Source: History of Religions, August 1999 v39 i1 p1.

Title: UTTERED FROM THE HEART: GUILTY RHETORIC AMONG THE AZTECS.
Author: David Carrasco

Abstract: The rhetoric of guilt among the Aztecs is discussed. Topics
include the Aztec vision of the cosmos, including the universe's geometry and
dynamics, the duality of equilibrium and disequilibrium, and the human body as
axis mundi; as well as the guilt of the gods and of humans, and the ritual
confession of sexual sins to Tlazolteotl, the goddess called the eater of
filth.

Subjects: Guilt - Social aspects
Aztecs - Religion
Locations: Mexico

Electronic Collection: A57535007
RN: A57535007

Full Text COPYRIGHT 1999 University of Chicago Press

My interest in guilty utterances among the Aztec was stimulated by the
invitation to participate in the Eranos conference on "Guilt" at Ascona,
Switzerland in the summer of 1996. I had been working on the cosmomagical
worldview of the Mexica for some time, and this conference allowed me to both
refine my work on the relations of ritual to cosmology in Mesoamerica and
recall the ways that Mircea Eliade wrote about the "Eranos experience" in his
journals. Eliade felt that the Eranos experience gave vitality to his attempts
to stimulate a "new humanism" among scholars through the practice of a
creative hermeneutics. He believed that the Western encounter with archaic and
Asian spiritualities would revitalize scholarship and open the way to new
modes of understanding the sacred and human existence. He thrilled at Olga
Froebe Kapteyn's invitation in 1950 to join the Eranos meetings, and he began
his journal, No Souvenirs, with a selection written at Casa Gabrielle in
Ascona in 1957. Elsewhere he wrote that the "spirit of Eranos" was "one of the
most creative cultural experiences of the modern Western world. Nowhere else
is to be found a comparable sustained effort of scholars to integrate, in one
all embracing perspective, the progress made in all the various fields of
study."(1) Standing today in this place brings up in me a series of powerful
emotions as the rich and tall shadows of past scholars, discussions, and
conferences fall across the landscape. What is one to do, to feel in the
presence of such a rich tradition? How does one contribute to profound
intellectual substance? How can one try to measure up without falling into the
sin of pride, or falling miserably short and thereby committing a kind of
intellectual sin? In fact, one of the emotions that accompanied Eliade in his
days of preparation for his talk and final preparation of his manuscript was
something akin to guilt, the topic of our conference. His busy schedule and
prolific creativity often left him with a sense of catching up, not measuring
up, being behind in his preparation, perhaps even feelings of guilt. Reading
his references to Ascona and the presentations he made here, one discerns the
combination of excitement, anxiety, and not having the time to do the job
well. On July 12, 1959 he wrote on the eve of his departure by car for Ascona,
"I've spent nearly six weeks in this apartment. I've written `With the Gypsy
Girls' but have done nothing, or almost nothing for the Eranos lectures. It
has only been these last few days that I've had the time to spend a few hours
at the Musee de l'Homme and the Musee Guimet."(2) Then a month and a half
later on August 23 he writes that he is still working to revise the
manuscript, which should have been handed in for publication in the Eranos
Yearbook, and will not finish until he returns to Chicago in the fall.

Eliade's sense of trying to catch up with time's responsibilities and the
inklings of his feelings of guilt also show up in journal entries about his
visit to Mexico, where he was fascinated by Mesoamerican religions,
worldviews, and ritual practices. He sometimes mentions his missed
opportunities to learn something important, to focus more deeply on a symbol,
image, or, as he liked to say, "message." Consider this final entry in the
section "Winter in Mexico," telling of his visit to Oaxaca and his meeting
with the great archaeologist, Alfonso Caso:

Afternoon in the museum in Oaxaca. Extraordinarily rich. We lingered
especially in the Monte Alban hall. The corn deities in the hall of the
monoliths. Then, on the floor above, tomb number VII with its fabulous
treasure. In the display windows: corals, shells, enormous pearl necklaces,
alabaster vases, turquoise and jade necklaces. (If Flaubert could have seen
them!) In an isolated comer, a rock-crystal vase. And that extraordinary skull
done in a turquoise mosaic. And the God of death; his golden mask reproduced
on so many postcards. On the wall, the photograph of Caso, in front of tomb
number VII, at the moment he had discovered it. (I should have written down
more closely my conversations with Dr. Caso last week.)(3)

HEARTS AND SOULS

When other European visitors, the Spaniards, came to Mexico in the sixteenth
century and began their futile "spiritual conquest" of native peoples, a small
cadre of priests turned their attention to the ideas, languages, and religious
practices of indigenous peoples.(4) They were struck with the central
importance of the corazon (heart) in Aztec life and thought. On the one hand,
the Spaniards were excited and scandalized by the extraction and ritual use of
hearts (sometimes their own) in human sacrifice,(5) while on the other hand,
they learned that the concept of "heart" had something to do with the native
conception of "center" or "essence." They found that everything important had
a "heart." There was the "heart" of the mountain, the "heart" of the town, the
"heart" of the sky, the "heart" of the tree, and certain special individuals,
whom the Spaniards labeled hombre-dioses (man-gods),(6) were considered to be
the "heart" of social groups. In time we have learned that the Aztecs believed
(as many natives today still believe) that humans have three souls or
"animistic entities" and one of these is the heart. Humans think and live with
all three souls and maintain their health only when all three are in balance,
equilibrium, and harmony. The central soul is in the heart where human
rationality and therefore the understanding of guilt reside.

When Bernardino de Sahagun did his extensive research in the middle of the
sixteenth century in three towns around the lakes of Mexico, he discovered
that the sophisticated Aztec practice of public oratory was intimately tied up
with the indigenous notion of "heart." These orations, called huehuetlatolli
(ancient sayings) were spoken or uttered from the heart and reflected Aztec
cosmovision, child-rearing practices, and social relationships in a series of
ideal type admonitions (see fig. 1). These admonitions contained sets of
prohibitions as well as descriptions of high ideals to be sought after. They
"truly issued from their hearts when they spoke ... when they prayed." The
"words which came from their very hearts ... which they uttered from their
very hearts" reflect what I am calling guilty rhetoric among the Aztecs.(7)
They describe some of the sins to be avoided (but often committed), the gods
to be worshiped (but often disobeyed), and the crimes abhorred (but often
acted out). In what follows I want to explore some of the rhetoric of guilt,
sin, and confession that was uttered from the heart and other bodily organs.
First, I will contextualize the guilty rhetoric of Aztec hearts and bodies by
describing the Aztec cosmovision, which includes: (1) the geometry and
dynamics of the universe, (2) the importance of the equilibrium/disequilibrium
duality, and (3) the axis mundi of the human body. We will see that the human
body was a container not only of the heart but also of three souls or
animistic entities. And we will learn that it was the ritual site where the
drama of sacred dualities and the four quarters of the universe was acted out.
Second, I will focus on the guilt of the gods, the guilt of humans, and the
ritual confession of sexual sins to Tlazolteotl, the eater of filth, to whom
guilty rhetoric was periodically spoken.

[Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE FALL AND THE COSMOS

One of the most fascinating and problematic concepts in the history of
religions is the concept of the fall of human life out of paradise or a golden
age into sin and the inherited condition of guilt and punishment.(8) The
conception of a primordial rupture and the subsequent, shared human condition
of guilt takes a very interesting form among the Nahua-speaking peoples of
Mexico. Here it is the gods who commit terrible acts and "fall" out of a
primordial condition of intranscendence, peace, and equilibrium. The passage
of time and the history of the cosmos in which gods and humans act originated
when the gods committed the sins of disequilibrium that ruptured universal
peace and created the divisions, unions, and geometry of the cosmos. In
general terms, these two sins of disequilibrium were the sexual union of
elements that should not have been joined and the rupture of the sacred tree
that spilled the cosmic forces of blood, heat, cold, and death into the world
of the passage of time. Within the drama of these actions, the gods became
involved in sexuality, death, and rebirth, which collectively establish the
nature and destiny of human life. Of the numerous examples of the fall of the
gods and their associated guilt, allow me to begin with the journey of
Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent,(9) into the underworld of Mictlan to recover
the bones of the ancestors in the dark period between the Fourth and Fifth
Ages of the world. This story, complex in itself, also reflects a number of
cosmogonic characteristics that will help contextualize the discussion of
guilty rhetoric in Mesoamerica.

