Why was Aztec religion so fucking nightmarish?
We all have our war gods and gruesome stories but gods that are threatening to destroy the world unless you constantly feed them rivers of blood is horrific.
How do you even maintain a society built on such a ghoulish spiritual foundation?
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And they're still like that, the murder rates in Mexico and central America (a side question, why isn't Mexico considered central America?) are through the roof, the cartels use chainsaws and razor wire as execution tools and even after they converted to catholicism they had to come up with macabre shit like Santa Muerte. Those retards literally worship the grim reaper.
Their stone age level of development combined with their high population, just imagine human sacrifice proto-juadism and germanicism with china's population levels
...
I think it has to be genetic or something, it's no coincidence their descendants are ultra violent to this day even though their culture and technologic level is completely different.
Like the ancient Jews and Romans were downright appaled because some Phoenicians threw some babies into the fire when no one was looking, meanwhile the Aztecs and Mayans slaughtered people by tens of thousands every year with the entire city cheering like crazy. Even their sports were grim shit when players were dropping dead on the field because the game was so brutal and after the game they just sacrificed the losing team to the gods.
They literally had a god who wore human skins like fucking Buffalo Bill jesus christ it's like a religion made up by a high school goth kid
First of all, not knowing basic shit like why Mexico isn't considered "Central America" borderline disqualifies you from the discourse. Secondly the Aztecs at their height still killed a smaller percentage of their population than, say, England at the time, who would excecute people at the drop of a hat under the guise of "justice".
My mother (we're Mexican-descended) always explained away the insane violence and brutality in Mexico as 'we're descended from the Aztecs'.
I never really noticed any particularly high levels of aggression in my own family but goddamn, I guess through-the-roof murder rates don't lie.
>First of all, not knowing basic shit like why Mexico isn't considered "Central America" borderline disqualifies you from the discourse.
I'm genuinely curious, why is Mexico not considered Central America? Geographically there's either North American or just American continent, yet for some reason we consider Honduras and Guatemala "central" while Mexico is "northern". They are both mostly mestizos, they both speak Spanish, both are heavily catholic and very poor. I don't get it.
Nigger, they worshiped God who only made it rain if they tortured & murdered screaming children beyond the point of shedding tears
There was another who liked to have newlyweds tied up and lit on fire
Brutal environments such as deserts & tundra tend to create dark, cruel, merciless mythology
Look how grim Inuit, Semitic, and Norse lore are
>the world is full of hostile spirits and nobody will save us
>the gods created us to be their slaves and if we don't obey they'll kill us all, and then send us to an eternity of gloom. O yeah and demons are everywhere but the gods wont help
>The gods are jerkoffs who will wind up letting the entire universe be destroyed by demons
>Secondly the Aztecs at their height still killed a smaller percentage of their population than, say, England at the time, who would excecute people at the drop of a hat under the guise of "justice".
This is simply not true. At the height of their empire, Aztecs sacrificed around 30k people a year. Now consider the fact they were a stone age civilization with no firearms or artillery, such a crazy rate of senseless murder is downright unprecedented.
Because mexico is first world and white duh
IIRC Aztec society developed after American collapse of 800-1200 that destroyed most of the societies in the Americas. So like, imagine a society that evolved out of Lord Humongous gang but fueled by maize instead of gasoline.
(for you kids out there, replace Lord Humongous with Immortan Joe)
No meme answers please.
>this thread
No wonder the Aztecs converted to Catholicism. If someone came around and told me there was an alternative to the gory, Lovecraft-tier horror story that was my people's religion, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
Christian missionaries always say the gods of other peoples are demons, but in the case of the Aztecs I can really believe it.
>senseless murder
Actually it wasn't senseless to them because "religion lol."
Plus I'm sure that a lot of the people were sacrificed more to terrorize the populace and get rid of undesirables. Like how the Spartans did The Purge every year to terrorize the Helots.
Well talking about Semites, a huge point of the Bible is that Moses and Joshua destroyed the Canaanites because they were sacrificing children to pagan gods. So even a backwards desert nomadic tribe like the ancient Hebrews realized that shit is wrong.
I wouldn't say it's a huge point.
Yahweh commanded the Hebrews to slaughter Canaanite children anyway, so it's a bit of a glass houses situation.
Its really no worse than most other relgions.
Keep in mind that most of the people in Mesoamerica hated the Aztecs.
This is why the Spanish had such an easy time conquering them. Because all of their neighbors cooperated as much as they could.
He did command them to slaughter, but not to sacrifice them. That's a world of difference. The entire point of the story about Abraham and Isaac is rejecting human sacrifice in favor of animal one.
>all while massacring men, women, and children mercilessly on the orders of their world destroying, baby killing God of war
Semites are cunts
This is why I like Hindu myths
The Gods actually care about mankind and abhor cruelty
To be clear they hated the aztecs because they were cunts.
