The Road To Mictlantecuhtli

1982.  Charcoal on newsprint.

Mictlantecuhtli, Aztec god of the underworld.

A tzompantli, an Aztec skull rack.  The so called Aztecs, the Mexica, were the worst civilization ever until Hitler and Stalin had a go at it.  Oddly enough their cities were marvels of sanitation and town planning.  The sacrifices at Tenochtitlan were to provide meat for the priest and warrior class.  Warriors indeed.  Four hundred insane with greed Spaniards led by that most audacious of leaders Hernan Cortes destroyed their nasty empire in two years, my vote for greatest military feat ever.  The word great does not imply "nice".  This is the only time that I think western conquistadors were justified in the violence they visited on native peoples.  Let me recommend Marvin Harris on this subject.  The title of this post is from a short story by Adobe James, aka James Moss Cardwell.  If you read it you will never forget it.


http://www.heretical.com/cannibal/mamerica.html 

Of course, they have firearms now.

But of all their gods this guy here was the real obscenity.  Look upon the face of

Xipe Totec,  Our Lord the Flayed God.

https://www.ancient.eu/Xipe_Totec/

One of history's most capable men and incredible sorry bastard, Hernan Cortes.

He and the Mexica deserved each other.

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, sculpted by Rudolfo Galeotti Torres. Born in Castille to a good family, he was literate and very intelligent, eventually learning 3 languages in Mexico.  He had already been on 3 expeditions to the country before he joined up with Cortes.  He wrote of the Conquest some 50 years later and a more exciting true story would be hard to find.  Here is what he had to say about the evidence of human butchery and cannibalism in the town of Xocotlan (Zautla)

"I remember in the square where some of their (pyramids) stood there were many piles of human skulls, so neatly arranged that we could count them, and I reckoned them at more than one hundred thousand.  Let me repeat that there were more than one hundred thousand.  In another part of the square there were more piles made up of innumerable human thigh bones."

And this was before the Spanish got into Tenochtitlan, a city of between 150,000 and 300,000.  This was cannibalism in high gear.  You will hear a lot of bullshit about sacred cannibalism and comparison to the Eucharist, but the people who say such things have an obsidian axe to grind.  This was the monster culture of all time.  There were no large meat animals in Mexico, and in order to get animal protein a mythos was invented for justification.  The Aztec religion is so terrifying that it is probable it was designed to cow their neighbors through horror and fear.

Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuaca.  Built between 100 and 200 A.D., it was long abandoned when the Aztec arrived.  When I was 14 I climbed this thing and marveled at the steepness of the stairs.  I remember thinking that if a person fell he would break every bone in his body by the time he stopped rolling.  Bingo.  These temples were giant food processors designed to expedite the harvest of meat.
The Aztec structures were pretty much identical to this.  Sacrifice was made at the top and the bodies were rolled down the steps.

Tecpatl, obsidian knife.  This razor sharp weapon could excise a human heart in seconds.  The priests worked in teams and could kill thousands of people a day.

Quetzalcoatal, a feathered serpent.  He could fly.  Curiously reminiscent of another heartless savage group, the Visconti.

 The Biscione emblem of the Visconti family.
Welcome to Milan.

The Inquisition does it's thing.  Thank God that Spain subdued those barbarians!