On Human Sacrifice

 

Aztec symbols in the square in Guadalajara. To the right is a Quezalcoatl, a sacred bird/serpent to the Aztecs. 

Fifth Sun, by Camilla Townsend, is a history of the Aztecs of Central Mexico before and at the arrival of the Spanish conquest. It differs from other histories in that it relies on the written work of the Aztecs themselves who learned phonetic writing from the Spaniards and committed their remembered history, their legends to paper. 

         Their religious beliefs included a pantheon of gods, one being the creator god and lesser gods of the sun, the moon, etc.

         The book’s title comes from a legend of five worlds, and the belief that the sun had gone down on four worlds and the fifth—the present world—would require a sacrifice to appease the sun god and keep a sun alive. Two men volunteered to throw themselves into the fire as the sacrifice that would bring about the dawning of the new sun; one was a nobleman and the other a commoner.

When it came time for the sacrificial fire, the nobleman found he couldn’t do it while the commoner threw himself in without hesitation and in his sacrifice, became the fifth sun. Seeing his courage, the nobleman mustered the strength to sacrifice himself as well, and the fifth world ... the people of what would come to be called the Aztecs ... were saved from darkness.

Somewhere in the centre of what is now Mexico City there once was a lake, and in that lake there was an island, and on that island a city—Tenochtitlan, as modern a city as any in Europe—grew into a powerful capital from where Moctezuma ruled when the Spaniards under Hernan Cortez first arrived in the early 16^th Century and eventually colonized the area with a combination of horses, men with weapons . . . and smallpox. (We tend to forget that the Mexico area was home to over 25 million people before Cortez arrived while the area that is now Canada was home territory for about 2 million.)

A characteristic of Tenochtitlan that’s always been troublesome to historians was the practice of human sacrifice, which appears to have escalated as the strength of the city-state grew. Polygyny was practiced there, and in the nobility resulted in fierce competition among the many heirs--the sons of the many wives--for plum leadership posts. 

This struggle sometimes ended in massacres of clans. Also, war captives in skirmishes with neighbouring tribes would be “sacrificed” in public displays warning anyone who aspired to overthrow the hegemony of Tenochtitlan. At religious ceremonies, young women would also be sacrificed to appease the gods, much like the ancient Hebrews and their neighbours sacrificed their best animals.

My thoughts turn to the similarity between the basic Christian story and that of the Fifth Sun sacrifice, the commoner who threw himself into the fire for the salvation of the people. Two religions developing entirely separately seem to share a startling similarity, namely that God or the gods are pleased or appeased by sacrifice of that which is valuable to the people, and what can be more valuable than a human’s life? In fact, human sacrifice has been common to many, many cultures, although having faded into antiquity by now...

... except. Except that the most modern of nations still send young men and women into harm’s way in wars knowing that a number must be sacrificed in defense of the people. In a hospital in Quebec, a man in a bed suffers a cardiac arrest and no one attends to him; all available personnel are engaged in life and death struggles with other critical cases. The man dies for the sins of the people who refuse to cooperate with COVID-19 protocols.

In the USA, right now, the president repeatedly pooh-poohs the severity of the crisis while taking credit for the good work done by others. To this point, 346,000 human lives have been snuffed out there by COVID-19.

In Canada, debate on a Medical Assistance in Dying bill has seen the deadline for passage extended, largely because there are knowledgeable, good people and astute arguments on both sides of the question of what is, basically, a right to choose one’s own method and time of death. The fact that this bill hasn’t been summarily passed argues, for me, that many Canadians are rethinking the value of life itself.  

But human sacrifice is alive and well and we’re learning that in its broadest sense, the value of a human life has been negotiable. Ask the man who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he was dead whether he valued that life ... or threw him in the fire, a human sacrifice.