The word "temple," if held to imply an enclosed and covered building, is
very improperly applied to the kind of edifice in question. Indeed, a
Mexican temple (and the same may be said of most of the sanctuaries of
Central America) was essentially a gigantic altar, of pyramidal form,
built in several stages, contracting as they approached the summit. The
number of these retreating stories or terraces might vary. There were
never less than three, but there might be as many as five or six, and in
Tezcuco some of these quasi-pyramids even numbered nine. The one that
towered over all the rest in the city of Mexico was built in five
stages. It measured, at its base, about three hundred and seventy-five
feet in length and three hundred in width, and was over eighty feet
high. At a certain point in each terrace was the stair that sloped
across the side of the pyramid to the terrace above; but the successive
ascents were so arranged that it was necessary to make the complete
circuit of the edifice in order to mount from one stage to another, and
consequently the grand processions to which the Mexicans were so much
devoted must have encircled the whole edifice from top to bottom, like a
huge living serpent, before the van could reach the broad platform at
the top, and this must have added not a little to the picturesque effect
of these religious ceremonies. Such an erection was called a _teocalli_
or "abode of the gods." The great teocalli of Mexico commanded the four
chief roads that parted from its base to unite the capital to all the
countries beneath the sceptre of its rulers. It was the palladium of the
empire, and, as at Jerusalem, it was the last refuge of the defenders of
the national independence.
The teocalli which Fernando Cortes and his companions saw at Mexico, and
which the conqueror razed to the ground, to replace it by a Catholic
church, was not of any great antiquity. It had been constructed
thirty-four years before, in the place of another much smaller one that
dated from the time when the Aztecs were but an insignificant tribe; and
it seems that frightful human hecatombs had ensanguined the foundations
of this more recent teocalli. Some authorities speak of seventy-two or
eighty thousand victims, while more moderate calculations reduce the
number to twenty thousand, which is surely terrible enough. In front of
the temple there stretched a spacious court some twelve hundred feet
square. All around were smaller buildings, which served as habitations
for the priests, and store-houses for the apparatus of worship, as well
as arsenals, oratories for the sovereign and the grandees of the
empire, chapels for the inferior deities and so on. Amongst these
buildings was the temple in which, as I have said, the gods of the
conquered peoples were literally imprisoned. In another the Spaniards
could count a hundred and thirty-six thousand symmetrically-piled
skulls. They were the skulls of all the victims that had been sacrificed
since the foundation of the sanctuary. And, by a contrast no less than
monstrous, side by side with this monument of the most atrocious
barbarism there were halls devoted to the care of the poor and sick, who
were tended gratuitously by priests.[7] What a tissue of contradictions
is man!
But the Aztec religion does not allow us to dwell upon the note of
tenderness. In the centre of the broad platform at the summit stood the
_stone of sacrifices_, a monolith about three feet high, slightly ridged
on the surface. Upon this stone the victim was stretched supine, and
while sundry subordinate priests held his head, arms and feet, the
sacrificing pontiff raised a heavy knife, laid open his bosom with one
terrific blow, and tore out his heart to offer it all bleeding and
palpitating to the deity in whose honour the sacrifice was performed.
And here you will recognize that idea, so widely spread in the two
Americas, and indeed almost everywhere amongst uncivilized peoples, that
the heart is the epitome, so to speak, of the individual--his soul in
some sense--so that to appropriate his heart is to appropriate his whole
being.
Finally, there rose on the same platform a kind of chapel in which were
enthroned the two chief deities of the Aztecs, Uitzilopochtli and
Tezcatlipoca.[8] And here I will ask you to accompany Captain Bernal
Diaz in the retinue of his chief, Fernando Cortes, to whom the king
Montezuma himself had seen fit to do the honours of his "cathedral."
