“
Now tequila may be the favored beverage of outlaws but that doesn't mean it gives them preferential treatment. In fact, tequila probably has betrayed as many outlaws as has the central nervous system and dissatisfied wives. Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!
”
”
Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)
“
There were car gods there: a powerful, serious-faced contingent, with blood on their black gloves and on their chrome teeth: recipients of human sacrifice on a scale undreamed-of since the Aztecs.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
“
Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And who of Huitzilopochtli? In one year - and it is no more than five hundred years ago - 50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried out with the sun.
When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human blood. But today Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of Richmond P. Hobson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey.
Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother Tezcatlipoca. Tezcatlipoca was almost as powerful; he consumed 25,000 virgins a year.
Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a couronne des perles. But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quetzalcoatl is? Or Xiuhtecuhtli? Or Centeotl, that sweet one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Of Mictlan? Or Xipe? Or all the host of Tzitzimitl? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of Hell do they await their resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, whom Caesar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Of that of Tarves, the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or that of Mullo, the celestial jackass? There was a time when the Irish revered all these gods, but today even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them.
But they have company in oblivion: the Hell of dead gods is as crowded
as the Presbyterian Hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and
Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsullata, and Deva, and
Bellisima, and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in their day, worshipped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to bind and loose - all gods of the first class. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them - temples with stones as large as hay-wagons.
The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests,
bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake.
Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels; villages were burned, women and children butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and today there is none so poor to do them reverence.
What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley? What has become of:
Resheph
Anath
Ashtoreth
El
Nergal
Nebo
Ninib
Melek
Ahijah
Isis
Ptah
Anubis
Baal
Astarte
Hadad
Addu
Shalem
Dagon
Sharaab
Yau
Amon-Re
Osiris
Sebek
Molech?
All there were gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, five or six thousand years ago, with Yahweh Himself; the worst of them stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and with them the following:
Bilé
Ler
Arianrhod
Morrigu
Govannon
Gunfled
Sokk-mimi
Nemetona
Dagda
Robigus
Pluto
Ops
Meditrina
Vesta
You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: You will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignity-gods of civilized peoples-worshiped and believed in by millions. All were omnipotent, omniscient and immortal.
And all are dead.
”
”
H.L. Mencken (A Mencken Chrestomathy)
“
The Aztec word for the psilocybin mushroom was teonanacatl, which means literally "god's flesh"; when it was eaten in religious ceremonies, it gave many the experience of a direct encounter with God.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom)
“
According to Annabeth, our family, the Chases, had some sort of special appeal to the ancient gods. Maybe it was our winning personalities. Maybe it was our brand of shampoo. Annabeth’s mom, the Greek goddess Athena, had fallen in love with her dad, Frederick. My dad, Frey, had fallen in love with my mother, Natalie. If somebody came up to me tomorrow and told me—surprise!—the Aztec gods were alive and well in Houston and my second cousin was the granddaughter of Quetzalcoatl, I would totally believe them. Then I would run screaming off a cliff into Ginnungagap.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #2))
“
The early Sumerian pictograph for god was an asterisk, the symbol of the stars. The early Aztec word for god was Teotl, and its glyph was a representation of the Sun. The heavens were called Teoatl, the godsea, the cosmic ocean.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
“
The ancient Aztec and the ancient Greek words for “God” are nearly the same. Is this evidence of some contact or commonality between the two civilizations, or should we expect occasional such coincidences between two wholly unrelated languages merely by chance? Or could, as Plato thought in the Cratylus, certain words be built into us from birth?
”
”
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
“
He probably didn’t know Aztecs from Mayans. None of the gods, none of the mythology, none of the names she’d learned since childhood. There had been vampires in America before the Aztecs rose to power, and they had interacted with humans, of course. But the Tlahuelpocmimi had blended so seamlessly into Aztec culture it was difficult to determine who had influenced whom, whether the emphasis on blood and sacrifice had come from exposure to the vampires or whether the vampires had gravitated toward this tribe because it meshed with their worldviews.
”
”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Certain Dark Things)
“
He thought of death in its infinite groanings, of Aztecs ripping out living hearts and of cancer and three-year-olds buried alive and he wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and “Hurrah for Karamazov” and kindness. He
”
”
William Peter Blatty (Legion (The Exorcist, #2))
“
The Aztecs, so the story goes, routinely disemboweled eight thousand faithful a week in their temples of the sun, a sacrifice to the god of the clouds to make him send them rain. Such things are hard to believe until you get mixed up in a war. Once you’re in a war, you see how it is: the Aztecs’ contempt for other people’s bodies was the same as my humble viscera must have inspired in our above-mentioned General Celadon des Entrayes, who, thanks to a series of promotions, had become a kind of chickenshit god, an abominably exigent little sun.
