MESOAMERICAN RELIGIONS

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MESO-AMERICAN RELIGIONS

• MAYAN, TOLTEC, AZTEC

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Mayan and Aztec Civilizations

• Mayan civilization 250-900 CE Aztec civilization
  1325-1521 CE

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Aztec Conquests 1427-1519
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Urban Civilizations

• Extensive agricultural base
• Centralized government religion
• Job specialization results in social
  stratification and growth in knowledge
• Increase in warfare as subsistence hunting
  declines
• Large concentrated populations create disposable
  people

Aztec practice of floating islands
for agriculture, called chinampas
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Agriculture, Cosmology Death

• All that dies is reborn, younger and more
  beautiful than before. All that dies and reborn
  brings forth fluids blood and water.
• Corn dies at harvest and is reborn the next
  spring
• Sun dies every evening, reborn each morning
• Warriors who fell in battle, and sacrificial
  victims became quauhtecatl, companions of the
  eagle, present at each sunrise eventually they
  were reincarnated as hummingbirds
• Peasants reborn in Tlalocs garden paradise

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Aztec Empire and Warfare

• The need for warfare is a cosmic duty
• Those who die in warfare or as sacrifices are
  deified (same is true for women who die in
  childbirth)
• Flowery wars (xochiyaoyotl) conducted between
  rival cities to garner captives
• Aztecs insisted Huitzilipochtli be adopted by
  conquered cities, but otherwise allowed
  traditional religion to be followed in subject
  territories

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Mayan Temple

• Pyramidal shape reflects cosmology
• Tripartite universe of earth, that which is
  below, and that which is above
• Chichen Itza, from the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico

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El Mirador, Mayan site in Guatemala(artists
conception)
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El Mirador, Mayan site, Guatemala
artists conception
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Temple Stairs

• Cival site artists reconception (from National
  Geographic)
• Stairs quite steep, to provide priests,
  dignitaries and sacrificial victims an altered
  state of consciousness

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Aztec Temple Stairs (Tenayuca)
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Tenochtitlan

• Lake bed in the Valley of Mexico
• Causeways from land to the city
• Location of modern-day Mexico City
• Name derived from legend of founding means
  place-by-the-prickly-pear-cactus
• Capital of the Aztec empire

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Huitzilipochtli

• Specific to Aztecs
• God of Sun and War
• Last-born child of Coatlicue, slays siblings

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Coyolxauhqui

• Moon goddess who leads attack on Coatlicue
• Defeated and dismembered by Huitzilipochtli
• Cosmology of constant struggle reinforced by the
  cycles of the moon

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• Huitzilipochtli
• Hummingbird-on-the-left (direction of the rising
  sun)

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Why a Hummingbird?

• Hummingbirds are fierce, territorial, seemingly
  armed in their very anatomy
• Hummingbirds have a fleeting, intense, constantly
  changing beauty and metallic sheen

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Influence of Nature

• Meso-Americans were keen observers of nature
• Animals influenced their mythology and art
• Hummingbird Annas 88 Butterfly

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Mictlantecuhtli

• Aztec god of the underworld
• Life-sized sculpture from ceremonial center in
  Tenochtitlan
• Associated with owls, bats, and spiders
• Connected to all three kinds of deaths in Aztec
  cosmology (1) normal death (old age, disease)
  (2) heroic death (warfare, child-birth) (3)
  non-heroic death

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Mictlantecuhtli

• Aztec god of the underworld
• Statues in temples received blood offerings

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Tlaloc

• Rain god
• Goggle effect composed of two snakes converging

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Tlaloc
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Xochiquetzal
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The battlefield is the placewhere one toasts
the divine liquor in war,where are stained red
the divine eagles,where the jaguars howl,where
all kinds of precious stones rain from
ornaments,where wave headdresses rich with fine
plumes,where princes are smashed to bits.There
is nothing like death in war,nothing like the
flowery deathso precious to Him who gives
lifefar off I see it my heart yearns for it.
(from Robert Hull, The Ancient World of the
Aztecs)

• WAR POETRY OF THE AZTECS

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MORE WAR POETRY OF THE AZTECS

• Death is here among the flowers,
• in the midst of the plains!
• Close to the war,
• When the war begins,
• In the midst of the plains,
• The dust rises as if it were smoke,
• Entangled and twisted round
• With the flowery strands of death...
• Be not afraid, my heart!
• In the midst of the plain
• My heart craves death
• By the sharpness of the obsidian blades
• This is all my heart craves
• Death is war...
• (from Miguel Leon-Portilla Native Mesoamerican
  Spirituality 218) - note flower and smoke

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Logic of Sacrifice (general)

• Sacrifice means, etymologically, to make
  sacred any thing, being, or person sacrificed
  has achieved sacred status
• Sacrifice, in common language use, can mean
  anything that we give where the giving is not
  easy, or cheap, such as sacrificing time to a
  noble cause.
• Essentially, sacrifice is a form of gift-giving.
  Gift-giving is a way of maintaining relationships
  (think, Mothers Day!). You are supposed to give
  the best quality gift you can because of your
  respect/love/gratitude for the recipient.