Before life had been recreated, the celestial gods lived in a static, peaceful
state and the universe was unformed. There were no divisions, ruptures, or
motion. As one Maya creation myth states, "This is the account of how all was
in suspense, all calm, in silence; all motionless, still, and the expanse of
the sky was empty."(10) Following this period of primordial peace, a series of
adventures by the gods took place that created the parts, dynamics, and order
of the universe. In one account, the gods gather and ask, "Who will there be?
Sky has been established, Tlaltecuhtli has been established. Gods, who will
there be?"(11) The gods then send Quetzalcoatl down into the underworld (a
"fall" through the geometry of the universe by order of the gods) to retrieve
the ancestral bones. He travels down to the ninth level of the underworld and
announces to Mictlantecuhtli and his consort, Mictecacihuatl, his quest for
the precious bones. The Dual God of the underworld presents him with a trial,
an ordeal: "'Very well. Blow my conch horn and circle four times round my
precious realm." But his conch horn was not hollow. Then he summoned worms,
who hollowed it out. Then bumblebees and honeybees went in. Then he blew on it
and the dead land lord heard him."(12) Then, Quetzalcoatl is given permission
to take the bones, but a trap is laid to destroy him; a pit is dug by the
helpers of the underworld for him to fall into. He takes the bones, wraps them
up, and begins to leave the Land of the Dead. Along the path, quail spring up
from the grass and startle Quetzalcoatl, who falls (a second fall) into the
pit and loses consciousness. The bones are broken into different sizes,
scattered on the ground, and nibbled on by the quail. Quetzalcoatl is revived
by one of his souls, gathers the bones, and takes them to the paradise of
Tamoanchan.(13) There his consort Quilaztli/Cihuacoatl grinds them into powder
and places them in her jadestone bowl, a symbol of her womb. Quetzalcoatl
bleeds his penis into the bowl, the gods do penance, and human life is
restored. The gods announce: "`Holy ones, humans, have been born; it's because
they did penance for us.'" The episode continues as Quetzalcoatl makes another
theft, this time the theft of corn to feed humans. He descends into the "Heart
of Food Mountain," but I will leave off the narrative at this point.

This myth introduces us to a series of fundamental cosmological notions,
including the four quarters, duality, the vertical shape of the universe, the
fall, and especially the involvement in earthly things, which was a synonym
for sin. In fact, the Nahuatl synonym for the Spanish pecado was a difrasismo,
a dual word combining teuhtli, tlazolli, meaning "filth, trash." A related
term is tlatlacolli, which derives from the transitive verb, itlacoa, meaning
"to damage, spoil, or harm," referring to physical or moral transgressions.
One of the primary ways to damage or spoil was to become involved in tlazolli
(filth). The best definition comes from Alonso de Molina's Vocabulario de la
lengua mexicana (1555) which defines tlazolli as "rubbish which they throw on
the dungheap," or something useless, drained of its original purpose and
structure. As one scholar notes,

In general, tlazolli consists of little bits and pieces of things, which might
once have belonged somewhere but now, through processes of decay,
deterioration, or digestion, have become formless and unconnected; these
fragments are now scattered about, interfering with things that are new and
tidy. The term tlazolli covers a whole series of impurities used in moral
discourse to connote negativity. Rags, potsherds, cobwebs, dust, mud, straw,
or grass, charcoal, disheveled hair, excrement, urine, vomit, nasal mucus,
sweat, pus, coagulated semen, niter or saltpeter [tequixquitl], the drugs of
pulque--anything of unpleasant odor, of rotten or formless composition, is
included.(14)

Quetzalcoatl's act of regeneration is tainted through and through with
tlazolli. Here we have a god who travels down into the earth to Mictlan, the
land of the rotten and the dead, and becomes contaminated with the process of
death. He is frightened by the quail (which in Nahuatl is zollin, one of the
root words of tlazolli, meaning "stumbles and falls," which in Nahua thought
is a metaphor for immoral behavior) and loses consciousness. Even though he
overcomes this condition, he and the bones (and therefore bodies of humans),
which were scattered and unconnected, are now permeated by something akin to
what we mean by sin and guilt. But it is impressive that this adventure also
results in the recreation of human life. We see contamination and freshness,
death and life joined together. We will return to the meaning and resonance of
tlazolli later and try to clarify these meanings. It is now time to turn to a
review of key aspects of the cosmovision reflected in this story.

GEOMETRY AND DYNAMICS OF THE AZTEC COSMOS

The Indians of Puebla today claim that in Mexico City there are skyscrapers
forty stories high that also have forty stories underground, reflecting the
notion of a vertical column in the universe. The story of Quetzalcoatl's
descent to the underworld and journey to Tamoanchan reflects this notion of a
vertical cosmos as well as the crucial symbols of duality, the four quarters,
and equilibrium. What stands out to me in the following survey is the emphasis
or overemphasis on a locative view of the world. In the Aztec depictions of
the universe, we see a tightly ordered, highly detailed series of bailiwicks,
boundaries, classifications, realms, and locations in which all of life is
organized. Everything has a place and everything must be in its rightful place
in order for the cosmos to survive.

DUALITY

The Aztec universe, as that of many Mesoamerican peoples, was balanced by

the dual opposition of contrary elements, dividing the universe to explain its
diversity, its order, and its movement. Sky and earth, heat and cold, light
and darkness, man and woman, strength and weakness, above and below, rain and
drought are conceived at the same time to be polar and complementary pairs,
their elements interrelated by their opposition as contraries in one of the
great divisions and by their arrangement in an alternating sequence of
dominance. After this primary division, the geometry becomes complicated,
governed by an order that has its maximum abstract expression in basic numbers
and their products: 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 13, 18, 20, 52, 73, 104, 260, 18,980, etc.
All these numbers were in turn fundamental in establishing the classification
and the sequence of domination of the various forces of nature.(15)

The general scheme places the male/father principle in the sky (associated
with the qualities of hot, above, eagle, the number 13, heaven, light, day,
large fire, life, and streams of blood), while the female/mother principle is
placed in the earth (associated with cold, below, ocelot, the number 9, the
underworld, darkness, night, water, and night stream [death]). The duality
extended, of course, to the sky/earth division, with the sky having thirteen
celestial levels and the earth having nine underworld levels, each inhabited
by diverse gods. The top level of the sky was called the "Place of Duality"
and the bottom level of the underworld was "The Obsidian Place of the Dead,
The Place Where Smoke Has No Outlet."

The earth was either a rectangle or a disk surrounded by seawater that curved
upward at the outer edges to form the lower celestial levels. A cruciform
pattern, like a Maltese cross, divided the earth into four segments with each
of the four directions associated with colors, gods, symbols, and trees (see
fig. 2). One common scheme went "north-black-flint knife,"
"south-blue-rabbit," "west-white-house," and "east-red-reed" with the central
section of the cosmos colored green. According to Angel Maria Garibay Kintana,
"this order establishes a double opposition of death-life (north-south, with
the symbols of inert matter and extreme mobility) and female-male (west-east,
with the sexual symbols of house and reed) as if the axis of the
sky-underworld had been projected in two ninety-degree turns, each one
perpendicular to the other, upon the plane of the earth's surface,
distributing opposites in complementary pairs."(16)

[Figure 2 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

At the four corners of the cosmos rose four trees or columns that supported
the sky and provided a sense of cardinal orientation to the gods and humans.
These four entities appear as either sacred trees or as one of the four cosmic
tlaloque (rain gods) who provided the life-giving rains from the four
directions. These four directions were also called Nauchampa, or the Four
Quarters, and the Aztec city was a replica of this four-quartered cosmos.(17)

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Aztec cosmos are the passageways of
communication between the four quarters and the central axis of the universe.
Malinalli, two pairs of helical bands that turned in constant motion, brought
forces from the underworld to ascend to earth and above as well as forces from
the upperworld to descend to earth and the underworld.(18) They are depicted
in the native pictorial manuscripts as nocturnal streams, cords of water,
sharp points, flowers, or streams of blood, all of which are passageways
linking the above, the middle, and the below (see fig. 3). "These passageways
provided communication between the turquoise place [the sky] and the obsidian
place [the underworld] to create the center, the place of the precious green
stone [the surface of the earth] as well as time, change, and the conflict
between the two opposing currents."(19)

[Figure 3 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The underworld had nine levels and was the source of rivers, brooks, winds,
and the clouds which emerged from mountain caves. The abundant riches of
seeds, waters, and minerals appeared on the earth's surface, and the
underworld was depicted, in part, as a place of endless fertility. But it was
also the place of gods who could withhold the powers of fertility and cause
cruel suffering among humans. Diseases emerged from the underworld where the
ohican chaneque (the lords of dangerous places) dwelled and threatened the
well-being of the surface of the earth.

DYNAMICS

It can be said that there were three kinds of time narrated in the sacred
histories of the Aztecs. First, there was a Primordial era in which gods, some
times a dual god, existed without action, motion, or change.(20) This
primordiality reflected modes of totality, equilibrium, prodigious
potentiality, or what Mircea Eliade called an "unhistorical primordiality."
This was the space and time of Ometeotl, the Dual God who lived in
equilibrium. This pattern of time, a kind of patternless time, when nothing
had been created, was followed by a rupture, a powerful action that was the
adventures of the gods. As already suggested, this action constituted
something akin to what we are labeling guilt, crime, or sin. Their actions
created and transformed, divided, and ranked the universe. One scholar
summarizes, "This peace was broken by a second time, that of myth and
creations, an era in which abductions, violations, broken honor, deaths,
struggles and the dismembering of gods gave origin to beings who would be more
intimately connected with man; then man himself was brought into existence.
These creations would also give way to a third time, the time of man, a time
taking place in the intermediate part of the universe: that is, on the earth's
surface and in the four lower heavens."(21)

We will review several of these divine sins and the resultant
disequilibrium/guilt later. Suffice it to make the claim at this point that
sin and guilt constitute part of the motor of sacred history in Aztec thought.

HUMAN BODY, THREE SOULS, AND TLAZOLLI

Lopez Austin writes from the perspective of Mesoamerican religions, giving new
meaning to the time-honored concept of the axis mundi.

Man was conceived to be the center of the cosmos, born at a time when the five
points of the terrestrial plane met in equilibrium, a being in whom it was
believed the qualities of all the components of the universe converged.
Obviously, these components, reunited in the cosmic center, ought to exist in
man in a balanced form, making him the ordered and stable synthesis of the
universe. If man as a species was granted maximum equilibrium, the concept of
an individual had to account for, in terms of balance, the evident biological
and social inequalities: sex, age, degree of sociability, group and intergroup
positions, animistic changes, temperament, variations in health, etc.(22)

Human equilibrium was dependent on the interplay of many factors, including
sex, age, social position, temperament, and changes in health, but the most
important factors were the three animistic entities distributed in three parts
of the body--the skull, the heart, and the liver (see fig. 4). The most vital
and vulnerable aspects of the cosmos were concentrated (like souls) in these
body parts, and the experience and expression of guilt, sin, crime, and
punishment depended in part on the conditions and interrelationship of these
three souls. We will now consider some characteristics of these three souls or
animistic entities.

[Figure 4 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

TONALLI AND THE HEAD

The front part of the skull, especially the area of the fontanel, was the
container of tonalli (derived from the verb tona, meaning "to irradiate or
make warm, to make sun").(23) Among the characteristics of tonalli were that
(1) it was the source of warmth, vigor, valor, and growth in the human body;
(2) animals, plants, and gods all had tonalli; (3) tonalli came from the
celestial gods, first from the Dual God in Omeyocan who breathed tonalli into
the fetus and second, from the Sun whose warmth and light provided tonalli to
humans; (4) newborn children accumulated more tonalli when placed near the
home fire where the god Xiuhtecuhtli resided; (5) human blood also generated
tonalli; (6) tonalli had a physical nature--it was hot and luminous; (7)
tonalli left the body, causing disequilibrium during sexual intercourse,
dreams, and sleep; (8) a warrior gained control over an enemy's tonalli when
grabbing them by the front tuft of air on the head; and (9) the loss of too
much tonalli resulted in death.

IHIYOTL AND THE LIVER

A second animistic entity or soul was located in the liver, the site of

passion, vigor, and feeling, Ihiyotl was breathed into infants, especially
when they were offered to water in a bathing ceremony four days after birth.
Its physical nature was a luminous gas capable of attracting other beings.
This power is reflected in the name for magnetic stone which was tlaihiyoanani
tetl (stone that attracts things with ihiyotl).(24) This soul was associated
with "night air" or "dead air" that provided either beneficent or noxious
energy. Ihiyotl could be supplied by food or through breathing air onto or
within a person. Certain individuals such as magicians or shamans could
externalize their ihiyotl and magically inject it into people, animals,
objects, or insects to cause harm and bring about desired influences.

TEYOLIA AND THE HEART

The third animistic entity, and the most important for the purposes of this
article, was the heart, the place of equilibrium. Teyolia (heart) derives from
yolia (he who animates) and yol (life) and is the location of thought,
rationality, the inner person. As mentioned before, animals, towns, lakes,
sky, ocean, and other things had teyolia. Each town had a heart called the
altepeyollotl (heart of the town). Teyolia appeared in the mother's womb as a
gift from the gods and was hot during life and cold during death. Human hearts
received the divine force of teyolia when they accomplished the extraordinary
in war, art, poetry, politics, or science. Certain exceptional individuals
called hombre-dioses (man-gods) by Lopez Austin had enormous amounts of
teyolia. One of the greatest mishaps to a person's teyolia came through sexual
misconduct when the teyolia was damaged. Unlike the other two souls, teyolia
"went beyond" after death to various realms. The teyolia of warriors killed in
battle or sacrificed traveled with the sun through the heavens and the
underworld. The teyolia of women who died in childbirth accompanied the sun
until sunset and then periodically descended to earth to torment people. The
teyolia of those who were killed by Tlaloc, the rain god, were taken to caves
in the mountains and became helpers of the Tlaloque, who sent rain but also
harmful weather. The teyolia of suckling infants had the best fate. These
infants had never eaten corn or engaged in sex and therefore they had never
committed sin, filth, dirt. Consequently, their teyolia went to
Chichiualcuauhco, "the place of the nursemaid tree," where the teyolia existed
suckling milk from leaves shaped like female breasts.

It must be reiterated that these animistic forces were conceived as entities
with physical features. Mesoamerican peoples did not believe in the spirit or
the soul or in gods as immaterial entities. Everything was matter, a kind of
subtle matter, but a matter with weight and a form of heaviness. The
equilibrium and disequilibrium of the human body and human nature were created
by the "flow" of this subtle material.

GODS AND GUILT

I have argued elsewhere that the Aztecs were plagued with a sense of cosmic
paranoia and a subversive genealogy, especially as it related to the problem
of legitimate rulership.(25) It could be said that guilt permeated their
cosmos. As with the Aztec "huehuetlatolli" messages--which overflowed with
what Freud called "superego" power, forever presenting children, rulers,
midwives, teenagers, and anyone who listened with speeches about what they
"ought" or "should" or "must" do to act according to impossibly high standards
and which were filled with gloomy forecasts of human conduct and
destiny--Aztec cosmic cycles were unstable, tense, ever passing through total
catastrophes. The cosmovision of the Mexica emphasized the more dangerous
phases of the life cycle--the phases of threat, death, decomposition, and
eccentric periodicity. From the grand cosmogonic episodes of repeated
creations and destructions to the names given to the world ages (i.e., the
names of the destructive forces) to the episodes of sacred history in which
great kings or culture heroes abdicate their authority to the images of the
sky and earth as hungry mouths, Mesoamerican myths and the rituals in which
they were embedded portray a tense, unstable, dynamic, perishable world.
Nevertheless, these episodes of collapse, gloom, and devourment were perceived
as necessary stages in the decomposition of the world and the recreation of
the cosmos. This combination of a perishable but regenerative world is crucial
to the understanding of Aztec guilt and sin.