”
”
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Journey to the End of the Night)
“
The junk virus is public health problem number one of the world today.
Since Naked Lunch treats this health problem, it is necessarily brutal, obscene and disgusting. . . . As always the lunch is naked. If civilized countries want to return to Druid Hanging Rites in the Sacred Grove or to drink blood with the Aztecs and feed their Gods with blood of human sacrifice, let them see what they actually eat and drink. Let them see what is on the end of that long newspaper spoon.
”
”
William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch)
“
Casiopea, meanwhile, looked at a heavy silver bracelet with black enamel triangles, of the "Aztec" style, which was much in vogue and meant to attract the eye of tourists with its faux pre-Hispanic motifs. It was a new concoction, of the kind that abound in a Mexico happy to invent traditions for mass consumption, eager to forge an identity after the fires of revolution--but it was pretty.
”
”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Gods of Jade and Shadow)
“
He thought of death in its infinite groanings, of Aztecs ripping out living hearts and of cancer and three-year-olds buried alive and he wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and “Hurrah for Karamazov” and kindness.
”
”
William Peter Blatty (Legion (The Exorcist, #2))
“
There is a kind of alchemy in the transformation of base chocolate into this wise fool's-gold, a layman's magic that even my mother might have relished. As I work, I clear my mind, breathing deeply. The windows are open, and the through-draft would be cold if it were not for the heat of the stoves, the copper pans, the rising vapor from the melting couverture. The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla, heated copper, and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rain forest. This is how I travel now, as the Aztecs did in their sacred rituals: Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia. The court of Montezuma. Cortez and Columbus. The Food of the Gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life.
”
”
Joanne Harris (Chocolat (Chocolat, #1))
“
Just as the god Jupiter defended Rome and Huitzilopochtli protected the Aztec Empire, so every Christian kingdom had its own patron saint who helped it overcome difficulties and win wars. England was protected by St George, Scotland by St Andrew, Hungary by St Stephen, and France had St Martin. Cities and towns, professions, and even diseases – each had their own saint. The city of Milan had St Ambrose, while St Mark watched over Venice. St Florian protected chimney cleaners, whereas St Mathew lent a hand to tax collectors in distress. If you suffered from headaches you had to pray to St Agathius, but if from toothaches, then St Apollonia was a much better audience.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
The Aztecs had to tear open a human chest cavity every day just to make sure that the sun would rise.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Long Live Hitch: God is Not Great/Hitch-22/Arguably)
“
Good God!” he said. “Are you a faculty wife?
”
”
Donald E. Westlake (Dancing Aztecs)
“
I love the word Quetzalcoatl.'
'The word!' he repeated.
His eyes laughed at her teasingly all the time.
'What do you think, Mrs Leslie,' cried the pale-faced young Mirabal, in curiously resonant English, with a French accent. 'Don't you think it would be wonderful if the gods came back to Mexico? our own gods?' He sat in intense expectation, his blue eyes fixed on Kate's face, his soup-spoon suspended.
Kate's face was baffled with incomprehension.
'Not those Aztec horrors!' she said.
'The Aztec horrors! The Aztec horrors! Well, perhaps they were not so horrible after all. But if they were, it was because the Aztecs were all tied up. They were in a cul de sac, so they saw nothing but death. Don't you think so?'
'I don't know enough!' said Kate.
'Nobody knows any more. But if you like the word Quetzalcoatl, don't you think it would be wonderful if he came back again? Ah, the names of the gods! Don't you think the names are like seeds, so full of magic, of the unexplored magic? Huitzilopochtli!--how wonderful! And Tlaloc! Ah! I love them! I say them over and over, like they say Mani padma Om! in Tibet. I believe in the fertility of sound. Itzpapalotl--the Obsidian Butterfly! Itzpapalotl! But say it, and you will see it does good to your soul. Itzpapalotl! Tezcatlipocá! They were old when the Spaniards came, they needed the bath of life again. But now, re-bathed in youth, how wonderful they must be!
”
”
D.H. Lawrence (The Plumed Serpent)
“
And as we came among the houses we saw how large a town it was, larger than any we had yet seen, and were fll of admiration. It was so green with vegetation that it looked like a garden; and its streets were so full of men and women who had some out to see us that we gave thanks to God for the discovery of such a country.
