There are numerous civilizations and beliefs that stand out from the Mesoamerican era. European conquistadors on Mexican land. The feathered being holds various names, but most of us know it as Quetzalcoatl. I find it fascinating that even centuries after the disappearance of the Aztecs, the modern Western world knows about the Quetzalcoatl. We are gonna look at how and why the feathered serpent came to be one of the most important gods in Mesoamerican cultures.
The cult of the serpent in Mesoamerica is ancient. The roots of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, can be traced all the way back to the Olmec civilization, which existed from around 13th to the 5th centuries BC. A representation of the feathered serpent can be found on a famous
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Olmec stone-carving known as the “La Venta Monument 19”, in which a man is shown to be seated in front of the creature. In the Olmec culture, the snake represented the earth and vegetation. As the myth of Quetzalcoatl developed, he was mixed with other gods, and acquired their numerous attributes.
He began to be associated with Ehecatl, the wind god, who represents the forces of nature, and is also associated with the Venus morning star. Quetzalcoatl became a representation of the rain, the celestial water and their associated winds. He eventually was transformed into one of the main gods of creation. By the time of the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl would be considered the originator of the arts, poetry and all knowledge. The feathered figure would become inseparable from the image of one of their most important gods. blended with other deities of their own beliefs. However, the Quetzalcoatl we will be talking about only emerged several centuries later, during the Late Classical …show more content…
period. In the Aztec civilization, the Quetzalcoatl is the plumed serpent god who brought the benefits of civilization to Mexico. His names is a combination of two Aztecs words. Quetzal, meaning bird with long green tail feathers, and coatl, meaning serpent. That is why Quetzalcoatl is most commonly known in English as the Plumed Serpent or Feathered Serpent. Since the first appearance of the legend, he is attributed many mysterious forms: he is considered a man, but also a deity, a priest, and 400 children of the snake-skirted goddess Coatlicue. In another, the goddess Chimalman is the mother of Quetzalcoatl. One of the most popular ones can be found in the Aztec culture. The history of the legend goes like this: When the creation of the world was finished, the gods and humans lived in to take a human form to share the knowledge and art that the gods and deities possessed. He arrived in the world of humans, and came upon Tollan, the capital city of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. As he arrived, humans were offering a sacrifice for Quetzalcoatl’s brother, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl halted the execution. The priest of the sacrifice was angry and shouted at the man and the sky turned gray with clouds and a storm with lightning and thunder swarmed above them. Quetzalcoatl calmed the priest and the humans, he assured them that while he was in Tollan, the city would flourish. He raised his hands to the sky and the winds cleared away the clouds. After that event, men wanted to worship him as a deity, but he insisted on rejecting any kind of luxury or priviledge. He taught them live with humility and to learn with purity of soul. As he stayed in the city, Tollan grew and prospered. In his human form, the god taught them how to cultivate corn, to work with precious jewels and stones like jade, gold and obsidian and he taught the art of astronomy, he also improved their writing, promoted the worship of the gods and forbade any human sacrifices. Of course, There are multiple theories to explain to beginnings of this myth, since it was mixed with Olmec and Mayan religions, but whether this legend was based on real events is still under debate among scholars. The legend behind Quetzalcoatl will most like remain a debate within the field, since there are so many pieces to the puzzle. But that does not change the fact that the Feathered Dragon was repeatedly represented throughout Mesoamerican history. His figure was represented in feathers around his body and head in most mesoamerican cultures. However, the Aztecs often depicted him in his human form, he is often depicted in dark colors with a red beak. In many images, he is depicted wearing a plumed headdress and carrying a plumed shield. He is often seen wearing shell The representations of Quetzalcoatl went beyond traditional depiction, cult centers were built in the gods supported a population of a hundred thousand people. It contained a massive central road and numerous buildings including the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon. It is still unclear as to who built this great empires, but it theorized that many cultures added onto the city, and incorporated their own representations of their gods and beliefs. The city had multiple cult centers to honour Quetzalcoatl, the most impressive one being the Temple of the Feathered-Serpent. It was given that to be a depiction of another central deity of the Aztec, named Tlaloc, but this is still being debated, since some believe that they are a representation of the crocodile Cipactli or of the Fire-Serpent. The carved on the pyramids are designed to tell a story, a religious concept and an historical event.
