Chapter 59. Killing the God in Mexico.
BY NO PEOPLE does the custom of sacrificing the human representative
of a god appear to have been observed so commonly and with so much
solemnity as by the Aztecs of ancient Mexico. With the ritual of these
remarkable sacrifices we are well acquainted, for it has been fully
described by the Spaniards who conquered Mexico in the sixteenth
century, and whose curiosity was naturally excited by the discovery in this
distant region of a barbarous and cruel religion which presented many
curious points of analogy to the doctrine and ritual of their own church.
"They took a captive," says the Jesuit Acosta, "such as they thought
good; and afore they did sacrifice him unto their idols, they gave him the
name of the idol, to whom he should be sacrificed, and apparelled him with
the same ornaments like their idol, saying, that he did represent the same
idol. And during the time that this representation lasted, which was for a
year in some feasts, in others six months, and in others less, they
reverenced and worshipped him in the same manner as the proper idol;
and in the meantime he did eat, drink, and was merry. When he went
through the streets, the people came forth to worship him, and every one
brought him an alms, with children and sick folks, that he might cure them,
and bless them, suffering him to do all things at his pleasure, only he was
accompanied with ten or twelve men lest he should fly. And he (to the end
he might be reverenced as he passed) sometimes sounded upon a small
flute, that the people might prepare to worship him. The feast being come,
and he grown fat, they killed him, opened him, and ate him, making a
solemn sacrifice of him." 1
This general description of the custom may now be illustrated by
particular examples. Thus at the festival called Toxcatl, the greatest festival
of the Mexican year, a young man was annually sacrificed in the
character of Tezcatlipoca, "the god of gods," after having been maintained
and worshipped as that great deity in person for a whole year. According
to the old Franciscan monk Sahagun, our best authority on the Aztec
religion, the sacrifice of the human god fell at Easter or a few days later,
so that, if he is right, it would correspond in date as well as in character to
the Christian festival of the death and resurrection of the Redeemer. More
exactly he tells us that the sacrifice took place on the first day of the fifth
Aztec month, which according to him began on the twenty-third or
twenty-seventh day of April. 2
At this festival the great god died in the person of one human
representative and came to life again in the person of another, who was
destined to enjoy the fatal honour of divinity for a year and to perish, like
all his predecessors, at the end of it. The young man singled out for this
high dignity was carefully chosen from among the captives on the ground
of his personal beauty. He had to be of unblemished body, slim as a reed
and straight as a pillar, neither too tall nor too short. If through high living
he grew too fat, he was obliged to reduce himself by drinking salt water.
And in order that he might behave in his lofty station with becoming grace
and dignity he was carefully trained to comport himself like a gentleman of
the first quality, to speak correctly and elegantly, to play the flute, to
smoke cigars and to snuff at flowers with a dandified air. He was
honourably lodged in the temple, where the nobles waited on him and paid
him homage, bringing him meat and serving him like a prince. The king
himself saw to it that he was apparelled in gorgeous attire, "for already he
esteemed him as a god." Eagle down was gummed to his head and white
cock's feathers were stuck in his hair, which drooped to his girdle. A
wreath of flowers like roasted maize crowned his brows, and a garland of
the same flowers passed over his shoulders and under his armpits. Golden
ornaments hung from his nose, golden armlets adorned his arms, golden
bells jingled on his legs at every step he took; earrings of turquoise
dangled from his ears, bracelets of turquoise bedecked his wrists;
necklaces of shells encircled his neck and depended on his breast; he
wore a mantle of network, and round his middle a rich waistcloth. When
this bejewelled exquisite lounged through the streets playing on his flute,
puffing at a cigar, and smelling at a nosegay, the people whom he met
threw themselves on the earth before him and prayed to him with sighs and
tears, taking up the dust in their hands and putting it in their mouths in
token of the deepest humiliation and subjection. Women came forth with
children in their arms and presented them to him, saluting him as a god.