”
”
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (The Conquest of New Spain)
“
In a YouTube video made by actor Ashton Kutcher just after Obama’s inauguration, dozens of Hollywood celebrities pledged “to be a servant to our president and all mankind.”28 It was like something out of an Aztec festival of the gods—if what the Aztec gods wanted was for Hollywood actresses like Eva Longoria to use “less bottled water.” I don’t remember Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope producing a video pledging themselves to be servants of Ronald Reagan. In fact, if anyone had ever made a video with people reading the exact same lines as Demi and Ashton’s friends about a Republican president, MSNBC would be running specials on the rise of fascism in America.
”
”
Ann Coulter (Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America)
“
One of the few things we do know for sure about Teotihuacan is that its name was not Teotihuacan. That name means “city of the gods,” and it’s what the Aztecs called the place centuries later when they stumbled across its deserted ruins—for like so many other great Mesoamerican urban centers, this city was flourishing and then it wasn’t.
”
”
Tamim Ansary (The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection)
“
Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!
”
”
Tom Robbins (Still Life With Woodpecker)
“
There has always been a chasm between theological theories and historical realities. Most people have found it difficult to digest the monotheist idea fully. They have continued to divide the world into ‘we’ and ‘they’, and to see the supreme power of the universe as too distant and alien for their mundane needs. The monotheist religions expelled the gods through the front door with a lot of fanfare, only to take them back in through the side window. Christianity, for example, developed its own pantheon of saints, whose cults differed little from those of the polytheistic gods. Just as the god Jupiter defended Rome and Huitzilopochtli protected the Aztec Empire, so every Christian kingdom had its own patron saint who helped it overcome difficulties and win wars. England was protected by St George, Scotland by St Andrew, Hungary by St Stephen, and France had St Martin.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
This was more than a pact; it was a true connection. Once she gave him this, she could not take it away. There should have been a selection process, a ceremony, the burning of copal. She was going at it wrong and she was too young to have a tlapalēhuiāni. The Aztecs did not consider a warrior a man until he had captured his first prisoner of war. Her people did not think a warrior was a woman until she had made an honorable kill or pleased the gods with her deeds. Youths had no business with a tlapalēhuiāni. Fuck it.
”
”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Certain Dark Things)
“
In the beginning, God was simply the most powerful god among many. He is just a local tribal god. And then in the sixth century, when the Jews were in Babylon, the notion of a world savior came in, and the biblical divinity moved into a new dimension. You can keep an old tradition going only by renewing it in terms of current circumstances. In the period of the Old Testament, the world was a little three-layer cake, consisting of a few hundred miles around the Near Eastern centers. No one had ever heard of the Aztecs, or even of the Chinese. When the world changes, then the religion has to be transformed.
”
”
Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)
“
Thus, as far as the destiny of the soul after death is concerned, there are two opposite paths. The first is the "path of the gods," also known as the "solar path" or Zeus's path, which leads to the bright dwellings of the immortals. This dwelling was variously represented as a height, heaven, or an island, from the Nordic Valhalla and Asgard to the Aztec-Inca "House of the Sun" that was reserved for kings, heroes, and nobles. The other path is that trodden by those who do not survive in a real way, and who slowly yet inexorably dissolve back into their original stocks, into the "totems" that unlike single individuals, never die; this is the life of Hades, of the "infernals," of Niflheim, of the chthonic deities.
”
”
Julius Evola (Revolt Against the Modern World)
“
I put a handful of Criollo beans into the grinder. Their scent is very far from sweet. I can smell oud, and sandalwood, and the dark scents of cumin and ambergris. Seductive, yet faintly unsavory, like a beautiful woman with unwashed hair.
A moment in the grinder, and the beans are ready to use. Their volatile essence fills the air, freed from one form into another. The Maya tattooed their bodies, you know, in order to placate the wind. No, not the wind. The gods. The gods.
I add hot water to the beans and allow them time to percolate. Unlike coffee beans, they release an oily kind of residue. Then I add nutmeg, cardamom and chili to make the drink that the Aztecs called xocoatl- bitter water. That bitterness is what I need.
”
”
Joanne Harris (The Strawberry Thief (Chocolat, #4))
“
Mimicry flows like beauty from Mexico City’s faucets, space and time are relative, and instead of the usual floral-and-stone façade, there’s dahlia and obsidian. In the course of time, what was yesterday a lake of water becomes asphalt today, and the past is a perpetual duplication that drowns the future. Yesterday’s omens come back, the same substance in a different shape. The city is a nagual that becomes a wall of skulls, an intelligent domotique structure: the Huitzilopochtli temple in a cathedral and Castile roses in cactus bouquets. Time is measured simultaneously with the Aztec, Julian, and Gregorian calendars and the cesium fountain atomic clock; the heart of Mexico City is made of mud and green rocks, and the God of Rain continues to cry over the whole country.