COSMIC COMPOST HEAP

One of the most compelling images of a theory of cosmomagical regenerative
power comes from Thelma Sullivan, the distinguished nahuatlato (Nahuatl
specialist) who described the earth and its decomposing parts as a compost
heap. Sullivan focused on the goddess Tlazolteotl, the eater of filth, whom we
shall discuss later. Tlazolteotl is associated with the earthiness of sexual
life, sexual license, and the confession of wrong doings (see fig. 5). In
return for confessions, Tlazolteotl would "eat" the sexual sins of humans and
digest evil sexual energy so that it could be recomposed in some useful
fashion. What seems most interesting is the prestige which revitalization
continued to have within this clearly negative valuation of cosmic and human
existence. Sullivan wrote that Tlazolteotl was "the goddess of the fertile
earth, and symbolized, too, the earth that receives all organic wastes--human
and animal excrement, vegetable and fruit remains, fish, fowls, and animal
bones, and so forth--which when decomposed are transformed into humus. Humus
in Nahauatl is called tlazollalli--from tlazolli, filth, garbage and tlalli,
earth. In the same way that Tlazolteotl caused the symbolic rebirth of the
transgressor by eating the ordure of his wickedness, she also symbolized the
transformation of waste into humus, that is the revitalization of the
soil."(26)

[Figure 5 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This view of the earth and some of its deities as a cosmic compost heap eating
the refuse of humans, animals, and vegetation to restore vitality to the earth
reflects the cosmovision of sexuality, collapse, and regeneration mentioned
earlier. One primary example of this combination, one which combines the theme
of a subversive genealogy for supreme rulers with cosmic renewal (not from
humus, but from ashes), is the story of the rise, fall, self-sacrifice, and
rebirth of the hombre-dios Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, to which we now turn.

QUETZALCOATL AND FORBIDDEN SEX

Aztec rulers claimed their legitimate descent from the paradigmatic ruler,
Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, of the Great Tollan, the ideal type of kingdom of the
tenth to twelfth centuries north of the Basin of Mexico.(27) The Aztecs were
nomadic latecomers into the centers of culture and civilization that
controlled social, spiritual, and economic life in the lake cultures of
Anahuac. While climbing the social and political ladder of this urbanized
society, the Aztecs gained access through marriage and warfare to the sine qua
non royal lineage of the Toltecs, whose supreme representative was Topiltzin
Quetzalcoatl. It is fascinating that the basic tale taught in the calmecacs
(priestly schools of the Aztec empire) emphasized the contradictory image of
an abundant paradisiacal urban kingdom and a disgraceful collapse which led to
the end of the era. Following a glorious period of abundance, stability, and
expansion, Tollan comes to a miserable end in the following sequence: (1) An
antagonist appears--a sorcerer usually identified with Tezcatlipoca--who
organizes a movement against Quetzalcoatl, (2) partially around the issue of
human sacrifice. (3) Through a series of tricks and magical deceptions, (4) he
gets the priest-king roaring drunk. (5) Whereupon Quetzalcoatl breaks his
ritual commitments and perhaps has some kind of sexual encounter with a
priestess, and (6) he awakens from the debauch heartbroken. Having realized
that his authority has been undermined, Quetzalcoatl sings out his decision to
depart Tollan with some followers, resulting in (7) the immediate fall of the
city or its waning over a period of years.

In one version, Quetzalcoatl had designated quail, butterflies, snakes, and
large grasshoppers for sacrifice, but the gods Huitzilopochtli and
Tezcatlipoca demanded human victims and created a confrontation. The rivals
entered his city and asked for human sacrifices to take place, "He did not
consent, because he greatly loved his subjects who were Toltecs. Snakes, birds
and butterflies that he killed were what his sacrifices always were.... And it
is told and related that with this he wore out the sorcerers' patience. So it
was then that they started to ridicule him and make fun of him, the sorcerers
saying they wanted to torment Quetzalcoatl and make him run away." The
sorcerers decided, "Let us brew pulque. We'll have him drink it and make him
lose his judgment so that he no longer performs his sacraments. Then
Tezcatlipoca said, `Myself, I say we should give him a way to see his flesh.'"
Tezcatlipoca went first, carrying a two-sided mirror larger than the size of
an outstretched hand, concealed in a wrapping. Following some clever
maneuvering on Tezcatlipoca's part, he managed to get past the palace guard
and ministers and held up the mirror in front of the ruler. Quetzalcoatl was
shocked by his decaying visage and soon entered into a drunken party, became
utterly intoxicated, and neglected his ritual responsibilities. This led to an
apparent sexual episode of sacred, royal proportions when "Quetzalcoatl said
in a happy mood, `Go get my elder sister Quetzalpetlatl. Let the two of us be
drunk together.' ... His pages went to Mount Nonohualca where she was doing
penance and said, `My child lady, Quetzalpetlatl, O fasting one, we've come to
get you. Priest Quetzalcoatl awaits you. You're to go and be with him.'" She
complied and went to Quetzalcoatl with whom she became drunk, and they
neglected their rituals and perhaps had sexual intercourse. Afterward, when
Quetzalcoatl awoke from his stupor, he cried in profound lament, "Never, a
portion counted in my house.... There is only misery and servitude." Then his
weeping pages sang, "They made us rich, they our lords, and he, Quetzalcoatl,
who shined like a jade. Broken are the timbers, his house of penance. Would
that we might see him. Let us weep."(28)

Quetzalcoatl is forced to leave in disgrace and his kingdom begins to
collapse. The food turns "bitter, bitter to the core" as he flees, in one
version, to the seashore. There he orders a funeral pyre created and in an act
of self-sacrifice surrenders to the fire. This is a radical act of
purification in which his body is reduced, not to humus but to ashes, but the
ashes, like humus, are recycled in a new form of life. The text tells us:

And they say as he burned, his ashes rose. And what appeared and what they saw
were all the precious birds, rising into the sky. They saw roseate spoonbills,
cotingas, trogons, herons, green parrots, scarlet macaws, white-fronted
parrots, and all the other precious birds.... And as soon as his ashes had
been consumed, they saw the heart of a quetzal rising upward. And so they knew
he had gone to the sky, had entered the sky.... The old people said he was
changed into the star that appears at dawn. Therefore they say it came forth
when Quetzalcoatl died, and they called him Lord of the Dawn."(29)

Quetzalcoatl descends into Mictlan, the lowest underworld, for eight days and
reappears as Venus, the morning star. In this case, we see a god-man forced by
ritual sin and guilt to relinquish his royal position. In order to overcome
his ritual guilt, he sacrifices himself, the result being, repeating the
pattern of the cosmic compost heap, a reduction to ashes and descent into the
earth, which leads to a rebirth in the sky.

A COMMENT ON SIN IN MESOAMERICA

In this discussion, I have tried to find analogies between the terms guilt,
crime, and sin and the comparable Mesoamerican ideas and symbols. Both guilt
and especially sin have been very problematic in the general scholarship on
the history of religions, and some scholars have claimed that sin and guilt
are Christian terms without analogies among native Americans. In fact, the
Mesoamerican record suggests that qualities analogous to sin and guilt were
committed, experienced, and shared by the gods in the time of sacred history.
Alfredo Lopez Austin has made it clear that sin and guilt are common among the
gods and humans:

The word sin is often avoided in Mesoamerican historical studies, with the
claim that it is a Christian concept. I see no reason for this, since the
wrongdoing in Mesoamerican myth fit perfectly the definition of sin (pecado)
in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Espanola, which has often been
criticized for its conservatism in religious matters. Furthermore, the close
association of the generic idea of sin and the specific idea of sexual
sin--the epitome of sin--is not unique to Christianity. It is enough to note
here that the metaphor in teuhtli in tlazolli ("dust, garbage") meant carnal
sex in its generic and specific aspects to the ancient Nahua.(30)

RUPTURING THE COSMIC TREE

Let us turn to the story of Quetzalcoatl's retrieval of the bones and his
journey to Tamoanchan, which was the site of cosmic creation and sin.
Tamoanchan was a mythical place where the god's adventures introduced life,
dirt, and death onto the surface of the earth. As one scholar notes,
"Tamoanchan appears as the source of creation through the sin of the gods as
well as the place where creation occurred."(31) There are many mythic
fragments about Tamoanchan in the surviving sources, which give us the
following picture: (1) Tamoanchan was "the heaven where the goddess ...
Xochiquetzal resided." Xochiquetzal was a goddess of love. (2) It was the
place of the flowering cosmic tree and the flowery mist where the great tree
grew. This tree was loaded with jewels and gold and intoxicating flowers.(32)
(3) It was the place where reincarnated dead rulers flew among the flowers of
the tree and dwelled on the branches. (4) But Tamoanchan was also the place of
a primordial sin symbolized in several sources by a cut tree from which a
stream of blood flows (see fig. 6). One text reads, "those gods, being in that
place, transgressed when they cut flowers and branches from the trees and
that, because of it, Tonacatecuhtli and the woman Tonacacihuatl became angry
and they cast them out of the place. Some of them came to earth and others
went to hell, and these are the ones that made them fearful."(33) A number of
gods, including Oxomoco , Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Tonacatecuhtli, all
of whom sinned, fell to earth after the gods "ate some of those fruits,"
breaking the tree. It appears that these references to fruits and flowers are
references to sexual intercourse.

