The Religions Book

44

dates back to the Olmec people
and continued after the Spanish
Conquest of Mexico in 1519. Both
men and women of the Mayan
nobility took part—the men
drawing blood from their foreskins,
women from their tongues. They
collected their offerings on strips
of bark paper, which were then
burned; through the smoke from
these offerings, they communicated
with their ancestors and the gods.

Sacrificial rites
Human sacrifice was far more
common among the Aztec than
the Mayans, who performed it only
in special circumstances, such as
the consecration of a new temple.
Aztec sacrifice usually involved
cutting the victim’s heart from his
body. The heart was believed to be
a fragment of the sun’s energy—so
removing the heart was a means of
returning the energy to its source.
The victim was typically held by
four priests over a stone slab in the
temple, while a fifth cut the heart
from the body with an obsidian
knife, and offered it, still beating,
to the gods in a vessel called a
cuauhxicalli, an eagle gourd.
After the removal of the heart,

the body was rolled down the stairs

of the pyramid-shaped temple to

the stone terrace at the base. The

victim’s head was removed and

the arms and legs might also be

cut off. Skulls were displayed on

a skull rack. Depending on the

particular god being honored

in the sacrifice, victims might be

slain in ritual combat, drowned,

shot with arrows, or flayed.

The scale of sacrifice sometimes

reached immense proportions: for

example, at the rededication of the

Aztec temple of Huitzilopochtli, at

Tenochtitlan, in 1487, around 80,400

victims were said to have been

sacrificed to the god, their clotted

blood forming great pools in the

temple precinct. Even if a more

modest estimate of 20,000 victims

is accepted, this was still slaughter

on a vast scale.

The Aztec ritual year was

marked by sacrifices to various

gods and goddesses. Although the

gods could also be propitiated with

SACRIFICE AND BLOOD OFFERINGS

smoke from incense and tobacco,

and with food and precious objects,

blood was what they really craved.

Rituals and the calendar

The Mesoamerican year lasted

260 days, a calendar observed by

both the Mayans and the Aztecs.

At the end of each year in Aztec

society, a man representing

Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the

underworld, was sacrificed in

the temple named Tlalxicco, “the

navel of the world.” It is thought

that the victim was then eaten

by the priests. Just as human

flesh sustained the gods, so by

consuming a god (embodied in

the sacrificial victim) a form of

communion could be enacted.

Less high-ranking celebrants

ate figures made from dough,

into which sacrificial blood

was mixed. To break apart and

consume these dough figures,

known as tzoalli, was also to

commune with the gods.

Such reenactment of the

myths of the gods was a feature of

Aztec belief and of annual rituals.

During the main festival of Xipe

And this goddess

cried many times in

the night desiring the

hearts of men to eat.

Saying of Aztec

goddess Tlaltecuhtli

And when his

festival was celebrated,

captives were slain, washed

slaves were slain.

Aztec hymn to

Huitzilopochtli

Descendants of the Mayans, the

Tzotzil people were put to work on the

Spanish colonists’ estates, and fused

their own beliefs with Christian forms

of worship in a syncretic religion.