For, as you are aware, Montezuma, divided between a rash confidence and
certain apprehensions which I shall presently explain, received Cortes
for a considerable time with the utmost distinction, lodged him in one
of his palaces, and did everything in the world to please him. This,
then, is the narrative of Bernal Diaz:[9]
"Montezuma invited us to enter a little tower, where in a kind
of chamber, or hall, stood what appeared like two altars covered
with rich embroidery." (What Bernal Diaz compared to altars were
the two _Teoicpalli_ (or _seats of the gods_), which were wooden
pedestals, painted azure blue and bearing a serpent's head at
each corner).... "The first [idol], placed on the right, we were
told represented Huichilobos, their god of war" (this was as
near as Bernal Diaz could get to Uitzilopochtli), "with his face
and countenance very broad, his eyes monstrous and terrible; all
his body was covered with jewels, gold and pearls of various
sizes.... His body was girt with things like great serpents,
made with gold and precious stones, and in one hand he held a
bow, and arrows in the other. And another little idol who stood
by him, and, as they said, was his page, carried a short lance
for him, and a very rich shield of gold and jewels. And
Huichilobos had his neck hung round with faces of Indians, and
what seemed to be the hearts of these same Indians, made of
gold, or some of them of silver, covered with blue gems; and
there stood some brasiers there, containing incense made with
copal and the hearts of three Indians who had been slain that
same day; and they were burning, and with the smoke and incense
they had made that sacrifice to him; and all the walls of this
oratory were so bathed and blackened with cakes of blood, as was
the very ground itself, that the whole exhaled a very foul
odour.
"Carrying our eyes to the left we perceived another great mass,
as high as Huichilobos. Its face was like a bear's, and its
shining eyes were made of mirrors called Tezcat. Its body was
covered with rich gems like that of Huichilobos, for they said
that they were brothers. And this Tescatepuca" (the mutilated
form under which Bernal Diaz presents Tezcatlipoca) "was the god
of hell" (this is another mistake, for Tezcatlipoca was a
celestial deity).... "His body was surrounded with figures like
little imps, with tails like serpents; and the walls were so
caked and the ground so saturated with blood, that the
slaughterhouses of Castile do not exhale such a stench; and
indeed we saw the hearts of five victims who had been
slaughtered that same day.... And since everything smelt of the
shambles, we were impatient to escape from the foul odour and
yet fouler sight."
II.
Such was the impression made upon a Spanish soldier and a good Catholic
by the sight of the two chief deities of the Mexican people. To him
they were simply two abominable inventions of Satan. Let us try to go a
little further below the surface.
Uitzilopochtli signifies _Humming-bird to the left_, from _Uizilin_
(Humming-bird), and _opochtli_ (to the left). The latter part of the
name is probably due to the position we have just seen noticed to the
left of the other great deity, Tezcatlipoca. But why Humming-bird? What
can there be in common between this graceful little creature and the
monstrous idol of the Aztecs? The answer is given by the American
mythology, in which the Humming-bird is a divine being, the messenger of
the Sun. In the Aztec language it is often called the "sunbeam" or the
"sun's hair." This charming little bird, with the purple, gold and topaz
sheen of its lovely plumage, as it flits amongst the flowers like a
butterfly, darts out its long tongue before it to extract their juices,
with a burring of its wings like the humming of bees, whence it derives
its English name. Moreover, it is extremely courageous, and will engage
with far larger birds than itself in defence of its nest. In the
northern regions of Mexico, the humming-bird is the messenger of
spring, as the swallow is with us. At the beginning of May, after a cold
and dry season that has parched the soil and blighted all verdure, the
atmosphere becomes pregnant with rain, the sun regains his power, and a
marvellous transformation sets in. The land arrays itself, before the
very eyes, with verdure and flowers, the air is filled with perfumes,
the maize comes to a head, and hosts of humming-birds appear, as if to
announce that the fair season has returned. We may lay it down as
certain that the humming-bird was the object of a religious cultus
amongst the earliest Aztecs, as the divine messenger of the Spring, like
the wren amongst our own peasantry, the plover amongst the Latins, and
the crow amongst many tribes of the Red-skins. It was the emissary of
the Sun.
