However, Tecuciztecatl felt humiliated by his fellow god sacrifice and after all, he decided to jump to the fire too, becoming into the moon.Īs a result of this myth, the Aztec people believed that blood sacrifices were needed to continue this cycle, that is the reason why they performed these acts that we could consider brutal and unnecessary. This sacrifice was a call for humans to continue the cycle of life by sacrificing themselves. One of the gods, Tecuciztecatl, was supposed to sacrifice himself, but when the hour of truth came, he could not jump to the fire.Īs an act of sacrifice, a god called Nanahuatzin decided to jump to the fire instead and caused the fifth and final sun to rise where the humans could live. The world and the sun were already created but the star needed to be set in motion for history to begin. The Aztec Creation Myth: the fifth age and the blood sacrificesĪccording to the Aztec religion beliefs, the fifth age of the world began in the city of Teotihuacan when all the Aztec gods and goddesses had gathered themselves to create this age. One of the most important myths surrounding Quetzalcoatl decided to steal the bones of the previous generation of humans that lived in the Underworld in order to make life continue. The task of the Aztec people was to continue the cycles of lifeĪccording to the Aztec people, they believed that both humans and gods had to sacrifice themselves in order to allow life to continue. Those who died without glory would go to the underworld reign of Mictlan. Those who drowned would enter in the reign of the Aztec god of rain Tlaloc. They believe that those warriors who died in battle and the woman who died in childbirth would transform into hummingbirds and accompanied the Sun in its cyclical journey. The Aztec temples The cycles of life and death in Aztec religionĪfter they died, the souls of the humans could go to one of three different places: to the Mictlan, to the lowest layer of the sky, the home of the god Tlaloc or to the sun.
Of course, this was not only the case with the Mictlan, as the sky had thirteen layers, but the upper was also the home of the Aztec god Ometeotl, and the lowest was the home to the god Tlaloc, the deity related to rain and water. The Aztec believed that the underworld was formed by nine layers in which different deities and beings inhabited. The Aztec believed that life was structured in cycles of life, death, and rebirth, and thus, just like the Sun hid in the Mictlan at night and it rises to be reborn in the mornings in the earth world, both the humans and the Aztec gods and goddesses were also cyclical. In order to fully understand why the Aztec religion was like it was, we need to set the context right.Īccording to the Aztecs, the world was structured in three different parts: The earth world in which the humans lived, the underworlds or Mictlan, which was the land of the dead, and the upper plane in the sky which was impenetrable for humans. Understanding the cosmology in the Aztec religion
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