”
”
Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico City Noir)
“
The avenue seemed full of gay people these days, persons as happy as she. At intervals were stationed the mounted traffic police. Their splendid figures, their neat, well-fitting uniforms, their highly polished puttees protecting perfectly formed legs, the thigh outlined by pressure against the horse's side, all combined to make a picture which she found irresistibly appealing. She found herself looking for the mounted police. She formed preferences for one or the other. She thought of the Aztecs with their idea that men astride of horses were some kind of god,and she smiled to think that her poetic sense was interpreting these horsemen in the same light. She liked especially to view the officers from the back, the torso, the carriage, the outline of the leg all accentuated.
”
”
Robert Scully
“
The entire pre-Columbian literature of Mexico, a vast library of tens of thousands of codices, was carefully and systematically destroyed by the priests and friars who followed in the wake of the conquistadors. In November 1530, for example, Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, who had shortly before been apointed 'Protector of the Indians' by the Spanish crown, proceeded to 'protect' his flock by burning at the stake a Mexican aristocrat, the lord of the city of Texcoco, whom he accused of having worshipped the rain god. In the city's marketplace Zumárraga 'had a pyramid formed of the documents of Aztec history, knowledge and literature, their paintings, manuscripts, and hieroglyphic writings, all of which he committed to the flames while the natives cried and prayed.'
More than 30 years later, the holocaust of documents was still under way. In July 1562, in the main square of Mani (just south of modern Merida in the Yucatan), Bishop Diego de Landa burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings, and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He boasted of destroying countless 'idols' and 'altars,' all of which he described as 'works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity.' Noting that the Maya 'used certain characters or letters, which they wrote in their books about the antiquities and their sciences' he informs us: 'We found a great number of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously and which gave them great pain.
”
”
Graham Hancock (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
“
Ramón kissed slowly down her body. His touch was gentle, but the teasing was unbearable. Julieta was going to explode. He spread her legs wide and licked her as pleasure throbbed through her. She thrashed around on the bed as he drove her out of her mind with delight.
She was almost there when he stopped, leaving her breathless. She caught the hungry look in his eye.
She pulled him up and knelt in front of him. She couldn't wait to suck his cock.
She gripped the base and took him deep.
Ramón groaned but nudged her head off him. "I want you."
Julieta's body was on fire.
Ramón was so gorgeous naked. His dark skin accentuated every muscle. He was an Aztec god. And she couldn't wait for him to conquer her.
He grabbed a condom and pulled it on.
She lay back, and he kissed her neck as she welcomed him deep into her soul.
"Oh, Ramón."
His hard body pressed against hers as his rhythm quickened. She screamed in ecstasy.
Ramón kissed her neck and then slid out slowly. Julieta ached without him. He sat up on the bed.
"Ride me."
Julieta slowly lowered herself onto him, inch by inch. She gasped. He filled her perfectly.
"Let me look at you," he said.
She smiled and then he smiled. And they both laughed. They kissed, and she started rubbing her clit against him, the tension sending pulses of pleasure through her brain.
He sucked on her nipples, and Julieta was almost over the edge of ecstasy. His hands clutched her bottom as he guided her rhythm. She threw her head back in abandon.
Julieta never wanted this moment to end. She was so close.
"Ay, Ramón!"
He held her close, and she came harder than she ever had as he grunted in pleasure.
”
”
Alana Albertson (Ramón and Julieta (Love & Tacos, #1))
“
Now into the small ceramic pan I grate the block of couverture. Almost at once the scent rises, the dark and loamy scent of bitter chocolate from the block. At this concentration it is slow to melt; the chocolate is very low in fat, and I will have to add butter and cream to the mixture to bring it to truffle consistency. But now it smells of history; of the mountains and forests of South America' of felled wood and spilled sap and campfire smoke. It smells of incense and patchouli; of the black gold of the Maya and the red gold of the Aztec; of stone and dust and of a young girl with flowers in her hair and a cup of pulque in her hand.
