down the sun and at the winter solstice to hasten his progress
toward spring. It is presumed that these rites are a projection
of the same religion that is a basis for the sun cults of the
high cultures of Mexico and Peru.
Mesoamerica. The Maya of Mesoamerica developed a
complex civilization that to date has not been entirely re-
vealed to modern researchers. There are still discoveries to
be made in the huge structures now in ruins; they are proba-
bly not cities in a real sense but religious establishments
where a priestly caste expended tremendous energies on
mathematical study and on astronomical observations. They
invented a sign for zero and produced two complicated cal-
endars, which come together every fifty-two years. The site
of one of their complexes was itself a huge calendar by which
they could determine solstices and equinoxes. Since the
Maya hieroglyphics have not been entirely deciphered, and
since many of their sacred books were destroyed by the Span-
iards, there is no clear picture of their complex religious pan-
theon, which involved four aspects for each deity (for the
four points of the compass), or of the characteristics of their
gods, which changed from one area to another. The supreme
deity seems to have been a sky god, pictured as an old man
with a Roman nose; he often performed as a sun god and
was married to the Moon. Rain gods and fertility gods were
also part of the pantheon. It is still unknown why the Maya
civilization collapsed, although many theories, such as cli-
mactic change, conquest, or peasant revolt, have been sug-
gested.
In the tenth century CE, conquering Toltec from Tula
in central Mexico moved into Maya territory, took over the
city of Chichén Itzá, together with many of the Maya
achievements. The Toltec brought with them their culture
hero, the Feathered Serpent, but also their belief that the sun
god died every night and had to be resuscitated every morn-
ing with human blood. They established two priestly warrior
groups, the Eagles, representing the sun in the daytime, and
the Jaguars, representing the sun in the underworld. A frieze
at Chichén Itzá from Toltec times shows members of the
groups presenting a human heart to the sun. The sacrifice
was often succeeded by a cannibalistic feast in which pieces
of the victim, if he had been a great warrior, were passed out
to the elite. A priest donned the skin of the victim and
danced before the people.
The Toltec had perhaps been driven out of the valley
of Mexico by the Aztec, who settled on islands in Lake Tex-
coco and built their elaborate city Tenochtitlán on the site
that is today known as Mexico City. They took over from
their predecessors the temple architecture, their fifty-two-
year calendar, and the sacrifice to the sun, which they carried
to even more grisly lengths. On some occasions as many as
twenty thousand victims were sacrificed on the sun pyramid.
The Aztec believed that on their journey north, their sun
god, Huitzilopochtli, who took the form of a hummingbird,
led them in the day, and the fearsome Tezcatlipoca, the sun
of the underworld, led them at night. A third form of the
sun represented the physical disk of the sun, under the name
of Tonatiuh. He appears on the huge calendar stone, thirteen
feet across, that is now in the Museo Nacional de An-
tropología. This stone pictures the four suns that the Aztecs
believed had existed before them and the fifth, under which
they lived. The former suns had been destroyed by storms,
floods, and darkness, and the present sun, represented by
Tonatiuh, was to end in an earthquake. The whole calendar
is circled by fire serpents, which the Sun uses to fight his ene-
mies at night. The entire religion of the Aztec was suffused
with the battle between light and darkness and life and death.
The universe, they believed, would fall into ruins if they did
not feed the “skeleton” sun every morning as he rose.
It seems to have been the priesthood, possibly under the
influence of psychedelic drugs, who drove the armies to seek
increasing numbers of conquests in order to provide prison-
ers for the sacrifices. Huitzilopochtli is said to have pro-
claimed, “My principal purpose in coming and my vocation
is war.” All young Aztec were educated for war and taught
to endure pain. There is a story told of the gladiatorial battle
that followed the morning sacrifice in which a captive was
tied to a stone and given four staves to defend himself against
two Eagle and two Jaguar knights. Once, a captive miracu-
lously won his battle and was released, but he returned to die
on the stone so that he would not lose the privilege of accom-
panying the sun across the sky every morning. In the after-
noon, the sun was followed by women who had died in
childbirth, for they had also died “taking a man prisoner.”
Peru. In Mexico the Sun became one of the most blood-
thirsty of all divinities, but the sun god of the Inca of Peru
was an autocratic but paternalistic deity, who planned for the
welfare of his people while controlling their every action. In
the high civilization of Peru, the sun again symbolized royal
power; images of the sun were emblazoned with the most lav-
ish display of the sun’s metal ever seen. In Peruvian society
there was no trade in (as there was among the Aztec) nor use
for metal, except for extravagant adornment of the gods and
royal personages.
A number of Spanish chronicles have recorded Inca rule
as one of the most orderly and regulated in the world. All
land was owned by the state and was divided into church,
state, and peasant holdings. Inca territory was divided into
four quarters ruled by governors, who were subordinate to
the emperor, the son of the Sun. The emperor controlled the
priesthood, usually making his brother high priest.
The leading tribes that formed the Inca empire seem to
have arrived in Cuzco from somewhere around Lake Titica-
ca. Their legend told that the founder and his sister, children
of the Sun, were set down by their father on an island in the
lake. The first emperor is said to have been sent by his father,
the Sun, to establish a city at the place where the golden
wand the Sun carried struck the ground. This site was Cuzco,
at eleven thousand feet above sea level. It was apparently the
custom for each new emperor to build his own palace, so that
the site became a maze of buildings, temples, and palaces,8842 SUN