It was in this capacity, and under the law of anthropomorphism to which
all the Mexican deities were subject, that the divine humming-bird, as a
revealing god, the protector of the Aztec nation, took the human form
more and more completely in the religious consciousness of his
worshippers. And indeed the Mexican mythology gives form to this idea
that the divine humming-bird (of which those on earth were but the
relatives or little brothers) was a celestial man like an Aztec of the
first rank, in the following legend of his incarnation.
Near to Coatepec, that is to say the Mountain of Serpents,[10] lived the
pious widow _Coatlicue_ or _Coatlantona_ (the ultimate meaning of which
is "female serpent"). One day, as she was going to the temple to worship
the Sun, she saw a little tuft of brilliantly coloured feathers fall at
her feet. She picked it up and placed it in her bosom to present as an
offering to the Sun. But when she was about to draw it forth, she knew
not what had come upon her. Soon afterwards she perceived that she was
about to become a mother. Her children were so enraged that they
determined to kill her, but a voice from her womb cried out to her,
"Mother, have no fear, for I will save thee, to thy great honour and my
own great glory." And in fact Coatlicue's children failed in their
murderous attempt. In due time Uitzilopochtli was born, grasping his
shield and lance, with a plume of feathers shaped like a bird's beak on
his head, with humming-birds' feathers on his left leg, and his face,
arms and legs barred with blue. Endowed from his birth with
extraordinary strength, while still an infant he put to death those who
had attempted to slay his mother, together with all who had taken their
part. He gave her everything he could take from them; and after
accomplishing mighty feats on behalf of the Aztecs, whom he had taken
under his protection, he re-ascended to heaven, bearing his mother with
him, and making her henceforth the goddess of flowers.[11]
You will be struck by the analogy between this myth and more than one
Greek counterpart. There is the same method of reducing to the
conditions of human life, and concentrating at a single point of time
and space, a permanent or regularly recurrent and periodic natural
phenomenon. Uitzilopochtli, the humming-bird, has come from the Sun with
the purpose of making himself man, and he has therefore taken flesh in
an Aztec woman, Coatlicue, the serpent, who is no other than the spring
florescence, and therefore the Mexican Flora. It is not only amongst the
Mexicans that the creeping progress of the spring vegetation, stretching
along the ground towards the North, has suggested the idea of a divine
serpent crawling over the earth. The Athenian myth of Erichthonius is a
conception of the same order. The celestial humming-bird, then,
offspring of the Sun, valiant and warlike from the day of his birth,
champion of his mother, plundering and ever victorious, is the symbol
instinctively seized on by the Aztec people; for it, too, had sprung
from humble beginnings, had been despised and menaced by its neighbours,
and had grown so marvellously in power and in wealth as to have become
the invincible lord of Anahuac. Uitzilopochtli had grown with the Aztec
people. He bears, amongst other surnames, that of Mextli, the warrior,
whence the name of Mexico. He protects his people and ever extends the
boundaries of its empire. And thus, in spite of his bearing the name of
a little bird, his statue as an incarnate deity had become colossal. Yet
the Aztecs did not lose the memory of his original minuteness of
stature. Did you observe, in the account given by Bernal Diaz, that
there stood at the feet of the huge idol another quite small one, that
served, according to the Spanish Captain, as his page? This was the
_Uitziton_, or "little humming-bird," called also the _Paynalton_, or
the "little quick one," whose image was borne by a priest at the head of
the soldiers as they charged the enemy. On the day of his festival, too,
he was borne at full speed along the streets of the city. He was,
therefore, the diminutive Uitzilopochtli, or, more correctly speaking,
the Uitzilopochtli of the early days, the portable idol of the still
wandering tribe; and in fidelity to those memories, as well as to
preserve the warlike rite to the efficacy of which they attached so much
value, the Aztecs had kept the small statue by the side of the great
one.
