The document discusses religious practices and beliefs among Mesoamerican civilizations like the Aztecs and Maya, including: 1) Human sacrifice played a central role in religions, seen as a form of "payment" to gods like Tlaloc, the rain god, in exchange for agricultural fruits. 2) Maya kings were expected to shed their blood to connect with the underworld and ancestors and ensure world renewal through rituals tied to maize cultivation. 3) Indigenous religions among Mesoamericans emphasized the centrality of place, viewing the earth as both sustaining and consuming humans in an ongoing cycle of exchange between the human and sacred realms.

1. Aztec and Maya
Centrality of Human Sacrifice

2. Onondaga Land Rights
• http://centralny.ynn.com/content/top_sto
ries/518483/neighbors-of-the-
onondaga-nation-hold-vigil/?ap=1&MP4

3. Mesoamerica

4. Primary Gods of the Templo
Mayor
• Huitzilopochtli
– Sun God/Aztec
Deity
• Tlaloc
– Rain and Fertility
God/Pan
Mesoamerican
Deity

5. Tlaloc: Aztec God of Rain
• Tlaloc--”he who is
the embodiment of
the land”
• Tlalocan
– the home of Tlaloc
located in the
underworld

6. Atlcahualo--Drought
• First Month
– Before rainy
season (12
February)
• Child Sacrifice
• Ritual map of
Valley of Mexico

7. Eating Landscape
• Earth was Tlaloc’s
body, sites of sacrifice
were his mouths
– Demand was for human
blood in exchange for
water
– Fruits of human body
(children) were
exchanged for fruits of
the earth (agricultural
products)
– Sacrifice--”payment of
debt”

8. Mesoamerica

9. Maya (300 BCE- 1500 CE)
• Pacal’s tomb
– Page 93
• Sacred Kingship
– Sacred tree
– Moment of death
– Not a spaceship
• World Renewal

10. Auto-sacrifice and Vision
• Sheild Jaguar and Lady
Xoc
– Page 111
• Blood of Kings leads to
sacred knowledge
– “...female blood, shed in
this sacrificial manner
opens the membrane
between heaven and earth
through which flow
astronomical
influences, the spirit of the
ancestors and legitimate
power for a ruler ascending
the throne."[112]

11. Blood of Kings
• Primary
responsibility of
rulers was to let
blood
– Connection with
Xibalba, ancestors
• Popol Vuh
– Story of Hero Twins
journey to the
underworld

12. I, Rigoberta Menchú
• Maya woman from Guatemala
• 1992 Noble Peace Prize winner
• “Every part of our culture comes
from the earth. Our religion comes
from the maize and bean harvests
which are so vital to our community.”
(p. 16)

13. Mesoamerican Human
Sacrifice
• Payment of debt
• “We eat the earth and then the earth
eats us.”
• “Religion” in exchange between
human and sacred beings

14. Indigenous or Native
Religions
• Centrality of place
– Locative
• Primacy of place
• Crisis of contact with utopian traditions
– Mircea Eliade--the hierophany
• Manifestation of the sacred
• Distinctive qualities and presence of the
sacred

15. Mesoamericans as
Indigenous
• Religion as Habitation
– Centrality of habitation
– Centrality of the body
• Materiality of Religion
– Engagement with material world
– Distinctive from “belief” emphasis