Religions précolombiennes of Mésoamérique

This article presents an extremely short outline of the religions précolombiennes of Mésoamérique .

General information

Our knowledge of the religions mésoaméricaines is very fragmentary. It is dependant on the state of our sources, very variable according to the times and the areas, as well as type of sources available:

archaeological sources;

They are the only available ones for civilizations formerly known as without writing, like the Olmèques. But the recent topicality shows us, thanks to the discovery of the Stèle of Cascajal, that the speculations and the quarrels of the specialists on the absence in documents written for this civilization do not have any more raison d'être. However we can quote retrospectively, for example, the very disputed table of Covarrubias, which proposes to show a continuous evolution since the olmèque were-jaguar until the Aztec Tlaloc.

written sources.

to measure the distance between the two types, it is enough to evoke traditional Maya civilization. Before spectacular progress of the deciphering of the Maya writing, one regarded the Mayas as people of peaceful farmers directed by priests astronomers. It is known now that their company was articulated around a concept of royalty divine and rythmée by bloody sacrifices.

It is necessary to take care not to regard the religions mésoaméricaines as static systems. Following the example Judaism or Christianity, they knew during one period from three to four thousand years an evolution, which is difficult to encircle, considering the state of our sources. Attempts were made for civilizations best documented, like the Mayas.

Mésoamérique constitutes a cultural surface, in spite of a great geographical diversity. There was a constant circulation, not only goods and people, but also of the ideas, and more particularly of the religious ideas. Let us quote some examples:

the statues of Chac Mol are found with Tula in central Mexico and with Chichen Itza with the Yucatan.
the olmèque iconography knew a very broad diffusion, so much so that some (Michael D. Coe) speak olmèques “missionaries”!

It is thus not astonishing that one finds convergences between the majority of the religions mésoaméricaines, except notable for the tarasque religion (see below).

General characters

By general characters, it is necessary to hear features which are found in the majority of the religions mésoaméricaines, in variable forms. Among these largely spread characters, let us quote:

a dualistic thought, which is not without pointing out the Yin and yang Chinese: Mésoaméricains see readily the things by two, which they are complementary or opposite. There exist extremely old and expressive testimonys of this mentality: the duality death-life represented by a mask of Tlatilco, of which the left half is skeletal and the covered right half of flesh. At the Aztec ones, the creative god is called “Ometeotl”, i.e. “God Two”, who is divided into two aspects “Ometecuhtli” (Lord Two) and “Omecihuatl” (Lady Two), i.e. the duality masculine-female). One of the most complex pairs is that of the numbers “9” and “13”. Let us illustrate it for an example which makes it possible to attach it to others: at the Aztec ones, the inframonde is divided into nine levels, while the sky is composed of thirteen levels. By this skew, one can bring the pair neuf-treize closer to the pairs haut-bas, moisture-dryness, cold-heat or death-life.

the human sacrifices, whose archeologists recognized omnipresence only gradually. For example, the “Danzantes” of Assembles Alban, which one formerly took for dancers, are now regarded as sacrificial victims. The antiquity of the phenomenon is attested by the discovery with San Jose Mogote of a sculpture of the preclassical Time representing an individual whose open chest lets escape a flood from blood. The phenomenon reaches a paroxysm at the time postclassic. Even if one discuste of the number of victims sacrificed during the inauguration of Templo Mayor by the emperor Ahuitzotl in 1487 (from 20.000 to 80.000 according to the chroniclers), the omnipresence of the human sacrifices is not a doubt. There exists a great number of manners of sacrificing the victim, most frequent being the cardiectomy (i.e. the fact of opening the chest and of tearing off the heart from it). Far from being a demonstration of sadism, this variety is explained by the symbolism (see below) attached to each mode of sacrifice.

a monumental religious architecture (pyramids)

a Polytheism with the the plentiful Pantheon. To find itself there is all the more difficult as a given culture can adopt certain gods of an older culture or that a god can present different aspects and different attributes in the iconography. Let us take the example of Quetzalcoatl, which, in the shape of Ehecatl, god of the wind, has a face equipped with a species of nozzle.

a calendar system closely related to the religion: a combination of 365 days the solar calendar and 260 days a ritual calendar. In this system, the same day only returns time every 52 years (which constitute a “century” mésoaméricain). At the Aztec ones, this event gives place to a religious holiday, the Fête of new Fire.

