Chapter II: 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.