Aztec religion


The Aztec religion is a polytheistic and monistic pantheism in which the Nahua concept of teotl was construed as the supreme god Ometeotl, as well as a diverse pantheon of lesser gods and manifestations of nature. The popular religion tended to embrace the mythological and polytheistic aspects, and the Aztec Empire's state religion sponsored both the monism of the upper classes and the popular heterodoxies.
The most important deities were worshiped by priests in Tenochtitlan, particularly Tlaloc and the god of the Mexica, Huitzilopochtli, whose shrines were located on Templo Mayor. Their priests would receive special dispensation from the empire. When other states were conquered the empire would often incorporate practices from its new territories into the mainstream religion.
In common with many other indigenous Mesoamerican civilizations, the Aztecs put great ritual emphasis on calendrics, and scheduled festivals, government ceremonies, and even war around key transition dates in the Aztec calendar. Public ritual practices could involve food, storytelling, and dance, as well as ceremonial warfare, the Mesoamerican ballgame, and human sacrifice.
The cosmology of Aztec religion divides the world into thirteen heavens and nine earthly layers or netherworlds. The first heaven overlaps with the first terrestrial layer, so that heaven and the terrestrial layers meet at the surface of the Earth. Each level is associated with a specific set of deities and astronomical objects. The most important celestial entities in Aztec religion are the Sun, the Moon, and the planet Venus.
After the Spanish Conquest, Aztec people were forced to convert to Catholicism. Aztec religion syncretized with Catholicism. This syncretism is evidenced by the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Day of the Dead.

Teotl

Nahua metaphysics centers around teotl, "a single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, energy or force." This is conceptualized in a kind of monistic pantheism as manifest in the supreme god Ometeotl, as well as a large pantheon of lesser gods and idealizations of natural phenomena such as stars and fire. Priests and educated upper classes held more monistic views, while the popular religion of the uneducated tended to embrace the polytheistic and mythological aspects.
Teotl is sometimes translated as "god", but it held more abstract aspects of divinity or supernatural energy, akin to the Polynesian concept of Mana.
In first contact with the Spanish prior to the conquest, emperor Moctezuma II and the Aztecs generally referred to Cortés and the conquistadors as "teotl". Some historians interpret this to mean that the Aztecs believed them to be gods, but a better understanding of teotl suggests that they were being referred to as "mysterious" or "inexplicable".

