Aztec Sacrifice

Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism

Human sacrifice and cannibalism of adults in Aztec culture are established facts, attested by early eyewitness accounts and supported by archeological evidence as well. The variety and magnitude of human sacrifice is too broad to be covered in essay format, but a glimpse will suffice to illustrate the point.

The Aztecs believed that the sun god, Huitzilopoztli, required blood so that the sun would come out each day. Ritual cannibalism frequently ensued. Sacrifices were not limited to men but included all ages and sexes. The frequency and number of sacrifices is hotly debated, but we know that 18 out of the 20 months of the Aztec calendar included some type human sacrifice. This was not a rare or infrequent event.

We also know that some Spaniards were sacrificed after being captured, as recounted by eyewitness Bernal Diaz, as they retreated with Cortéz from Tenochtitlan after an Aztec uprising:
We heard them play the drums of [Huitzilopochtli] and many other shells and horns and instruments like trumpets, and the sound was terrifying, and we all looked toward the lofty pyramid…and saw our comrades…forced up the steps…
We saw them place plumes on their heads and fans in their hands and forced them to dance before [Huitzilopochtli] and after they had danced they immediately placed them on their backs on some rather narrow stones…and with some knives they sawed open their chests and drew out their palpitating hearts and offered them to their idols.
They kicked the bodies down the steps, and the Indian butchers waiting below cut off their arms and legs and flayed the skin off their faces and prepared it like clove leather with the beards still on…and the flesh they ate in chilmole.
[T]he bellies and entrails they threw to the tigers, lions and snakes they kept in the house of beasts. As they made the sacrifices, a squadron of warriors suddenly fell upon us shouting: “see the way you are all going to die.” [T]hen they threw roasted legs of Indians and the arms of our soldiers and yelled: “Eat the flesh of these teules [Indians] and of your brothers, for we already had our fill.”

This type of chilling account is not unique, and even if human sacrifice is a worldwide phenomenon, the Aztecs seemed to have taken this practice to superlative levels. According to Spanish accounts, king Ahutzotl sacrificed between 14,000 and 80,400 prisoners in 1487 AD during the dedication of the Great Temple to Huitzilopochtli; all in just four days. Using the lower estimate, this is equivalent to five men killed every two minutes for 96 hours straight! It took four teams of butchers to complete the blood-bath that permanently tainted red the façade of the “Templo Mayor” pyramid.
Women were not exempt from sacrificial duty.

According to Sahagún, they were sacrificed to the goddess Xilonen by decapitation followed by heart extraction and finally flayed so the skin could be worn by a noble. Aztecs sacrificed men to the fire god Xiuchtecutli in a particularly gruesome manner: the men’s bodies were tainted yellow and red and dressed with feathers. Before the sacrifice, the top of their scalps was cut and kept as a relic. A large pyre encircled by stones was lit until only red-hot coals and ash remained. The men were sprayed with incense, and then thrown into the burning coals alive. Once their bodies were “scorched and covered with blisters” in agonizing pain, but still alive, they were pulled out of the pool of coals and finally taken to a sacrificial stone where their beating hearts to be

extracted.
Early accounts of cannibalism from Diaz, Sahagún, Cortez, and others are undeniable and confirmed by archeology.

“[E]very day,” wrote Diaz, the Aztecs “sacrificed three or four or five Indians in front of us, offering their hearts to the idols, smearing their blood on the walls, cutting off their legs, arms and muscles as butchers do in our country, and they eat them like beef that is brought from the butcheries in our country.” Similar accounts abound in early Spanish eyewitness writings confirmed by archeology.

Idolatry

The list of Aztec deities includes more than 1000 idols. It is interesting to note that worshiping in the Aztec cult was not geared towards moral improvement but as means to coerce the gods to obtain favor. Along with the practice of human sacrifice, the long list of Aztec ceremonies included bloodletting of earlobes, legs and genitals; dances wearing the skins of flayed victims, and burning offerings of snakes and other animals.

