Aztec Religion Essay, Research Paper

At the clip of the Spanish conquering, the faith of the Aztecs was polytheistic, based on the worship of a battalion of personal Gods, most of them with chiseled properties. Nevertheless, thaumaturgy and the thought of certain impersonal and occult forces played an of import function among the people. There was, in add-on, among the uneducated categories inclination to overstate polytheism by gestating of as Gods, besides, what to the priests, were lone manifestations or properties of one God ( Caso, 1987 ) .

Even though there was a charming and impersonal background in the faith of the Aztec people, every bit good as an overdone polytheism, there is besides grounds to back up that Aztec priests tried to cut down the multiple deities to different facets of the same God. When they adopted the Gods of conquered peoples or received Gods from peoples of more advanced civilizations, the priests would ever seek to integrate them, like the Romans, into their ain national pantheon, by sing them as diverse manifestations of the Gods they had inherited from the great civilisations which preceded them and from which they had derived their civilization ( Leon-Portilla, 1970 ) .

Although the Aztec priests tried to unify in a individual construct the different Gods of the different tribes the people as a whole would non acknowledge that their local God was capable to any other or that he was merely an property of a superior being. An exclusion to this generalized idea was Huitzilopochtli, the Aztecs & # 8217 ; ain tribal God, and other divinities associated with him in the national myths kept alive by Aztec pride. In ulterior fables this God is associated with the creative activity of the universe, busying a infinite similar to that

held by the traditional Toltec and Teotihuacan Gods and by those Gods worshiped by the people of the Valley of Mexico before the vent Xitle covered their places with lava, several centuries before Christ ( Caso, 1987 ) .

However, a really ancient school of doctrine held that the beginning of all things was a individual double rule, masculine and feminine, that had created the Gods, the universe, and adult male. Nezahualcoyotl, the male monarch of Texcoco, already preferred to idolize an unseeable God that could no longer be represented. He was called Tloque Nahuaque, or Ipalnemohuani, & # 8220 ; the God of the immediate locality, that one through whom all live, & # 8221 ; who was placed above the celestial spheres and in the highest kingdom and on whom all things depended. Even though this appears to be a monotheistic attitude it still acknowledged the being and the worship of the other Gods, it does bespeak nevertheless, that in exceeding outlooks the philosophical desire for integrity had already appeared and that work forces were seeking a individual cause to explicate all other causes, and a individual God superior to all other Gods ( Caso, 1987 ) .

Therefore, when Nezahualcoyotl built a temple upon a pyramid of nine patios stand foring the nine celestial spheres, he did non topographic point in the sanctuary that crowned the pyramid any image stand foring the God, since he could non be portrayed and must be conceived as pure thought. This individual God of Nezahualcoyotl did non hold much following, nor did he impact the spiritual life of the people. The Gods of philosophers have ne’er been popular, for they arise from the demand of a logical account of the existence, while the common people require less abstract Gods who will fulfill their sentimental demand for love and protection ( Leon-Portilla, 1970 ) .