It is intoxicating; as it melts, the chocolate becomes glossy; steam rises from the copper pan, and the scent grows richer, blossoming into cinnamon and allspice and nutmeg; dark undertones of anise and espresso; brighter notes of vanilla and ginger. Now it is almost melted through. A gentle vapor rises from the pan. Now we have the true Theobroma, the elixir of the gods in volatile form, and in the steam I can almost see-
A young girl dancing with the moon. A rabbit follows at her heels. Behind her stands a woman with her head in shadow, so that for a moment she seems to look three ways-
But now the steam is getting too thick. The chocolate must be no warmer than forty-six degrees. Too hot, and the chocolate will scorch and streak. Too cool, and it will bloom white and dull. I know by the scent and the level of steam that we are close to the danger point. Take the copper off the heat and stand the ceramic in cold water until the temperature has dropped.
Cooling, it acquires a floral scent; of violet and lavender papier poudré. It smells of my grandmother, if I'd had one, and of wedding dresses kept carefully boxed in the attic, and of bouquets under glass.
”
”
Joanne Harris (The Girl with No Shadow (Chocolat, #2))
“
[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void.
Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin."
Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget.
Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love."
Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands.
The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love.
The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva.
The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know.
”
”
Joseph Campbell
“
Frazer further recounts that, according to the Franciscan monk Sahagun, who was "our best authority on the Aztec religion," another human sacrifice was committed at the vernal equinox, i.e., Easter, the precise time when the archetypical Christian Son of God was put to death in an expiatory sacrifice. 119 As it was in so many places, the Mexican Easter ritual was practiced for the purpose of fertility and the resurrection of life during the spring.
”
”
D.M. Murdock (Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled)
“
there was yet another reason for Moctezuma’s apparent confusion. It was because of the legend of the Aztecs’ great god Quetzalcoatl, who was supposed to return one day to revisit his people. Quetzalcoatl, according to legend, was a hero who had been the human leader of the ancient Toltecs as well as an immortal deity. He was fair and bearded, and he taught his obedient people many things - how to plant, how to work metal, and how to construct beautiful buildings. But Quetzalcoatl was driven out by a rival, a king and deity named Tezcatlipoca. And after a long period of wandering, Quetzalcoatl disappeared across the eastern sea, promising to return in the year ce acatl (one reed) - which in the Aztec calendar is the name of a certain year that recurs every fifty-two years.
”
”
Irwin R. Blacker (Cortés and the Aztec Conquest)
“
Aztec religion practiced human sacrifice, understanding it to be both a form of oblation to the gods and a means of deification for the victims. The crucifixion therefore made a certain kind of sense by analogy and the cross was thus incorporated into this sacrificial narrative. Nahua (Aztec) converts could comprehend a crucified god, self-offered to a yet-higher deity.
”
”
Robin M. Jensen (The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy)
“
Despite worries about idolatry, images have been important in multiple traditions. For Hindus, worship includes darśan (pronounced dar-shan), which means seeing and being seen by a deity at a temple, and followers of other traditions have venerated many gods. To glimpse the astonishing variety of supernatural beings imaged in material form you might tour a museum near you, or search a museum's online collection for keywords like "religion" "god," or "goddess." At the British Museum, for example, you can find images from Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Christian traditions, as well as everything from a bronze Egyptian cat representing the goddess Bastet made about 30 BCE to a fifteenth-century Aztec eagle from Central America carved in volcanic rock and associated with the solar god Tonatiuh.
”
”
Thomas A Tweed (Religion: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
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if you were born with a very small organism in the Olmec or the later Maya culture, you’d be seen as a magical being, touched by the gods. You’d be enjoying all kinds of luxuries, often appearing in the king’s court. This may be something to do with their belief that the sky was held up by four dwarves, and so they gave them special treatment.
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Captivating History (Ancient Civilizations: A Captivating Guide to Mayan History, the Aztecs, and Inca Empire (Exploring Ancient History))
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The Aztecs were right to believe the gods must be appeased, to offer them human blood every day in order to keep the universe from sinking back into chaos. We long since ceased to believe in the gods, and we no longer offer them sacrifices. Yet the world is still here. No doubt. Only we no longer have the good luck to know why it does not collapse on the spot.