For "he passed for our Lord God; the people acknowledged him as the
Lord." All who thus worshipped him on his passage he saluted gravely and
courteously. Lest he should flee, he was everywhere attended by a guard
of eight pages in the royal livery, four of them with shaven crowns like the
palace-slaves, and four of them with the flowing locks of warriors; and if
he contrived to escape, the captain of the guard had to take his place as
the representative of the god and to die in his stead. Twenty days before
he was to die, his costume was changed, and four damsels delicately
nurtured and bearing the names of four goddesses-the Goddess of
Flowers, the Goddess of the Young Maize, the Goddess "Our Mother
among the Water," and the Goddess of Salt-were given him to be his
brides, and with them he consorted. During the last five days divine
honours were showered on the destined victim. The king remained in his
palace while the whole court went after the human god. Solemn banquets
and dances followed each other in regular succession and at appointed
places. On the last day the young man, attended by his wives and pages,
embarked in a canoe covered with a royal canopy and was ferried across
the lake to a spot where a little hill rose from the edge of the water. It was
called the Mountain of Parting, because there his wives bade him a last
farewell. Then, accompanied only by his pages, he repaired to a small and
lonely temple by the wayside. Like the Mexican temples in general, it was
built in the form of a pyramid; and as the young man ascended the stairs
he broke at every step one of the flutes on which he had played in the
days of his glory. On reaching the summit he was seized and held down
by the priests on his back upon a block of stone, while one of them cut
open his breast, thrust his hand into the wound, and wrenching out his
heart held it up in sacrifice to the sun. The body of the dead god was not,
like the bodies of common victims, sent rolling down the steps of the
temple, but was carried down to the foot, where the head was cut off and
spitted on a pike. Such was the regular end of the man who personated the
greatest god of the Mexican pantheon. 3
The honour of living for a short time in the character of a god and dying a
violent death in the same capacity was not restricted to men in Mexico;
women were allowed, or rather compelled, to enjoy the glory and to share
the doom as representatives of goddesses. Thus at a great festival in
September, which was preceded by a strict fast of seven days, they
sanctified a young slave girl of twelve or thirteen years, the prettiest they
could find, to represent the Maize Goddess Chicomecohuatl. They
invested her with the ornaments of the goddess, putting a mitre on her
head and maize-cobs round her neck and in her hands, and fastening a
green feather upright on the crown of her head to imitate an ear of maize.
This they did, we are told, in order to signify that the maize was almost ripe
at the time of the festival, but because it was still tender they chose a girl
of tender years to play the part of the Maize Goddess. The whole long day
they led the poor child in all her finery, with the green plume nodding on
her head, from house to house dancing merrily to cheer people after the
dulness and privations of the fast. 4
In the evening all the people assembled at the temple, the courts of
which they lit up by a multitude of lanterns and candles. There they
passed the night without sleeping, and at midnight, while the trumpets,
flutes, and horns discoursed solemn music, a portable framework or
palanquin was brought forth, bedecked with festoons of maize-cobs and
peppers and filled with seeds of all sorts. This the bearers set down at the
door of the chamber in which the wooden image of the goddess stood.
Now the chamber was adorned and wreathed, both outside and inside,
with wreaths of maize-cobs, peppers, pumpkins, roses, and seeds of
every kind, a wonder to behold; the whole floor was covered deep with
these verdant offerings of the pious. When the music ceased, a solemn
procession came forth of priests and dignitaries, with flaring lights and
smoking censers, leading in their midst the girl who played the part of the
goddess. Then they made her mount the framework, where she stood
upright on the maize and peppers and pumpkins with which it was strewed,
her hands resting on two bannisters to keep her from falling. Then the
priests swung the smoking censers round her; the music struck up again,
and while it played, a great dignitary of the temple suddenly stepped up to
her with a razor in his hand and adroitly shore off the green feather she
wore on her head, together with the hair in which it was fastened, snipping
the lock off by the root. The feather and the hair he then presented to the
wooden image of the goddess with great solemnity and elaborate
ceremonies, weeping and giving her thanks for the fruits of the earth and
the abundant crops which she had bestowed on the people that year; and
as he wept and prayed, all the people, standing in the courts of the
temple, wept and prayed with him. When that ceremony was over, the girl
descended from the framework and was escorted to the place where she
was to spend the rest of the night. But all the people kept watch in the
courts of the temple by the light of torches till break of day. 5
The morning being come, and the courts of the temple being still crowded
by the multitude, who would have deemed it sacrilege to quit the precincts,
the priests again brought forth the damsel attired in the costume of the
goddess, with the mitre on her head and the cobs of maize about her neck.
