235.

More Aztec notes:

-believes that ongoing sacrifice sustains the earth.
- everything is tonacayotl = the “spiritual flesh-hood” “bodily [sacrificial] presence” of the gods on earth.
- Everything springs from the severed or buried remains of the sacrificed gods.
- Humanity is macehualli = “those deserved and brought back to life through penance”.
- Indebtedness connected to this worldview.
- nextlahualli (debt-payment) commonly used as metaphor for human sacrifice.
- Sacrifice = highest level of an entire panoply of offering to the gods.
- offering mound (massive temple-pyramids) crammed with treasures, grains, etc.
- animal sacrifice common
- objects broken as sacrifices
- cult of Quetzalcoatl required sacrifice of butterflies and hummingbirds
- self-sacrifice also common
- people would offer maguey thorns tainted with their own blood, offer blood from their tongue, ear lobes, or penises.
- blood held central place in Mesoamerican cultures
- in one of the creation myths Quetzalcoatl offered blood from a wound in his penis to give life to humanity.
- it has been said that modern Aztecs still practice bloodletting from cuts made by obsidian knives or bone needles on body parts such as earlobes, lips, tongues, chests and calves.
- maguey thorns put into a ball of straw called zacatapayoli and later placed in an adoratorium.

THE 52-YEAR CYCLE

- feared the universe would collapse after each cycle if the gods weren’t strong enough
- New Fire ceremony performed every year.
- All fires extinguished at midnight and a human was sacrificed
- Aztecs then waited for dawn. If the sun rose, the cycle had been enough and the body was list on fire and this fire was taken to every house, city and town.
- Ceremony was older than the Aztecs themselves
- Original Nahua religion and the Aztecs considered themselves to be the main representatives for feeding the gods and this gave them an identity. They were no longer known as “people without face” but as “The people of the sun. This is disputed though.


SACRIFICES TO SPECIFIC GODS
Huitzilopchtli

- tribal deity of the Mexica. Represented character of Mexica people and often identified with the sun at zenith and warfare.
- Victim would be placed on sacrificial stone.
- Priest would cut through the abdomen with an obsidian or flint blade.
- Heart would be torn out while still beating, held towards the sky in honour to the Sun-God
- - the body would be either cremated or given to the warrior responsible for the capture of the victim.
- -Warrior would either cut the body into pieces and send them to important people as an offering or use the pieces of ritual cannibalism.
- Warrior would thus ascend one step in the hierarch of the Aztec social classes, a system that rewarded successful warriors.



Oh, and friends are douchebags.