[Figure 6 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The sexual nature of what took place in Tamoanchan is made explicit by the
names and characters of the goddesses who were cast to earth. One was Ixcuina,
wife of the god of death who "was the goddess who was said to defend
adulterers." Another was Tlazolteotl, the goddess of garbage and
shamelessness. She was referred to as the "woman who sinned before the flood,
the cause of all wickedness and deceit."(34) Xochiquetzal was also sent down
for sexual sin, but the greater prestige goes to the goddess, Tlazolteotl, of
whom it was said, "Then, when time began, sin began, and the things it brought
on afterwards."

This primordial sexual event resulted in the splitting of the great tree from
which the passage of time irrupted, and the gods were distributed throughout
the cosmos. Fortunately, we have an image of the Tamoanchan tree in the Codex
Borbonicus, which is a synthesis of the four cosmic trees (see fig. 7). The
striped nature of the tree may represent the four colors of the cosmic trees
of the four directions, but the split signifies that the gods have irrupted
and passed into the human world and the underworld. I am impressed with Lopez
Austin's contention that sexual pleasure is the cause of this split; he notes
that one term for sex among the Aztecs was tlalticpaccayotl (what belongs to
the surface of the earth). Nowhere is this clearer than in glosses associated
with Tlazolteotl, the goddess of sexual sin, that appear in the Codex
Vaticanus 3738 ("A") and in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. These state that
"they say that this head signifies the commencement of sin that began with
time, there has been sin since the beginning."(35) The message which protrudes
through the obvious Christian influence is that the creation of life on the
surface of the earth is accomplished in part through the sexual actions of the
gods in Tamoanchan. The time of the gods (the second time) and certainly the
time of humans (the third time) is permeated with the sexual act that led to
the rupture and disequilibrium of the cosmic tree.

[Figure 7 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

GUILTY RHETORIC AND THE AZTEC SUPEREGO

The Aztecs felt that they lived in a world where no privacy, no sin, no guilt,
no act was beyond the knowledge of their gods. Consider just the title of
chapter 4 of book 6 of the Florentine Codex, which is about the huehuetlatolli
(ancient saying) to their god Tezcatlipoca, who, you will recall, fell out of
Tamoanchan after the tree was ruptured. The title reads: "Here are related the
words which came from their very hearts when they prayed to Tezcatlipoca, whom
they named creator of men, knower of men, seer into men's hearts and men's
thoughts, as they asked for help in behalf of the ruler who had been
installed, who had been chosen, in order that he might exercise well the
office of ruler." In fact, the speech predicts a series of stupidities the new
ruler will carry out, calling him guilty before the actions: "Perhaps he will
be stupid; perhaps he will constantly steal; perhaps he will pilfer; perhaps
he will keep his own counsel; perhaps in secret he will cook things up for
himself; perhaps he will be rude, will seize the government; perhaps he will
be quarrelsome; perhaps he will belittle others, will be precipitate,
perverse."(36) No eulogistic perfection here! The rulers were expected to do
foolish things, but the underlying message is that the gods will know and are
ready to condemn.

We can also hear the warnings against the earthly sins of sexual misconduct in
chapter 18 when rulers "admonished their daughters when they had already
reached the age of discretion," urging them to "prudence, virtue, public and
private" so they would "in no way blacken, dirty, discredit the lineage."
Following paragraphs of lofty poetic language filled with oblique instructions
come the following passages:

Especially note that which I say to thee, that which I cry out to thee. Thou
art my creation, thou art my child. Take special care that thou not dishonor
our lords from whom thou descended. Cast not dust, filth upon their memory.
May thou not dishonor the nobility with something.

May thou not covet carnal things. May thou not wish for experience, as it is
said, in the excrement, in the refuse. And if thou art to change thyself, wilt
thou become as a goddess? May thou not have quickly destroyed thyself. Yet
calmly, with special care, present thyself well.... Give thyself not to the
wanderer, to the restless one who is given to pleasure, to the evil youth. Nor
are two, three to know thy face, thy head. When thou hast seen the one who,
together with thee, will endure to the end, do not abandon him.(37)

CONFESSION: BURNING UP GUILT AND SIN

We are fortunate to have a remarkable example of the social and spiritual
therapeutics of ritual confession from a present-day pilgrimage tradition of
the Huichol Indians of Mexico. It brings to our attention the power of
confession of sin, especially sexual sin, which was vitally important among
the Aztecs and which represents the power of guilty rhetoric, not only to
restore health but also to reestablish an equilibrium with the gods. The
Huichol engage in a public confession prior to setting out on their yearly
pilgrimage to Wirikuta, the land of the ancestors and the sacred fire, to
collect peyote. In order for pilgrims to leave home on the journey, they must
first become transformed into the ancestral beings who took the first
pilgrimage. This transformation takes place, in part, when the pilgrims are
emptied of their human identity through a public confession of all sexual
liaisons during the previous year. This public confession can often cause
public outcries, pain, and hullabaloo as sexual secrets involving some people
who are present are revealed through the uttering of names. Barbara Myerhoff,
the anthropologist who participated in one of the peyote hunts under the
guidance of a mara'akame, describes the moment of guilty rhetoric this way:

One at a time, in the proper order, each of the pilgrims came forward,
acknowledged the four directions and then in a highly formalized speech stated
the names of all those persons with whom he or she had ever had illicit sexual
relations. For each name mentioned a knot was tied by Ramon [the ritual
leader] in a husk fiber cord he brought forth from his deerskin quiver. The
participants' mood was especially gay when old Francisco came forward to name
his amours. Ramon was directed by the others to make one knot for each five
names because the old man had had such a long life and so many romances that
to make a knot for each name would leave no one else room on the cord. At the
conclusion of each person's statement Ramon with his plumes brushed the
pilgrim from the head downward, making a motion of shaking into the fire the
individual's sexual experience. Before returning to his seat each pilgrim
paused to shake and brush his clothing meticulously into the fire, turning his
bags inside out, shaking his cape and hat, cleansing his clothing as well as
himself, then circling the fire and returning to his proper place among the
other peyoteros.(38)

Later, the knotted string was held up and prayers were delivered over it by
the shaman, who then threw it into the fire, where it was consumed and turned
into ashes. It was now understood that the pilgrims were no longer mere
mortals but the Ancient Ones who had gone on the first peyote hunt to Wirikuta
at the beginning of time, before any sexual intercourse had taken place among
the gods or humans. It is interesting that the fire or combustion of the
knots--representing sexuality, and therefore human identity--into ashes is the
mode of purification and the reversal of human time back into the time of the
Huichol gods.

