| Human sacrifice, as a re-enactment of the events through which the current universe took orderly shape, was presented to members of Aztec society as an aesthetic and moral reality that so deeply penetrating all aspects of life that it came to be taken as part of the natural order. But even when my students understand this, they can still find it difficult to deal with the possibility that cannibalism was part of the same complex set of practices and beliefs. Anthropologists haven't helped a great deal, with some trying to argue (unconvincingly, I think) that cannibalism was required as a source of protein for the Aztec population. I am also concerned that we can fixate too much on the idea of consumption itself, and lose sight of what it tells us about the body and the spirit in pre-hispanic Mexico. The separation of the body into parts was an important part of Aztec ritual practice and the mythology that ritual enacted. Especially startling is the separation of the head from the body, an idea that extends to other Native American traditions, in which detached heads roll along on their own, usually nefarious, errands. The head was where tonalli, one of the forms of spirit, physically resided. The head, in the form of a face (painted) and hair style, was the marker of social status, age, gender, achievement, and often role. The body was the product of sustenance, and in fact the corn plant was thought of as embodied, so that despite the prevalence of vegetable sources in the diet, every meal involved eating a body. The description of cannibalism in the Florentine Codex describes it as participation by the members of a warrior's neighborhood in the product of his capture and sacrifice, a participation that emphasized the warrior's social ties while those were, in fact, being overwritten by new ties of the military order.
|
