Human Sacrifice In Aztec Religion

Aztec religious rituals routinely used human sacrifice in their ceremonies. It is one of the more well know facts about Aztec religion. In this paper I will be examining the female role in these rituals as well as the symbolic nature of Aztec human sacrifice. The roles that women play in a society's religion can be an illuminating glimpse of that societies gender roles, especially, like in the case of the Aztecs, where women social roles are hard to find. Because women's roles in Aztec religion were reduced to either the sacrifice or the outside observer I will be using the four festivals that involve female sacrificial victims, as well as Aztec mythology, archeological evidence about women's spaces to draw conclusions about Aztec society and women's place therein.

Human sacrifice is built into Aztec religion through their mythology. The birth of two of their most important gods, Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war, and Nanauatzin the Aztec god of the sun, involve sacrifice, in one the god acts as the executioner and the other the sacrificed. In the myth of the god of war, we even see into the roles of women through a sinner/saint dichotomy of Huitzilopochtli's sister and mother. In the myth of his birth Huitzilopochtli's mother, Coatlicue the mother goddess, is the mother of at least 401 gods and goddesses. At the beginning she is subjected to a magical pregnancy like some sort of lame plot device from a Sci-Fi show. When her

children hear of pregnancy they are enraged, Huitzilopochtli's sister Coyolxauhqui incites her 400 brothers to go kill their mother. When they arrive at the sacred temple, Huitzilopochtli is born fully grown and kills his sister and slaughters the 400 gods. In this way he acts as the executioner, sacrificing his brothers and his sister to spare his mother's life. This myth also is a significant glimpse into the acceptable roles for women. On one hand we have Huitzilopochtli's mother, Coatlicue, who symbolizes the ultimate Aztec femininity. She is the mother goddess, the mother of all, she is fertile and a fount of creation. On the other we have Coyolxauhqui, who is jealous of her brother, and in leads men into battle against him. She symbolizes entrance into male sphere and taking on the male of destruction. In the end she pays the price for it by being cut up and thrown down some stairs.
In the myth of the creation of the sun and sun god Nanauatzin, we see the importance of the role of the sacrificed in Aztec religion.

In the myth some gods are all standing around a fire daring each other to jump in and create the sun. Nanauatzin is brave enough to do so and is followed by an eagle and a jaguar (which is incidentally is why they're so black). His self-sacrifice is rewarded by him become the sun. In this way sacrifice is justified by mythology because the birth of deities is through sacrifice and human sacrifice is

