The Aztecs by Michael E Smith

Author:Michael E Smith [Smith, Michael E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405194976
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

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

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