MEXICAN MYTHOLOGY
The Mexican Empire at the period of its conquest by Cortes had arrived
at a standard of civilisation comparable with that of those dynasties
which immediately preceded the rule of the Ptolemies in Egypt. The
government was an elective monarchy, but princes of the blood alone were
eligible for royal honours. A complex system of jurisdiction prevailed,
and a form of district and family government was in vogue which was
somewhat similar to that of the Anglo-Saxons. In the arts a high state
of perfection had been reached, and the Aztec craftsman appears to have
been a step beyond the slavish conventionalism of the ancient Egyptian
artist. In architecture the Mexicans were highly skilled, and their
ability in this respect aroused the wonder of their Spanish conquerors,
who, however, did not hesitate to raze to the ground the splendid
edifices they professed so much to admire. As road-builders and
constructors of aqueducts they chiefly excelled, and a perfect system of
posts was established on each of the great highways of the empire.
With the Aztecs the art of writing took the form of hieroglyphs, which
in some ways resembled those of the ancient Egyptians; but they had not
at the period of their conquest by Cortes evolved a more convenient, and
cursive method, such as the hieratic or demotic scripts employed in the
Nile valley. In astronomical science they were surprisingly advanced and
exact. The system in use by them was wonderfully accurate. It is,
however, quite erroneous to suppose that it has affinities with any
Asiatic system. They divided the year into eighteen periods of twenty
days each, adding five supplementary days, and providing for
intercalation every half-century. Each month contained four weeks of
five days each, and each of the months had a distinct name. That the
Aztecs were possessed of exact astronomical instruments cannot be
proved; but in the thirteenth plate of Dupaix's _Monuments_, (Part II.)
there is a representation of a man holding to his face an instrument
which might or might not be a telescope.[2] The astronomical dial was
certainly in use among them, and astrology, and divination in its every
shape were frequently resorted to.
In the manual arts the Aztecs were far advanced. Papermaking was in a
moderate state of perfection, and the dyeing, weaving, and spinning of
cotton were crafts in which they excelled. Feather-work of supreme
beauty was a staple article of manufacture, but in the metallic arts the
absence of iron had to be compensated for by an alloy of copper,
siliceous powder, and tin--an admixture by the use of which the hardest
granite was cut and shaped, and the most beautiful gold and silver
ornaments fashioned. Sharp tools were also made from obsidian, and in
the barbers' shops of the city of Mexico razors of the same stone were
in use.
To the art of war the Aztecs--a military nation who won and held all
they possessed by force of arms--attached great importance. Training in
the army was rigorous, and the knowledge of tactics displayed appears to
have been very considerable.
Although the Aztecs had founded and adopted from other nations a
complete pantheon of their own, they were strongly influenced by the
ancient sun and moon worship of Central America. _Ometecutli_ (twice
Lord) and _Omecihuatl_ (twice Lady) were the names which they bestowed
upon these luminaries, and they were probably the first deities known to
the Aztecs upon their emergence from a condition of totemism. The sun
was the _teotl_, _the_ god of the Mexicans, but it will be seen in the
course of this chapter that the national deities and those acquired by
the Aztecs in their intercourse with the surrounding peoples of Tezcuco
and Tlacopan somewhat obscured the worship of those elementary gods.
Through all the confusion of a mythology second only in richness to
those of Egypt and Hellas can be traced the idea of a supreme creator, a
'god behind the gods.' This was not the sun, but an Allfather, addressed
by the Mexican nations as 'the God by whom we live'; 'omnipotent, that
knoweth all thoughts, and giveth all gifts'; 'invisible, incorporeal,
one God, of perfect perfection and purity.' The universality of this
great being would seem (as in other mythologies) to have led to the
deification of his attributes, and thus we have a pantheon in which we
can trace all the various attributes of an anthropomorphic deity. This
subdivision of the deity was not, however, responsible for all the gods
embraced by the Mexican pantheon. Many of these were purely national
gods--and two at least had probably been raised to this rank from a
condition of symbolic totemism during a period of national expansion and
military success.
Such a god was the Mexican Mars, Huitzilopochtli, a name which signifies
'Humming-bird on the left,' a designation concerning the exact
derivation of which there is considerable difference of opinion. The
general explanation of this peculiar name is that it may have arisen
from the fact that the god is usually represented as having the feathers
of a humming-bird on the left foot. Before attempting an elucidation of
the name, however, it will be well to examine the myth of
Huitzilopochtli.
