| Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden
Bough. 1922. |
LIX. Killing the God in
Mexico |
| |
| BY NO PEOPLE does the
custom of sacrificing the human representative of a god appear to
have been observed so commonly and with so much solemnity as by the
Aztecs of ancient Mexico. With the ritual of these remarkable
sacrifices we are well acquainted, for it has been fully described
by the Spaniards who conquered Mexico in the sixteenth century, and
whose curiosity was naturally excited by the discovery in this
distant region of a barbarous and cruel religion which presented
many curious points of analogy to the doctrine and ritual of their
own church. “They took a captive,” says the Jesuit Acosta, “such as
they thought good; and afore they did sacrifice him unto their
idols, they gave him the name of the idol, to whom he should be
sacrificed, and apparelled him with the same ornaments like their
idol, saying, that he did represent the same idol. And during the
time that this representation lasted, which was for a year in some
feasts, in others six months, and in others less, they reverenced
and worshipped him in the same manner as the proper idol; and in the
meantime he did eat, drink, and was merry. When he went through the
streets, the people came forth to worship him, and every one brought
him an alms, with children and sick folks, that he might cure them,
and bless them, suffering him to do all things at his pleasure, only
he was accompanied with ten or twelve men lest he should fly. And he
(to the end he might be reverenced as he passed) sometimes sounded
upon a small flute, that the people might prepare to worship him.
The feast being come, and he grown fat, they killed him, opened him,
and ate him, making a solemn sacrifice of him.” |
1 |
| This general description of the custom may now be
illustrated by particular examples. Thus at the festival called
Toxcatl, the greatest festival of the Mexican year, a young man was
annually sacrificed in the character of Tezcatlipoca, “the god of
gods,” after having been maintained and worshipped as that great
deity in person for a whole year. According to the old Franciscan
monk Sahagun, our best authority on the Aztec religion, the
sacrifice of the human god fell at Easter or a few days later, so
that, if he is right, it would correspond in date as well as in
character to the Christian festival of the death and resurrection of
the Redeemer. More exactly he tells us that the sacrifice took place
on the first day of the fifth Aztec month, which according to him
began on the twenty-third or twenty-seventh day of April. |
2 |
| At this festival the great god died in the person of
one human representative and came to life again in the person of
another, who was destined to enjoy the fatal honour of divinity for
a year and to perish, like all his predecessors, at the end of it.
The young man singled out for this high dignity was carefully chosen
from among the captives on the ground of his personal beauty. He had
to be of unblemished body, slim as a reed and straight as a pillar,
neither too tall nor too short. If through high living he grew too
fat, he was obliged to reduce himself by drinking salt water. And in
order that he might behave in his lofty station with becoming grace
and dignity he was carefully trained to comport himself like a
gentleman of the first quality, to speak correctly and elegantly, to
play the flute, to smoke cigars and to snuff at flowers with a
dandified air. He was honourably lodged in the temple, where the
nobles waited on him and paid him homage, bringing him meat and
serving him like a prince. The king himself saw to it that he was
apparelled in gorgeous attire, “for already he esteemed him as a
god.” Eagle down was gummed to his head and white cock’s feathers
were stuck in his hair, which drooped to his girdle. A wreath of
flowers like roasted maize crowned his brows, and a garland of the
same flowers passed over his shoulders and under his armpits. Golden
ornaments hung from his nose, golden armlets adorned his arms,
golden bells jingled on his legs at every step he took; earrings of
turquoise dangled from his ears, bracelets of turquoise bedecked his
wrists; necklaces of shells encircled his neck and depended on his
breast; he wore a mantle of network, and round his middle a rich
waistcloth. When this bejewelled exquisite lounged through the
streets playing on his flute, puffing at a cigar, and smelling at a
nosegay, the people whom he met threw themselves on the earth before
him and prayed to him with sighs and tears, taking up the dust in
their hands and putting it in their mouths in token of the deepest
humiliation and subjection. Women came forth with children in their
arms and presented them to him, saluting him as a god. For “he
passed for our Lord God; the people acknowledged him as the Lord.”
All who thus worshipped him on his passage he saluted gravely and
courteously. Lest he should flee, he was everywhere attended by a
guard of eight pages in the royal livery, four of them with shaven
crowns like the palace-slaves, and four of them with the flowing
locks of warriors; and if he contrived to escape, the captain of the
guard had to take his place as the representative of the god and to
die in his stead. Twenty days before he was to die, his costume was
changed, and four damsels delicately nurtured and bearing the names
of four goddesses—the Goddess of Flowers, the Goddess of the Young
Maize, the Goddess “Our Mother among the Water,” and the Goddess of
Salt—were given him to be his brides, and with them he consorted.