Again she mounted the portable framework or palanquin and stood on it,
supporting herself by her hands on the bannisters. Then the elders of the
temple lifted it on their shoulders, and while some swung burning censers
and others played on instruments or sang, they carried it in procession
through the great courtyard to the hall of the god Huitzilopochtli and then
back to the chamber, where stood the wooden image of the Maize
Goddess, whom the girl personated. There they caused the damsel to
descend from the palanquin and to stand on the heaps of corn and
vegetables that had been spread in profusion on the floor of the sacred
chamber. While she stood there all the elders and nobles came in a line,
one behind the other, carrying saucers full of dry and clotted blood which
they had drawn from their ears by way of penance during the seven days'
fast. One by one they squatted on their haunches before her, which was
the equivalent of falling on their knees with us, and scraping the crust of
blood from the saucer cast it down before her as an offering in return for
the benefits which she, as the embodiment of the Maize Goddess, had
conferred upon them. When the men had thus humbly offered their blood to
the human representative of the goddess, the women, forming a long line,
did so likewise, each of them dropping on her hams before the girl and
scraping her blood from the saucer. The ceremony lasted a long time, for
great and small, young and old, all without exception had to pass before
the incarnate deity and make their offering. When it was over, the people
returned home with glad hearts to feast on flesh and viands of every sort
as merrily, we are told, as good Christians at Easter partake of meat and
other carnal mercies after the long abstinence of Lent. And when they had
eaten and drunk their fill and rested after the night watch, they returned
quite refreshed to the temple to see the end of the festival. And the end of
the festival was this. The multitude being assembled, the priests solemnly
incensed the girl who personated the goddess; then they threw her on her
back on the heap of corn and seeds, cut off her head, caught the gushing
blood in a tub, and sprinkled the blood on the wooden image of the
goddess, the walls of the chamber, and the offerings of corn, peppers,
pumpkins, seeds, and vegetables which cumbered the floor. After that they
flayed the headless trunk, and one of the priests made shift to squeeze
himself into the bloody skin. Having done so they clad him in all the robes
which the girl had worn; they put the mitre on his head, the necklace of
golden maize-cobs about his neck, the maize-cobs of feathers and gold
in his hands; and thus arrayed they led him forth in public, all of them
dancing to the tuck of drum, while he acted as fugleman, skipping and
posturing at the head of the procession as briskly as he could be expected
to do, incommoded as he was by the tight and clammy skin of the girl and
by her clothes, which must have been much too small for a grown man. 6
In the foregoing custom the identification of the young girl with the Maize
Goddess appears to be complete. The golden maize-cobs which she wore
round her neck, the artificial maize-cobs which she carried in her hands,
the green feather which was stuck in her hair in imitation (we are told) of a
green ear of maize, all set her forth as a personification of the corn-spirit;
and we are expressly informed that she was specially chosen as a young
girl to represent the young maize, which at the time of the festival had not
yet fully ripened. Further, her identification with the corn and the
corn-goddess was clearly announced by making her stand on the heaps
of maize and there receive the homage and blood-offerings of the whole
people, who thereby returned her thanks for the benefits which in her
character of a divinity she was supposed to have conferred upon them.
Once more, the practice of beheading her on a heap of corn and seeds
and sprinkling her blood, not only on the image of the Maize Goddess, but
on the piles of maize, peppers, pumpkins, seeds, and vegetables, can
seemingly have had no other object but to quicken and strengthen the
crops of corn and the fruits of the earth in general by infusing into their
representatives the blood of the Corn Goddess herself. The analogy of this
Mexican sacrifice, the meaning of which appears to be indisputable, may
be allowed to strengthen the interpretation which I have given of other
human sacrifices offered for the crops. If the Mexican girl, whose blood
was sprinkled on the maize, indeed personated the Maize Goddess, it
becomes more than ever probable that the girl whose blood the Pawnees
similarly sprinkled on the seed corn personated in like manner the female
Spirit of the Corn; and so with the other human beings whom other races
have slaughtered for the sake of promoting the growth of the crops. 7
Lastly, the concluding act of the sacred drama, in which the body of the
dead Maize Goddess was flayed and her skin worn, together with all her
sacred insignia, by a man who danced before the people in this grim attire,
seems to be best explained on the hypothesis that it was intended to
ensure that the divine death should be immediately followed by the divine
resurrection. If that was so, we may infer with some degree of probability
that the practice of killing a human representative of a deity has commonly,
perhaps always, been regarded merely as a means of perpetuating the
divine energies in the fulness of youthful vigour, untainted by the
weakness and frailty of age, from which they must have suffered if the
deity had been allowed to die a natural death. 8
These Mexican rites suffice to prove that human sacrifices of the sort I
suppose to have prevailed at Aricia were, as a matter of fact, regularly
offered by a people whose level of culture was probably not inferior, if
indeed it was not distinctly superior, to that occupied by the Italian races
at the early period to which the origin of the Arician priesthood must be
referred. The positive and indubitable evidence of the prevalence of such
sacrifices in one part of the world may reasonably be allowed to
strengthen the probability of their prevalence in places for which the
evidence is less full and trustworthy. Taken all together, the facts which we
have passed in review seem to show that the custom of killing men whom
their worshippers regard as divine has prevailed in many parts of the
world. 9