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Aztec Gods

                      Quetzalcoatl

Aztec Gods.—The main features of the Aztec religion were the prominence of its moral code, and of the worship of ancestors and of the sun, the multitude of its gods and idols, its assertion of the equality of all men before the gods, and the frequency and number of its human sacrifices. It had a well-trained and pow­erful priesthood, numerous temples, an elaborate cere­monial, and a complete control of the faith of the people. All ranks accepted the sacerdotal fictions of the super­natural with unquestioning faith. They believed in an immortal life after death for all men and for all beasts, with a heaven in the East for the good and a hell in the West for the bad. The happiest future was to be enjoyed by brave warriors slain honorably in battle, by women dying in childbirth, by victims sacrificed to the gods, and generally by those men who, as high officials, had done credit to their station and valuable service to their country.

There were thousands of divinities. There was one for every occupation, for every virtue, for every prominent natural object or phenomenon, and for every nationality and district. The soul of every man after he died, became a god; and the deceased father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were the chief objects of worship in every family. In public, and by the priests, devotion was paid to the great gods who had never been human, but with the people, the chief objects of adora­tion were the minor ancestral divinities.

The divinity that received the most general worship was the sun. When the sun rose the priests said, “He begins his work,” and in all the temples, no matter to which divinity dedicated, they saluted him with horn-blowing, incense, prayers, and sacrifices of quails. When the sun sets, they said, ‘ He has finished his work.’ Ac­cording to a common legend, the gods collected at the beginning of time to decide which of them should govern the world, but as soon as the sun made his appearance all the others died. Fire was considered the sacred earthly representative of the sun, and was addressed by the same title, “Father of all the gods,” and as “the oldest of the gods.”

No such universality of worship was paid to any other divinity, not even to the deities within the domains of their respective nationalities. Tezcatlipoca was spoken of as the creator, governor, and all-pervading soul of the universe, the author of morality, the god of repentance and forgiveness. He was represented by figures of fire, river, arrow, and snake, as emblems of the four elements, which he had created. His idols had four eyes, suggest­ing that he sees everything, and held four arrows, indicat­ing his justice and the Pestilences that he sends in the punishment of sin; and a wreath of smoke ascends to his ear as a symbol of the prayer of the penitent to whom he gives a merciful hearing. At his annual festival sins were confessed to the priests and absolved by them. Flowers and incense were offered in his temples; and also bloody sacrifices occasionally, though, according to some priests, they were inconsistent with the spirit of his worship. Notwithstanding the multitude of divinities, idols, and temples, many of the prayers had a monotheistic phraseology. The god from whom favors were solicited was addressed as if he were the only one whom the wor­shiper recognized. This habit of treating one, in a great multitude of divinities, as if he were omnipotent and exclusively divine, is common among polytheists.

In every department of life the great influence of their religion on the people was apparent. Their worship was not limited to the temples and to public occasions. It accompanied every important action. Before eating or drinking, a small portion was invariably offered on the hearth to the household god. The people never left their houses without adoring the domestic divinity by touching the earth at the doorway with the hand, which they then kissed. When an Aztec added after an assertion that it was true “as God sees me,” he was be­lieved. A very solemn and sacred form of oath was, “By the life of our father the sun and of our mother the earth.” A new dwelling could not be occupied until it had been consecrated by a priest.³ The gods were sup­posed to attend and watch over human beings at all times and to give them omens indicating the results of every undertaking, great or small; and for these omens the people were always looking under the guidance of fancies which were often potent in proportion to the ignorance on which they were based. Before invading an enemy’s country the Aztecs offered sacrifices to the gods of the land, and when they conquered a district they adopted and honored the local divinity. It was their highest duty to conquer all other nations and compel them to worship Huitzilopochtli, their god of war.

Aztec Temples.—Temples were numerous; some of them large and prominent, others small. In the cities and chief towns there was at least one for every thousand of inhabitants. Izcucan, with three thousand houses, had one hundred temples. The court of the great temple in the city of Mexico was four hundred yards square, and it enclosed forty temple pyramids, each dedicated to a different god. Its buildings had accom­modations for five thousand ecclesiastical attendants, and for a garrison of ten thousand soldiers, who were to oc­cupy it in time of danger. The largest of the temple pyramids was one hundred and twenty yards square on the ground, with an area of sixty-five by eighty yards on the upper level. Each god had his own set of priests.

The inside of the inclosing wall was lined with cells in which certain nobles and officials stayed while un­dergoing a regular fast and penance of four days. Rooms, said to number four hundred, served for the instruction of boys and girls and for the shelter of indi­gent and sick persons. Other rooms were used for stor­ing arms, musical instruments, incense, thorns, and relics of victims sacrificed, including human hides. One build­ing was a lodging-house for guests of the emperor; another was a place for instruction in music. In the courts were a bathing-tank for washing away the sins of penitents after confession; and a large stone to which a prisoner, desirous of fighting for his life, might be chained. If he succeeded in defeating successively six assailants, he was entitled to his life and freedom. When Cortes took this temple, the main court, opposite to the western entrance, had a pyramid of; 30,000 hu­man skulls, the remains of so many victims there sacri­ficed to the gods.

Every temple or chapel in large temple grounds was consecrated to a special divinity, and had his idol in the most sacred chamber, with an altar before it for offerings. The divine images were generally in the form of men, but also of women, beasts, and monsters, and were of stone, wood, or burned clay, those of the latter material being usually hollow, and some of them so made that a priest could go into the figure and deliver his oracles or declare his auguries through the mouth of the god. Idols were also found at the sides of the streets, so that persons passing in haste could pay their devotions by a brief prayer or an obeisance. When a living sacrifice was offered, the mouth of the idol was always smeared with the blood, which was regarded as especially acceptable to the gods.

Among the temple implements was a drum. It had four metal plates, presumably like gongs, each of which gave out a different tone, and when struck with great force made a noise so loud that it could be heard at a distance of five miles.

Besides the temples, there were other buildings occu­pied by sacerdotal communities, some of men and others of women, living under vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience to the rules and superiors of their respective orders. The women inmates of these institutions could creditably leave at any time for the purpose of accepting an offer of marriage; and while they remained they spent their time in spinning, weaving, and other household labor, and in ecclesiastical observances.

Religious festivals were frequent and were conducted with much pomp. There was one on the last day of every month, and an important one on the last day of the year. The greatest was at the beginning of the cycle, after several weeks of fasting, penance, and humiliation. According to their mythology, the world was to conic to an end at the close of one of their cycles, and they acted as if they feared that each would be the last. Many con­fessed their sins, swept their houses, put out their fires, destroyed or cleaned their clothing and furniture, threw their millstones and ancestral idols into the water, and when the old cycle had come to an end marched in pro­cession to a sacred hill, where the chief priest undertook to kindle a new fire on the breast of a prostrate slave. So soon as the smoke showed that the experiment would be a success, a glad shout announced that the gods had granted a continuation of life to mankind, and that all the sins of the past had been absolved. The slave on whom the fire had been kindled was burned with the new flame, which was then distributed among the people, so that each could carry it to his own home. Days of general festivity followed.

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