Aztec confessions were much more private involving the priest, the sinner, and
the gods, especially Tlazolteotl. Confession had a therapeutic effect in Aztec
thought because sexuality had such a strong influence on the three animistic
forces in the human body and on physical health. As Bernard Ortiz de
Montellano notes in his study of Aztec medicine and healing, "In fact, the
threat of illness from the loss of these forces was actually much more
effective than legal sanctions as a deterrent against adultery and aberrant
sexual practices."(39) As we have noted before, moderation and balance were
crucial in all matters, including sexual ones. Premature sex resulted in
stunted growth and a weakening of the intelligence because tonalli was lost
during the growth process. Apparently, the Aztecs believed that there was a
profound gender difference in the human capacity for sex. Men were urged to
start sexual activity later in their adolescence because they contained a
fixed amount of semen. Waiting later to start sexual activity meant being able
to have sex later in life. Women were sometimes thought to be insatiable as
indicated in a famous legal case involving one of the great Aztec rulers, the
Hungry Coyote of Tezcoco. Two elderly women caught in adultery with younger
men were brought before the king for judgment. When interrogated as to why
they still wanted to have sex in their old age, they told the king:

You men cease to desire sexual pleasure when you are old because you indulged
in your youth and because human potency and semen run out. We women, however,
are never satiated nor do we stop liking it. Our body is like a cave, a gorge
which never swells and receives whatever is thrown in and still wants and
demands more. And if we don't do this we are not alive. I tell you this, my
son, so that you will live cautiously and discreetly; so you will go step by
step and not hurry with this ugly and harmful business.(40)

SPEAKING IN TONGUES TO TLAZOLTEOTL

Nowhere is the Aztec sense of guilt and guilty rhetoric clearer than in the
grand confession to Tlazolteotl as reported in book 1 of the Florentine Codex.
In what follows, I want to emphasize the performative force of the sacred
actions and especially the flow of words that constitute the confession, or
neyolmelahualiztli, which translates as "the act of straightening the hearts."
There are a series of complex interrelated parts to this performance, which at
the beginning, middle, and end depend on the ability of words to symbolically
strip a person of one identity and assist in the creation of a new one. It is
not only words but also certainly the tongue which is the focus of the action,
the tongue which at one moment is homologized with the penis, the tongue which
must create the sounds that set one's heart straight. In order to gain
perspective on this complex rhetorical moment, I want to describe the ritual
in seven parts, focusing on (1) the notion of the goddess's realm; (2) the
naming of the goddesses and verbal cosmic setting of the confession; (3) the
ritual construction of space and time for the confession; (4) the invitation
to confess, to open one's heart; (5) the opening of one's heart; (6) the
punishment against the stomach, the tongue, and the penis; and (7) the retreat
to silence and confidentiality.

THE REALM OF THE GODDESS

"As to her being named Tlazolteotl: it was said that it was because her realm,
her domain was that of evil and perverseness--that is to say lustful and
debauched living. It was said that she ruled and was mistress of lust and
debauchery" (see fig. 8).(41) It is impressive that this goddess ruled a
geography, a realm, but the realm was not so much a space as it was an action,
a sexual action. She was identified as the cause of lustfulness as to role a
specific domain. One god governed the domain of war, another governed the
domain of art, still another controlled the waters. This goddess ruled
sexuality and in so doing provided from within her own substance the forces of
sexuality, for good or ill, that is, she cast lust upon humans, like casting a
net over them. But her influence was also internal as she "inspired in one" or
breathed into a person sexual misconduct. She also provided from within her
own substance the release and cure from this excessive lust. Tlazolteotl
provoked sinful sex but also could take it away. As we shall see, she ate the
substance of sexual lust committed by humans, thereby taking it back into her
divine body.

[Figure 8 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE NAMING OF THE GODDESS/A VERBAL COSMIC SETTING

"And as to her name Ixcuina: it was said there were four women--the first
named Tiacapan (the firstborn or leader), the second Teicu (the younger
sister).... Each one of these was called Tlazolteotl." It is impressive that
language creates the setting of the confession by first multiplying the names
of the goddess into four. This sacred setting for the straightening of one's
heart reflects the Aztec pattern of the one and the many. Various gods can be
concentrated into one single god, and one god can be multiplied into various
gods. Some of the chief gods, such as Tlaloc, Ehecatl, and Xiuhtecuhtli, were
often converted into four gods in order to live in each of the cosmic trees.
The same pattern was expressed in the goddess of sexual love who had four
sisters, each one located in the four comers of the universe. In a sense, this
multiplicity means that there is no escape from these sexual complexities of
human existence.

One of the names of the goddess was Tlaelquani (Eater of Filthy Things). The
goddess inspired lust and ate its power to disrupt.(42) I am impressed with
the oral focus of so much of this ritual performance as expressed also in the
passage "because one told, one recited before her all vanities; one told, one
spread before her all unclean works, however ugly, however grave.... Indeed
all was exposed, told before her." This is a sacred, oral discourse between
human and goddess that absolutely depends on rhetorical action from start to
finish.

The verbal action is reiterated when the penitent goes to a soothsayer "in
whose hands lay the books ... who preserved the writings, who possessed the
knowledge ... the wisdom which hath been uttered." Utterances are not only
made by the penitent, they wait for him or her embedded in the pictorial
manuscripts. It is for this reason that the penitent announces, "I wish to go
to the master, our lord of the near, the nigh. I wish to learn of his
secrets." The verb itechtzinco means "to be in his venerable proximity" and
ninaxitiznequi means "I wish to seek the protection of" (be beneath the divine
figure in order to acquire virtue and become upright). One's guilt and sin
have become enclosed in names and signs which have been uttered.

THE RITUAL CONSTRUCTION OF SPACE

"The soothsayer said, 'Thou has done a favor.' He instructed him when he
should come; he chose the day. He consulted his sacred almanac ... when it was
already the appointed time." In order for the ritual transformation and
exchange of guilty and cleansing rhetoric to take place, a sacred space and
time had to be identified. The soothsayer was the go-between or conduit
between the goddess and the penitent, and he had to identify the space and
rhythm of time suitable for the powerful event. A "good day, good time" was
chosen and the home of the penitent was swept clean; a new reed mat, which was
the specific setting of the confessions, was laid down near the new fire that
was lit. Incense was cast into the flames of Xiuhtecuhtli, and the first words
were uttered, reflecting the duality we have seen to be so crucial in Aztec
thought. "Mother of the gods, father of the gods, the old god, here hath come
a man of low estate ... he hath lived in filth, ... hear the torment of this
lowly one." These phrases show a spatial relationship between a person
speaking from a low, near-the-earth position to a god who is old, honored, and
at the center of the universe. Though it is not made explicit in this text,
the use of the home as the site of confession and cleansing may be said to
symbolize the communal nature of guilt. The sexual misconduct of one member of
a family could spread illness and harm to others. According to the research of
Lopez Austin, one person's sexual sins could harm all members of the
family--living and dead. This was due, in part, to the power of the
disequilibrium of one of the souls. For instance, a moral life produced a
cemelli (unified liver). But immoral sexual activity altered the liver, which
erupted, like the cosmic tree, with emissions of ihiyotl. These emissions
could injure the health of others, including animals. An adulterer would emit
noxious forces that could infect the spouse. This disease was called
chahuacocoliztli (illness due to adultery).(43) Children and other innocent
bystanders were especially susceptible to these influences.

THE INVITATION TO OPEN/CLEAN ONE'S HEART/CONFESS

"Thou hast ... come to tell him, to deliver thyself of, thy evil atmosphere
... to open thy secrets." This passage indicates the formal invitation to the
penitent to open himself (recall our prior use of the phrase "the heart was
opened") through narration of his sexual history. The soothsayer implores,
"uncover thy secrets, tell thy way of life, in whatsoever way thou art moved
... pour forth thy vices ... and tell thy sorrows to our lord of the near and
nigh, who stretching forth his arms to thee, embraceth thee and carrieth thee
on his back."(44) It is noted that this action, which apparently could take
place only once in a lifetime, took courage: "be not timid because of shame
... be daring."

THE OPENING/CLEANING OF THE HEART

"`I take off my clothes and uncover, in thy presence my nakedness'... Then he
began [the tale of] his sins, in their proper order, in the same order as that
in which he committed them. Just as if it were a song ... in the very same way
he told what he had done." This passage tells of the narrative structure of
the confession, which is likened both to a song and to a journey ("as if on
the road he went following his deeds") and resonates with some aspects of
contemporary psychoanalytic technique. In contemporary therapeutics, the
analysand is instructed to relive the road of his or her life as a means of
creating a profound and long lasting catharsis and a clear pathway of
understanding to see the impulses, forces, and sources of complex, troubling
feelings. For the Aztecs, the confession, which was the cleaning of one's
heart, had to address the amount of phlegm and soil that has covered the
heart. It was thought that too much weight of guilt on the heart would drive a
person crazy.