During the last five days divine honours were showered on the
destined victim. The king remained in his palace while the whole
court went after the human god. Solemn banquets and dances followed
each other in regular succession and at appointed places. On the
last day the young man, attended by his
wives and pages, embarked in a canoe covered with a royal canopy and
was ferried across the lake to a spot where a little hill rose from
the edge of the water. It was called the Mountain of Parting,
because there his wives bade him a last farewell. Then, accompanied
only by his pages, he repaired to a small and lonely temple by the
wayside. Like the Mexican temples in general, it was built in the
form of a pyramid; and as the young man ascended the stairs he broke
at every step one of the flutes on which he had played in the days
of his glory. On reaching the summit he was seized and held down by
the priests on his back upon a block of stone, while one of them cut
open his breast, thrust his hand into the wound, and wrenching out
his heart held it up in sacrifice to the sun. The body of the dead
god was not, like the bodies of common victims, sent rolling down
the steps of the temple, but was carried down to the foot, where the
head was cut off and spitted on a pike. Such was the regular end of
the man who personated the greatest god of the Mexican pantheon. |
3 |
| The honour of living for a short time in the
character of a god and dying a violent death in the same capacity
was not restricted to men in Mexico; women were allowed, or rather
compelled, to enjoy the glory and to share the doom as
representatives of goddesses. Thus at a great festival in September,
which was preceded by a strict fast of seven days, they sanctified a
young slave girl of twelve or thirteen years, the prettiest they
could find, to represent the Maize Goddess Chicomecohuatl. They
invested her with the ornaments of the goddess, putting a mitre on
her head and maize-cobs round her neck and in her hands, and
fastening a green feather upright on the crown of her head to
imitate an ear of maize. This they did, we are told, in order to
signify that the maize was almost ripe at the time of the festival,
but because it was still tender they chose a girl of tender years to
play the part of the Maize Goddess. The whole long day they led the
poor child in all her finery, with the green plume nodding on her
head, from house to house dancing merrily to cheer people after the
dulness and privations of the fast. |
4 |
| In the evening all the people assembled at the
temple, the courts of which they lit up by a multitude of lanterns
and candles. There they passed the night without sleeping, and at
midnight, while the trumpets, flutes, and horns discoursed solemn
music, a portable framework or palanquin was brought forth, bedecked
with festoons of maize-cobs and peppers and filled with seeds of all
sorts. This the bearers set down at the door of the chamber in which
the wooden image of the goddess stood. Now the chamber was adorned
and wreathed, both outside and inside, with wreaths of maize-cobs,
peppers, pumpkins, roses, and seeds of every kind, a wonder to
behold; the whole floor was covered deep with these verdant
offerings of the pious. When the music ceased, a solemn procession
came forth of priests and dignitaries, with flaring lights and
smoking censers, leading in their midst the girl who played the part
of the goddess. Then they made her mount
the framework, where she stood upright on the maize and peppers and
pumpkins with which it was strewed, her hands resting on two
bannisters to keep her from falling. Then the priests swung the
smoking censers round her; the music struck up again, and while it
played, a great dignitary of the temple suddenly stepped up to her
with a razor in his hand and adroitly shore off the green feather
she wore on her head, together with the hair in which it was
fastened, snipping the lock off by the root. The feather and the
hair he then presented to the wooden image of the goddess with great
solemnity and elaborate ceremonies, weeping and giving her thanks
for the fruits of the earth and the abundant crops which she had
bestowed on the people that year; and as he wept and prayed, all the
people, standing in the courts of the temple, wept and prayed with
him. When that ceremony was over, the girl descended from the
framework and was escorted to the place where she was to spend the
rest of the night. But all the people kept watch in the courts of
the temple by the light of torches till break of day. |
5 |
| The morning being come, and the courts of the temple
being still crowded by the multitude, who would have deemed it
sacrilege to quit the precincts, the priests again brought forth the
damsel attired in the costume of the goddess, with the mitre on her
head and the cobs of maize about her neck. Again she mounted the
portable framework or palanquin and stood on it, supporting herself
by her hands on the bannisters. Then the elders of the temple lifted
it on their shoulders, and while some swung burning censers and
others played on instruments or sang, they carried it in procession
through the great courtyard to the hall of the god Huitzilopochtli
and then back to the chamber, where stood the wooden image of the
Maize Goddess, whom the girl personated. There they caused the
damsel to descend from the palanquin and to stand on the heaps of
corn and vegetables that had been spread in profusion on the floor
of the sacred chamber. While she stood there all the elders and
nobles came in a line, one behind the other, carrying saucers full
of dry and clotted blood which they had drawn from their ears by way
