From: Fernandinande of Lemuria <lemurama@mindXspring.com>
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.slack
Reply-To: Fernandinande of Lemuria
Date: Tue, Jul 31, 2001 11:17 AM
As well-trained, methodical butchers of the battlefield
and as
citizens of the land of the Inquisition, Cortés
and his men,
who arrived in Mexico in 1519, were inured to displays
of cruelty
and bloodshed. It must have come as no great surprise
to them
that the Aztecs methodically sacrificed human beings,
inasmuch
as the Spaniards and other Europeans methodically broke
people's
bones on the rack, pulled people's arms and legs off
in tugs-of-
war between horses, and disposed of women accused of
witchcraft
by burning them at the stake[1]. Still, they were not
quite prepared
for what they found in Mexico.
Nowhere else in the world had there developed a state-sponsored
religion whose art, architecture and ritual were so
thoroughly
dominated by violence, decay, death and disease. Nowhere
else
were walls and plazas of great temples and palaces reserved
for
such a concentrated display of jaws, fangs, claws, talons,
bones
and gaping death heads. The eyewitness accounts of Cortés
and his
fellow conquistador, Bernal Dïaz, leave no doubt
concerning the
ecclesiastical meaning of the dreadful visages portrayed
in stone.
The Aztec gods ate people. They ate human hearts and
they drank
human blood. And the declared function of the Aztec
priesthood was
to provide fresh human hearts and human blood in order
to prevent
the remorseless deities from becoming angry and crippling,
sickening, withering, and burning the whole world.
The Spaniards first glimpsed the inside of a major Aztec
temple as
the invited guests of Moctezuma, the last of the Aztec
kings.
Moctezuma had not yet made up his mind concerning Cortés's
intentions - an error which was shortly to prove fatal
for him -
when he invited the Spaniards up 114 steps to the twin
temples of
Uitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, which stood at the top of
Tenochtitlán's
tallest pyramid in the centre of what is today Mexico
City. As they
mounted the steps, wrote Bernal Dïaz, other temples
and shrines
OEall gleaming white' came into view. In the open space
at the top
of the pyramid OEthe great stones stood on which they
placed the poor
Indians for sacrifice.' Here also was OEa bulky image
like a dragon,
and other evil figures and much blood shed that very
day.' Then
Moctezuma let them see the image of Uitzilopochtli,
with its OEvery
broad face and monstrous and terrible eyes,' before
which OEthey
were burning the hearts of three Indians whom they had
sacrificed
that day.' The walls and floor of the temple OEwere
so splashed and
encrusted with blood that they were black' and the OEwhole
place
stank vilely.' In Tlaloc's temple, too, everything was
covered
with blood, OEboth walls and altar, and the stench was
such that
we could hardly wait for the moment to get out of it.'
The main source of food for the Aztec gods was prisoners
of war,
who were marched up the steps of the pyramids to the
temples,
seized by four priests, spread-eagled backward over
the stone
altar, and slit open from one side of the chest to the
other with
an obsidian knife wielded by a fifth priest. The victim's
heart -
usually described as still beating - was then wrenched
out and
burned as an offering. The body was rolled down the
pyramid steps,
which were built deliberately steep to accommodate this
function.
Occasionally some sacrificial victims - distinguished
warriors,
perhaps - were given the privilege of defending themselves
for
a while before they were killed. Bernardino De Sahagún,
the
greatest historian and ethnographer of the Aztecs, described
these mock battles as follows:
OE... they slew other captives, battling with them -
these being
tied, by the waist, with a rope which passed through
the socket
of a round stone, as of a mill; and [the rope] was long
enough
so that [the captive] might walk about the complete
circumference
of the stone. And they gave him arms with which he might
do battle;
and four warriors came against him with swords and shields,
and
one by one they exchanged sword blows with him until
they
vanquished him.'
Apparently in the Aztec state of two or three centuries
earlier
the king himself was not beyond the task of dispatching
a few
victims with his own hands. Here is an account by Diego
Durán of
the legendary slaughter of prisoners captured among
the Mixtecs:
OEThe five priests entered and claimed the prisoner
who stood first in
the line... Each prisoner they took to the place where
the king stood
and, when they had forced him to stand upon the stone
which was the
figure and likeness of the sun, they threw him upon
his back. One took
him by the right arm, another by the left, one by his
left foot,
another by his right, while the fifth priest tied his
neck with a
cord and held him down so that he could not move.
OEThe king lifted the knife on high and made a gash
in the breast.
Having opened it he extracted the heart and raised it
high with his
hand as an offering to the sun. When the heart had cooled
he tossed
it into the circular depression, taking some of the
blood in his
hand and sprinkling it in the direction of the sun.'
Not all the victims were prisoners of war. Substantial
numbers of
slaves were also sacrificed. In addition, certain youths
and maidens
were chosen to impersonate specific gods and goddesses.
These were
treated with great care and tenderness throughout the
year preceding
their execution. In the Dresden Codex, a sixteenth-century
book
written in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, there
is this account
of the death of a woman who played the role of the goddess
Uixtociuatl:
OEAnd after they had slain the captives, only [then]
Uixtociuatl['s
impersonator] followed; she came only at the last. They
came to the
end and finished only with her.
OEAnd when this was done, thereupon they laid her down
upon the offering
stone. They stretched her out upon her back. They laid
hold of her;
they pulled and stretched out her arms and legs, bending
[up] her
breast greatly, bending [down] her back, and stretching
down her head
taut, toward the earth. And they bore down upon her
neck, with the
tightly pressed snout of a sword fish, barbed, spiny;
spined on
either side.
OEAnd the slayer stood there; he stood up. Thereupon
he cut open
her breast.
OEAnd when he opened her breast, the blood gushed up
high; it welled up
far as it poured forth, as it boiled up.
OEAnd when this was done, then he raised her heart as
an offering [to
the god] and placed it in the green jar, which was called
the green
stone jar.
OEAnd as this was done, loudly were the trumpets blown.
And when it
was over, then they lowered the body and the heart of
[the likeness
of] Uixtociuatl, covered by a precious mantle.'
But such displays of reverence were few and far between.
The great
majority of victims did not walk joyfully up the steps
of the pyramid,
soothed by the prospect that they were about to make
some god happy.
Many of them had to be dragged by the hair:
OEWhen the masters of the captives took their slaves
to the temple
where they were to slay them, they took them by the
hair. And when
they took them up the steps of the pyramid, some of
the captives
swooned, and their masters pulled them up and dragged
them by the
hair to the sacrificial stone where they were to die.'
The Aztecs were not the first Mesoamericans to sacrifice
human
beings. We know that the Toltec and the Maya engaged
in the
practice, and it is a reasonable inference that all
steep-sided,
flat-topped Mesoamerican pyramids were intended to serve
as a
stage for the spectacle in which human victims were
fed to the
gods. Nor was human sacrifice an invention of state-level
religions. To judge from the evidence of band and village
societies throughout the Americas and in many other
parts of
the world, human sacrifice long antedated the rise of
state
religions.
[...more...][2]
http://www.heretical.com/cannibal/mamerica.html
[1] And almost as many men as women.
[2] See also "Early Western Travels", Thwaites
Original file name: What kinda deth kult is this a... - converted on Thursday, 20 December 2001, 03:25
This page was created using TextToHTML. TextToHTML is a free software for Macintosh and is (c) 1995,1996 by Kris Coppieters