THE PUNISHMENT

"When the Cihuapipiltin descend, ... thou shalt starve thy entrails."
Following the narration of the road of one's sexual misdeeds, the soothsayer
delivered the punishment according to the severity of the story, the volume of
guilt. The intensity of punishment is reflected in the reference to the
descending Cihuapipiltin who are the women who died while giving birth to
their first child. The souls of these women ascended to the western sky of the
sun and formed five groups whose function was to accompany the sun during the
first half of its celestial journey. These beings descended to the earth every
fifty-two days with permission to occupy invisible houses and punish
wrongdoers or just anyone they choose (e.g., a beautiful child was paralyzed
and deformed). It was on the date of their descent that the penitent was to
carry out at least two painful kinds of ritual cleansing.

First, a serious fast was undertaken. This fast signified the withdrawal from
eating things of the earth, a reversal of human growth, human nature, and the
involvement in teuhtli, tlazolli. Lopez Austin has noted that the first
disequilibrium or sin was committed the first time a child ate from the body
of the Earth Mother, typically a corn pabulum.

When a child eats the substance that comes from the interior of the earth, the
child ingests the weight and quality of death. All that comes from the Earth
Mother comes from the death that produces life. In this way, the life that is
maintained at the cost of death has to be transformed into death. If a human
eats corn, he is required to pay his debt to the earth by giving his own body
when he dies. Throughout life, the human being is sinning on the earth, is
building up a debt to the earth. This debt is disequilibrium which must be
paid or set right. This payment, in Aztec thought, is done with offerings,
with autosacrifice, with human sacrifice, with dances, and finally with the
surrendering of one's body to the earth.(45)

This confession is just such an "offering," and the next requirement
introduces the painful practice of autosacrifice, which is a debt payment.

Second, the penitent is told that he must "pay in blood" with very specific
instructions. During the fasting period, the tongue receives harsh treatment
as straws and sticks are drawn through it. Straws, reeds, or sticks are drawn
"through the middle, thou shalt break it through from the under side" of the
tongue or, in some cases, the ears. But it is not only the protuberance of the
tongue that told the guilt which is pierced and bled; it is also the
protuberance of the penis that committed, in part, the sexual action that is
bled. The penitent is also required to draw sticks, reeds, or straws through
his penis many times. "Thou shalt insert [the reeds] in thy penis ... Thou
shall pass them through singly, or pass them through as one, binding them
together, be they four hundred or eight hundred sticks which thou shalt pass
through."(46) In this way, the faults, sins and evil are overcome.

Autosacrifice was carried out by all members of Aztec society at some time in
their lives. As Cecelia Klein has shown in her seminal work, "The Ideology of
Autosacrifice at the Templo Mayor," depictions of people engaged in
self-sacrifice greatly outnumber images of human sacrifice, at least on the
stone monuments that have survived. It appears that from very ancient times,
the piercing of one's own body with spines, obsidian blades, or other
instruments promoted agricultural and reproductive fertility and good health.
These acts of bleeding the self seem to be closely tied up with the concept of
paying a debt or making an exchange for supernatural aid. Parents bled their
children during the month of Tozoztontli so "that they could avoid illness and
... no evil would befall them," and children were bled during the New Fire
Ceremony. Describing the ideology of autosacrifice, Klein summarizes: "Since
both sexual transgression and overindulgence in food and drink were closely
associated with moral and physical weakness, sexual abstinence and fasting
usually accompanied bloodletting. Conversely, those who had behaved asocially
in this manner often sought to restore their strength by offering their blood.
Adulteresses and priestesses who broke the vows of chastity are specifically
reported to have done this ... Human blood could be shed on behalf of plant
and animal life, as well, with the understanding that it in turn would benefit
people."(47)

These practices among the priesthood could reach extraordinary proportions,
reflecting our concerns with guilty rhetoric, guilty tongues. The priests
actually tied knots in the cords that were pulled through their tongues and,
according to Diego Duran, some priests not only bled their virile members but
also split them in two to insure impotence and the complete avoidance of
sexual relations.

THE RETREAT INTO SILENCE/CONFIDENTIALITY

"The soothsayer before whom sins were laid nowhere spoke of what had been
placed before him, of what had been said.... For the sins were given--they
were told--to him of the near, the nigh, whom moral man might not see." I am
impressed with the closing comments of silence and confidentiality. Once the
guilt had been confessed, relived through the telling, and cleansed through
the fasting and autosacrifice (lesser offenses required singing, dancing, the
making of images), the penitent was required to do penance at the temple at
night while naked wearing only the emblem of Tlazolteotl (a paper painted with
obsidian points) on his loins and buttocks. They he returned home and silence
was required of penitent and soothsayer.

This ritual silencing of the guilty rhetoric now ingested by the goddesses was
exaggerated by certain priestly groups who drew large numbers of knotted cords
or thorns through their tongues. "According to Motolinia, one physical effect
of this practice was considerable difficulty in speaking. The Cholulan priests
who offered their own blood to Camaxtli drew the rods through their tongues
every twenty days, he tells us, precisely so as 'to keep their tongues from
murmuring."(48) During one eighty-day fast in honor of the god Camaxtli in the
region of Tlaxcala, the head priest who sang "could scarcely move his tongue."
This is a radical form of silencing the flow of guilty rhetoric as well as of
reminding the penitent of the seriousness of the offense and blocking the
allure of the sin.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

In Aztec thought, human life was a tender, perishable combination of the Above
and the Below, the Four Quarters, and the Dualities of the cosmos. Guilt was
part of human nature because the gods, in creating the thirteen levels above
the earth, and the nine levels below, injected the sins of their sexuality and
the bloody forces erupting from the broken tree in Tamoanchan. Perhaps the
final word on the profundity of this guilt should be given to that greatest of
Aztec messengers, the Mexica midwife, as she addressed the newborn baby four
days after birth in the naming ceremony. Just before sunrise, she took the
newborn child in her arms, faced west, and began to bathe the child. Cooing,
she told the male child he has been sent from the gods Ometecuhtli, Omecihuatl
who lived in the highest heavens; she gave him a taste of water, the blue
water, the yellow water in order to purify the heart. Then she said: "My
youngest son, my youth, take, receive the water of the lord of the earth, our
sustenance, our refreshment, which is that which cleanseth one, that which
batheth one. May the heavenly water, the blue water, the deep green, go into
thy body; may it remain in thy body. May it remove, may it destroy the manner
of things thou wert given with which thou wert arrayed in the beginning--the
bad, the evil; for we are still left in its hands; we merit it, for even
before, our mother Chalchiuhitli icue, knoweth of it."(49)

(1) Mircea Eliade No Souvenirs: Journal, 1957-69, trans. Fred H. Johnson, Jr.
(New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. xiii

(2) Ibid., p. 45.

(3) Ibid., p. 259.

(4) For the best introduction to the worldview and religious practices of the
Aztec world, see H. B. Nicholson, "Religion in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico,"
in The Handbook of Middle American Indians, ed. Gordon F. Ekholm and Ignacio
Bernal, vol. 10 of Archaeology of Northern Mesoamerica, Part One, ed. Robert
Wauchope (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), pp. 395-445. Also, see
Michel Graulich, Myths of Ancient Mexico, trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de
Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1997); and David Carrasco, "Aztec Religion," in The Encyclopedia of
Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 6:518-23.

(5) For a discussion of how human sacrifice included Spanish hearts, see David
Carrasco, "Myth, Cosmic Terror and the Templo Mayor," in The Great Temple of
Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World, by Johanna Broda, David
Carrasco, and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1987), pp. 124-62. Eyewitness descriptions of Spaniards
being slaughtered in sacrificial ceremonies appear in Bernal Diaz del
Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517-1520, ed. Genaro Garcia;
trans, and notes Alfred P. Maudslay; introduction by Irving A. Leonard (New
York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1956).