the constant intervention of divine in the human activities (which is accompanied at the time postclassic of the use of called religious almanacs “tonalamatls”)

an original cosmography: the world is a square divided into four districts, corresponding to the four cardinal points, having each one its own color (variable according to the cultures), a central axis connecting the three parts of cosmos, the inframonde, the ground and the higher world. The higher world and the inframonde are divided into several levels (the number being variable according to the cultures). The most completed expression this design is at the Aztec ones, where the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan materializes the center of the world. This quadripartite design of the world would go up at the time preclassical. According to Caterina Magni, the famous mosaic of the olmèque site of Was windy It would not represent, as some think it, a mask of jaguar, but the quadripartite division of the world, with in the center a rectangle, which is the axis.

a geographical orientation of the sites: for example in Templo Mayor de Tenochtitlan, the many offerings are laid out according to three East-West axes, respectively crossing the sanctuary of huitzilopochtli, that of tlaloc and temple centers it. they are directed towards the west (setting sun)

a very thorough symbolism which returns the interpretation of the delicate religious representations (explicit representations of human sacrifice are rare at the Mayas traditional, but frequent in the forms of symbols)

Gods olmèques

The religion Olmèque is a subject which is the subject still of controversies. According to Caterina Magni, three principal currents can be distinguished.

the school of thought promoted by D. Joralemon which, following an analytical work, identifies ten principal divinities within the crowned universe, then the tiny room to six. This Pantheon would be governed by a major divinity that the author names " dragon" , made up of attributes borrowed from the caiman, the eagle, the jaguar and the snake.

the traditional current, which gathers the majority of the specialists, believes in the existence of a religion centered around the worship of the Earth Mother and the Jaguar. The Jaguar, anthropomorphized or not, generally is associated with the rain and agriculture. Its capacity is ambivalent, creator and destructor at the same time.

Certains authors denies the phenomenon of the deification at Olmèques. Although conscious of a religious reality, they do not believe in the existence of formalized divinities. It is the case of Pohorilenko which sees in olmèque art a composition of elements requiring a reading, a kind of visual communication using specific signs. These representations do not depict divinities, but rather " fétiches" anthropomorphic which contains spirits, capacities of nature. It would thus act, of invisible Masters and not of gods.

Principal gods mexica

The Pantheon mexica, group to which belong the Aztèque S, comprised a great number of gods, in particular for all the natural phenomena. One can quote in particular: the major divinities are:

Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent
Tlaloc, god of the rain
Xipe Totec, god of the vegetable revival
Mictlantecuhtli, god who reigns on Mictlan: the hells
Tezcatlipoca, incarnation of the night world
Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun and the war, tribal divinity of the Aztec ones.
Coyolxauhqui, goddess of the moon, sister of Huitzilopochtli, incarnation of the sacrificed victim.
Chicomecoatl, " seven serpents" , goddess of but, protects harvests.
Ehécatl, god of the wind
Huehueteotl, old god of fire
Coatlicue, goddess maternal of the Earth
Nanahuatzin says the bubonic one, dwarf god, is transformed into sun
Xochipilli, god adolescent of the flowers, the plays, arts
Xochiquetzal, Xochipilli female

Maya religion

The Maya religion is a phenomenon geographically and historically various whose history is not finished yet. In its Traditional forms and Postclassiques, it presents similarities with the religion Aztèque; it also included/understood human sacrifices. The yucatèque Maya calendar located the End of the world at the 16th century, and the appearance of the conquistadors at that time threw greatest confusion because the latter were accommodated like the announced gods. The Mayas thus opposed only little resistance so that they regarded as superhuman beings and an immutable destiny. The principal religious center of the yucatèque Maya world was Chichén Itzá.

The Mayas believed in the recurrence of the cycles of creation and the destruction. The ritual ones and the ceremonies were narrowly connected to these multiple terrestrial and celestial cycles. The role of the Maya priest was to interpret these cycles and to prophesy last times and to come. So dark times were envisaged, it was necessary to turn into to sacrifices for appaiser the Gods. To follow these cycles they used several calendars: the crowned calendar, most important 260 days, called Calendar Tzolkin; a 365 day old calendar based on the solar year, the Calendar haab; a lunar calendar; a calendar based on Venus as well as a single system of character historiographic in Mésoamérique, called the long Account of the traditional Time.

A great part of the Maya religion remains obscure. It is known nevertheless that they believed that cosmos was separate in three different entities: the lower world, ground and sky. The sky postclassic was composed of thirteen layers, each one having its own divinity.

The underground world comprised nine layers on which nine lords of the Night reigned. The underground world was a place cold and inhospitable for which were intended the majority of the Mayas after their death. When the kings died, they took the way related to the cosmic movement of the sun and fell into the lower World, but because they had supernatural capacities it reappeared in the celestial World and became gods. This underground universe accommodated also each evening the celestial bodies like the Sun, the Moon and Venus, once crossed the threshold of the horizon. The Maya Pantheon contained an incalculable number divinities. This proliferation is partly explained by the fact why each divinity was presented under multiple aspects. Some had more than one sex, others could be at the same time young people and old. Each god representing a celestial body had in the underground world a different face which appeared each evening with its “death”.