We can identify elements found within the carved representations of Quetzalcoatl themselves. The feathers that surround the serpent’s head tell us that it is in fact the feathered-serpent. The feathers themselves represent the flowering crops to depict that he is the god that brings the harvest to the city. of represents infinity and the swirling cosmos as he is a creator god and the morning star Venus. In a more general sense, the Temple is thought to have represented a big part of the daily life of the civilization of Teotihuacan. If all the heads on the faces of the pyramid were left untouched, the combined four faces would have totalled 260 Feathered-Serpent an indication of what day it
was. The fame of the Quetzalcoatl’s is also due to a persistent theory about Hernan C in Spanish records. One theory for the origin of the story is that the Spanish conquistadors misinterpreted the speech that the Aztec king gave to welcome them. We have no way of knowing if this speech ever happened, but it is said that Motecuhzoma made a and shows that even the conquistadors understood the importance that Quetzalcoatl had in their culture. The Aztecs beliefs were a fundamental attribute of their civilization, these creator gods and was instrumental in the development of their civilization. He became an important symbol that represented agriculture, creation, and the arts, which were some of the most important parts of their civilization at the time. Scholars still have many debates about the history of this deity, but what we can say with certainty is that all the knowledge we have culture and beliefs.
A well-known Meso-American deity, Huitzilopochtli, is the Aztec god of war and human sacrifice. It is written that he had a constant battle with evil within himself and required human sacrifice for nourishment. It is believed that Huitzilopochtli’s mother, Coatlicue, an Aztec earth goddess, conceived him after she kept a ball of hummingbird feathers in her bosom that had fallen from the sky. Huitzilopochtli’s sister, Coyolxauhqui, plotted to kill her mother after discovering the shameful way she had become impregnated. When his mother was decapitated, Huitzilopochtli burst from the womb and killed his sister Coyolxauhqui ...
During 1325 a newly homeless Aztec tribe who were chased away by the angry ruler/father of a princess they sacrificed to the sun god, were traveling through swamps . they saw a small island with an eagle perched on a cactus eating a snake. This was told to be a sign of where the tribe was to create their new home. This new city was named Tenochtitlan. Soon this will become the capital of the Aztec empire. Tenochtitlan started out with only a temple to worship the war god Huitzilopochtli, and huts for the tribesmen.
In 1510, Montezuma turned his attention to a series of revolts and revolutionary flare-ups in the Aztec territories. These battles only increased the size of the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs also continued their Flower Wars with the Tlaxcatlecans to provide human sacrifices to their god Huitzilopochtli. Around the same time, Montezuma’s oracles passed information that there were strangers in the midst. In fact, his astrologer priests foretold of the coming of Quetzalcóatl, a white bearded god who was believed to eventually reclaim their empire. Reputed claims of Whit...
The Aztecs people of Central Mexico have been a controversial culture studied by many archeologist and anthropologist alike. The Aztec had an empire in central Mexico when the Spanish arrived in the 1500s. The Aztecs had a very controversial practice not seen in many cultures around the world and that is a human sacrifice.
The children which were the stars and Coyotxauhqu became jealous and feared that now they would no longer be as important to her and decided the murder her. The children decapitated the Coatlicue which cause the new born child Huitzilopotchi to be born in armor and seek vengeance upon his siblings. He threw his sisters body down the mountain and tossed her head into the air to become the moon. This myth was used by the Aztecs as a metaphors as to why the sun, moon, and stars are how they are now, but also to show how Huitzilopotchi became the sun god telling how the sun and moon came into place. The Aztec people traveled until they found a cactus with an eagle nesting obeying Huilzilopotchli command and settled there which is now known as Tenochtitlan. After the fall of the Aztec, the work was found by Christians and reburied because of the assumption that it represented something evil. The art was not supposed to be viewed as evil but to show the Coatlicue as part human, part earth animal, and animal that represented life and death. The goddess played a
Coatlicue was one of seven deities it the Aztec culture including, Ometecuhtli, creator god, Qpetzalcoatl, Feathered Serpent or god of twins and learning, Tezcatlipoca, god of the night sky, Tlaloc, god of rain and fertility, and Xipe Totec , god of vegetation, torture, and sacrifice. Coatlicue’s was the mother of Coyolxanuhqui, goddess of the moon, and to over four hundred son’s whom would later become the stars in the sky. Cloatlicue’s was also the mother of, Huitzilopochtli, sun god or war god.
The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican people that lived in the area of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th century. It is said that Aztecs came from a place called Aztlan. Aztlan was the Aztec's homeland, nobody knows exactly where it was, but it is believed that Aztlan lies somewhere to the north of Mexico. Some experts claim that Aztlan is a mythical place. According to Aztec legends Huitzilopochtli, their god of war and of the sun, told them to leave Aztlan and to wander until they saw an eagle on a cactus budding out of a rock and eating a snake. The Aztecs traveled many years to find the legend that Huitzilopochtli had told. They left Aztlan in the 12th century. They built their settlements in the Valley of Mexico by Lake Texcoco. There were other Indian tribes living in the area when the Aztecs arrived. The Aztecs called their settlement Tenochtitlan. By the time they settled after two centuries of voyage they called themselves by a different name, the Mexica, but the term Aztec has been used as a ...