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Emil M. Cioran
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In pursuit of this goal, the state curriculum encouraged teachers to lead their students in a series of indigenous songs, chants, and affirmations, including the “In Lak Ech Affirmation,” which appealed directly to the Aztec gods. Students clapped and chanted to the deity Tezkatlipoka—whom the Aztecs traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice and cannibalism—asking him for the power to become “warriors” for “social justice.” As the chant came to a climax, students performed a supplication for “liberation, transformation, [and] decolonization,” after which they asked the gods for the power of “critical consciousness.”30
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Christopher F. Rufo (America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything)
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In pursuit of this goal, the state curriculum encouraged teachers to lead their students in a series of indigenous songs, chants, and affirmations, including the “In Lak Ech Affirmation,” which appealed directly to the Aztec gods. Students clapped and chanted to the deity Tezkatlipoka—whom the Aztecs traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice and cannibalism—asking him for the power to become “warriors” for “social justice.” As the chant came to a climax, students performed a supplication for “liberation, transformation, [and] decolonization,” after which they asked the gods for the power of “critical consciousness.
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Christopher F. Rufo (America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything)
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And at 10:23 p.m. Central Time, a cornfield in Buttercup, Iowa split open and It emerged: that selfsame deity that the Pre-Atlantean, Post-Lemurian Serpent Priests addressed by Seven-Thousand-and-Twelve Sacred Names (Number Eleven translating to “Whatever It Is, We Wish It Would Just Leave Us Alone”); that lugubrious critter known to the ancient Aztecs as He-Who-Drips-Sweat-All-Over-Our-Nice-Clean-Temple, to whom they sacrificed the lymph nodes of their enemies after they’d given the hearts to gods they actually liked.
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Mark McLaughlin (Best Little Witch-House in Arkham)
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In Tenochtitlan, Tezcoco and other cities there were groups of wise men known as tlamatinime. These scholars carried on the study of the ancient religious thinking of the Toltecs, which Tlacaelel had transformed into a mystical exaltation of war. Despite the popularity of the cult of the war-god, Huitzilopochtli, the tlamatinime preserved the old belief in a single supreme god, who was known under a variety of names. Sometimes he was called Tloque-Nahuaque, “Lord of the Close Vicinity,” sometimes Ipalnemohuani, “Giver of Life,” sometimes Moyocoyatzin, “He who Creates Himself.” He also had two aspects, one masculine and one feminine. Thus he was also invoked as Ometeotl, “God of Duality,” or given the double names Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, “Lord and Lady of Duality,” Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, “Lord and Lady of the Region of Death,” and others.
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Miguel León-Portilla (The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico)
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...the Virgin of Guadalupe was not a mere Christian front for the worship of a pagan goddess. The adoration of Guadalupe represented a profound change of Aztec religious belief...The pagan Tonantzin was a dual-natured earth goddess who fed her Mexican children and devoured their corpses. She wore a necklace of human hands and hearts with a human skull hanging over her flaccid breasts, which nursed both gods and men. her idol depicts her as a monster with two streams of blood shaped like serpents flowing from her neck. Like other major deities in the Aztec pantheon, Tonantzin was both a creator and destroyer...The Christian ideals of beauty, love, and mercy associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe were never attributed to the pagan deity."
William Madsen, "Religious Syncretism", Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 6, p.378.
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William Madsen
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As we believed in those days, a hero slain in the service of a mighty lord or sacrificed in homage to a high god was assured of a life everlasting in the most resplendent of afterworlds, where he would be rewarded and regaled with bliss throughout eternity. And now Christianity tells us that we all may hope for an afterlife in a similarly splendid Heaven. But consider. Even the most heroic of heroes dying in the most honorable cause, even the most devout Christian martyr dying in the certainty of reaching Heaven, he will never again know the caress of this world's moonlight dappling his face as he walks beneath this world's rustling cypress trees. A trifling pleasure--so small, so simple, so ordinary--but never to be known again.
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Gary Jennings (Aztec (Aztec, #1))
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While doing a survey in the area, he came across what looked like the remains of a small pre-Columbian village scattered about an ancient lava bed, called Angamuco, once a settlement of the fierce Purépecha (Tarascan) people, who rivaled the Aztecs in central Mexico from around AD 1000 until the arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s. “We thought we could knock out Angamuco in a week,” he recalled. “We just kept going and going and going.” It turned out to be a huge site. In 2010, Fisher used lidar to map Angamuco. The results were perhaps even more astounding than those at Caracol. The images gathered after flying over Angamuco for just forty-five minutes revealed twenty thousand previously unknown archaeological features, including a bizarre pyramid that, seen from above, is shaped like a keyhole
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Douglas Preston (The Lost City of the Monkey God)
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The Vikings of Trelleborg, the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan, and the Benin of West Africa are separated by great expanses of time and geography. They share almost nothing in common except a particularly bloody form of paganism—a willingness to sacrifice fellow human beings, even children, not just to appease their gods but also to maintain a social order through the control of anxiety and the deployment of ritual violence. But they also had this in common: their encounters with Christianity eventually brought an end to their pagan religions, and in this they were not unique.