During the second month of the Aztec calendar, some of the blood from human sacrifices was collected to taint the mouth of different idols symbolizing their satisfaction with the

sacrifice.
Many of the rites involved imitation of mythical accounts: Coyolxauhqui, daughter of the gods Mixcoatl and Coatlique, was dismembered and decapitated by her brother Huitzilopochtli. Scholars believe that the destruction of Coyotxauhqui mirrors the traditional rite of human sacrifice given that, at the foot of the “Templo Mayor,” where most of the sacrifices took place, resided a large stone with a carved image of the goddess were the carnage of bodies was received to be dismembered.
They Knew Better
Could it be that the Aztecs’ behavior is justified since they simply had a different perspective of life and culture? I think not. In a 2009 article in Philosophia Christi, Dr. Clay Jones convincingly argues that God’s command to destroy the Canaanites was capital punishment due to their depravity. He lists the following Canaanite sins that ultimately warranted divine judgment: idolatry, incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality and bestiality. This list is very similar to that of the Aztecs: idolatry, homosexuality, child and human sacrifice, torture, cannibalism, polygamy, and adultery. This speaks volumes of the human common denominator: unimaginable potential for evil.
But, are we to think that the Aztecs did not have an objective sense of morality? Maybe they just did not know any better? After all, it could be argued that they could not have a sense of the monotheistic God of the Bible. I disagree; they knew exactly what they were doing. People stop being moral relativists as soon as they suffer evil, pain and suffering of their own. We can know how people really feel about morality from their reactions: according to the very eminent historian David Carrasco, the Aztecs accompanied the killing of children with loud wailing (from the parents and family to drown the child’s cries), and the priests considered it a grim, dirty business. Aztecs avoided the places of child sacrifice whenever they could. This is very revealing. Offering children in sacrifice was not a joyous occasion, thus the wailing, mourning, and avoidance of sacrificial places. A mother’s protective instinct is hard to overcome in spite of deep moral corruption.
We also have strong evidence of monotheistic beliefs in ancient Mexico. All men have the potential to recognize the God of all creation in nature as indicated in Romans 1. The Aztecs were no exception. Netzahualcoyotl (1402-1472) was a poet, ruler and philosopher in the eastern side of Lake Texcoco, near Tenchtitlan. He conceived of a single invisible deity that he called Tloque Nahuaque, favored monotheistic ideas, and despised human sacrifice. He was a brilliant and fair ruler. In fact he raised a temple in honor of Tloque with no idols and no sacrifices. In his poetry he refers to Tloque as “invisible as the night and untouchable as the wind,” mentions concepts such as “true words,” and the enigma of facing “The Giver of Life.” Netzahualcoyotl asks desperate rhetorical questions in his abundant poetry seeking to unravel the mystery of this nameless “Supreme Judge”:
Only there, in the lap of the heavens
You invent your word
You, Giver of life!
What will you decide?
Will you not be content here?
Will you hide your fame and glory from earth?
What will you decide?
Where will we go?

It is easy to empathize with that deep longing that stone idols could not fulfill. Even if the purity of Netzahualcoyotl’s monotheism has been questioned by some scholars, there is no doubt about his strong tendencies to worship a single Creator of the Universe. There are many other pre-Columbian references to monotheistic worship in Mesoamerica. What is clear is that, not only the Aztecs, but all humans have been given enough grace to identify God Almighty through creation. Unfortunately, in light of the evidence we have analyzed above, the grand majority of the Aztecs did not act with moral responsibility to God, but instead “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.” If there is one thing we have in common in all ages with all men is this: we know when we have done evil. The Aztecs were no exception. They certainly knew!
Conclusion
The similarities between the Aztec and Canaanite sins are striking. I don’t know the mind of God, but it seems very plausible to me that the elimination of the Aztec culture, just as the Canaanites, was capital punishment (using yet another fallen and corrupt race such as the Spanish conquistadors). Many more analogies can be drawn that I leave the reader to discover. But God is merciful and there may have been a few pre-Columbians, like Netzahualcoyotl, that responded properly to God’s natural revelation and found salvation just as Job and Melchizedek did.
But here is what we can know: fast forward 500 years, and as I look in the mirror of my ancestors, I see myself and today’s society reflected: sodomy, genocide, incest, pornography, abortion (child sacrifice), idolatry, selfishness, materialism, prostitution, sex trafficking, pedophilia, etc. Is our list of sins really that different from that of the Aztecs or the Canaanites? Are we so blind and arrogant to believe we are better? We often ask God to intervene and take away the evil from the world without realizing that sometimes he does: God eliminated evil by passing judgment on the Canaanites; he likely did it with the Aztecs; I think we are next in line unless we repent from the depravity, sin and evil in our lives. We need to take a look back 2000 years ago and ponder on the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth for our sake: the only sacrifice approved by God and capable of cleaning all the sin and blood from our past, present, and future.