Huitzilopochtli was the principal tribal deity of the Aztecs. Another,
though evidently less popular name applied to him, was Mextli, which
signifies 'Hare of the Aloes.' Indeed a section of the city of Mexico
derived its name from this appellation. The myth concerning his origin
is one the peculiar features of which are common to many nations. His
mother, Coatlicue or Coatlantona (she-serpent), a devout widow, on
entering the Temple of the Sun one day for the purpose of adoring the
deity, beheld a ball of brightly coloured feathers fall at her feet.
Charmed with the brilliancy of the plumes, she picked it up and placed
it in her bosom with the intention of making an offering of it to the
sun-god. Soon afterwards she was aware of pregnancy, and her children,
enraged at the disgrace, were about to put her to death when her son
Huitzilopochtli was born, grasping a spear in his right hand and a
shield in his left, and wearing on his head a plume of humming-bird's
feathers. On his left leg there also sprouted the flights of the
humming-bird, whilst his face and limbs were barred with stripes of
blue. Falling upon the enemies of his mother he speedily slew them. He
became the leader of the Aztec nation, and after performing on its
behalf prodigies of valour, he and his mother were translated to heaven,
where she was assigned a place as the Goddess of Flowers.
The Muellerism of fifteen or twenty years ago would have assigned
unhesitatingly the legend of Huitzilopochtli to that class of myths
which have their origin in natural phenomena. In the _Hibbert Lectures_
for 1884, M. Reville, the French religionist, professes to see in the
Mexican war-god the offspring of the sun and the 'spring florescence.'
Mr. Tylor (_Primitive Culture_) calls Huitzilopochtli an 'inextricable
compound parthenogenetic deity.' A more satisfactory solution of the
myth would seem to the present writer to be that the origin of
Huitzilopochtli was partly totemic--that, in fact, the humming-bird was
the original totem of the wandering tribe of Aztecs prior to their
descent upon Anahuac. The humming-bird is of an extremely pugnacious
disposition, and will not hesitate to attack birds considerably larger
than itself. This courage would appeal to a warlike tribe bent on
conquest, and its adoption as a totem and as a standard in the wars of
the Aztecs would naturally follow. This standard was known as the
_Huitziton_ or _Paynalton_, the 'little humming-bird' or 'little quick
one,' and was a miniature of Huitzilopochtli borne by the priests in
front of the soldiers in battle. This totem, then, took rank as the
national war-god of the Aztecs. The commerce of the mortal woman with
the animal is common to many legends of a totemic origin, as may be
witnessed in the myths of many of the present-day American Indian tribes
who believe their ancestors to have been the progeny of bears or wolves
and mortal women, or as many Norse and Celtic families in Early Britain
believed themselves to be able to trace a similar ancestry.
However, Huitzilopochtli had a certain solar connection. He had three
annual festivals, in May, August, and December. At the last of these
festivals, an image of him was modelled in dough, kneaded with the blood
of sacrificed children, and this was pierced by the presiding priest
with an arrow, in token that the sun had been slain, and was dead for a
season. The totem had, in fact, become confounded with the sun-god, the
deity of the older and more cultured races of Anahuac, who had been
adopted by the Aztecs on their settlement there. The myth had, in fact,
to be revised in the light of the later adoption of a solar cultus; so
that here as in so many of the myths of other lands we find an amicable
blending of rival beliefs which have been almost insensibly fused one
into another.
But another originally totemic deity had gained high rank in the Aztec
pantheon. This was Tezcatlipoca, whose name signifies 'Shining Mirror.'
He was the brother of Huitzilopochtli, and in this brotherhood may be
discerned the twofold nature of the Huitzilopochtli legend. Tezcatlipoca
was not the blood-brother of the war-god of the Aztecs, but his brother
in so far as he was connected with the sun. Tezcatlipoca, then, was the
god of the cold season, and typified the dreary sun of that time of
year. But he was also (probably as an afterthought) the God of Justice,
in whose mirror the thoughts and actions of men were reflected. It seems
probable to the present writer that Tezcatlipoca may originally, and in
another clime, have been an ice-god. The facts which lead to this
assumption are the period of his coming into power at the end of summer,
and his possession of a shining mirror. Another of Tezcatlipoca's names
signifies 'Night Wind.' He was evidently regarded also as the 'Breath of
Life.' He may originally have been a wind demon of the prairies.