Pantheon

The Aztecs would often adopt gods from different cultures and allow them to be worshiped as part of their pantheon. For example, the fertility god, Xipe Totec, was originally a god of the Yopi, but became an integrated part of the Aztec belief system. Further, sometimes foreign gods would be identified with an already existing god. Other deities, such as Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl, had roots in earlier civilizations of Mesoamerica, and were worshiped by many cultures under different names.
The many gods of the Aztecs can be grouped into complexes related to different themes. Some were associated with aspects of nature, such as Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl, and other gods were associated with specific trades. Reflecting the complexity of ritual in Aztec society, there were deities related to pulque, a sacred alcoholic beverage, but also deities of drunkenness, excess, fun, and games. Many gods had multiple aspects with different names, where each name highlighted a specific function or trait of the god. Occasionally, two distinct gods were conflated into one, and quite often, deities transformed into one another within a single story. Aztec images sometimes combined attributes of several divinities.
Aztec scholar H. B. Nicholson classed the gods into three groups according to their conceptual meaning in general Mesoamerican religion. The first group he called the "celestial creativity—divine paternalism group". The second: the Earth-mother gods, the pulque gods, and Xipe Totec. The third group, the War-Sacrifice-Sanguinary Nourishment group, contained such gods as Ometochtli, Huitzilopochtli, Mictlantecuhtli and Mixcoatl. A more specific classification based upon the functional attributes of the deities is as follows:
File:Quetzalcóatl 5.jpg|thumb|Quetzalcoatl, god of the winds and knowledge, in the Codex Borgia
Cultural god
  • Tezcatlipoca: meaning “Lord of the Smoking Mirror", trickster deity, shaman, and the patron god of the ruling class. Associated with the form of the jaguar
  • Quetzalcoatl: god of knowledge, monsters, life, and wind, and is the patron of priests and the Aztec elite. He had a hand in creating human life. The planet Venus in Aztec cosmology
  • Mixcoatl: meaning "cloud serpent", god of the heavens and the hunt
  • Huitzilopochtli: god of sun, war, and the patron god of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan
Nature gods
  • Tlaloc: a Pan-Mesoamerican god of lightning, rain, water, and thunder
  • Tlaltecuhtli: meaning "earth lord", goddess of the Earth
  • Chalchiuhtlicue: meaning "jade her skirt", goddess of springs, running water, lakes, rivers, seas, streams, horizontal waters, storms, and baptism
  • Centzon Huitznahua: meaning "the 400 southerners", gods of the stars
  • Ehecatl: the wind, often conflated with Quetzalcoatl and called "Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl"
  • Tepeyollotl: god of the animals, darkened caves, echoes, and earthquakes. Tepeyollotl is a variant of Tezcatlipoca and is associated with mountains.
Gods of creation
  • Ōmeteōtl/Tōnacātēcuhtli: the Lord of Sustenance and one of the creators of all things
  • Huehuetéotl/Xiuhtecuhtli: meaning "old god" and "turquoise lord", god of origin, time, fire and old age
  • Coatlicue/Toci/Teteoinnan/Tonantzin: progenitor goddesses
File:Tezcatlipoca 3.jpg|thumb|Tezcatlipoca, god of providence, in the Codex Borgia.
Lords of the Night
  • Metztli: goddess of the moon
  • Xiuhtecuhtli: god of fire and time
  • Tezcatlipoca: god of providence, the darkness and the invisible, lord of the night, ruler of the North.
  • Citlalicue: goddess of female stars in the Milky Way.
  • Citlalatonac: god of female stars
  • Piltzintecuhtli: god of visions, associated with Mercury and healing
  • Xolotl: lord of the evening star and the planet mercury, twin of Quetzalcoatl
Lords of the Day
Gods of pulque and excess
  • Tlazolteotl: goddess of filth and childbirth
  • Tepoztecatl: god of pulque worshipped at Tepoztlan
  • Xochiquetzal: goddess of pleasure, indulgence, and sex
  • Tlazolteotl: goddess of lust, carnality, and sexual misdeeds.
  • Mayahuel: goddess of pulque and maguey
  • The Ahuiateteo:
  • *Macuiltochtli
  • *Macuilxochitl
  • *Macuil Cuetzpalin
  • *Macuilcozcacuauhtli
  • *Macuil Malinalli
  • Centzon Totochtin: meaning "the 400 rabbits", god of intoxication
  • *Ometochtli: meaning "two rabbit", leader of the Centzon Totochtin, god of fertility and intoxication
Gods of maize and fertility
  • Xipe Totec: meaning "our flayed lord", fertility god associated with spring, patron god of goldsmiths
  • Centeotl: god of maize
  • Chicomecoatl: goddess of agriculture
  • Xilonen: goddess of tender maize
  • Xochipilli: meaning "flower prince", god of happiness, flowers, pleasure, and fertility
Gods of death and the underworld
Trade gods
  • Yacatecuhtli: meaning "nose lord", god of merchants
  • Patecatl: god of doctors and medicine

    Religion and society

Religion was part of all levels of Aztec society. On the state level, religion was controlled by the Tlatoani and the high priests governing the main temples in the ceremonial precinct of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. This level involved the large monthly festivals and a number of specific rituals centered around the ruler dynasty and attempted to stabilize both the political and cosmic systems. These rituals were the ones that involved a sacrifice of humans. One of these rituals was the feast of Huey Tozoztli, when the ruler himself ascended Mount Tlaloc and engaged in autosacrifice in order to petition the rains. Throughout society, each level had their own rituals and deities and played their part in the larger rituals of the community. For example, the class of Pochteca merchants were involved in the feast Tlaxochimaco, where the merchant deity would be celebrated and slaves bought on specific slave markets by long-distance traders would be sacrificed. On the feast of Ochpaniztli all commoners participated in sweeping the streets. Afterwards, they also undertook ritual bathing. The most spectacular ritual was the New Fire ceremony which took place every 52 years and involved every citizen of the Aztec realm. During this, commoners would destroy house utensils, quench all fires, and receive new fire from the bonfire on top of Mt. Huixachtlan, lit on the chest of a sacrificed person by the high priests.
Women were also a vital part of Aztec society and religion. Many women had the right to land and the ability to vote on important issues. The Aztec deities also reflected this, as many of the essential deities were women.

Priests and temples

In the Nahuatl language, the word for priest was teopixqui – meaning "god guard". These men were seen as prominent leaders of the community who taught various ideas and morals to the public. Tlamacazqui the "giver of things" ensured that the gods were given their due in the form of offerings, ceremonies, and sacrifices.
The Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan was the head of the cult of Huitzilopochtli and of the state religion of the Aztec empire. He had special priestly duties in different rituals on the state level.
However, the Aztec religious organization was not entirely under his authority. Bernardino de Sahagún and Duran describe the pairs of high priests who were in charge of the major pilgrimage centres as enjoying immense respect from all levels of Aztec society—akin to archbishops—and a level of authority that partly transcended national boundaries. Under these religious heads were many tiers of priests, priestesses, novices, nuns, and monks who ran the cults of the various gods and goddesses. Sahagún reports that the priests had very strict training, and had to live very austere and ethical lives involving prolonged vigils, fasts, and penances. For instance, they often had to bleed themselves and undertake prescribed self-mortifications in the buildup to sacrificial rites.
Additionally, Sahagún refers to classes of religious specialists not affiliated with the established priesthood. This included wandering curers, black magicians, and other occultists and hermits. Finally, the military orders, professions and wards each operated their own lodge dedicated to their specific god. The heads of these lodges, although not full-time religious specialists, had some ritual and moral duties. Duran also describes lodge members as having the responsibility of raising sufficient goods to host the festivals of their specific patron deity. This included annually obtaining and training a suitable slave or captive to represent and die as the image of their deity in that festival.
Aztec temples were basically offering mounds: solid pyramidal structures crammed with special soils, sacrifices, treasures and other offerings. Buildings around the base of the pyramid, and sometimes a small chamber under the pyramid, stored ritual items and provided lodgings and staging for priests, dancers, and temple orchestras. The pyramids were buried under a new surface every several years. Thus the pyramid-temples of important deities constantly grew in size.
In front of every major temple lay a large plaza. This sometimes held important ritual platforms such as the "eagle stone" where some victims were slain. Plazas were where the bulk of worshippers gathered to watch rites and dances performed, to join in the songs and sacrifices, and to partake in any festival foods. Nobility sat on tiered seating under awnings around the plaza periphery, and some conducted part of the ceremonies on the temple.
Continual rebuilding enabled Tlatoani and other dignitaries to celebrate their achievements by dedicating new sculptures, monuments, and other renovations to the temples. For festivals, temple steps and tiers were also festooned with flowers, banners and other decorations. Each pyramid had a flat top to accommodate dancers and priests performing rites. Close to the temple steps there was usually a sacrificial slab and braziers.
The temple house itself was relatively small, although the more important ones had high and ornately carved internal ceilings. To maintain the sanctity of the gods, these temple houses were kept fairly dark and mysterious—a characteristic that was further enhanced by having their interiors swirling with smoke from copal and the burning of offerings. Cortes and Diaz describe these sanctuaries as containing sacred images and relics of the gods, often bejeweled but shrouded under ritual clothes and other veils and hidden behind curtains hung with feathers and bells. Flowers and offerings generally covered much of the floors and walls near these images. Each image stood on a pedestal and occupied its own sanctuary. Larger temples also featured subsidiary chambers accommodating lesser deities.
In the ceremonial center of Tenochtitlan, the most important temple was the Great Temple which was a double pyramid with two temples on top. One was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli; this temple was called Coatepec, and the other temple was dedicated to Tlaloc. Below the Tlatoani were the high priests of these two temples. Both high priests were called by the title Quetzalcoatl—the high priest of Huitzilopochtli was Quetzalcoatl Totec Tlamacazqui and the high priest of Tlaloc was Quetzalcoatl Tlaloc Tlamacazqui. Other important temples were located in the four divisions of the town. One example was the temple called Yopico in Moyotlan which was dedicated to Xipe Totec. Furthermore, all the calpullis had special temples dedicated to the patron gods of the calpulli. Priests were educated at the Calmecac if they were from noble families and in the Telpochcalli if they were commoners.