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John Daniel Davidson (Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come)
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You’re implying Christianity is just some kind of . . . repackaged sun worship!” “Not at all. Christianity did not borrow only from sun worship. The ritual of Christian canonization is taken from the ancient ‘god-making’ rite of Euhemerus. The practice of ‘god-eating’—that is, Holy Communion—was borrowed from the Aztecs. Even the concept of Christ dying for our sins is arguably not exclusively Christian; the self-sacrifice of a young man to absolve the sins of his people appears in the earliest tradition of the Quetzalcoatl.
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Dan Brown (Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon #1))
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If somebody came up to me tomorrow and told me – surprise! – the Aztec gods were alive and well in Houston and my second cousin was the granddaughter of Quetzalcoatl, I would totally believe them. Then I would run screaming off a cliff into Ginnungagap.
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Rick Riordan (Magnus Chase and the Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #2))
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one is tempted to believe that some people
in the White House worship Aztec gods—with the offering of Central American blood.
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Noam Chomsky (Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance)
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register with plastic bags full of herbs, roots, twigs and dried flowers, a box of “rattlesnake pills” with a picture of a coiled snake on the front, a packet of “Aztec energy tea,” a packet of Celebrex arthritis pills, and three boxed syringes loaded with a cortisone steroid that had been banned in the United States and presumably dumped on the Mexican market. She wrote out all the instructions and a bill that totaled nearly a hundred American dollars. I handed over the money and said thank you.
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Richard Grant (God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre)
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Brilliant. And how do you know he’s a saint?” “He’s got a halo?” “Excellent, and does that golden halo remind you of anything?” Hitzrot broke into a smile. “Yeah! Those Egyptian things we studied last term. Those . . . um . . . sun disks!” “Thank you, Hitzrot. Go back to sleep.” Langdon turned back to the class. “Halos, like much of Christian symbology, were borrowed from the ancient Egyptian religion of sun worship. Christianity is filled with examples of sun worship.” “Excuse me?” the girl in front said. “I go to church all the time, and I don’t see much sun worshiping going on!” “Really? What do you celebrate on December twenty-fifth?” “Christmas. The birth of Jesus Christ.” “And yet according to the Bible, Christ was born in March, so what are we doing celebrating in late December?” Silence. Langdon smiled. “December twenty-fifth, my friends, is the ancient pagan holiday of sol invictus—Unconquered Sun—coinciding with the winter solstice. It’s that wonderful time of year when the sun returns, and the days start getting longer.” Langdon took another bite of apple. “Conquering religions,” he continued, “often adopt existing holidays to make conversion less shocking. It’s called transmutation. It helps people acclimatize to the new faith. Worshipers keep the same holy dates, pray in the same sacred locations, use a similar symbology . . . and they simply substitute a different god.” Now the girl in front looked furious. “You’re implying Christianity is just some kind of . . . repackaged sun worship!” “Not at all. Christianity did not borrow only from sun worship. The ritual of Christian canonization is taken from the ancient ‘god-making’ rite of Euhemerus. The practice of ‘god-eating’—that is, Holy Communion—was borrowed from the Aztecs. Even the concept of Christ dying for our sins is arguably not exclusively Christian; the self-sacrifice of a young man to absolve the sins of his people appears in the earliest tradition of the Quetzalcoatl.” The girl glared. “So, is anything in Christianity original?” “Very little in any organized faith is truly original. Religions are not born from scratch. They grow from one another. Modern religion is a collage . . . an assimilated historical record of man’s quest to understand the divine.
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Dan Brown (Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon #1))
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Sometimes he was called Tloque-Nahuaque, “Lord of the Close Vicinity,” sometimes Ipalnemohuani, “Giver of Life,” sometimes Moyocoyatzin, “He who Creates Himself.” He also had two aspects, one masculine and one feminine. Thus he was also invoked as Ometeotl, “God of Duality,” or given the double names Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, “Lord and Lady of Duality,” Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, “Lord and Lady of the Region of Death,” and others.
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Miguel León-Portilla (The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico)
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psilocybin, had been used by the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America for hundreds of years as a sacrament. Called teonanácatl by the Aztecs, or “flesh of the gods,” the mushroom was brutally suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church after the Spanish conquest and driven underground.