Not religion.
Their religions we similar.
Okay forgive me if I'm wrong but I recall hearing that the aztecs and pretty much everyone in the general vicinity were close to starvation when the spanish arrived. If that's the case then it's no surprise that they would be going apeshit with the sacrifices.
That's just a justification for war / conquest. The commies said "liberation of the workers", the nazis said "advancement of the Aryan race", Americans said "spreading democracy", etc. The Jewish commandments even speak about being hospitable to foreigners as long as they're not hostile rather than gathering them all up and sacrificing them to some sun god.
>ITT: people with a high-school tier understanding of a religion judge it based on the morality of their own culture, which is completely alien to the religion and its morals in question
>because morality doesn't exist objectively, it means we're not allowed to judge anything
>Why was Aztec religion so fucking nightmarish?
It wasn't, you're either reading spanish biased chronicles or blindly seeing the superficial aspect of such a complex tradition from a modern POV, you can be sure aztecs didn't sacrifice captives out of an evil or torturous desire.
Isn't Mexico fighting a war against drug cartels right now? Brazil and Venezuela have similar homicide rates iirc.
>How do you even maintain a society built on such a ghoulish spiritual foundation?
by being badass fucking aztecs
>this is simply not true
>now, to change the subject...
Really though, show me proof that Aztec society in 1500 was more brutal than the major European players at the time.
Mexico owned California until fairly recently for one.
If you look at a map "central america" really starts at the yucatan. Now that Mexico is a shithole however, it's been included in "central america" more often.
I was about to defend Aztec sacrifice but holy shit
>Brutal environments such as deserts & tundra
Protip: the Aztecs lived in rain forest areas
Rainforests can be pretty brutal. Tons of disease, rain, giant predators....
>sacrifice by starvation in a cave
>sacrifice of a decapitated young woman to Toci, she was skinned and a young man wore her skin
>extraction of the heart
>extraction of the heart
>extraction of the heart
>extraction of the heart
It's like the Aztecs and their gods should be the villains fought by a plucky band of heroes in a fantasy novel, except they were real.
And then critics would complain that the villains are too cartoonishly evil to be taken seriously.
For real the Aztecs seem like a thought experiment. Some weird planet Picard stumbles across and has to consider whether he's obligated to put a stop to it or not.
> Why was Aztec religion so fucking nightmarish?
The same reason why Christian religion is fucking nightmarish with hell and shit. The fear mongering is a good way to spread the religion and practices like sacrifices is a good way to solidify that fear in people.
Christian cosmology is pretty horrifying if you give it some thought, and I suppose you could make the argument that the execution of heretics or heathens is a sort of human sacrifice, but I just don't see the same sheer bloodthirst and relish in brutality.
Plus, while Christians found a shitton of excuses to kill people over the ages, technically Christianity doesn't require anyone to die, while Aztec religion was predicated on the regular deaths of thousands.
>Christianity doesn't require anyone to die
Jesus just got real bummed out
>Christianity doesn't require anyone to die
I would disagree. God's system is such that sin needs to be paid in death, before Jesus this was simply done with animals instead of men, was was the custom before. There still needed be a steady tide of death flowing in to pay the wages of sin.
Enter Christ, who does some weird platonic spirit sacrifice to pay the wages of sin forever and his own, brutal death on earth was required to make it happen. Only the blood of God himself, or a weird aspect of God himself (it gets messy around here) is enough to stop the bloodflow.
So yeah I guess after that it isn't necessarily required that anyone die. But only because an eternal sacrifice was made instead.
I'm not surprised the mesoamericans took to Catholicism so strongly.
>you don't understand, it's a very deep cultural tradishun
You soundd just like the mudslime apologists
They most likely killed the babies first
I's still like to se ONE tophet in the Levant
Aztec religion is a lot cooler than Islam though to be fair.
Similarly there was a part in WWII where Hitler ordered counter-attacks against British airfields as they were recovering bombers ended, because "the bombers need to be shot down over Germany and not England to boost morale," which is the type of decision you'd expect from the one-dimensional "stupid liberal harming the war effort" characters in a bad military fiction/military scifi novel.
Old Testament God was pretty brutal, but then he had a kid and mellowed out a bit.
Old Testament Yahweh just kills you and that's it, you go to Sheol like everyone else.
The Father in the NT will literally burn you for all eternity.
I know which one I'd be more afraid of.
If by cooler you mean more retarded
>why isn't Mexico considered central America
Because they manage to influence the US in certain ways instead of just taking the dick.
This. Portraying NT God as some tree hugging tolerast hippy is beyond moronic.
The god of the old testament will kill your whole family and take away everything else from you just to se if you're a good slave, but still, hell is worse
>The Father in the NT will literally burn you for all eternity.
