Aztecs 6

By Pueros

Chapter 6 – Sacrifices

(Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire, September 1520)

After a lonely night, the deeply apprehensive Tezozo was returned, after the usual preparations, just before midday to the altar of the main temple and again splayed naked on the sacrificial plinth. This time, the High Priest consumed the reincarnated sungod’s sacred seed. Tezozo would, in fact, not need to masturbate himself again whilst he remained the divinity’s earthly presence for he would be milked of the precious product of his loins on the edifice at noon every day. The Emperor would return to be personally invigorated by oral consumption of the elixir once a month. The High Priest enjoyed the same replenishment frequency. At other times, the revered liquid would be collected in a dish for a variety of ritualistic purposes.

After several more lonely nights and days, Tezozo was taken one afternoon to the temple of the mother god, Coatlicue. She was represented by a huge stone headless statue, with two serpents emerging from the torso. Many human skulls, perforated for stringing, were displayed on rack poles at the foot of the edifice. A crystal skull was located at the centre of the gruesome display. The sungod was forced to watch as twenty young men, wearing red loincloths with gold skulls embroidered on the flaps, were brought in, one after the other, knelt before the idol and briskly beheaded by a bloody axe wielded by the local high priest.

A few days later, Tezozo was enthroned at the top of a minor pyramid, looking down at a sanguine plinth, as numerous boys and youths, all dressed in quetzal plumes with jade bracelets and paper wings, lost their hearts in celebration of the Emperor’s birthday.

Over the ensuing months, Tezozo was to be the sacred guest of honour at a number of other horrible ceremonies, in the many temples and atop the various pyramids of the Aztec capital, when he was compelled to observe a multitude of sacrifices. Youths were despatched by arrows for the hunting god. A boy was boiled alive in a large pot for the merchant god. Young maidens, called ‘cenotes, were thrown into a deep well to act as messengers to the gods.

Seven temples specialised in sacrifices to the rain gods. Each displayed green poles, indicative of fertility, with white paper displaying large and small drops of rubber, symbolic of rain, fixed to the top. Children, called ‘human banners’, wearing headbands with sprays and sprigs of quetzal feathers, greenstone necklaces and bracelets, and paper finery of various colours, were carried along the capital’s spacious thoroughfares to the temples in litters, also covered with quetzal feathers. Some of the children were adorned with stripes of liquid rubber, others with strange vestments covered with mussel shells. Most went crying, tears coursing down and bathing their pretty faces. It was said that such a tearful display guaranteed rain and so all who saw it were joyful, their minds at rest.

The ends the youngsters encountered depended on the temple to which they were destined. Most lost their hearts in the customary manner but some, sent to temples set next to some of the capital’s lagoons, were ritualistically drowned. Other children, festooned in paper ornaments, were borne off to be exposed in the mountains, the abode of the rain gods.

When Tezozo was introduced to the top of the main pyramid, where he was unknowingly scheduled to meet his own end, it was to observe the extraction of the hearts of many prisoners to appease the war god. They were brought by their captors to the sacrificial plinth individually and naked, their bodies covered in painted red stripes. The victors wore red loincloths with gold eagle motifs and were also painted with red stripes. Additionally, their torsos were covered with feather down and their hands and feet with white turkey feathers. They had already removed locks of hair from their captives as mementoes and made personal offerings of blood from the victims’ ears. The extracted hearts, called ‘precious cactus fruit’, were held aloft to the sungod before being cast into a large golden vessel in the shape of an eagle.

The bodies of the victims, or ‘eagle men’, were rolled down the steps of the pyramid and carried off to various temples. There they were cut to pieces, a thigh of each being set aside for the Emperor, whilst the captors’ heads were covered in feather down. The latter would later summon their blood relations to their houses so that they could enjoy together a meal of tlacatlaolli, which literally means dried maize with human flesh.

Meanwhile, Juan spent a lot of time in a golden cage suspended from the ceiling of a large ornate chamber in Cuauhtemou’s palace. He now wore a white loincloth, displaying a yellow snake symbol, and was garlanded with sweet-smelling flowers. The boy’s body was adorned with the finest jewels, including golden bracelets on his arms and bells on his legs. The 13 years old sungod’s action in the main temple had clearly shown that the 14 years old was the reincarnated Smoking Mirror god, the second most important divinity in the Aztec pantheon. The boy chosen to be this deity’s earthly embodiment had, like his sungod equivalent, to be physically without blemish. The relevant Aztec codex took a full page to describe the bodily perfection required, starting with “He was like something smoothed, like a tomato, or like a pebble, as if hewn of wood. He did not have curly hair, but straight long hair; he had no scabs, pustules or boils on his forehead nor was he large-headed.” It finished with the stipulation that the boy’s buttocks were to be neither hatched-shaped nor flabby and recommended regular drinking of brine to keep the god’s flesh firm. When the time came for the deity to return to his spiritual form at the temple of Tlacochcalco, Juan would be expected to ascend the steps to the sacrificial plinth of his own free will.

(To be continued in Chapter 7 – ‘Gods’)