Sunday, October 1, 2023

Burr Cartwright Brundage on Creation by Blood Sacrifice among the Aztecs

  

The Third Category of Creation Myths—

Creation by Blood Sacrifice

 

In none of the other three categories were the Aztecs so adamant in their beliefs about the creative act: in this category, creation was defined very concretely. It was not an act sui generis, once and for all; rather it was an act of blood sacrifice that would always be repeated and indeed had to be repeated. Sacrifice was a mechanic, an inner logic of the universe, almost a god in itself. This concept permeated the whole of Aztec mythology, whether cosmogonic or otherwise. It was also the central preoccupation of the Aztec state.

 

It appears centrally in the Nanahuatl myth, where the god sacrifices himself by leaping into the fore so as to become the sun, thereby providing light and life for the world. . . .Blood sacrifice—the method by which the stellar and the atmospheric parts of the cosmos came into being—established for the Aztec mind a corollary: the created cosmos was finite, its strength waned rapidly, and it must constantly be revivified. This renewal could be accomplished only by sacrifice, which thus became a ceaseless activity and an incumbency on those who desired the continuance of the cosmos.

 

Nanahuatl’s original sacrifice was not only the great exemplar; a series of sacrifices had to follow it. Gods, earth, and sky were entirely dependent on blood sacrifice to maintain them. Retroactively this defines the blood sacrifice performed in the creation of the sun and the moon as the precursor of necessity in a finite world. If there is to be life, there must be sacrificial death, all this is presented to us in a remorseless Aztec dialectic. (Burr Cartwright Brundage, The Fifth Sun: Aztec Gods, Aztec World [Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1979], 33)

 

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