That's not how Hell works.
>or a weird aspect of God himself (it gets messy around here)
That's heresy.
>suppose you could make the argument that the execution of heretics or heathens is a sort of human sacrifice
God doesn't revel in the destruction of the wicked, nor did He require anyone to do that. Cases where heretics were executed was done for temporal pragmatism on human judgement.
Yes it is canonically
Trying to describe any element of the trinity in detail often results in heresy.
Yeah, I remember a documentary where an archaeologist recounted how horrified a team was to find that the previously thought to be peaceful Mayans ritually tore out the fingernails of POW's.
>Islam
>we have one God and he can do anything that's it okay
>pray five times a day and also you can't eat pork or do anything fun or drink
>and making pictures is evil
>you have to drop everything and make a long, boring journey to a shithole city in the middle of the desert
>Aztec religion
>have several different cool gods
>one of them is a flying snake
>we feed them human blood atop a giant pyramid
>have cool, colorful idols and carvings
>some of which are bowls to hold human hearts and body parts
>have festivals where we chop people's heads off and wear their skins
>have awesome, beautiful ceremonial clothes for our priests
No contest.
>How do you even maintain a society built on such a ghoulish spiritual foundation?
by having a limited supply of animal protein
No, even when Jesus alludes to Fire, it's to conjure imagery that would be unpleasant to the Levantine populace. Preach to the Inuit and you need to change Hell to a freezing pit because they'd WANT to be surrounded by fire.
Besides, Hell is more or less like a kid who goes to bed hungry because he said no to mom's cooking and no matter what she tried he refused to eat, so now he's in bed groaning because he's hungry all of his own accord.
Which is why it's best to not think about it too much. There is an orthodoxy on what the Trinity is, but if you try and understand how that orthodoxy works, you get heresy. Like the Arians. Fucking Arian bastards. God Bless Santa Claus for decking their founder in the chops.
>pretending the world is a fundamentally moral/caring place
fuck off
Wow, people killing masses over religion any time before the Enlightenment? It's like the Aztecs were humans or somethin.
As for the modern crime rate, more to do with shit law enforcement and education than some "murderer gene." You think kids in Chicago or the Philipines are descended from Aztecs, faggot?
News flash you historically illiterate fuckface: everyone ever has an affinity for murder, and everyone is descended from murderers and usually rapists as well.
Even undeucated and undisciplined whites are murderous trash.
tl;dr knowledge is power mother fucker, and mexico has shit for schools.
So now he can't eat ever again? Fucked up dude.
>He did command them to slaughter, but not to sacrifice them.
literally how is killing children to appease a god not a religious sacrifice?
Central America is generally considered to be the isthmus that is in the center (Central) of the Americas (America). Mexico is not a part of it just because they are poor and speak Spanish.
>You think kids in Chicago or the Philipines are descended from Aztecs, faggot?
No they're descended from black niggers and yellow niggers.
>Besides, Hell is more or less like a kid who goes to bed hungry because he said no to mom's cooking and no matter what she tried he refused to eat, so now he's in bed groaning because he's hungry all of his own accord.
or the kid didn't know dinner was being served, or heard dinner was being served at a different place, or even that dinner wasn't being served at all
>reading that much into the analogy.
No, the point of the analogy is "Hell is the hungry tummy caused by one's own refusal to accept food rather than a punishment issued by the one giving the food." The analogy, because it's set within time, isn't eternal and shouldn't be treated that way. Heaven and Hell (everything Spirtual really) exists outside of time. Hence, things pertaining to them are Eternal.
Mexico is fucked up because of corruption in the government that dates back even before it became independent..
Or the kid ate his dinner heretically, because nobody in his family can agree on which spoon is the soup spoon and which spoon is for mashed potatoes. His uncle was trying to tell him to scrap the mashed potatoes altogether, but then the kid found out his uncle was just eating them instead of getting rid of them.
Back to your murdershed, savage.
>we kill each other because of poor education xDDD
There are BLACK AFRICAN countries that have severely lower murder rates than your central American killzones, you got no excuse whatsoever.
>literally how is killing children to appease a god not a religious sacrifice?
Ritual.
Putting cities to the sword was militaristic, kill and that was it. No rites, no ceremony, no solemnity. It's like starting a brawl in Assassins Creed with a mob of guards. Fight, Kill, Walk Off. Ezio didn't then hold a bonfire and recite an incantation as he burned the corpses of soldiers he killed during a Venice street brawl.
Killing in War is done to soley to eliminate an opponent. Ritualistic sacrifice isn't about eliminating an opponent, it's effectivley a spiritual payment for goods and services.
Yeah, Black African countries are famously good at keeping those kinds of records.