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Logic of Blood Sacrifice in Ancient Mexico

• The deities need blood to fuel their on-going
  creative and sustaining functions.
• The nobility would engage in auto-sacrifice,
  a.k.a. bloodletting, since they were at the
  pinnacle of the hierarchy of power.
• As more and better sacrifices were sometimes
  necessary, human sacrifices, particularly of
  captured enemy warriors (who would have high
  status in their tribes), came to complement
  auto-sacrifice.

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Lady Xocs Auto-Sacrifice Ritual(Mayan)
Lady Xoc is running a scorpions spine over her
tongue, and allowing the blood to soak paper
(in the basket) which will later be burned
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Aztec Human Sacrifice
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Aztec Emperors

• Itzcoatl (r. 1427-1440) (Tlacaéllel's uncle)
• Moctezuma I (r. 1440-1469) (Tlacaéllel's
  half-brother) (a.k.a. Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina)
• Axayácatl (r. 1469-1481) (grandson of Iztcoatl
  thus Tlacaéllel's second cousin)
• Tízoc (1481-1486) - Tlacaéllel may have ordered
  his assassination
• Auítzotl (1486-1502) - Tlacaéllel dies soon after
  Auítzol ascends
• Moctezuma II (1502-1520) - the more famous (to
  moderns) Moctezuma, a.k.a. Motecuhzoma II),
  emperor when Cortes and the Spanish arrived

Stylized representation of Moctezuma I
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Tlacaéllel (1397-1487), Chief Advisor to Aztec
Emperors

• He elevated the deity Huitzilipochtli, who was
  distinct to the Aztecs, to a pre-eminent
  position. Huitzilipochtli was a god of war, who
  was at war with other deities (i.e. other tribes)
  from the moment of his birth. Aztecs allowed
  conquered cities to continue to worship their own
  gods, but they had to incorporate Huitzilipochtli
  as well (a practice similar to the Roman empire).
  Huitzilipochtli underlined the cosmological
  importance and unending nature of warfare. He
  promised rewards to warriors who died in battle,
  while also demanding high quality (i.e. enemy
  warrior) human sacrifices. As an incarnation of
  the sun, whose initial act consisted of
  dismembering the moon goddess, Huitzilipochtli
  specifically encouraged a dualism of sun v.
  forces of night/evil

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Huitzilipochtli and Tlacaéllel

• Tlacaéllel destroyed previous written records of
  the Aztecs, to better link them to
  Huitzilipochtli and the Toltecs
• Tlacaéllel stressed the need for
  warfare-in-permanence to provide captives
• Under Tlacaéllel, religion became increasingly
  literalistic

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Shamans to Priests Shamans, by virtue of
different abilities, granted by an inaccessible
authority, are different from other members of
the tribe. Thus, shamanism marks the beginning of
(a literal) hierarchy With urban civilizations,
hierarchy is complicated by social
stratification and job specialization Shamans
become priests when job specialization must be
regularized, compelled by urban societies which
are dependent on (an increasingly alienated)
agricultural base.
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Urban Societies ? Shamanism

• The sheer magnitude and anonymity of urban
  societies dictates a change in the nature of
  rituals performed
• Rituals exist to protect society as a whole,
  rather than addressing individual needs.
• Priests officiate over rituals that are often
  scheduled, following a regular calendar.
• In Meso-American urban cultures (Maya, Toltec,
  Aztec), order, predictability and regularity were
  treasured values, so having an orderly,
  predictable, and regularized ritual calendar
  reinforced and patterned this desire.

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Shamans to Priests

• in Meso-American culture, there are two other
  dynamics at play
• relative lack of animals for game means that
• a) the hunting function of a shaman atrophies,
  and
• b) therefore, instead, the shaman adopts
  characteristics of beasts of prey,
• such as jaguar, eagle, hummingbird, etc.
• 2) The need to maintain and ensure order and
  regularity
• calls for specialized study, abstracted from
  everyday vicissitudes
• such as illness and disease -
• e.g. astronomy, calendar, ritual.
• The result is that the healing function of the
  shaman
• reverts to women healers (a.k.a. curanderas),
• and the priests retain only the formality of
  ritual,
• not the as-needed character of healing ritual

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Priests

• A priest is a ritual officiant, who can perform
  rituals so that they are efficacious
• A priest is a technician of the sacred the
  skills a priest wields are of a technical nature,
  not accessible or allowable to non-priests
• Priestly systems of religion exist where religion
  needs to protect and bless society as a whole,
  rather than individuals per se.
• The technical efficacy of the ritual a priest
  performs must be logically separable from the
  moral qualities of the priest

Traditional Mayan priest, June 2007, on
pilgrimage to perform ritual to goddess Ixchel
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Tlamatinime

• Knowers of things
• Aztec philosophers, derived from captured
  intelligensia of the Toltecs
• Develop cosmology of Flowers and Songs as the
  only truly real things in the world
• Counter-balance to warriors and priests,
  ambivalent toward warfare and empire

Mayan philosopher