of penance during the seven days’ fast. One by one they squatted on
their haunches before her, which was the equivalent of falling on
their knees with us, and scraping the crust of blood from the saucer
cast it down before her as an offering in return for the benefits
which she, as the embodiment of the Maize Goddess, had conferred
upon them. When the men had thus humbly offered their blood to the
human representative of the goddess, the women, forming a long line,
did so likewise, each of them dropping on her hams before the girl
and scraping her blood from the saucer. The ceremony lasted a long
time, for great and small, young and old, all without exception had
to pass before the incarnate deity and make their offering. When it
was over, the people returned home with glad hearts to feast on
flesh and viands of every sort as merrily, we are told, as good
Christians at Easter partake of meat and other carnal mercies after
the long abstinence of Lent. And when they had eaten and drunk their fill and rested after the night
watch, they returned quite refreshed to the temple to see the end of
the festival. And the end of the festival was this. The multitude
being assembled, the priests solemnly incensed the girl who
personated the goddess; then they threw her on her back on the heap
of corn and seeds, cut off her head, caught the gushing blood in a
tub, and sprinkled the blood on the wooden image of the goddess, the
walls of the chamber, and the offerings of corn, peppers, pumpkins,
seeds, and vegetables which cumbered the floor. After that they
flayed the headless trunk, and one of the priests made shift to
squeeze himself into the bloody skin. Having done so they clad him
in all the robes which the girl had worn; they put the mitre on his
head, the necklace of golden maize-cobs about his neck, the
maize-cobs of feathers and gold in his hands; and thus arrayed they
led him forth in public, all of them dancing to the tuck of drum,
while he acted as fugleman, skipping and posturing at the head of
the procession as briskly as he could be expected to do, incommoded
as he was by the tight and clammy skin of the girl and by her
clothes, which must have been much too small for a grown man. |
6 |
| In the foregoing custom the identification of the
young girl with the Maize Goddess appears to be complete. The golden
maize-cobs which she wore round her neck, the artificial maize-cobs
which she carried in her hands, the green feather which was stuck in
her hair in imitation (we are told) of a green ear of maize, all set
her forth as a personification of the corn-spirit; and we are
expressly informed that she was specially chosen as a young girl to
represent the young maize, which at the time of the festival had not
yet fully ripened. Further, her identification with the corn and the
corn-goddess was clearly announced by making her stand on the heaps
of maize and there receive the homage and blood-offerings of the
whole people, who thereby returned her thanks for the benefits which
in her character of a divinity she was supposed to have conferred
upon them. Once more, the practice of beheading her on a heap of
corn and seeds and sprinkling her blood, not only on the image of
the Maize Goddess, but on the piles of maize, peppers, pumpkins,
seeds, and vegetables, can seemingly have had no other object but to
quicken and strengthen the crops of corn and the fruits of the earth
in general by infusing into their representatives the blood of the
Corn Goddess herself. The analogy of this Mexican sacrifice, the
meaning of which appears to be indisputable, may be allowed to
strengthen the interpretation which I have given of other human
sacrifices offered for the crops. If the Mexican girl, whose blood
was sprinkled on the maize, indeed personated the Maize Goddess, it
becomes more than ever probable that the girl whose blood the
Pawnees similarly sprinkled on the seed corn personated in like
manner the female Spirit of the Corn; and so with the other human
beings whom other races have slaughtered for the sake of promoting
the growth of the crops. |
7 |
| Lastly, the concluding act of the sacred drama, in
which the body of the dead Maize Goddess was flayed and her skin
worn, together with all her sacred
insignia, by a man who danced before the people in this grim attire,
seems to be best explained on the hypothesis that it was intended to
ensure that the divine death should be immediately followed by the
divine resurrection. If that was so, we may infer with some degree
of probability that the practice of killing a human representative
of a deity has commonly, perhaps always, been regarded merely as a
means of perpetuating the divine energies in the fulness of youthful
vigour, untainted by the weakness and frailty of age, from which
they must have suffered if the deity had been allowed to die a
natural death. |
8 |
| These Mexican rites suffice to prove that human
sacrifices of the sort I suppose to have prevailed at Aricia were,
as a matter of fact, regularly offered by a people whose level of
culture was probably not inferior, if indeed it was not distinctly
superior, to that occupied by the Italian races at the early period
to which the origin of the Arician priesthood must be referred. The
positive and indubitable evidence of the prevalence of such
sacrifices in one part of the world may reasonably be allowed to
strengthen the probability of their prevalence in places for which
the evidence is less full and trustworthy. Taken all together, the
facts which we have passed in review seem to show that the custom of
killing men whom their worshippers regard as divine has prevailed in
many parts of the world. |
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