Aztecs/Mayans

Aztecs

Location:

Cosmology:

Creation began with two deities: Omerecuhtli (Lord of Duality) and Omecihuatl (Lady of Duality) who then had four sons Xipe Totec, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, and Huitzilopochtli. Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtil then created the world with fire and a half-sun being first, then the first man and woman, then the lord and lady of the underworld, then the calendar, then the heavens, waters, and land,  and then Tlaloc(rain god) and his wife. The Aztecs also believe that there were four ages before this one, each with its own sun: the Jaguar Sun, the Wind Sun, the Rain Sun, the Water Sun, and the Earthquake Sun. The name of each sun names what would or did destroy that age. Sacrifices of hearts and blood are used to nourish the sun. They also believed in there being nine levels of the underworld that the soul had to go through: river, clashing high mountains, obsidian mountain, icy winds, flapping flags, arrows, ferocious beasts, narrow passages between hard rocks, and darkness and rest. They believed in many gods and each had a certain thing that he/she controlled and looked after.

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/stross/ant322m_files/cosmology.htm

Sacred Symbols:

The only sacred symbols that the Aztecs use are the symbols used to tell the dates on their sacred calendar. It is a 260-day calendar called tonalpohualli and consists of two parallel and interlocking cycles. One cycle has 20 days (day signs) and the other has 13 days (coefficients). A date in the calendar has one day sign and one coefficient. The Aztecs had two other calendars but they were not sacred and not a commonly used. These are the day signs:

http://www.ancientscripts.com/aztec.html

Sacred Locations:

Aztec sacred locations were their temples though sometimes they had entire cities dedicated to religious activities. They called them Teocalli (God houses). The priests went there to worship and pray and make sacrifices. The temples were commonly giant pyramids with stairs on one side and a flat top. One of these temples is the Templo Mayor with was built to honor Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. It was the main temple of their capital city and had two shrines on top. Human sacrifices were the most common rituals done at this temple.

http://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-temples.html

Major Gods:

The biggest major gods were Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl who were the parents of a lot of the other major gods. The represented the primordial forces of nature and duality. The next major god is Quetzalcoatl who was believed to be the creator of the humans though he was not the first. He simply recreated the humans each time an age ended and a new one began. He is represented be a feathered serpent. The next god is Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird of the South/Left) who was a warrior sun god. Many human sacrifices were made to him to help him fight the darkness and wars were fought with other peoples especially for their need to capture sacrifices. He was the most revered of the Aztecs. The next god is Xipe Totec (Flayed one) who was the god of the seasons and growing things and the patron of the gold workers. He was believed to have flayed himself to give humans food so sacrifices to him were flayed as well. The last major god was Tláloc who was the god of rain and water. He often had goggle eyes, fangs, and a curled nose. Children sacrifices were made to him since it was believed that children tears brought rain.  

http://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-gods.html

Totems:

The Aztecs used art to pay tribute to their gods through pottery, sculptures, pictographs, masks, and warrior art.

http://www.aztec-indians.com/aztec-art.html

Fetishes:

The Aztecs got their protection from their sacrifices. The sacrifices were done to both please and replenish the gods. Anyone could give blood but there were different processes for each god for the sacrifices. For the maize goddess, young girls were decapitated. For the fire god, people were scorched then sacrifices. Every sacrifice had a purpose and was needed for the god to live. Victims were usually chosen a long time in advance and it was estimated that the Aztecs sacrificed 10,000 to 50,000 people a year.

 http://www.plu.edu/~bluchehn/sacrifice/sacrificial-victims.html

Taboos:

  

The Aztecs had many taboos but the most they had were for pregnant women. Pregnant women were forbidden to lift heavy objects, take excessive sweat-baths, engage in excessive sex (fetus would be glued to the womb), and have abortions since pregnancy was seen as a favor from the gods. The women were told not to go out at night without spreading ash, a pebble, or wormwood on her chest so women that died in childbirth would not haunt her child. They also should not look at a hanged person (fetus would be strangled by umbilical cord), should not look at an eclipse or rising moon (child would become hair-lipped), and in the last months she was not allowed to sleep during the day or look at anything frightening, offending, or red. There were also some for children like if you one-stepped over a child you had to step backward over them or their growth would be stunted.

http://malinche.info/blog/?p=81

Role of Shaman:

The priests were treated as nobles but their lives were stressful and hard. They had to watch the planets and stars to prophesize and sound the time, keep track of the eclipses and other events, name certain constellations, read the calendar, divine the incantations to the gods and horoscopes, divine horoscopes for newborns, check the horoscopes of engaged couples, make offerings and sacrifices to the gods, sacrifice victims on the sacrificial stone, and draw blood. The priestesses had many of these responsibilities as well.

http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/index.php?one=azt&two=you&id=429&typ=reg

Rituals:

