Aztec Lore and Rituals

Birth of Huitzilopochtli.

The legend relates how the goddess of the earth, Coatlicue, gets pregnant with Huitzilopochtli when a ball of feathers falling from the sky touches her while she was living at the top of the "serpent mountain" or Coatepec. The daughter of Coatlicue, called Coyolxuhqui, enraged by her mother's dishonorable pregnancy called her four hundred brothers the Centzon Huitznahuas, to kill Coatlique. It was then when Huitzilopochtli was born, and saved his mother by slaying the Centzon Huiznahuas. Coyolxuhqui was also killed, and her body was dismembered and thrown down Coatepec. Her head was thrown into the sky, where she became the moon, and the Centzon Huitznahuas became the stars (Codice Azcatitlan 566-567).

Aztec Cosmology

The Aztec believed that the universe was divided into different levels, and therefore the levels of the Templo Mayor pyramid represented the levels of the universe. The pyramid itself was the earthly level. Above the pyramid were the thirteen levels of the sky; which was were the creation gods lived, and below the pyramid were the nine levels of the underworld (Matos Moctezuma 1989: 115-120).

Aztec Sacrifice

Human sacrifice was practiced among the Aztec in the following way: the people to be sacrificed were placed in the stone of sacrifices, the priests proceeded to rip the heart by opening the chest with a big obsidian knife and placed the hearth in a special urn as an offering to the god for which the sacrifice was performed (Coe 1994: 177). Sacrificial victims were often prisoners captured by the Aztec in their wars against the surrounding cities. There is evidence that after the ritual some of the victims were decapitated and the skin of the head was pealed off to conserve the skull, which was transformed into a mask or placed into an altar called "tzonpantli", or skull rack in the Aztec Nahuatl language (Robles 71). Sacrifices in honor of Huitzilopochtli were meant to help the sun rise again the next morning. On the other hand, sacrifices in honor of Tlaloc had a different purpose. These sacrifices were intended to persuade Tlaloc in order to bring the rain necessary for the agriculture of maize, which was the base of Aztec diet. Since crops like maize cannot grow without rain, the purpose of this ritual suggests that sacrifices in honor of Tlaloc were therefore a way for the Aztecs to request fertility.

Ritual of The New Fire

The ceremony of the new fire was a cyclical ritual based on the Aztec calendar, which denotes the beginning and the end of an era by dividing time into cycles of fifty-two years. The ritual therefore was practiced every fifty two solar years. It consisted on bringing new fire from the mountain known as Cerro de la Estrella, and then setting it on top of the Templo Mayor. If the new fire failed to ignite then the sun would die and the end of the era of the fifth sun would arrive with earthquakes and famines. On the other hand, if the new ire was successfully lit, it was redistributed to the other temples of Tenochtitlan and to the cities under Aztec control in celebration of continuance of their solar era. The symbolism of this ritual is of particular importance because it represented the renovation of cosmic time at the end of a solar era. The ritual also reinforced the ideology of the Aztec to think of the Templo Mayor as the center of the universe since the fire was distributed from there to all the limits of the Aztec world ( Lopez Lujan 1994: 97-103).

Legend of the Creation of the Suns

The Aztec legend of the creation of the suns. This myth relates the creation of five distinct eras each started with the creation of a new sun, and ending with its destruction. During each era different types of men were created and evolved as a new sun was created. The Aztec believed that the world was in the fifth era. This era started when two ancient gods, Tecucistecatl and Nanahuatzin, gathered in the city of Teotihuacan. There they lit the sacred fire into which Nanahuatzin threw himself to create the new sun, Tonatihu, and Tecucistecatl sacrificed himself afterwards creating the moon (Moctezuma 2004: 40).

Festival of Tlacaxipehualitztli

The festival of Tlacaxipehualitztli, or "the flaying of man", took place during the second month of the ritual year and it was dedicated to the god Xipe-Totec, who was the god of spring. During Tlacaxipehualitztli prisoners of war were given weapons made out of feathers and were forced to fight against well-armed Aztec warriors. After the prisoners were wounded, they were placed lying on the solar stone and the sacrifice was enacted. The skin of the sacrificed were removed and worn by the priests in representation of Xipe-Totec's self-flaying so that the earth would provide good maize harvests throughout the year.