To sum up: Uitzilopochtli was a derivative form or determination of the
Sun, and specifically of the Sun of the fair season. He had three great
annual festivals. The first fell in May, at the moment of the return of
the flowering vegetation. The second was celebrated in August, when the
favourable season unfolded all its beauty. The third coincided with our
month of December. It was the beginning of the cold and dry season. On
the day of this third festival they made a statue in Uitzilopochtli's
likeness, out of dough concocted with the blood of sacrificed infants,
and, after all kinds of ceremonies, a priest pierced the statue with an
arrow. Uitzilopochtli would die with the verdure, the flowers and all
the beauteous adornments of spring and summer. But, like Adonis, like
Osiris, like Atys, and so many other solar deities, he only died to live
and to return again.[12]
It was now his brother Tezcatlipoca who took the direction of the world.
His name signifies "Shining Mirror." As the Sun of the cold and sterile
season, he turned his impassive glance upon all the world, or gazed into
the mirror of polished crystal that he held in his hand, in which all
the actions of men were reflected. He was a stern god of judgment, with
whose being ideas of moral retribution were associated. He was therefore
much dreaded. Up to a certain point he reminds us of the Vedic Varuna.
His statue was made of dark obsidian rock, and his face recalled that of
the bear or tapir. Suspended to his hair, which was plaited into a tail
and enclosed in a golden net, there hung an ear, which was likewise made
of gold, towards which there mounted flocks of smoke in the form of
tongues. These were the prayers and supplications of mortals. Maladies,
famines and death, were the manifestations of Tezcatlipoca's justice.
Dry as the season over which he presided, he was not easily moved. And
yet he was not absolutely inexorable. The ardent prayers, the sacrifices
and the supplications of his priests might avert the strokes of his
wrath. But in spite of all, he was pre-eminently the god of austere law.
And this is why he was regarded as the civilizing and organizing deity
of the Aztecs. It was he who had established the laws that governed the
people and who watched over their observance. In this capacity he made
frequent journeys of inspection, like an invisible prefect of police,
through the city of Mexico, to see what was going on there. Stone seats
had been erected in the streets for him to rest upon on these
occasions, and no mortal would have dared to occupy them. At the same
time a terrible and cruel subtlety in the means he employed to
accomplish his ends was attributed to him; and the legend about him,
which is far less brilliant than that of his brother Uitzilopochtli, led
several Europeans to believe that he was simply an ancient magician who
had spread terror around him by his sorceries. All this we see
exemplified in his conflicts with a third great deity whom we shall next
describe. In any case we may define Tezcatlipoca as another
determination of the Sun, and specifically of the winter Sun of the
cold, dry, sterile season.[13]
The third great deity is Quetzalcoatl, that is to say "the feathered
serpent," or "the serpent-bird;" and it is specially noteworthy, in
connection with the elevated rank which he occupied in the Mexican
pantheon, that he was not an Aztec deity, but one of the ancient gods of
the invaded country. He was in fact a Toltec deity, and we recognize in
his name, as well as in the special notes in the legend concerning him,
that god of the wind whom we know already in Central America under the
varying names of Cuculcan, Hurakan, Gucumatz, Votan and so forth. He is
almost always a serpent, and a serpent with feathers. His temple at
Mexico departed altogether from the pyramidal type that we have
described. It was dome-shaped and covered. The entrance was formed by a
great serpent-mouth, wide open and showing its fangs, so that the
Spaniards thought it represented a gate of hell. Quetzalcoatl's priests
were clothed in white, whereas the ordinary garb of the Mexican priests
was black. There was something mysterious and occult about the
priesthood of this deity, as though it were possessed of divine secrets
or promises, the importance of which it would be dangerous to
undervalue. A special aversion to human sacrifice, and especially to the
frightful abuse of the practice amongst the Aztecs, was attributed to
this god and his priests, in passive protest, as it were, against the
sanguinary rites to which the Aztecs attributed the prosperity of their
empire.