Tezcatlipoca's plaited hair was enclosed in a golden net, and from this
plait was suspended an ear wrought in gold, towards which mounted a
cloud of tongues, representative of the prayers of mankind. The
ever-present nature of the 'Great Spirit' is also typified by
Tezcatlipoca, who wandered invisible through the city of Mexico to
observe the conduct of the inhabitants. That he might be enabled to rest
during his tour of inspection, stone seats were placed for his reception
at intervals in the streets. Needless to say no human being dared to
occupy those benches.
But the most unique of all the gods of Mexico was Quetzalcoatl. This
name indicates 'Feathered Serpent,' and the deity who owned it was
probably adopted by the Aztecs upon their settlement in Mexico, called
by them Anahuac. At all events, Quetzalcoatl stood for a worship which
was eminently more advanced and humane than the degrading and sanguinary
idolatry of which Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca were the prime
objects. That he was not of Aztec origin but a god of the Toltecs or of
the elder peoples who had preceded them in Anahuac is proved by a myth
of the Mexican nations, in which his strife with Tezcatlipoca is
related. Step by step Quetzalcoatl, the genius of Old Anahuac, resisted
the inroads of the newcomers as represented by Tezcatlipoca. But he was
forced to flee the country over which he had presided so long, and to
embark on a frail boat on the ocean, promising to return at some future
period. The Aztecs believed in and feared his ultimate return. He was
not one of their gods. But in their terror of his vengeance and return
they attempted to propitiate him by permitting his worship to flourish
as a distinct caste side by side with that of Huitzilopochtli and
Tezcatlipoca.
Reville, writing in 'the mythical age,' as the decade of the 'eighties
of last century has wittily been designated, sees in Quetzalcoatl the
east wind, and quotes Sahagun to substantiate his theory.[3] But
Quetzalcoatl was 'Lord of the Dawn.' In fine he was a culture-god, and
was closely connected with the sun. It would be impossible in the space
assigned to me to enter fully into an analysis of the origin of this
most interesting figure. There is, however, reason to believe that
Quetzalcoatl was one of those early introducers of culture who sooner or
later find a place among the deities of the nation they have assisted in
its early struggles towards civilisation. The strife between
Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, according to Reville, typifies the
struggle between the wind and the cold and dry season. It is more
probable that it typifies the strife between culture and barbarism. The
same authority points out that it is Tezcatlipoca and not
Huitzilopochtli who attacks Quetzalcoatl. But Tezcatlipoca, was the god
of austerity, and perhaps of the cold north, and thus the proper
opponent of a luxurious southern civilisation. I have gone more fully
into the question of the origin of Quetzalcoatl in the last chapter of
this work, as a more prolonged consideration of the subject would be
somewhat out of the scope of the present chapter.
The worship of Quetzalcoatl was antipathetic if not directly opposed to
that of the other deities of Anahuac. It had a separate priesthood of
its own who dressed in white in contradistinction to the sable garments
which the priests of the other divinities were in the habit of wearing,
and its ritual discountenanced if it did not forbid human sacrifice.
Quetzalcoatl possessed a high priest of his own, who was subservient,
however, to the Aztec pontiff, and who only joined the monarch's
deliberative council on rare and extraordinary occasions. There can be
no doubt that the good reception given to Cortes and the Spanish
conquerors was solely on account of the Quetzalcoatl legend, which
insisted upon his return at some future period, and the Aztecs
undoubtedly regarded the arrival of the strange white men as a
fulfilment of this prophecy.
Tlaloc was the god of rain--an important deity for a country where a
droughty season was nothing less than a national disaster. His name
signifies 'the nourisher,' and from his seat among the mountains he
despatched the rain-bearing clouds to water the thirsty and sun-baked
plains of Anahuac. He was also the god of fertility or fecundity, and in
this respect appears to have been analogous to the Egyptian Amsu or
Khem, the ithyphallic deity of Panopolis. He was the wielder of the
thunder and lightning, and the worship connected with him was even more
cruel, if possible, than that of Huitzilopochtli. One-eyed and
open-mouthed, he delighted in the sacrifice of children, and in seasons
of drought hundreds of innocents were borne to his temple in open
litters, wreathed with blossoms and dressed in festal robes. Should they
weep, their tears were regarded as a happy augury for a rainy season;
and the old Spanish chroniclers record that even the heartless Aztecs,
used to scenes of massacre as they were, were moved to tears at the
spectacle of the infants hurried, amid the wild chants of frenzied
priests, to the maw of this Mexican Moloch.
The statues of Tlaloc were usually cut in a greenish-white stone to
represent the colour of water. He had a wife, Chalchihuitlicue (the lady
Chalchihuit), and by her he possessed a numerous family which are
supposed to represent the clouds, and which bear the same name as
himself. At one of his festivals the priests plunged into a lake,
imitating the sounds and motions of frogs, which were supposed to be
under the special protection of the water-god.