divine.
The Aztec's used human sacrifice to transform death into life and to pay debt to deities for allowing their continued survival and wellbeing. Because Aztec culture associates women with creation it is not surprise that femininity is associated with the fertilization and growth of crops. So the festivals that the women played a part in were very much focused on the aspect of the fertilization of seeds and the regeneration of plants. The debt sacrifice of women were four festivals that involved highly ritualized roles required of both genders, but especially for the women being sacrificed. The ceremonies were both highly sexual and highly symbolic, and spoke volumes about the roles in society that women were expected to play. In the end her sacrifice replenished both the land and the culture.
The four festivals are in the middle of the year. The first one is called the Great Vigil and is held during the fourth Aztec month, the second is The Small Festival of the Lords and is held during the seventh Aztec month, the third is called The Greater Festival of the Lords, and the fourth is called The Sweeping and in held during the eleventh month. The symbolism in all of these rituals are remarkably significant. In them the girl takes on the persona of the maize goddess Chicomecoatl and they symbolically go through from first to last, the rise and fall of planting and harvesting seasons. In the beginning she is sacrificed to give new life to the soil and to fertilize the seeds of all things, and in the end she is laid to rest and the season of creation are over for the year and the male sphere is returned with patterns of war and destruction.
The Great Vigil began in the four month of the Aztec calendar. This festival symbolizes the repayment for continued survival and the deification of the sacrificial victim as she is symbolically turned into the goddess Chicomecoatl. The festival starts with decorations made by young men out of their blood. Then the priests walk through the city asking for alms, when they finished gathering the alms they collected maize stalks and decorated the temple. The goddess was given food and a "hard-baked frog...with its face painted blue, a woman's skirt about its hid quarters." The frog was a reference to the first rains of spring. Then young women brought maize up to the temple of Chicomecoatl and they are then painted red and covered with feathers. The girl's then walk through the city while a crowd watches and cheers them on. They walk to the temple where the maize is turned into symbolic hearts to symbolize the fertilizing of the seed of everything in the underworld. After which the girl who represents Chicomecoatl is painted red and then sacrificed.
The Minor Festival of the Lords is about the Aztec goddess of salt, Huixtocihuatl, who represented the regeneration of the rains that watered the crops. The girl who was turned into Huixtocihuatl was dressed in symbolic dress for the sea, cats, plants, and birds. She was painted yellow all over and wore a green hat decorated with quetzal feathers and maize tassels. She was given gold earrings and wore a dress with blue for water and green for growing things, and white for clouds. Her calves were wrapped in jaguar skins that had bells on them and she wore cotton sandals. She carried with her a shield adorned with water lilies and leaves, and wore necklaces made of feathers. This all was a representation of growing and living things and was meant to represent the renewal of life. After she was all dressed up, the girl went dancing for ten days with a bunch of women wearing flower chains. As she danced she would plant a staff in the ground as if she was plowing it to represent the planting of crops. A bunch of old men would follow her around carrying feathers. At the end of the ten days, there was a day where she was kept dancing for a whole 24 hours without sleep. When this was over, male war captives were sacrificed and laid in the bottom of her grave and then the goddess was brought to the sacrificial area. The priests tied her spread eagle and then cut her head off with the beak of a swordfish, once again to represent water or something. Her heart was removed and she was basically torn apart and then her organs were placed in a stone jar. For two weeks afterwards the land and people who danced with her were supposed to have good fertility. Afterwards she was placed her grave on top of the foundation of male victims.
The Great Festival of the Lords came next. This ritual was all about male dominating and sexual tension between the genders. Women were gathered into what is described as a "female herd" where they go dancing and gallivanting about. Then young men would try and trick them so that they could go have sex with them in secret. The matrons who herded the girls would be bribed with gifts and fancy dinner and so the girls could sneak away in secret. Even though it was part of the festival, this had to be done in secret or the boy would be stripped of his rank and he and the girl would be beaten or burned. The girl would be completely rejected and would be unmarriable. Then a girl chosen to represent the Aztec goddess Xilonen would be drowned would be contorted and almost bent in half and then would be killed. Her heart would be removed and placed in a jar and would represent regeneration and the growth of crops. Then apparently she was eaten with maize and everyone got drunk.
The final festival is the craziest, The Sweeping doubles as both a religious and a military festival and combines all the insanity of both. A girl is chosen to represent the goddess Toci and her son Centeotl. The week before the streets are filled with drinking and mock battles between different social groups of women. Then they run through the streets having giant flower fights. After this dancing women would escort the girl to the market place to scatter cornmeal, representing harvest and sale of corn. Then she is taken to a temple where the ruler of Moctezuma comes and sleeps with her. This tells us important things about the gender roles in Aztec society where the current most holy woman in the country must be sexually available to the most powerful man in the empire. This whole time the girl is not told about her approaching death. Then the typical decapitating and heart removal happens and that is when things get really good. After her death she is skinned and turned into a skin suit, and then the skin of her thigh was turned into a mask. The skin suit is given to a strong warrior who is then transformed through the girl's skin into the goddess Toci. The man would ran out of the temple with an entourage of priests. Meanwhile to mask is taken to the man portraying Centeotl who puts it on. The two men ran at each other and met at the temple of the god of war where they participate in a mock battle. They embrace and then enter the temple and sleep there. The next day, noblemen dress the man playing Toci up with feathers, paint and dress with an eagle on it. He is bathed in incense and wrapped in banners, all still while still dressed in skin. Four captives are brought forward to be sacrificed. It is interesting that it is not the girl playing the goddess who sacrifices the captives but instead an elaborate ceremony is in place to turn a man into a female goddess just for this sacrifice and the more warlike aspects of this festival. Then Toci and Centeotl travel to the skull rack. Centeotl leaves the city to travel to enemy territory to bury the skin mask. Meanwhile the army is put through ceremonies, races, and mock battles to prepare them for war. At the end of this ceremony the skin is buried and the army marches out.
Through these religious myths and these religious festivals we can see the ways that Aztec women participate in religious ceremony and religious festivals. Although the ideal Aztec femininity is not passive but a source of creation and renewal, because the religious ceremonies were violent that they were not a sphere for women. So women were not active participants in the official religious practices and instead were regulated to passive observers. The only way that they can participate in these rituals is under the direction of the male priests and male rulers and through sacrifice.