The Toltec civilization was one of the greatest Mesoamerican civilizations, prospering between 900 to 1150 CE. The Toltecs preceded the legendary Aztec civilization in Mesoamerica, who regarded them as their “great intellectual and cultural predecessors” (ancient.eu). They played a key role in maintaining the Mesoamerican culture that was passed down by several older civilizations including the Olmec, Teotihuacan, and Mayan civilizations. Much of what is known about the ancient Toltecs is derived from Aztec along with other Mesoamerican texts which document even older oral descriptions of historical events. The accuracy of these events, especially that of the Aztecan documents, has been questioned due to the tendency of the civilization to hyperbolize the feats of the Toltecs by combining historical truths with cultural myths. However, it cannot be argued that the Toltec civilization was vital in preserving the culture and ideology of the Mesoamerican region.
The Aztec religion was a polytheistic religion and was a combination of many beliefs and practices of other Mesoamerican cultures and religion.Religion was very important to the Aztec and they had temples for the Gods they worshipped.They worshipped this Gods Huitzilopochtli is the God of war, Quetzalcoatl is the feathered serpent and is the God of morning and evening, Tonatiuh is the sun God, and Patecatl is the God of healing and fertility.The Aztec
There has been evidence of over two hundred human sacrifices in just one general area of Mesoamerica. Not just in an area of a city – but a “building”. Many pyramids, temples, and art forms such as sculptures were made and used just for the purpose of sacrifices and blood-letting rituals. Such violent rituals are shown in art and architecture to show the effect of symbols on the humans of Ancient Mesoamerica. The question that will be uncovered is, how far did the Mesoamericans go? To what extend do symbols effect Mesoamerican art and architecture? These effects could of course lead to the stronger subjects, specifically human sacrifices. The extent of symbols on the architecture and art therefore is reflected as the extent it had on ancient Mesoamericans. It will first be evaluated how Architecture is made to reflect their beliefs on the lives of their gods. Second, how architecture and art can depict symbols will be revealed, and lastly it will be discussed how architecture and art shows the effect of symbols on ancient human lives and interactions. Finding these things will answer the research question by revealing how much effort believers would make to please their symbols, how Mesoamericans believe their gods to be, and how far they would go with tradition or rituals.
The Aztec civilization was a very complex society that was feared and known well for their various gory sacrifices done to please their many gods in their polytheistic religion. The much feared civilization began by the exile of one of the two Toltec leaders, which lead to the decline of the Toltec state that was later replaced by Mexica, or the Aztecs. According to the Aztecs, the land chosen to build their main city was chosen by the portrayal of an eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its mouth. Through military might, the Aztecs managed to become the most powerful civilization in the mid-fourteenth century. They maintained their power through military might and the fear they caused other civilizations because of the human sacrifices they performed on their captured victims.
However, that is not true. Just like all human cultures, there have been struggles for power, great wars, and flourishing arts. One such example was the conquest of neighboring civilizations by the Aztecs. For most civilizations of the Valley of Mexico, Coatlicue was already a central deity in their lives. However, for the Aztecs, she was special in particular for being mother of Huitzilopochtli, the patron god of Tenochtitlan and also god of the sun and war. While mainly the Aztecs worshiped Huitzilopochtli, his connection with Coatlicue became his main origin story because of how conquered civilizations would respond favorably with what deities they are familiar with. The story goes that Coatlicue was impregnated with a feather. Her 400 sons and her daughter, Coyolxauhqui, sought to kill their mother for this before Huitzilopochtli burst forth in full armor to defend her. In this story, Coatlicue is represented as vulnerable and needing to be saved, but this also demonstrates how the Aztecs respected her and honored her for being the one who gave birth to their most beloved god. In fact, the stone statue of her was found at the Templo Mayor, which housed a temple of Huitzilopochtli. Further evidence of this relationship is found in the Florentine Codex, which was the work of the Spanish friar Bernardino de Sahagún. This codex
White Tezcatlipoca: Also referred to as the Plumed Serpent, a reference to his sibling and rival Quetzalcoatl, and patron god of the Cholula Aztecs.
One group following these rules is the Aztec Indians. According to the priests of their religion, a new god had been born. His name was Huitzilopochtli, or the Hummingbird Wizard. He or...
It is believed that the shape of the pyramid was an important religious statement. Some scholars believe that this is true while others still debate the possibilities. We can assume that the Egyptians were trying to symbolize the slanting rays of the sun. It is also believed that the sloping sides on the pyramid were intended to help the soul of the king climb to the sky and join the gods.