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The purpose of Aztec blood rituals

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Montezuma
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« on: December 14, 2010, 07:15:30 pm »

All Aztec people were expected to participate in performing ritual blood sacrifices (Nuttall 1904: 25-26), from the young to the old and from the rich to the poor.  At certain Aztec festivals, for example at the Nenacaztequiztli [ear cutting festival], little babies and children had their ears and lips ritually pierced (Nuttall 1904: 11).

During the third movable festival; the joint festival of Chicome Xochitl [Seven Flower], the patron of painters, embroiderers and weavers, and of Xochiquetzal, the inventor of weaving; married couples were expected to provide the principle offering of blood drawn from their fingers or eyes (Nuttall 1904: 12-13).  According to Nuttall (1904: 13), during the sixth movable festival, the patrons of Quetzalcoatl was sent to the temple alters with small saltcellars containing roughly eight to ten drops of their own blood, which were absorbed with strips of paper and burnt with copal gum.

The Aztecs often drew blood from the ears and the tongue using agave leaf points according to Nuttall (1904: 13). The reason was because the creation myth, recorded in chapter vii of the Codex Fuenleal, records the gods Quetzalcoatl and Tlalocantecuhtli fasting and drawing blood from their ears before they created the sun and the moon.  Hence, the Aztecs made it customary to draw blood from the same whenever any petition to the gods was made (Nuttall 1904: 13).

According to McIntosh and Twist (2003: 221), the Aztecs believed that by sacrificing themselves to the gods would ensure the continuation of their world. However, warriors who died in battle and women who died in child birth were assured to go to heaven under the escort of the sun whilst everyone else was unfortunately destined for the underworld.
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