Pre-Columbian Religions

C

Religious Leadership and Rituals

For the Mayas, religious leadership was the responsibility of the kings and nobles. One of the rulers' principal duties was to determine proper courses of action by communicating with their ancestors and the gods in visionary trances. Self-mutilation for the purpose of shedding blood was a central element of vision-seeking rituals. The loss of blood helped to bring on hallucinations, and the shed blood was offered as a sacrifice to the gods. The prophecies provided by the calendrical cycles governed the scheduling of rituals. The most solemn ceremonies were reenactments of the death and rebirth of the gods. In these rituals a ruler or noble who had been captured in battle was dressed as a god and then killed as a sacrificial offering. The capture of high-ranking individuals who could be sacrificed as god-impersonators was the primary goal of warfare among the Maya city-states throughout most of the Classic period.

D

The Destination of Souls

For the average Maya the prospect of the afterlife was wretched (see Eschatology). After death souls descended into the underworld, called the Place of Fright. It was a cold, damp, foul-smelling region ruled by cruel and fearsome deities. For most souls there was no escape. Deceased Maya rulers, however, could flee the underworld and be reborn as the sun, the moon, or Venus—that is, as an astronomical body that descends below the horizon and then rises again. In being reborn this way, rulers reenacted the deeds of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who defeated the rulers of the underworld in an athletic contest, then rose victorious to the sky, where they were deified as the sun and the moon.

IV

Aztec Religion

As in the case of the Mayas, a few Aztec codices survive. In addition, after the Spanish conquest, Mesoamerican peoples such as the Aztecs were quick to begin writing in Spanish and to transcribe their own languages into the Roman alphabet. As a result, sources written by native authors are much more common in Mesoamerica than in the Andes.

A

The Nature of the Universe

Like the Mayas, the Aztecs believed in multiple creations and destructions of the universe, but with important differences. Most notably, the Aztecs thought they were living in the fifth and final cycle of creation, the so-called Fifth Sun. At the end of this cycle everything would be swallowed by eternal darkness, and there would be no Sixth Sun. The ultimate destruction of the universe could not be prevented, but it could be delayed. The Aztecs saw the sun as a warrior who fought a daily battle across the sky against the forces of darkness. As long as the sun remained strong, he would prevail in combat and the universe would survive. The Aztecs believed they could keep the sun strong by nourishing him with a source of vital energy: human blood, preferably the vigorous blood of warriors captured in battle. To the Aztecs, unceasing warfare and human sacrifice were sacred duties upon which the preservation of the universe depended.

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Befitting their central role as allies of the sun, the Aztecs thought they lived at the center of the universe. Their earth was divided into four quadrants, each with typical Mesoamerican color-direction symbolism, though the specific pairings of colors and directions were different from those of the Mayas. The four quarters met at the main temple (Templo Mayor) of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital. This temple was also the point where supernatural forces from the heavens and the underworld came together. The heavens were composed of 13 ascending levels. The sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars traveled through the lower levels. The upper levels were the homes of winds, storms, colors, and remote gods. The underworld contained 9 levels, all descending, unpleasant, and dangerous.

B

Gods and Goddesses

The Aztecs, relative newcomers to central Mexico, joined their tribal deities with older Mesoamerican concepts of godhood, including color-direction symbolism and a complicated ceremonial calendar. The result was a pantheon of shifting and overlapping gods and goddesses—actually divine complexes that could take different forms in different ceremonial contexts. Some of these gods were ancient Mesoamerican deities related to fertility and agricultural production, such as the rain god Tlaloc. Others were personages with complicated origins, combinations of heroes and gods from the Mesoamerican historical and mythological pasts. Examples of these god-hero combinations included Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent) and Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror), the creators of the fifth universe.

The patron and sponsor of the Aztec empire was Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird on the Left). His origins were obscure, but he probably developed as a combination of hero and god before the Aztecs migrated into central Mexico. During the Aztecs' rise to imperial power he became identified with Tonatiuh, who was the warrior sun, and with the Blue Tezcatlipoca of the south (the young, strong sun of spring and summer). Through this blending, Huitzilopochtli emerged as the sun who defended the universe and had to be fed with human blood. The Templo Mayor, the main temple of Aztec state religion, was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc.