, or the Four Hundred Rabbits.

  In this many-sided pantheon were assembled the beliefs

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  and the aspirations of different social classes and of various peoples. The myth-cycle of the sun is pre-eminently the religion of the warriors devoted to battle and sacrifice. Quetzalcoatl is the ideal of priests yearning for holiness. Tlaloc is the great god of the peasants. Mixcoatl, the god of the northern peoples, had his devotees as well as Xipe Totec, 'lord of the coast', and the plumed serpent of the Toltecs, and the carnal goddess of the eastern nations.