Details Showing the Brutality of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica

Details Showing the Brutality of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica

Larry Holzwarth - December 13, 2018

Details Showing the Brutality of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica
A 16th-century codex depicts Xiuhtecuhtli at the center of Aztec values and beliefs. Wikimedia

10. There were more than one god of fire, worshiped in different manners and rituals

Huehueteotl was a highly ranked member of the Aztec pantheon of gods, recognized as more or less the god of fire, ranking above several lesser gods of fire which were also worshiped. He was usually pictured as an elderly man, bearded, and often withered and weak. As the god of fire, he was worshiped through fire. Sacrificial victims were burned in the flames in open hearths, but before dying they were removed from the flames, their hearts cut out, and the bodies then returned to the fires for destruction or in some instances were devoured by the worshipers. The hearts were then burned to ashes. Worship of Huehueteotl was in thanks for the two elements most associated with him, blood and fire, and rewarded the worshipers with protection against fire destroying their homes.

Xiuhtecuhtli was another god of fire, believed to have been the same god as Huehueteotl in a younger manifestation, and rituals for his worship occurred at the same time as those for the latter god. He also had a festival of his own which occurred once every 52 years, known as the New Fire Ceremony. The ceremony took place when Orion’s belt was aligned with a volcano outside of Tenochtitlan following weeks of preparation which included ritual offers of blood and other mandated behaviors such as periods of complete silence and the extinguishing of all fires. Failure to strictly observe all of the rituals was believed to bring on the end of the world through the wrath of the fire god. Near the top of the volcano the priests sacrificed a man by using a device they called a fire drill (the Aztec name for Orion’s belt) which they drove through the victim’s chest. The ritual allowed the fires throughout the empire to be relighted without angering the god of fire, and a new 52 year cycle began.

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