The legend of Quetzalcoatl, as the Aztecs transmitted it to the
Spaniards, is a motley concatenation of euhemerized myths. Its
historical basis is the continuous retreat of the Toltecs before the
northern invaders, with their god Tezcatlipoca. This latter deity
becomes a magician, cunning and malicious enough to get the better of
the gentle Quetzalcoatl on every occasion. I regret that time will not
allow me to tell in detail of the combat between Tezcatlipoca and
Quetzalcoatl. The latter was a sovereign who lived long ago at Tulla,
the northern focus of Toltec civilization. Under his sceptre men lived
in great happiness and enjoyed abundance of everything. He had taught
them agriculture, the use of the metals, the art of cutting stone, the
means of fixing the calendar; and being opposed to the sacrifice of
human victims--note this--he had advised their replacement by the
drawing of blood from the tongue, the lips, the chest, the legs, &c.
Tezcatlipoca succeeded by his enchantments in destroying this rule of
peace and prosperity, and forced Quetzalcoatl to quit Tulla, which
thereupon fell in ruins. He then pursued him into Cholula, the ancient
sacred city of the Toltecs, in which he had sought refuge, and in which
he had again made happiness and abundance reign. Finally, he forced him
to quit the continent altogether, and embark in a mysterious vessel not
far from Vera Cruz, near to the very spot where Cortes disembarked.
Since then Quetzalcoatl had disappeared; "But wait!" said his priests,
"for he will return." This expectation of Quetzalcoatl's return
furnishes a kind of parallel to the Messianic hope, or more closely yet
to the early Christian expectation of the _parousia_ or "second coming"
of the Christ. For when he returned, it would be to punish his enemies,
to chastise the wicked, the oppressors and the tyrants. And that is why
the Aztecs dreaded his return, and why they had not dared to proscribe
his cultus, but, on the contrary, recognized it and carried it on. And
if you would know the real secret of the success of Fernando Cortes in
his wild enterprize--for, after all, the Mexican sovereign could easily
have crushed him and his handful of men, by making a hecatomb of them
before they had had time to entrench themselves and make allies--you
will find it in the fact that Montezuma, whose conscience was oppressed
with more crimes than one, had a very lively dread of Quetzalcoatl's
return; and when he was informed that at the very point where the
dreaded god had embarked, to disappear in the unknown East, strange and
terrible beings had been seen to disembark, bearing with them fragments
of thunderbolts, in tubes that they could discharge whenever they
would--some of them having two heads and six legs, swifter of foot than
the fleetest men--Montezuma could not doubt that--it was Quetzalcoatl
returning, and instead of sending his troops against Cortes, he
preferred to negotiate with him, to allow him to approach, and to
receive him in his own palace. And although doubts soon asserted
themselves in his mind, yet he long retained, perhaps even to the last,
a superstitious dread of Cortes, that enabled the latter to secure a
complete ascendancy over him. This, I repeat, was the secret of the bold
Spaniard's success; nor can we ever understand the matter rightly unless
we take into consideration the significance of this worship of
Quetzalcoatl that the Aztecs had continued to respect, though all the
while flattering themselves that their own god, Tezcatlipoca, would be
able once more to protect them against his ancient adversary. Years
after the conquest, Father Sahagun had still to answer the question of
the natives, who asked him what he knew of the country of
Quetzalcoatl.[14]
What, then, was the fundamental significance of this feathered Serpent
that so pre-occupied the religious consciousness of the Aztecs?
He was not the Sun. The Sun does not disappear in the East. He was a god
of the wind, as Father Sahagun perfectly well understood, but of that
wind in particular that brings over the parched land of Mexico the tepid
and fertilizing exhalations of the Atlantic. And this is why
Tezcatlipoca, the god of the cold and dry season, rather than
Uitzilopochtli, is his personal enemy. It is towards the end of the dry
season that the fertilizing showers begin to fall on the eastern shores,
and little by little to reach the higher lands of the interior. The
flying Serpent, then, the wind that comes like a huge bird upon the air,
bringing life and abundance with it, is a benevolent deity who spreads
prosperity wherever he goes. But he does not always breathe over the
land, and does not carry his blessed moisture everywhere. Tezcatlipoca
appears. The lofty plateaux of Tulla, of Mexico and of Cholula, are the
first victims of his desolating force. Quetzalcoatl withdraws ever
further and further to the East, and at last disappears in the great
ocean.