Payments Made In Blood

When I first started this project I instinctively thought about what I already knew about the Aztecs.  The first thought that came into my mind? HUMAN SACRIFICE!  When I think Aztec, my first thought is always on ritualistic human sacrifice.  The Aztecs had two types of regularly practiced blood sacrifice.  auto-sacrifice and the better known human sacrifices.  Auto-sacrifice is the practice of bloodletting, which is ritualistic self-cutting or piercing.  Auto-sacrifice was done to honor gods like Quetzalcoatl who performed the first act of auto-sacrifice when he bled to give life to the world.  Priests engaged in auto-sacrifice nightly.  They would bath and purify themselves, burn incense, and go to a secluded spot for the ritual.  Often times the act would consist of piercing one’s earlobes or upper ear with pointed thorns.  Sometimes other body parts were pierced including the tongue, thighs, upper arms, chest, and genitals.  Devout followers, priests and the like, would also pull hollow straws or reeds through the holes.  Although auto-sacrifice was a prevalent ritual it was only a substitute for the more powerful human sacrifice.  the art historian Cecilia Klein sums this up pretty well when she says, “autosacrifice from the beginning was viewed as a symbolic death substitute for the real thing and, as such, as a debt payment made in return for continued life.”

The human sacrifices varied immensely due to the fact that each different city-state was independent from the others.  In many sacrifices the victims were taken to the top of pyramids and slain, their heart taken out and offered to the god or goddess they were praising.  The sacrifices were, more often than not, done in the name of a god or goddess.  The key concept here was ixiptla, which is often translated as “deity impersonator”.   Each god or goddess required different qualities in the ixiptla that was to be sacrificed to them.  Many gods required warriors, while other times slaves would do.  Occasionally women were sacrificed as ixiptla for female goddesses.  To be an ixiptla was an honor and the appointed ixiptla would approach their sacrifice with head held high.  Sometimes these rituals were planned months to years in advanced, and the ixiptla spent their last days or months living as a god.  Many sacrifices were followed by a ceremonial dinner at the home of the family of the captive or sponsor.  At the special meal, the family ate a portion of the victims body.  It was a religious event designed to honor the victim’s memory.  The Aztecs are certainly not the only civilization to practice human sacrifice, or even the cannibalism of sacrifice-ies, but they do stand apart from most others in the sheer frequency of it. Most civilizations that practiced ritualistic sacrifice did it very infrequently, while the Aztecs religion revolved around the practice. The factor of religion can only explain away a portion of the reason for why the Aztecs practiced ritualistic sacrifice as often as they did. The most commonly accepted theory for this is that the religion and political state of the empire were so closely intertwined that sacrifices were also used to advertise the power of the gods and the state.