By Camilo Ucros

Remember all the hype around December 21, 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar? Most likely you let it pass as another hysterical hype, another trend exaggerated in our era of interconnectedness. And for good reason. Looking somewhat into it, this so-called end of the world was just an expression of the cyclical conception pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures had of time and the universe.

This is a topic that historian David Carrasco explores in his paper “Cosmic Jaws,(1)” where he analyzes pictorial and written evidence arguing that the Aztecs saw the Earth as a great digestive system that connected earth with humans and the gods.

To simplify an otherwise elaborate tale the Aztecs have with respect to the origin of the universe, the first gods created the world with a corresponding sun four times, before the era of the Aztecs. Previous worlds were destroyed because of several qualms, including brotherly quarrels and infidelity between the gods, or humans who glorified themselves more than the gods. Aztecs were the fifth people, made out of corn that grew under the light of the fifth sun.

The story goes that the world in which the Aztecs inhabited had once been that of a body of a crocodile-like figure with a mouth on each of its joints, called Tlaltecuhtli, until the gods Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl ripped the crocodile apart. Half of her body became the Earth and the other half the sky. To compensate for the crocodile’s “sacrifice,” the rest of the gods took charge of making the world livable: Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, became the sun, while Tlaloc provided rain. Together they aided Centeotl, the god of maize, in growing the life-supporting crop.

It was not only up to the gods to calm Tlaltecuhtli, but also to the humans who would have to quench her thirst with their own blood. Hence sacrifices were required in caves or cenotes, which were thought of as the gaping mouths of the Earth. Tlaltecuhtli was not the only god demanding blood sacrifices, many of the others thirsted after blood too. The most notable exception was Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, god of the wind, who only demanded the sacrifice of hummingbirds and butterflies.

Pictorial Evidence

A depiction of the interconnectedness of the Earth is found on Pacal’s tomb. Pacal ruled the Mayas for 68 years and expanded the city of Palenque in extension and grandeur. In his tomb one can find an image depicting the underworld, the earth, and the heavens, all connected vertically through the trunk of a tree. Paraphrasing the description of art historian Linda Schele, and the analysis of David Carrasco, this image represents the death of Pacal and his descent into the underworld, where his blood would become the sap of the tree, which would carry him through a tree trunk to heaven. In other words, Pacal was swallowed by the underworld, represented by the mouth of a dragon, with the promise to be reborn in the heavens.

Further pictorial evidence complements the accounts of the Spanish observing ritual sacrifices. The Codex written by the Dominican friar Diego Duran, depicts Mexica ancestors coming out of a cave that also looks like a gaping mouth. The Aztec solar calendar depicts the Sun as a hungry entity, with an open mouth and a dagger like tongue coming out, ready to both eat and pierce the human flesh.

Sacrifices were the way humans fed the gods. The blood of the killed men was frequently smeared over the mouths of sculptures that represented the gods. Saying that the gods were bloodthirsty is not just a metaphor, a valid description of how the Aztecs conceived them.

The symbolic eating of the human was also an eating of the Earth. As humans were supposed to be made out of corn, their consumption was akin to consuming tortillas. Sacrifices to the Sun had the aim of sustaining the sun-god; if the sun wasn’t offered sacrifice then it would cool down (or be shoved out) like its predecessors.

The flow of the vital forces for the Aztecs was not unidirectional but rather an exchange. It was not only the gods who ate the humans, but the humans could also eat the gods. This was done through cannibalism. According to Philip Arnold, referring particularly to sacrifices made to Tlaloc, before a sacrifice, the victim was outstripped from his identity, his name, his dress, diet and character through ritual practice. This ritual aimed at converting the human into a holy deity only embodied in a human form, worthy as food for the gods. After the sacrifice, the heart was usually offered to the gods, and then the priests dismembered the body and distributed it among certain people for them to eat. The Mexica didn’t see this as mere cannibalism but as a ritual of eating a piece of the gods, in a transaction where each entity fed from the other.

The gods in turn would digest the flesh and blood and return them to nature with a renewed vital force. For example, in return for sacrifices Tlaloc would give rain, while Tlaltecuhtli needed to be irrigated with blood in order to let the Earth grow life-supporting goods; meanwhile Tlazolteotl, the goddess of sexual license, would “eat” the sexual sins of humans and recompose them into humus to maintain the fertility of the earth.

The Aztecs also maintained a dual reciprocal relationship with nature. Through oral tradition we have received certain evidence of a Nahuatl song that translates like this:

“We live here on the Earth
we are all fruits of the earth
the earth sustains us
we grow here, on the earth and lower
and when we die we wither in the earth, we are all fruits of the earth.
We eat the earth, then the earth eats us.”

Yet again we can see the same topics of duality and exchange. Furthermore, the lines separating humans and earth get diffused. Both wind up being part of the same whole, each residing within the other at different times. Again the distinction between nature and god is also blurred as the earth winds up being both an embodiment of the gods and their manure. In this cyclical relationship, the Aztec cosmology implied oneness with the world.

Moving away from Carrasco’s ideas about the Aztec ideas into more mundane ground, it is interesting to think about how Aztec daily life interplayed with such conception of the universe.

The triangular relationship had certain implications in the Aztec day-to-day life. First and foremost, it was an invitation to make every day men and women part of the ritual Aztec life, as each had their stakes of survival upon this exchange.

Second, there was an implication that demanding too much from nature would exhaust the vital forces elsewhere. After all, the vital force was a finite force that cycled through the levels of the universe, and if it was in one place it could not be in another. Representative of this is the Aztecs use of the term for farms that had high crop yields: a miccamilli, or a cornfield of death. This meant that a member of the family owning the field was going to die since his vital energy had been transferred to the fields.

This elegant conception of the universe did not mean that the Aztecs were overly cautious when interfering with the natural world. On the contrary, they did some of the most unimaginable feats, by global standards of the time. They built their capital Tenochtitlan in an island in lake Texcoco that was quickly overgrown and required methods to keep the city afloat, which they invented imaginatively. They planted their crops in chinampas, little artificial islands that took advantage of shallow lake beds for irrigation where they mixed and hybridized crops like corn in order to produce higher yields of crop and ensure protection against other diseases.

We can draw from this the conclusion that it is ridiculous to assume that the Aztecs expected to survive out of ritual practice and the favor of the gods alone. Instead, their religion actively commanded them to actively expand their domains and rule over other people, to capture enemies in order to sacrifice, and to have their crops ready in time to offer to the gods. In other words, humans played a primordial role in maintaining the existence of the universe, acting as mediators between the earth and the heavens. In order to fulfill their calling, they needed to strengthen their mundane situation as well. The relationship between humans and nature has always been one of exploitation. Aztec religion sought to constrain such exploitation, without imposing a collective suicide upon the society.

The most important thing to recall is that the Aztec way of seeing the universe was one of perpetual destruction and recreation. Only from waste could life be born again. The triangle between heavenly gods, earthly humans and the planet, did not have clearly defined edges. Each concept blurred into the other: humans could acquire godly features by ritual transformation and cannibalism, for example. Or, humans were made of corn, an earthly product, that would eventually decay as well. To complete the triangle, the Earth was an embodiment of the gods but also a medium through which the gods provided humanity the vital energy it needed, allowing humans the ability to feed themselves, preserving the existence of mankind.

(1)David Carrasco, “Cosmic Jaws” from City of Sacrifice. The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization. (Beacon Press). 164-187