Two Aztec rituals were the New Fire Ceremony and the Etzalqualiztli. The New Fire Ceremony occurred every 52 years and was their most important ritual since if it failed, the fifth age would end and everything would die. Every fire was put out and everyone would climb to the roof of their houses. The priests would dress as deities and climb the sacred mountain, Uixachtlan and make a sacrifice. After they removed the heart of the person they would light a fire in the chest and then light torches that would light every school, temple, and house. Etzalqualiztli begins with the priests going to Citlaltepec for reeds that they then use to decorate the temple. People avoided them while they were on their way back to the temple because they had a right to rob you of everything you had if you were caught by the priest. On this day the priests would beat any servant that did something wrong at the edge of the lake. This ritual was performed for the god Tlaloc to try to bring more rain and a better harvest.  

http://www.plu.edu/~seppibj/rituals/home.html

Art:

 

1)      Some forms of religion are called primal because they have been practiced since prehistoric times and tend to come before the popular religions of today. Some characteristics of a primal religion are that they provide special insight into the mythic and ritual dimensions of religion, it is the stem of all religions, generally are practiced by nonliterate people and don’t depend on scriptures or written teachings, and they tend to be the traditions of tribal peoples.

2)      They established the landscape, various life forms including humans, tribes, territories, language, social rules, and customs.

3)      The spiritual essence of the Ancestors survives in the symbols.

4)      A totem is a representation of something like ancestors. Taboos are things that are forbidden to do.

5)      Rituals are essential because it is only through rituals that the sacred power of the Dreaming can be accessed and experienced.

6)      They originated with the very first humans.

7)      The purposes are to awaken young people to spiritual identity, redefine their social identity within the tribe, and help them learn the essential truths and their world and how they are to act within it.   

8)      Two acts are the two lower middle teeth being knocked out and buried and having the boy’s neck and back struck with wounds.

9)      The Yoruba live in the western regions of central Africa in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo.

10)  It has always been the center because it was there that the god Orisha-nla first began to create the world.

11)  They believe that reality is divided into heaven and earth with the gods and ancestors in heaven and the humans and deviant forms of humans on earth.

12)  Olorun is the primary, original source of power in the universe and all life forces owe their existence to him.

13)  The orishas are the lower gods and deities under Olorun and serve as the mediators between Olorun and human beings.

14)  Orisha-nla created the earth and Ogun is the god of iron and war.

15)  A trickster figure is a mischievous supernatural being that goes between heaven and earth because it contain both good and evil aspects.

16)  The two types are family and deified. The family are only worshiped by the family and the deified are worshiped by everyone.

17)  Their role is to mediate between the gods and ancestors in heaven and the human beings on earth.

18)  It is learning your future. It is regarded as essential because they believe that it is necessary to determine how to proceed with your life.

19)  They believe that they came twenty thousand to thirty thousand years ago from Asia by the Bering Strait.

20)  It is of vital interest because this religion serves as the model of pan-Indian religion, a recent popular movement uniting many tribes from across North America.

21)  Wakan Tanka is the name for the supreme reality.

22)  Inktomi is the trickster figure of the Lakota.

23)  They believe that four souls depart a person at death. One goes along the “spirit path” of the Milky Way and meets an old woman who decides whether it goes to live with the ancestors or goes back to earth as a ghost. The other souls go into unborn children.

24)  They try to gain access to spiritual power that will ensure greater success in activities such a hunting, warfare, and curing the ill.

25)  The structure is a dark, airtight hut made of saplings and covered with animal skins. The function is to purify the person body and spirit.

26)  A typical vision is a message coming from a spirit in the form or an animal or some other object or force of nature.

27)  A woman of outstanding moral character presides.

28)  The axis mundi is the axis or center of the universe. In the Sun Dance it is the cottonwood tree set upright in a certain spot.

29)  They do this because they feel that their body is the only thing can sacrifice because it is the only thing they truly own.

30)  Aztecs were a highly developed civilization and the people were urban, city dwellers. It is like other primal religions in its emphasis on the interrelationship between myth and rituals and how it predated Catholicism.

31)  It included most of Mexico and extended southward to Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

32)  Quetzalcoatl created and ordered the world. Teotihuacan was the origin of the cosmos.

33)  He was a priest-king. He provided the Aztecs with the perfect model for their own authority figure.

34)  They called their present age the fifth age and anticipated that it would end.

35)  The Aztecs understood the spatial world as having four quadrants extending outward from the center of the universe which connected the earthly realm to the heavenly realm above and the underworld below.

36)  Each human being was regarded as a sort of axis mundi because of the potency of the divine force in the head and the divine force in the heart.

37)  They were able to communicate with the gods and make offerings through language instead of sacrifices.    

38)  The coincidence that Cortez was wearing a feathered hat so the king at the time thought he was Topiltzin because he was supposed to come back that year.  

39)  It shows it because it joins the living and the dead through festive and spiritually meaningful rituals like the Aztecs did every year for the same basic purpose.

40)  The three themes are the thin and often crossed boundary between the supernatural and the human world, the all-encompassing nature of religion, and change.