Mesoamerican Horror Story

OP means well but he's also retarded

That doesn't make it any less terrifying. In fact the notion that they thought they legitimately believed they needed to pay the gods with blood from living people makes it even scarier. How the fuck did this twisted sense of debt come about?

>those who died in sacrifice ascended to the highest Heaven-realms

So did people who died of natural causes end up in Hell? Is this why Lord Pacal's sarcophagus depicts him falling to the bottom of the world tree and having to fight his way to the top?

>I'd say it's no less distasteful than the Catholicuck tradition of worshiping the supposed "relics" of saintly figures,

Yeah well IMO people wearing a freshly peeled human skin for a month until it rots off is a bit more disgusting than briefly kissing a mummified body part. Have you ever smelled a human corpse?

>Where are you getting this made-up shit?

Ceceilia Klein's "Teocuitlatl, 'Divine Excrement': The Significance of 'Holy Shit' in Ancient Mexico"

There is the tale of a Tlaxcala warrior captured by the Aztecs and put through a gladiator style combat ritual where he was expected to die. He won and gained his freedom but still chose to be sacrificed as it was honored and would place a human soul in a greater afterlife closer to the gods rather than a gloomy Hades style afterlife for those who died of old age.

>one person decides to sacrifice himself to save humanity
>aztecs sacrifice majorly unwilling captives

Are you a bad enough dude to stab your own dick with a stingray spine?

...

Considering the fucked up practices in the old world (child sacrafice and rape temples were pretty common, Christianity partly gained so much traction because the idea of a human sacrafice having 'magical spiritual' power was easily digestible and accepted).

Meso-america was particularly bad ass evil though.

Many south and central american socioties grew up in very harsh environments and I think it makes sense that they would personafy their gods as harsh and demanding

the jews lived in a desert at the crossroads of big military powers, and their got was not a kind god...he was jealous and demanding

I think our religious expression is a reflection of the lives we live and i think people who live rough inhospitable lives ed up comeing to term with gods who reflect their world

>rape temples were pretty common

tell me more

And? How do YOU worship?

Which parts of the old world, exactly?

Interesting theory

It's a lot less hardcore when you remember that those who were sacrificed on the most important holy days were treated like gods in the year leading up to their death. Other than that it was just cut 'em open, rip it out or a bit of child sacrifice, which you found in primitive mythologies worldwide.

In part at least, trying to terrorrize subjugated peoples into paying tribute may have played a role in this

He's right you know, as a pantheonic example; consider the prominence of Sun-gods (e.g. Apollo/Phoebus, Ra-later-Amun-Ra) in polytheistic societies that grew up in relatively sunbathed areas like the Nile-basin & the mediterranean, versus the Norse pantheon not even bothering to deify the sun at all (I am writing under correction here of course). I imagine the picts also wouldn't have considered the sun to high up in their druidism as it didn't play as prominent a role in their lives as say, the forests.......

I'm just pulling this out my ass tho, so take it with a fistful of salt

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sól_(sun)

Sol was the Norse personification.

On the contrary, the Indo-Europeans considered the sky god the most important.
Dyews p'ter (Father Sky) became Zeus, Jupiter (Diup'ter,) Dyaus Pitar, Tyr (Tiwaz) who is the Tue in Tuesday. There's a certain equivalence between the sky and the sun, since the word dyews often turns into a word for day as opposed to night.

Environment is important, though. There's no sign of an original sea god in Indo-European religion, or even a word for the sea, and river religion is very minor compared to Egypt.

You're operating from the perspective that sacrafice was something to be feared in Mesoamerican societies. This is simply not the case

Didn't they sacrifice prisoners of war? Why would they give them the benefit?

>That doesn't make it any less terrifying.
I see. I can only suggest you to start considering this as something more than spooky stories, otherwise that's the only thing you'll find. Perhaps that's what you want.

He's write

In Mesopotamia life was extremely harsh what with the erratic floods and droughts, so their gods were a bunch of strict cunts who made humans to be disposable slaves

In Egypt life was much more stable and easy so their gods were kinder and the afterlife was Ok

>So did people who died of natural causes end up in Hell? Is this why Lord Pacal's sarcophagus depicts him falling to the bottom of the world tree and having to fight his way to the top?

Oh wow, is the Christcuck indoctrination too much to shake off?

There are no such things as Hell-realms in Mesoamerican mythology. Those people who died unimpressive deaths of old age were held to go to a Hades-like afterlife, which was neither pleasant or unpleasant and where the shades could find the comfort of their friends and families.