(6) "Hombre-dioses" is the term used by Alfred Lopez Austin in The Human Body
and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, trans. Thelma Ortiz de
Montellano and Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano (Salt Lake City: University of
Utah Press, 1988).

(7) See the introductory phrases to the first nine huehuetlatolli in book 6 of
Bernardo de Sahagun, Florentine Codex: The General History of the Things of
New Spain, ed. and trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa
Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah, 1950-82), pp. 1-41.
For an introduction to this literary style of ancient orations, see David
Carrasco (with Scott Sessions), Daily Life of the Aztecs: People of the Sun
and Earth (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998), pp. 164-70.

(8) See Julien Ries, "The Fall," in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea
Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 5:256-67.

(9) Quetzalcoatl is one of the most significant pre-Hispanic deities of
Mesoamerica and has attracted the attention of scholars, artists, and writers
in many cultures. The best study of the historical Quetzalcoatl is H. B.
Nicholson, "Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl of Tollan: A Problem in Mesoamerican
Ethnohistory" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1957). Also, be sure to read
Alfredo Lopez Austin, Hombre-dios: Religion y politica en el mundo nahuatl
(Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1973); and David
Carrasco, Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies among the
Aztecs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

(10) Popul Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya, trans. Adrian
Recinos, Delia Goetz, and Sylvanus G. Morley (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1950), p. 81.

(11) Leyenda de los Soles, quoted in John Bierhorst, History and Mythology of
the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca, trans, from the Nahuatl by John Bierhorst
(Tucson and London: University of Arizona Press, 1992), p. 145.

(12) Ibid.

(13) The best study of paradise in Mesoamerican traditions is Alfredo Lopez
Austin, Tamoanchan, Tlalocan: Places of Mist, trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de
Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Niwot: University Press of
Colorado, 1997). Also, see Hermann Beyer, "Tamoanchan, el paraiso de los
antiguos mexicanos," in Mito y simbologia del Mexico antiguo, ed. Carmen Cook
de Leonard (Mexico City: Sociedad Alemana Mexicanista, 1965), pp. 39-43; and
Alfonso Caso, "El Paraiso Terrenal en Teotihuacan," Cuadernos Americanos 6,
no. 6 (1942): 127-36.

(14) Louise Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in
Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989), p. 88.

(15) Lopez Austin, The Human Body and Ideology, pp. 52-53.

(16) Quoted in ibid., p. 58.

(17) An excellent introduction to the relationship of cosmos and state is
Richard E. Townsend, State and Cosmos in the Art of Tenochtitlan (Washington,
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1979).

(18) The best short introduction to the underworld is Timothy J. Knab,
"Geografia del inframundo" Estudios de cultura nahuatl 21 (1991): 31-47.

(19.) Lopez Austin, The Human Body and Ideology (n. 6 above), p. 60.

(20) Lopez Austin calls this time by the alternate terms "transcendent time"
and "intranscendent time" in an attempt to describe what is the nature of the
first stages of creation in the universe. For related and helpful discussions
of this stage of the cosmogony, see Mircea Eliade, "Cosmogonic Myth and Sacred
History," in The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 72-87. For a valuable exposition on the different
modes of primordiality in world religions, see Charles H. Long, Alpha: The
Myths of Creation (New York: G. Braziller, 1963).

(21) Lopez Austin, The Human Body and Ideology, p. 61.

(22) Ibid., p. 255.

(23) See M.-N. Chamoux, "La notion nahua d'individu: Un aspect du tonalli dans
la region de Huauchinango, Puebla," in Enquetes sur l'Amerique Moyenne:
Melanges offerts a Guy Stresser-Pean, ed. Dominique Michelet (Mexico City:
Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, consejo National para la
Cultura y las Artes, and Centre d'Etudes Mexicaines et Centramericaines,
1989), pp. 303-11, for a study of contemporary ideas concerning the tonalli.

(24) For a helpful discussion of ihiyotl and the best overall summary of Aztec
health practices, see Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, Aztec Medicine, Health,
and Nutrition (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), pp.
55-70.

(25) Carrasco, Quetzalcoatl (n. 9 above) see chap. 5.

(26) Quoted in Elizabeth Baquedano, "Aztec Earth Deities" in Polytheistic
Systems, ed. Glenys Davies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989), pp.
184-98. See Telma Sullivan, "Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina: The Great Spinner and
Weaver," in The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico, ed.
Elizabeth H. Boone (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1982), p. 15.

(27) See David Carrasco, Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial
Centers (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), esp. chap. 3, "Aztec Religion:
Ways of the Warrior, Words of the Sage," pp. 58-91, for a helpful introduction
to Quetzalcoatl's meaning for the Aztecs. Also, see Nigel Davies, The Aztec
Empire: The Toltec Resurgence (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987) for
an intense analysis of the historical sources about the Aztec/Toltec
relationship.

(28) Anales de Cuauhtitlan, quoted in Bierhorst (n. 11 above), History and
Mythology of the Aztecs, pp. 31-35.

(29) Ibid., p. 36.

(30) Alfredo Lopez Austin, The Myths of the Opossum: Pathways of Mesoamerican
Mythology, trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de
Montellano (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), p. 66.

(31) Lopez Austin, Tamoanchan, Tlalocan (n. 13 above), p. 91.

(32) Angel Maria Garibay Kintana, Poesia nahuatl (Mexico City: Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1964-68), 2:106.

(33) Eloise Quinones Keber, Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, Divination, and
History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1995), p. 40 (fol. 81) and pp. 182-83.

(34) Ibid., pp. 38 (fol. 17) and 179-81.

(35) Quoted in Lopez Austin, Myths of the Opossum, p. 67.

(36) Sahagun (n. 7 above), bk. 6, pp. 17-18, quote on p. 17.

(37) Ibid., pp. 97-98.

(38) Barbara G. Myerhoff, Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol
Indians (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. 134.

(39) B. R. Ortiz de Montellano, Aztec Medicine (n. 24 above), pp. 150-51.

(40) Quoted in ibid., p. 62.

(41) Sahagun, bk. 1, p. 23.

(42) For a provocative and insightful view of the cosmological basis of eating
symbols and rites, see, especially, Philip P. Arnold, "Eating Landscape: Human
Sacrifice and Sustenance in Aztec Mexico," in To Change Place: Aztec
Ceremonial Landscapes, ed. David Carrasco (Niwot: University Press of
Colorado, 1991), pp. 225-36. Also, see David Carrasco, "Cosmic Jaws: We Eat
the Gods and the Gods Eat Us," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63,
no. 3 (1995): 101-35. On a related note, Aztec cannibalism has been a juicy
topic among scholars for several centuries. The best summary of the
controversy appears in Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, "Aztec Cannibalism: An
Ecological Necessity?" Science 200 (1978): 611-17.

(43) B. R. Ortiz de Montellano, Aztec Medicine, p. 152.

(44) Ibid., p. 25.

(45) Alfredo Lopez Austin, personal communication.

(46) Sahagun, bk. 1, p. 26.

(47) Cecelia F. Klein, "The Ideology of Autosacrifice at the Templo Mayor," in
The Aztec Templo Mayor, ed. E. H. Boone (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks,
1987), pp. 293-370, esp. 294-95. There are many pictorial images of
autosacrifice as ritual expression and discipline for children in a number of
codices. For images of children being disciplined by autosacrifice, see the
third pictorial section of the Codex Mendoza, ed. Frances F. Berdan and
Patricia Rieff Anawalt, 4 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1992), vol. 3.

(48) Klein, p. 355.

(49) Sahagun, bk. 6, p. 202. The speech to the baby girl as reported in
Sahagun does not include an extensive statement about original evil. Rather it
says, "She cleaned it of thievery. Everywhere on its body, its groin, it was
said, she cleaned it of vice" (p. 206).

-- End --


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"If Brown (vs. Board of Education) was just about letting Black people into a White school, well we don’t care about that anymore. We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. What we want to do is teach ourselves, teach our children the way we have of teaching. We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain...We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil Rights Movement is all within the box of White culture and White supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction. And so it isn’t about an argument of joining neo liberalism, it’s about us being able, as human beings, to surpass the barrier."

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