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Sacrifice was a common theme in the Aztec culture. In the Aztec "Legend of the Five Suns", all the gods sacrificed themselves so that mankind could live.Some years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, a body of the Franciscans confronted the remaining Aztec priesthood and demanded, under threat of death, that they desist from this traditional practice.
With the Spanish conquest, there was a great effort to convert Aztecs to Catholicism. Through fear, threat of capital punishment, and boarding schools for young Aztecs, the Spanish tried to enforce worship of the Christian God. The Spanish attempted to gut the Aztec religion by abolishing human sacrifice and worship of the war gods.
The New Fire Ceremony (Spanish: Ceremonia del Fuego Nuevo) was an Aztec ceremony performed once every 52 years—a full cycle of the Aztec “calendar round”—in order to stave off the end of the world. The calendar round was the combination of the 260-day ritual calendar and the 365-day annual calendar.
Huitzilopochtli (Classical Nahuatl: Huītzilōpōchtli, IPA: [wiːt͡siloːˈpoːt͡ʃt͡ɬi] ⓘ) is the solar and war deity of sacrifice in Aztec religion. [3] He was also the patron god of the Aztecs and their capital city, Tenochtitlan. He wielded Xiuhcoatl, the fire serpent, as a weapon, thus also associating Huitzilopochtli with fire.
His main festival was Toxcatl, which, like most religious festivals of Aztec culture, involved human sacrifice. Tezcatlipoca's nagual, his animal counterpart, was the jaguar. In the form of a jaguar he became the deity Tepeyollotl ("Mountainheart").
When used for religion or sacrifice, it followed the sacred Aztec calendar and its ritual cycle. [18] Dance could also be used in politics to show imperial power and to impress the gods for successful wars and conquest. [18]
The tecpatl or sacrificial knife, was an important element in Aztec rituals. The tecpatl was used by Aztec priests to open the chest of the victims of human sacrifice to extract the heart that would feed the gods, in the hope that the offerings would bring blessings to mankind. [7] The most widespread sacrificial procedure among Aztecs, was ...
Annotated image of Xipe Totec sculpture. In Aztec mythology, Xipe Totec (/ ˈ ʃ iː p ə ˈ t oʊ t ɛ k /; Classical Nahuatl: Xīpe Totēc [ˈʃiːpe ˈtoteːk(ʷ)]) or Xipetotec [3] ("Our Lord the Flayed One") [4] was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, vegetation, the east, spring, goldsmiths, silversmiths, liberation, deadly warfare, the seasons, [5] and the earth. [6]