Also, you're misinterpreting the symbolism of Pacal's sarcophagus... He's being depicted similarly to the maize God, who has to be swallowed by the primordial Earth in order to emerge triumphant; or, as the sun god, who has to seemingly venture into the jaws of the Earth and underworld at dusk to arise triumphant each morning. It's a symbol of his expected deification.

>Ceceilia Klein's "Teocuitlatl, 'Divine Excrement': The Significance of 'Holy Shit' in Ancient Mexico"

Sounds too sensational, considering everything that we know about the Aztecs pointing to a general and particularly strong abhorrence of feces and their rather 'modern' hygiene preferences.

It was a death cult.

Their societies were basically run by sick twisted priests and of course the emperor; the people were terrified and ignorant so they of course genuinely believed it. It's hard to blame the normal people of that society because if I genuinely believed that the star devils don't come down to eat everyone i'd sacrifice a few thousand of my enemy.

horrifying, isn't it. The Priests were fucking evil, no way they believed their own bullshit.

Or the gods were actually Ayy Lmaos who took pranks a little too far

>Obsidian dagger plunges in to enemy tribesman's solar plexus
>the priest draws it up and down his chest, before ripping out the still beating heart
>suddenly camera crew appears
>You just got pranked

I'd really like to answer but I can't give an answer without including "both sides" of this perspective and seems people here only like to see the "cruel side".

Posts mentioning
>evil
should be immediately discarded.
The notion of "evil", which are doubtlessly hedged in judeo-christian morality, have no bearing on past cultures and societies totally foreign to your own time and place.

>Did priests believe their own bullshit?

It's impossible to know what priests and scribes of what would be considered gruesome religions like the Aztecs, Assyrians (skull impalers whose society runs on conquest) and Carthaginians (bronze idol baby-slaughterers) ACTUALLY thought, but in all reason they must have figured they were doing the right thing for their people - else their empire simply wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. The most major downside is that the expectations for sacrifice grew as the empire expanded and demanded bloody tribute from other states, producing an unrealistic curve of growth that would have certainly lead to collapse without a major socio-religious reformation. Reformed Aztec religion with the manner of a Christ-like infinite-paschal-lamb sacrifice or a Hindu concept of cyclic ages of silver, gold and bronze would have been fascinating to observe if they didn't collapse soon after colonization.

>Were the priests fucking evil?
It would be abundantly clear for the intelligent bronze-age priest that bodily self-sacrifice parallels natural phenomena. Consider these simple, reasonable lines of thought, involving weather
>rain and soil make crop
>crop feed man
>rain look like God tears
>God tears feed crop
>man feed God tears, to feed crop, to feed man
staple Agriculture
>man hungry
>man need corn
>good corn skin torn off for man
>man skin torn off for good corn
and even a pinch of naive psychological essentialism, resembling the Egyptians most closely in their exaltation of the heart and lack of dignity or attention whatsoever for the brain:
>moving parts = living with soul
>man is full of moving parts
>no part but heart move on own outside body
>therefore, heart is seat of man's soul
And this is to say nothing of the Aztec inheritance from lost Olmec social conventions. You can use your imagination.
Reductions like these show how you can derive basic religious principles for agricultural society and provide explanatory power, soothing the otherwise directionless, curious serfs and providing a framework for their society to begin working constructively.

Don't pay attention to , as these are Mayans. In Aztec culture it was considered an honor to be sacrificed. Parents gave up their children, slaves volunteered for sacrifice with the idea they'd immediately be raised to a specific god's highest heaven, and capture prisoners went nobly to their deaths with the idea that their strength would in turn strengthen the gods. It was metal, but it wasn't based off of fear.

>Why do people die when they bleed to death from too many cactus wounds? Why is the heart the seat of the soul, Aztec Aristotle?
Clearly blood is the vital substance of the soul and life as you know it, that powers all things.
>Where does food come from?
Corn god.
>Where does water come from?
Rain god in the sky.
>Why is life so hard and this desert/swamp so shitty to live in?
Heinous destiny god. He's a real motherfucker.
>What's the deal with death?
Subterranean skeleton gods, sun gods, earth gods. All of them are spooky and you don't really understand them as much as you'd like, but it makes sense because there are so many forces outside of your control as it is.

As a final word, violence and threat of violence is an excellent tool for social control and growth, as the English and Americans ought to know from the absolutely vast number of people they imprisoned and killed with horrible life-long circumstances even after the 1800s. And still do today, really. The Aztecs owing their success battling the unknown with fearsome, violent, and warlike nature isn't "evil" or a "horror story", it's the human condition in the rawest and realest form there is.

