Thursday, April 18, 2024

An Example of the Concept of a World Tree as a Religious Symbol in Mesoamerica Among the Aztecs

  

In his account of the Aztecs, the sixteenth-century Dominican friar Diego Durán wrote about two different tree-raising rituals. One of these concerned a tree put up during rituals Durán calls the Feast of the Waters (Figure 6.4). In this tree raising, ritualists did not climb the tree; instead, the tree served a more visual, symbolic purpose. According to Durán (1971 [1574–1579]:160–167), on Tlaloc’s feast day, men of all ages set up an elaborate artificial landscape in the main plaza in front of the Templo Mayor. The most important feature of this imitation forest was a central, perfect tree and four smaller trees, one at each of the four corners. The central tree was called Tota, or Our Father. The men found this tree by going to the Hill of the Star, the same hill where they drilled the new are every fifty-two years, further confirming the calendrical nature of the event. On that hill they chose the largest and most perfect tree, especially favoring a tree with lush, verdant branches. As they cut the tree, they used a series of ropes to keep it from ever touching the ground, which continued as they carried it back to the ceremonial center. Once in town, the celebrants raised the tree in the main plaza of Tenochtitlan. In his illustration and text, Durán (1971 [1574– 1579]:160–165) explained that ropes connected the central Tota tree to the other four trees. Thus, symbolically, the central world tree was connected by cords to the four cardinal directions. Underneath the trees, the people of Tenochtitlan were said to have held a festival, including song, dance, and games.

 

The event culminated when the men took down the tree, bound its branches, and placed it on a raft in Lake Texcoco. Simultaneously, the priests and lords carried a sacrificial young girl in a litter to the lake’s edge where they boarded canoes and took the girl and the tree to a place in the middle of the lake called Pantitlan. Because a great whirlpool often formed there, they spoke of Pantitlan as the drain for the lake. In the final acts of the Tota celebration, the Aztecs plunged the tree into the “drain” and unbound the branches so that it was full once again. They next slit the girl’s throat, let her blood flow into the water, and then threw the girl and offerings of stone and jewelry into the lake (Durán 1971 [1574–1579]:163–165). (Annabeth Headrick, “Gardening with the Great Goddess at Teotihuacan,” in Heart of Creation: The Mesoamerican World and the Legacy of Linda Schele, ed. Andrea Stone [Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 2002], 89-90)

 

The following image appears on p. 90: