Bernal Diaz describes his first impression of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City:
And when we saw all those cities and villages built in the water, and other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway leading to Mexico [i.e. Tenochtitlán], we were astounded. These great towns and cues [i.e., temples] and buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision from the tale of Amadis. Indeed, some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream. It is not surprising therefore that I should write in this vein. It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard of, seen or dreamed of before...
At the heart of this enchanted city of some 300,000 people was a great temple, the Templo Mayor, surmounted by twin shrines to Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and Tlaloc, god of rain and agriculture. Diaz tells us the statues of the deities were encrusted with pearls, precious stones and gold, and that the walls of the shrine(s) "were so caked with blood and the floor so bathed in it that the stench was worse than that of any slaughter-house in Spain."
In front of the bloody pyramid, the scene of an estimated 20,000 yearly human sacrifices, rose the Huey Tzompantli, the Skull Wall or Skull Banner. This held the flayed, decapitated heads of the Aztecs' sacrificial victims. These were strung up between beams, rank on rank, in a kind of grisly abacus about the length of a basketball court. This was flanked at either end by a circular skull tower, approximately 6 meters in width and height.
Andres de Tapia, who served under Cortes, saw the Tzompantli and its accompanying skull towers. He loosely calculated the structures to hold 136,000 heads, and we can imagine him walking about the temple precinct, with its gardens, ornamental ponds, brilliantly feathered birds and a towering wall of human skulls. He must have had time on his hands to do the math.
Historians and anthropologists were in the habit of dismissing all of this as Conquistador propaganda, used to justify their bloodthirsty, colonial oppression and destruction of the Aztec culture. Then, uncomfortably, in 2015 and 2020 archeologists discovered the remains of the skull towers. Diaz, Tapia et al weren't lying.
You see, gentle readers, all religions are not the same, especially when one is a human sacrificing, cannibalist, demonic death cult.
God bless,
LSP
13 comments:
Yes, but the Aztecs had no mean tweets. That makes them morally superior.
Oh, and perhaps Bob Weir, not wearing shorts, is called for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5D_j6mtCA4&t=14s
I resisted watching Apocalypto, which Mel Gibson directed after The Passion. When I did, I realized the contrast he was presenting between two sacrificial religions.
No, they are not (all the same). And only one has a direct path to God, "Narrow is the gate..."
Yet even that one is being corrupted, by man. Irony.
LSP: Posted to my blog, with this comment: A thing to remember that one day each year when the uninformed, waxed-eared noise makers damn Columbus and raise upon high the ideas of native religions and culture of which they know nothing.
Tsk, tsk. You will upset the "woke" warriors. Opps. my bad, that is part of your job, isn't it?
Were they POC? Infidel, I rest my case.
And wow, Infidel, EXCELLENT version. Hmmmm. Maybe a "Bob Weir's Shorts" post is in order...
Well said, Ed.
Have you read the archeo/anthropologists' commentary on the discovery of the skull rack and its towers? It's bizarre to see them attempting to pass the thing off as a symbol of light and life.
I'll resist the urge to wax large on the nature of sacrifice, sin, atonement and priesthood fulfilled on Calvary. But as an aside, it's important to remember that the Mass isn't a repetition of the all sufficient sacrifice of our great High Priest but a participation in it. The eternal's instantiated in the temporal, for us.
Now look what I've done, gone and sent the round into time and eternity... Kyrie.
And Paul, doesn't it seem as though the corruption's escalating? Perhaps it must as every instant draws us closer to the final battle.
Sgt., I believe you are psychic. Those were my thoughts entirely.
I try, WSF. You might have enjoyed a bit of yesterday's sermon in which I declaimed with a certain degree of rhetorical flex, "To coin a phrase, 'Our Public Servants have become Public Tyrants.'"
Lots of head nodding in the pews and we get the point, but the problem is their tyranny is engineered in secret. In the old days they were landowners and we knew where they lived. They were so much more readily accountable. On point, who runs Joe Biden? What private island hidden from view, real or figurative, controls the puppet?
Thank God for those terrifying old bastards, the Conquistadors, sinners like the rest of us, but Christian all the same. But for her, Our Lady of Guadalupe might not have had a chance to reign, and the Most Horrible of religions of the New World would still be having its victims delivered to grisly altars.
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