The Mayas saw the Earth like a form punt and square. Each one of its four angles was located at a cardinal point and was represented by a color: red in the east, the white in north, black in the west and yellow in the south. The center was green

Certains Mayas also believed that the sky was laminated and that each one of its four angles was supported by a divinity of an impressive musculature called Bacab . For others, the sky was supported by four trees of colors and different species, and the green ceiba, or black poplar, was drawn up in the center.

For the Mayas, the flattened shape of the Earth represented the back of a giant crocodile resting in a basin filled with water lilies. In the sky, during crocodile was a bicephalous snake, a concept undoubtedly ascribable to the fact that the Maya term indicating the sky resembles the word snake.

The elite was obsessed by blood - his and that of the prisoners - and the rite of the bleeding constituted an important aspect of any great event of the Maya calendar. The bleeding was also used to reconcile the gods and at the beginning of the decline of Maya civilization.

For the Mayas, the bloody sacrifice was necessary to survival as well gods as the human ones, making assemble human energy towards the sky and receiving in return the divine capacity. The king made use of an obsidian knife or a pivot of pastenague to notch the penis, of which it to let run blood on paper contained in a bowl. The wives of the kings took also part in this rite by drawing a cord roughcast from spines through their language. One made burn the stained paper of blood, and the smoke which rose some established a direct communication with the celestial World.

The habit wanted that the prisoners, the slaves, especially the children and in particular the orphans and the children illegitimate that one especially bought for the occasion, are offered in sacrifice. Before the era of Toltèques, one sacrificed the animals rather that the human ones.

Tarasque religion

The tarasque religion is known little about to us for lack of sources. In the absence of codex prehispanic, our independent source of information is the “Relation of Michoacan”, transmitted by a Spanish monk in 1540. Who more is, the first part of this document, devoted to the gods and with the ceremonies, disappeared.

The tarasque religion is included/understood only in the light of the tarasque history. In an area, the Michoacan, which always was a little with the variation of the remainder of Mésoamérique, exists at the beginning of XVIe century a form of syncretism between old local worships and the tribal worship of a warlike aristocracy arrived at Michoacan at the 13th century, the uacusecha (“eagles”). Like their contemporaries Aztèques, who had the feeling to be guided in their peregrinations by their guardian divinity Huitzilopochtli, Uacusecha believed that their tribal god Curicaueri had intended them to conquer Michoacan.

These considerations explain the characteristics of the religion of Tarasques, of which the interested parties themselves were conscious.

Curicaueri was naturally at the top of the tarasque Pantheon. The tarasques ones venerated it in the shape of fire, of the sun, but also in the form of a piece of Obsidienne, wrapped in a bundle. His wife was Xaratanga , a lunar goddess who brought the fertility, associated with the Coyote or with the owl. She is of local origin and its association with Curicaueri symbolizes the alliance of Uacusecha with the community of the sinners autochtones of the Lake Patzcuaro. The troisème large divinity is Cuerauaperi , the only tarasque divinity of which we know certain ceremonies, because they are quoted in the only passage of the first part of the “Relation of Michoacan” which has escaped with the destruction. We also know the name of many other gods, but without much of details. Let us note that one typically does not find at Tarasques any equivalent of these gods mésoaméricains who are Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl.

Tarasques employed only the solar calendar 365 days, contrary to the other people mésoaméricains which made use of 260 days the ritual calendar, in particular to decide better moment to carry out a war. The " Relation" mention the contempt of Uacusecha for this use: does one of them say “ Which required of you to count the days? We others we do not beat by counting the days of the kind.” (Rel. p. 180). Like the other people mésoaméricains, Tarasques usually practiced the human sacrifice, but most of the pertaining to worship activity consisted in burning wood in front of the temples. An example to illustrate the enormous importance which they attached to this practice: when the Aztec ones requested the assistance of Cazonci (the tarasque sovereign) against the Spaniards, this one theirs refused, “because a long time ago that they live in the evil, that they do not bring wood for the temples…” (Rel. p. 272).

The tarasque religious architecture is made conspicuous by a type of pyramid called yacata, equipped with a semicircular part prolonged by a rectangular part. The ceremonial center of Tzintzuntzan, the tarasque capital, comprises a platform on which five are drawn up yacatas. One has until now found at Tzintzuntzan no play of ball, this so important place in the rites mésoaméricains. If it is known that Xaratanga is the goddess of the play of ball, one is tilted to think that it is about a former local divinity, whose Uacusecha made the wife of their tribal god Curicaueri after their conquest of Michoacan.

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