Time And Sacrifice In The Aztec Cosmos Summary

“I have given an account of events which should be clearly told… costly as they were in the lives of the majority of my comrades… who died were sacrificed, and their hearts and blood offered to the Mexican idols…” (Diaz 262). Bernal Diaz del Castillo was one of the first Spanish conquistador who was exposed to the religious practices that the Aztecs carried out. Bernal Diaz, who was accountable for the lives of his comrades, detested the Aztecs for following this ritual during the 15th century. Most people, like Diaz, who saw the sacrifices also deplored this kind of religious conduct as it clashed with their Christian beliefs. However, despite the consecutive ritual killings that were frowned upon by the foreign eyewitnesses, this paper argues

“... this fiery sacrificial ritual that bound time-space together, reestablishing the appropriate order of the Fifth Sun… allowing the years… to ‘sprout’ into life… and once they blossomed, these hungry new lives were fed with the blood of human and animal offerings” (Read 123).

Read emphasizes how the sacrifices must be carried out in a particular way so that Aztec gods, such as Tonatiuh, will be contented with the bloody sacrifices. However, if these sacrifices were not planned perfectly, then the Aztecs will be plagued with predicaments, such as famine and death, until another ritual was held. When the ritual commences again, the Aztecs burned the sacrifices’ organs, specifically the hearts. “Sacrificing burnt hearts temporarily bound the reed years, keeping the cosmos in a balanced motion… finally sacrificial eating and topography are joined into a coherent system of creative-destructive powers that balanced people…” (Read

George Clapp Vaillant, an associate curator of Mexican Archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History, stated how the Aztecs assumed how they would have a peaceful journey to the afterlife. “... Divided the heavens into east and west… the east was the home of warriors, whose death in battle or sacrifice nourished the sun, and the west the home of women who died in childbirth, thus sacrificing themselves…” (Vaillant 172). Soldiers and women, who had children died in their womb, were willing to sacrifice themselves to the gods as they sought for a tranquil afterlife. There also a mythology that the if the warriors participated in the sacrifice, then they might reincarnate into hummingbirds. Furthermore, most people from any social standing volunteered to participate as the sacrifice since they also believed that if they were sacrifice to the gods, then the gods will give them the divine guidance to the underworld,