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Michael Pollan (How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence)
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up to me tomorrow and told me—surprise!—the Aztec gods were alive and well in Houston and my second cousin was the granddaughter of Quetzalcoatl, I would totally believe them. Then I would run screaming off a cliff into Ginnungagap.
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Rick Riordan (The Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #2))
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MODERN SCIENCE CAN SOLVE ANY TECHNICAL PROBLEM IT RECOGNISES therefore 257 THE GREAT FUTURE OF MANKIND WE CAN DOME THE CRATERS OF THE MOON AND GROW FORESTS IN THEM and then STRIP FROM VENUS HALF THE CLOUDS WHICH MAKE HER SURFACE A FACSIMILE OF ANCIENT HELL AND GIVE HER MOIST AIR RAINING AN OCEAN WHICH, STOCKED WITH PLANKTON AND WHALES, WILL COMPOSE A WARM PACIFIC PLANET WITH VOLCANIC ISLANDS WHERE SLOWLY NEW LIFE WILL TAKE ROOT and then HOLLOW THE LARGEST ASTEROIDS, LIGHT ARTIFICIAL SUNS IN THEM, ACCELERATE THEIR AXIAL ROTATION TO PRODUCE CENTRIFUGAL INTERIOR GRAVITY, BUILD HORIZONLESS GARDEN CITIES ROUND THE WALLS AND LET ADVENTUROUS GENERATIONS SAIL TO THE STARS IN THEM because WITHOUT FIGHTING OTHERWORLDLY HUNS, PLUNDERING OTHERWORLDLY AZTECS, KOWTOWING TO OTHERWORLDLY SUPERMEN, WE CAN CREATE ALL THE GOOD WORLDS WE EVER IMAGINED and thus LOVE, SEX, BIRTH, CHILDREN NEED NO LONGER LEAD TO POVERTY, FAMINE, WAR, DEBT, SLAVERY, REVOLUTION, THEY WILL BECOME OUR GREATEST GIFT TO THE UNIVERSE WHICH ENGENDERED US! However THE COST OF FERTILISING THE WASTE OF THE UNIVERSE, STARTING WITH THE MOON, IS SO GREAT THAT ONLY A RICH PLANET CAN AFFORD IT so we must EMPLOY EVERY LIVING SOUL TO FERTILISE OUR OWN DESERTS, RESTOCK OUR OWN SEAS, USE UP OUR OWN WASTE, IMPROVE ALL GROUND, NOURISH EDUCATE DELIGHT ALL CHILDREN UNTIL ALL ARE STRONG, UNAFRAID, CREATIVE, PRACTICAL ADULTS WHO LOVE AND UNDER-STAND THE WORLD THEY LIVE IN AND THE MANY WORLDS THEY COULD LIVE IN 258 GLORY RAGE RADIANCE for it is technically possible to CREATE A WORLD WHERE EVERYONE IS A PARTNER IN THE HUMAN ENTERPRISE AND NOBODY A MERE TOOL OF IT yes God we can BECOME GARDENERS AND LOVERS OF THE UNIVERSE BY FIRST TREATING OTHERS AS WE WISH THEY WOULD TREAT US AND LOVING OUR NEIGHBOURS AS OURSELVES (What happened three nights later when you went home to Denny?) FUCK OFF YA FUCKIN BASTARDING BAMPOT YE! LEA ME ALANE YE BLEEDN CUNTYE! YE ROTTN PRICKYE! Yes I’ll tell you about that but not right now. Give me a bit more time. Please. God.
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Alasdair Gray (1982, Janine)
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Once, when nothing was but night, they gathered, in a time forgotten— all the gods of greatest might— to plan the dawn of day and light. Here … at Teotihuácan.
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Gary Jennings (Aztec (Aztec, #1))
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If you're alive, you bleed more. The Aztecs wanted them to bleed a lot. They wanted waterfalls of the stuff, gushing down the sides of --
- Dad
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Rob Lloyd Jones (Jake Atlas and the Hunt for the Feathered God (Jake Atlas, #2))
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Once we realize this connection to the Mesoamerican cultures, primarily the Aztec. We can begin to understand that their vast Pantheon of over eighty-five principal gods and deities are directly related to the seventy shepherds and their companions spoken of in the Dream Vision. [6] This allows us to take the next step and realize that these eighty-five Aztec gods and deities, are the shepherds and their companions spoken of in the Dream Vision of Enoch. This realization provides us with an insight into the behavior of the shepherds, but it also allows us a slightly better
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R.J. Von-Bruening (UNLOCKING THE DREAM VISION: The secret history of creation)