I'm not even mexican you stupid faggot, just an American that doesn't believe everything their grandpa says without cracking a book.
Metal as fuck
>or the kid didn't know dinner was being served, or heard dinner was being served at a different place, or even that dinner wasn't being served at all
You do realize plenty of theologians before you have dealt with that issue right? It's not new.
>Or the kid ate his dinner heretically
No, in this context of food, Heresy is eating raw meat wheras Orthodoxy is eating cooked meat and the risk of contracting Salmonella because you wouldn't cook the meat is the danger of Heresy.
Because when you've got shit land, and you've overfarmed and salted that shit land as a result, because you have shit crop rotation, but have a HUGE population from all that time you were uber-farming your shit land, and thus everyone is starving to death - you start to believe shitty shit.
Most of the Aztec sacrifices came from smaller tribes, encroaching on what little usable farmland they had left. Even then, they literally had to have people eat their babies once in awhile to cut down on the population.
It's a civilization brought to extreme desperation by over-extending its population - and it isn't the first nor only time something along those lines happened. Agrarian cultures very often go cannibalistic, when the agrarian knowledge and circumstance fails to advance with the population growth.
The Aztecs, if anything, are a cautionary tale, of just how shit things can get.
So, two problems with your analogy.
1. God didn't ask Ezio to do that
2. Guards in that game are not children that God asked you to kill
How is slaughtering children at God's request comparable to killing guards in Assassin's Creed or "eliminating an opponent?"
Actually, we are pretty good at record keeping
Most of Africa isn't 1998 Congo, idiot
t. Ghanaian
>No, in this context of food, Heresy is eating raw meat wheras Orthodoxy is eating cooked meat and the risk of contracting Salmonella because you wouldn't cook the meat is the danger of Heresy.
Wait, didn't his mom prepare the food though? How is it up to the kid if the meat is raw or not?
>You do realize plenty of theologians before you have dealt with that issue right? It's not new
and? I'm responding to you. and you have dodged the issue by saying someone else has an answer
>2. Guards in that game are not children that God asked you to kill
Clearly we've been getting phone calls from different gods.
God was dealing with a bunch of savage desert people surrounded by relatively more savage desert people. One of the first things they did after their God just helped free them from slavery was "worship a golden calf" which would be like begging you Dad to bail you out of Jail and once he does you proceed to go rob a liquor store. Almost every Human that God ever dealt with was an ass to some degree. Besides you're looking at it like its a history textbook just relaying information about a bunch of desert nomads.
m.youtube.com
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it seems like hell was pretty clearly preached as an eternity of torture beyond description.
So while you can say
>t-that's not what the bible says!!!
everyone else who thought they were following the bible believed thats what it said.
I'm not going to say that ALL central americans are crazy or that it's 100% fact that they have some murder gene, but all central americans I've met have been crazy in some sort of way to the point where I really do have doubts if they don't have some genetic disposition to crazy/violent shit. I know it's anecdotal but combined with the murder rate in central american countries and it's hard for me to not think this way
>Killing in War is done to soley to eliminate an opponent
Yes, you sacrifice your opponent in order to get rid of them. You got rid of your opponent by paying with your opponent('s children's) blood.
These people must have eaten pussy like mad-men: what with how strong their mouths would've become from that mouth-muscle-intense language.
>Wait, didn't his mom prepare the food though? How is it up to the kid if the meat is raw or not?
In the Heresy analogy it's supposed to be adults or at least older teens. They have been provided with edible ingredients that require preparation. Orthodoxy fully cooks the food, Heresy just adds nutmeg.
Yes I'm changing who's involved, but that's because it's two different analogies. One on how Hell works, and the other on how Heresy works.
If the thread doesn't archive by morning I'll respond then. It would take longer than I'd like to find the theologians who tackled the issue and I'm quite tired. Sound fair? Look for the name in some other Aztec thread if it Archives or something.
You have no idea what sacrifice is, do you?
Jesus also described Hell as getting bounced from a party and throwing a fit ousted the club because of it.
Santa Muerte is a really cool concept through.
>God's system is such that sin needs to be paid in death
>There still needed be a steady tide of death flowing in to pay the wages of sin.
Anselm, please go.
Did someone mention... beautiful ceremonious \activities\?
youtube.com
There is a pov somewhere, out there...
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and then the preachers described it as fiery torment
i usually judge a religion based on the beliefs of its followers, and 99% of them describe hell as a place where you burn
God damn it, Aztecs were fucking brutal
Can you shut the fuck up for once. White people are civilized, and have been the most civilized people in the world for most of world history.
I know this breaks your cultural-marxist bubble, but it's the truth.
And then the Spanish are portrayed as 'evil', for fucks sake
When you read about the Aztecs you realize the Spanish did absolutely nothing wrong in exterminating that animal race.