Plus what
and other posters in this thread have said. Would you prefer facing a medium to long, miserable life as an early Eurasian serf eating potato mush and dying peacefully in old age, or getting treated like a rockstar for a year and maybe fucking the chief's hot daughter before getting violently torn to pieces on a pyramid in your prime? It's really a matter of perspective.

They deserved what they got.

>potato mush

You wish it were something as tasty as potatoes: considering how the potato didn't become a well-established staple until the 19th century, it would more likely be tasteless barley mush.

calling mesoamericans barbaric or evil is a bit hypocritical if we dont also call the Spanish and European settlers evil, considering they spent 200 years enslaving/wiping out a continents worth of people in the name of their god...in fact as far as blood sacrificed to gods go the christian god might take the cake in south and central america

He's probably misinterpreting the existence of sacred prostitutes in polytheist religions as being rape victims rather then highly respected individuals in their societies.

>There are no such things as Hell-realms in Mesoamerican mythology

Metnal/Xibalba, the underworld which the world tree connects to the heavens, is described as a place where you must cross rivers of scorpions, blood, and pus to enter. It's a place where disease-demons play jokes on you like throwing you into rooms full of darkness, hail, jaguars, giant killer bats, razor blades, and fire. The lid depicts Pacal falling into the jaguar-like mouth of Metnal/Xibalba where he'll have to pass the death gods' trials or defeat them before he can escape and climb the tree. Pacal's body is interred at the bottom level of the 9-step pyramid of inscriptions, signifying his descent to the 9th level of Metnal/Xibalba where Ah Puch resides.

You can drop the condescending attitude any time.

Good Lord, this sounds like a Mesoamerican "Dante's Inferno."

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Damn, reminds me of Warhammer

>Ah Puch
Is this the being you speak of?

>mesoamericans start worshiping chaos gods
>like clockwork fanatical catholics arrive
coincidence?

BTFO

...

This makes me want another Apocalypto in whatever media narrative they choose to go with whether that be a game, movie, or mini series.

Mesoamerican mythology and history is criminally unexplored.

People are probably too afraid to touch it. Considering how critics felt about Apocalypto, it may be a while.

Though there is this.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=3gsqtcuHt4o
It's long as hell, but quite interesting.

>these gods

...

mesoamerican culture is criminally unknown
chance wanted it to be abruptly terminated and forgotten

i believe it is the saddest event in human history

Didn't Apocalypto get good reviews and turn a profit, though?

Yeah, but historians and several native descendants got butthurt that the culture was being depicted as "savage" by mainly focusing on the brutality (a Mel Gibson staple)

Bumping. I'm Mexican myself but from what I've read in 24 years most of their gods were fucking H.P. Lovecraft creations.

>be half spaniard half negro rape baby
>we wuz aztecs n shiet

It's true! Not only as the typical pantheon of strange, capricious, elder beings, but the fact that they were portrayed to be as *inhuman and alienating as possible* without losing symbolic meaning. Imagine that, worshiping a deity whose godliness was demonstrated in the inscrutable convolutions of their form.

No wonder the Spaniards buried this thing for 200 years.

I think this not only applies to the religions hut also the aay societies are. Arab societies tend to be harsh and they fught a lot historicly. However, in one of the most easily hospitable places on earth, india, was the only civilisation ever to never have a war, indus valley.

Had this theory for a while now too, glad somone shares it.

To think of all the history, myth, art, and culture that was destroyed for questionable reasons at best, it's legitimately upsetting. That's not even counting the almost totally unknown Mississippi culture to the north. Fuck everything.

Minoans were mostly peaceful too IIRC, their culture shows very little if any signs of warfare.

Do not despair for what we do not have. Instead rejoice for what was saved.

You think that.

Imagine a Doom-like first person slasher with Chivalry's combat controls. Have the game start off with a tutorial featuring you as a local Mayan lord exploring your town and practice fighting, sacrificing, stargazing, etc. Then you get poisoned after a jaguar hunt and die. As you are interred in your pyramid you helplessly watch the coffin-lid close above you, the screen goes white, and you begin climbing the world tree in a platforming section. Near the top with a quetzal in sight you have a scripted fall and you dive headfirst into the hellmouth of Xibalba with cackling and death-screams all around you. You have to fight your way up the nine levels using various enchanted weapons you were buried with and acquiring different animal skins for special powers. You perform blood rituals to speak with your ancestors for advice. The various death gods are the bosses. The entire thing would be in Mayan with subtitles.

