Idea of Death in Aztec Culture: Myths and Legends
The ancient Aztec civilization had a perspective on life and death that is remarkably different from the perspective of many modern cultures. This was largely shaped by the Aztec religion, which permeated almost every aspect of ancient Aztec life.
Background of the Ancient Aztec Civilization
The term Aztec may refer to certain native ethnic groups that lived in what is now Mexico. It can also refer to those who spoke the Nahuatl language and lived in Mesoamerica between the 14th and 16th centuries. The most specific group to which the term Aztec may refer, and which is the definition most people associate with the term, are the peoples of Mexican ethnic descent who founded the city of Tenochtitlan in 1325 and later developed the Aztec empire. Tenochtitlan was the capital of the empire until the Spanish conquered it in 1521, and was the heart of the ancient Aztec civilization.
The ancient Aztec civilization was well advanced, boasting achievements in architecture, mathematics, medicine, language, agriculture, and technology. The Aztecs also developed and lived on two calendar systems that served different purposes: a solar calendar that measured time and a ritual calendar for religious holidays. Its governmental, political, military and class structures were highly developed and complex. They were entertained by art, poetry, games and sports, the latter being so important in Aztec life that the celebrity of their successful athletes rivaled that of modern professional athletes.
But what the Aztecs may have been remarkable for is their religion, and specifically the massive human sacrifice it demanded. Human sacrifice performed for religious purposes is not unique to ancient Aztec civilization, but the scale of human sacrifice performed by the Aztecs is; historians estimate that the Aztecs sacrificed thousands of people each year. The people of the Aztec empire were used for human sacrifice, but the Aztecs also fought with strangers for the express purpose of capturing more candidates for human sacrifice.
Human Sacrifice in Aztec Culture
Probably the barbaric aspect of Aztec rituals that has been written about most is human sacrifice. We know these practices because they were documented through pre-Hispanic art, archaeological excavations and accounts of the colonial era. The Aztecs offered human sacrifices because they believed it was the way to attract "cosmic balance," or to ensure that the sun would continue to rise and the rain would continue to feed the earth. According to Aztec mythology, the gods sacrificed to each other to keep the sun moving. When the rain fed their crops, the Aztecs believed they had to give back to the rain gods by sacrificing children. Thus, death through human sacrifice was a way the Aztecs believed they prolonged life, balancing and feeding the universe.
The Aztecs believed that human life was part of a cosmic movement of energy. In the Nahuatl language, the word for sacrifice was Ueman. Uemmana combines mana, which means to pass, and ventli, which means to offer. The sacrifices were the way the Aztecs returned vital energy to its source, which was necessary to maintain the energy cycle. Blood was the water of life, and it was the preferred offering to God. The most common public form was to tear the victim's heart from his chest with a sacrificial stone. The stone was called quauhxicalli, eagle's stone, and the victims were placed like an eagle spread over it. The stone was moulded in such a way that it forced the victim's body to retreat and force the chest upwards towards the tecpatl, the sacrificial knife. The ritual required six priests. Four of them held the victim down, the fifth grabbed the throat, and the sixth cut and grabbed the heart. He held the heart to the sun before throwing it into the image of the god. The body was thrown down the steps and usually multiple victims were sacrificed, so there was a huge pile of bodies.
Another type of sacrifice was self-sacrifice. They used volcanic glass, obsidian or cactus spines to cut themselves, or even formed a cord of spines through their penis or tongue. Sometimes they soaked bark paper with blood before their offering.
Xiuhtecuhtli, the God of Fire
There was also a burn to honor Xiuhtecuhtli, god of fire. They celebrated Xipe Totec, Our Froggy Lord, god of vegetation and new plants. The victim was shot with arrows, allowing it to fall to the ground as blood escaped from his body. Once the body had finally stopped bleeding, it was whipped and the skin was used by a young man in a ritual that resembled a fresh bud of a plant emerging from the shell of an old plant.
The victims were generally prisoners of war. They went to their death as messengers to the Aztec gods. In some circumstances they were seen as earthly representations of the gods, called ixiptla, which means likeness of the gods. The gods were visible to the crowd of spectators as they became one with the victims.
They also honored Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of the rivers. A young woman, dressed as ixiptla, was sacrificed during the celebration of Huey Tozoztli at Lake Texcoco. His blood was collected and poured into water.
Death from Natural Causes
According to the "Florentine Codex" created by the 16th century priest and author Bernardino De Sahagún, the treatment of a corpse and the path of the soul depended on the social position of the person and the way in which he died. For example, if a person died of old age, he went to the Aztec concept of Hades, known as Mictlan. This was a dark underworld ruled by Mictlantecuhtli, the skeletal god of death who is described as similar to Charon, the boatman of Hades in the Greek myth. To prepare the old body for its journey to Mictlan, people would wrap it in paper and secure it by wrapping it in a tightly woven cloth. They cremated the body together with a dog, so that the person had a guide and a companion in the underworld.
Some accounts say that the souls of the dead found peace of extinction after their initial trials through Mictlan. But other accounts suggest that they suffered eternally and found relief only one day a year, the Day of the Dead, which is still celebrated today as the day when souls return and mingle with the living.
There is a version of Mictlan described in a codex of Quetzalcoatl's journey at the beginning of the era. Quetzalcoatl went down to Mictlán first passing through the body of Coatlicue, goddess of the earth. He then traveled east of Mictlan and cremated himself on a pyre and his body was remade into a flock of birds. In that form he traveled south, and is said to have died by beheading or dismemberment. Then it passed without any harm through the body of the goddess Tlazolteotl. She found two temples in the west, one containing the souls of the women who died in childbirth and the other containing other warrior souls. Then it passed through Tlaltecuhtli, the monster of the earth and divided into Quetzalcoatl Red and Quetzalcoatl Black. Finally he came north and sacrificed his Red Quetzalcoatl and threw himself, Black Quetzalcoatl, on a sacrificial pyre. His spirit rose from Mictlan to the heavens and there he was known as Venus, the Morning Star.
Heroes of Death
Warriors fallen in battle and those who voluntarily gave themselves as human sacrifices were considered heroes and went to Tlaloc, a "paradise" after death that shone with eternal springs and gold. The Aztecs had more than one paradise of life after death, and Tlaloc was the fourth heaven, named after the rain god of the same name whose heavenly duty was to keep the blazing crops alive from the food of rain. Instead of being cremated, the hero was buried in the ground with objects representing images of the mountain gods associated with Tlaloc. The Aztecs believed that heroes had "fire-like souls" and wrapped their bodies in a cloth decorated with birds and butterflies to symbolize the essence of their soul. It was also believed that when a warrior died, his death honored the sun god and the departing warrior soul would find its way to Tlaloc through the rays of the sun.
Monuments to Death
Some Aztecs were commemorated through works of art. According to Dr. Manuel Aguilar-Moreno, professor of Latin American studies at UCLA, Aztec sculptures are not simply the result of random artistic inspiration, but are "the result of a monumental synthesis of religious and cultural concepts. He points out that a vital aspect of Aztec sculpture is the "abstraction of whole images that preserve concrete and realistic details". Dr. Aguilar-Moreno points out that Aztec dreams, myths and illusions related to life and death were described and represented in the sculptures.