Aztec Religion: Human Sacrifice

The Aztecs are polytheists and consider themselves the chosen people of the Sun. This religion has recourse to human sacrifices associated with festivities fixed by the Aztec calendar. One of the fundamental ideas of the Aztec religion consists in grouping all human beings according to the cardinal points and the central direction or from bottom to top. According to them, each human being has a role and a special place in nature. Colors, trees, animals are also classified and associated with one of the four directions.

As they consider themselves to be the chosen people of the Sun, they say they are responsible for ensuring its progress by feeding the sun with sacrifices. The Aztecs’ ‘mission’ was a kind of obsession. Among the Aztecs nature and men are not doomed to eternal death.

Resurrection forces are at work; the sun is reborn every morning and the moon every night, Venus dies and is reborn, animals and vegetation are reborn just like humans.

However, man is largely dominated by the destiny system. So neither his life nor his survival belongs to him. The quote that spoke to me is ‘ the sustenance of men during this age was a seed called water corn’, p. 66. because this passage shows how healthy the Aztecs were and it’s a very good thing. Many ignore it, but corn is very important in our diet. I could not find a part in the PowerPoint or in the video which supports this quote but it really interested me.

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Hindu culture is full of rituals, traditions and daily routines that seek to improve and create the best conditions for a living individual. These rituals are very orderly and are intended to move the individual from one stage of life to another.

The purpose of this personal movement, called samskara, is to help the individual achieve liberation and to break free from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. However, Hinduism considers death as a passage, a transmigration of the soul. Death is by no means considered dramatic, it rather frees the deceased by allowing him to reach a better state than that obtained during his lifetime. In Taoism, there is a great diversity of conceptions of death, which are relatively far from that proposed by Buddhism. Although both Taoism and Buddhists believe in reincarnation, there are some small differences in their conceptions of death. Finally among the Aztecs, religion and superstitions permeated all aspects of daily life and even at death. Within four days of the baby’s birth, the child received his name from a priest. He or she underwent a ritual washing and the ceremony was finished by blessings coming from the parents. At the approach of death, the old man or the dying man could confess his faults to a priest and had to do penance (scarification, fasting, offerings to the gods, etc.). Then, they place near the dead a vase filled with water intended to water it on its journey to the next world.