Aztecs

I have since long been interrested in the aztec empire, the impressive civilazation that was destroyed by the spanish army in the 16th century.

HUMAN SACRIFICE

There were many different kinds of human sacrifice, each associated with a given deity or one of the many festivals that punctuated the Aztec year, and the victims could be slaves as well as captured warriors. Without doubt the most common type of sacrifice was that in which the victim was held down while his still- pumping heart was cut out, but it was by no means the only method. Some unfortunates were decapitated. Still others became living targets, shot through with arrows or atlatl darts.
Pherhaps the noblest form of human sacrifice was the one that involved gladiatoral combat, albeit of a lopsided kind. Known as the Flaying of Men, it formed part of a ritual carried out in the spring, the time of planting, and celebrated the rejuvenation of life. The prisoners, seized on the battlefield and brought backi to Tenochtitlan, were carefully tended by their captors and treated almost as kinsmen, as brethren in death, that they might honor the victors through the dignity and bravery of their dying. Indeed, this relationship started on the battlefield where, by tradition, the warrior was supposed tp say to his prisoner, "He is my beloved son," and the prisoner in turn was to reply, "He is my beloved father."

The rite of the Flaying of Men took place over a two day period at the temple of the god Xipe Totec, known as the flayed one or the flayer, whose connections with the east, a region considered by the Aztecs to be a land of plenty, made him an appropriate deity to please at this time of year. The ceremony called for the prisoners, wearing paper loincloths, to be smeared all over with chalky substance. Then their heads were covered sticky latex, the juice of the rubber tree, to which turkey feathers were attached; the milky colored latex was applied to their faces as well. On the first day of the rite, only lesser captives went to their deaths atop Xipe's temple; they were supposed to spront up the steps, but many had to be dragged to the sacificial stone by the temple priests. After they had their hearts cut out, their lifeless bodies were thrown down the steps and flayed and butchered. One thight of each was dispatched to the ruler, while the victims captors got to keep the rest exept for the heads, which were used to decorate an enormous skull rack.

The warriors now summoned their kinsmen to their homes for ritual cannibal feasts. Mindful that they themselves might wind up one day on an enemy's killing stone, they abjured their capives flesh, but urged their relatives to eat a small piece with a handful of uncooked corn kernels, a symbolic art calling to mind the earth's bounty. With much wailing and weeping for the deaths that might one day befall their own sons, either on the battlefield or as sacrifices, the families partook of the flesh and corn.
The next day, the more important prisoners were sacrificed on the so-called gladiatoral stone at the base of Xipe Totec's pyramid. The captives had been prepared for the rite over a four day period during which, among other things, they were obliged to fight in mock combat and submit a sham removal of their hearts - that organ being represented by dried corn kernels. After spending the eve of their deaths with their captors, who symbolically cut of their warlocks at midnight, they were led to the temple. The high priest, dressed as Xipe, came down the steps, followed by his entourage.
A captive would be tethered to the waisthigh, circular stone, which was set on a raised platform. Stripped to his loincloth, he was provided with mock arms - four pine cudgels and a club rimmed with feathers in place of the usual obsidian blades. With these imitation weapons he was expected to defend himself against four of the mightiest Eagle and Jaguar Knights, who were armed with real weapons. to ease his pain he was given a drink of polque, spiked doubtless with a drug prepared from morning-glory seeds, and then he was set upon by his adversaries and their superior weapons.
As he fought his losin battle, he was subjected to what was known as the striping, the slitting here and there of his skin, so that his blood would seep from the tiny wounds. there was pherhaps an intended parallel here, the breaking of the skin suggesting the splitting open of seeds in the earth as they germinate. When at last the poor captive collapsed, the high priest impersonating Xipe stepped forward, cut out the heart, raised it up to the sun as an offering, and then dipped a hollow cane into the pool of blood rising in the chest cavity and held it up for the sun to drink. He presented the captor with the cane and a bowl of blood with which the warrior went about the city, reddening the mouths of the idols in the temples.
After making his rounds, the warrior returned to Xipe's temple and rejoined the celebrants, who flayed and dismembered the captives; they then lubricated their own naked bodies with grease and slippeed into the skin. The second day also included a cannibal feats for each warrior's family. During the 20-day period in which he wore the skin, he and those around him had to endure the stench it gave off. The ceremony over, the reborn spring, was joyously celebrated throughout the city.

Children were offered to Tlaloc, the god of rain and agriculture fertility. Each spring the priests took a child of six or seven years and placed him within an enclosed litter so that he would not be seen. The procession crossed the lake Tetzcoco and wended its way to the summit of Mount Tlaloc, a peak near Tenochtitlan that the Aztecs associated with clouds and rain. At Mount Tlaloc the child was sacrificed by the priests to the wail of trumpets, conch shells and flutes, the blood was used to bathe an image of the god; if a drought persisted, additional children would be sacrificed.
Meanwhile, in Tenochtitlan itself, a little girl dressed in blue, the color of water, waited in another closed litter within the great Tempel. When news came through that the mountain sacrifice had been accomplished, she was carried to a canoe and paddled to a given spot out on the lake. There her throat was slit, so that her blood flowed into the water, and her body thrown into the lake.