Xiuhtecutli (lord of fire), or Huehueteotl (the old god), was one of the
most ancient of the Mexican deities. He is usually represented as
typifying the nature of the element over which he had dominion, and in
his head-dress of green feathers, his blackened face, and the
yellow-feathered serpent which he carried on his back, the different
colours observed in fire, as well as its sinuous and snake-like nature,
are well depicted. Like Tezcatlipoca, he possessed a mirror, a shining
disc of gold, to show his connection with the sun, from which all heat
emanated, and to which all heat was subject. And here it will be well to
remind the reader of the statement made near the commencement of this
chapter that the god _par excellence_, the sun, was more or less
manifested in all the principal deities of Anahuac; that in fact these
deities _were_ the sun in conjunction with some attribute of a totemic
or naturalistic origin.
The first duty of an Aztec family when rising in the morning was to
consecrate to Xiuhtecutli a piece of bread and a libation of drink. He
was thus analogous to Vulcan, who, besides being the creator of
thunderbolts and conflagration, was also the divinity of the domestic
hearth. Once a year the fire in every Mexican house was extinguished,
and was rekindled by friction before the statue of Xiuhtecutli by his
priests.
The two principal goddesses of the Aztecs were Centeotl, the
maize-goddess, the Ceres of Mexico, and Tlazolteotl, the goddess of
love. The name Centeotl is derived from centli (maize) and teotl
(divinity), and is often confounded with that of her son, who bore the
same name. Like the Virgin or the Egyptian Hes, she bears in her arms a
child, who is the young maize, who afterwards grows to bearded manhood.
Centeotl was the goddess of sustenance, and was often represented as a
many-uddered frog, to typify the food-yielding soil. Her daughter,
Xilonen, was the tender ear of the maize. Appalling sacrificial rites
were celebrated in connection with the worship of this goddess, in which
women were the principal victims. These are dealt with in the chapter on
ritual and ceremonial.
Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love, or, more correctly, of sensuality, was
the object concerning whom the deities of the Aztec Olympus waged a
terrible war. Her abode was a lovely garden, where she dwelt surrounded
by musicians and merrymakers, dwarfs and jesters. At one time she had
been the spouse of Tlaloc, the rain-god, but had eloped with
Tezcatlipoca, and thus she probably represents nature, who in one season
espouses the rain-god and in another the god of the cold season. The
myths concerning Tlazolteotl are most unsavoury, and consist chiefly of
tales concerning her seductive prowess.
Mictlan was the Mexican Pluto. The name signifies 'Country of the
North'--the region of waste and hunger and death, and was used both of
the place and the deity. There, surrounded by fearful demons
(Tzitzimitles), he ruled over the shades of the departed much as did
Pluto, and, like his classical prototype, he possessed a consort, or
rather consorts, since he had several wives. The representations of him
naturally give to him a most repulsive aspect, and he is usually
depicted in the act of devouring his victims.
The minor gods of the Aztecs were legion--indeed various authorities
estimate their numbers from two hundred and sixty to two thousand--and
of these it will only be possible to deal with a few of the more
important.
Ixtlilton (brown one) was the god of healing, and was analogous to
AEsculapius. The priests connected with his worship vended a liquor which
purported to be a sort of 'cure-all.' Xipe (the bald) was the tutelar
deity of goldsmiths. He was, in reality, a form of Huitzilopochtli, and
probably indicated the idea that gold had some connection with the sun.
Mixcoatl (cloud serpent) was the spirit of the waterspout, and was
propitiated rather than worshipped by the semi-savage mountaineers in
the vicinity of Mexico. Omacatl (double reed) was the god or spirit of
mirth and festival. Yacatecutli (guiding lord) was the god of travellers
and merchants. Indeed the commercial class among the Aztecs were more
exact concerning his worship than in that of almost any other of their
deities. His symbol was the staff usually carried by the people of the
country when on a journey, and this stick was an object of veneration
among travellers, who usually prayed to it as representative of the god
when evening brought their day's march to a close.
The Tepitoton, or diminutive deities, were household gods of the lares
and penates type, and were probably connected with a species of
Shamanism, the origin of which may either have been prior to or
contemporary with the adoption of the worship of the greater gods.
Their existence might appear to suggest the presence of fetishism in the
Aztec religion, but the theory of a Shamanistic origin for these
household deities seems the more likely one.