This will never be made and even if it was it would sell poorly.

I could imagine it looking realistic in the world of the living, but once you die the style could change to resemble Mesoamerican art from the time.
It'd probably bomb at first, but might become a cult classic later on.

fun myth: Coatlicue used to have a human head. After she was decapitated by her daughter her carotid arteries transformed into viper heads and kissed to form her new head which you see there.

>Mormons think this was Jesus Christ's incarnation in the Americas

Let me clarify some points:

>Not all ethnic groups in Mesoamerica are related to each other

There's probably an underlying cultural substrate but genetically and linguistically most mesoamerican nations were not related -- for example, the Aztecs (Mexica) and the Maya. The word for "feathered serpent" in Nahuatl is "quetzalcoatl", while in Maya it is "kukulkan". Nahuatl is a Uto-Aztecan language.

>Priest vs Civilian castes in Aztec society
Most scholars accept that the priests had a deeper understanding of the religion than the civilians did. Don't get me wrong -- the civilians totally believed all the bullshit, that all the Gods were real, physical beings that actually existed. But the higher-ups were much more refined than that, and followed a religion somewhat akin to Taoism. They believed in a single divinity, named teotl, that was a manifestation of the ever-changing state-of-action of the universe. Teotl manifested in nature and was personified as the different gods, but they were never taken to be real, physical beings. Teotl underlied nearly every humanity in Mexica society. In philosophy, for example, Aztec epistemology defined truth as that which was well-rooted in Teotl. In aesthetics, poetry (a very well defined art in Aztec society) was considered "beautiful" if it explained or "shown light" on some aspect of teotl.

A good introduction to this topic is the book Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion by James Maffie. You can also just Google "Aztec philosophy" and get loads of resources, because it was strangely developed for an American ethnic group.

>also think that the Native Americans are a lost tribe of Israelites.
>believed that black people were angels who were neutral in the great rebellion.

You can't make this shit up

Thanks for the resources user!

Could make a neat side-scroller with the sprites based off codex illustrations. Also would have some great death animations.

This needs to happen now or the Mayan death gods will drag us to Xibalba

>man-sized bat monsters
>South American bats
How do you make this up? I need to know.

Can we start a kickstarter

Okay, this might be my ignorance of biology speaking, but why exactly does that bat have colossal balls?

To hit you over the head with when he flies by

Indus valley doesnt have any record of creating weapons of any sort, also buddhism, jinnisz etc stem from that region, and interestingly when biddhism branched out to tibet it became much more death oriented, as is expected within a difficult enviroment such as tibet.

...

...oh. well that answers that.

>questionable reasons at best

Nah dude, I'd have been right there with the conquistadors if I saw this shit going down.

>Huehueteotl
Was he a Brazilian god too?

Thought you were joking at first (mainly the name), but I don't know about the location.

Yeah i guess so, heres an ancient depiction

Especially with this guy.

>Be a conquistador
>In awe of Aztec capital which is clean, exotic and had a bigger population than the largest Spanish city
>suddenly they show you their pyramid and the inner shrine that is caked in blood and has charred human hearts on stone teeth

Xibalba isn't an afterlife destination, moron. The Hero Twins defeated and shamed the Xibalbans in primordial times and declared that "never again" would the Xibalban lords hold sway as they had previously done so. Xibalba is merely a court of various gods whose domains and aspects are death or darkness-related.

>appalled by the bloodiness of Aztec religion
>"Join our religion! You have to drink the blood and eat the flesh of this dead kike (it doesn't look like it, but it actually is human flesh and blood, that's the miracle!) and eternally contemplate the bloody torture and execution of this kike! And if you need help worshiping, here are some body parts of supposed saints."

I guess they'd feel right at home then. What if Eastern nations like China or Japan had "discovered" the Americas first?

Blood for the blood god

They do feel right at home, it's no wonder the Catholic church has had such a strong grip on Latin America.

The resulting syncretism hasn't been well received by the Vatican though.

Pic is from David Carrasco's "Religions of Mesoamerica" Second Edition, page 125.

>Davíd Carrasco (Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at Harvard Divinity School) is a Mexican American historian of religions with particular interest in Mesoamerican cities as symbols, and the Mexican-American borderlands.

You got any reputable source that contradicts this or are we done here?

>Xibalba
>and Xic ("Wing") and Patan ("Packstrap"), who cause people to die coughing up blood while out walking on a road.

Wow, now THAT is a specific Death God.

You ever tried Peyote? What about Ayahuasca? Give them a go and you'll soon understand where these gods came from.