The first 4 main Mesoamerican religions

This would have been the 4 main Mesoamerican religions.

Hello everyone, answering here a simple topic that I was raised a few days ago while we talked about ayahuasca. The Mayan or Aztec cultures are the most important at a historical level, due to the great influence they had. However, there are more than a dozen Mesoamerican civilizations and cultures, which have more than 20,000 years.

Beyond focusing on making a descriptive writing of each of the original deities of Mesoamerica, I will only provide a quick glimpse of their polytheist cults, which were more focused on nature, sacrifices (animals and humans) and climate, that in other aspects, but it is not to forget that these religions were strongly influenced by astrology, astronomy and the latent admiration towards the animal figures.

Based on religious traditions, as well as on the findings and expert archaeologists, it is easy to determine that there were multiple Mesoamerican cultures and religions, such as the Huastecas, Tlaxcaltecas, Chichimecas, Toltecs, and Zapotecs, among others, long before Christopher Columbus "discover" America.

The Mesoamerican civilization dates back to the pre-Hispanic era of the regions that now make up countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica. The cultural and demographic proliferation occurred during that time of the thaw, around the year 7000 BC, a fact that meant the development of agricultural activity so that the inhabitants could subsist.

As it happened in the beginnings of almost any type of society, the foundations of religion were also established, in which to bow, perform rituals and worship the gods to whom help was asked in difficult times.

Aztecs

In its beginnings, the Aztecs were considered a lower Mesoamerican culture due to their nomadic nature, until the 15th century arrived and they decided to establish their own empire. They worked the land to improve the cultivation, built boats to resort to fishing and invented an irrigation system to supply water to the territory where they ruled.

The religion that they professed has been considered as "bloodthirsty" due to the offerings they had to make to their gods, which often meant the sacrifice of human lives, prisoners of tribal wars or even relatives to feed the sun god, of fertility and water to survive.

Their religion was polytheistic, although they only professed worship of a few principal deities. The most important gods were related to the solar and agricultural cycle. In the Aztec religion, human sacrifices were very common. Upon reaching the Valley of Mexico, they tried to incorporate the culture and gods of the most advanced civilizations that were already established and that of older civilizations such as the Toltec.

Principal Gods:

Huitzilopochtli

God of war, wisdom, and power, identify him with the serpent. The precursor of summer, the season of lightning and fertility. He was honored in the fifteenth Aztec month, in a ceremony in which the priest crossed with an arrow a mass prepared with the blood of people sacrificed for such an occasion.

Quetzalcoatl: "the feathered serpent".

Father of the Toltecs, it is related to the teaching of the arts and, therefore, acts as an introducer of civilization. His devotees, to venerate him, drew blood from the veins under the tongue or behind the ear and smeared the mouth of the idols with it. The effusion of blood replaced the direct sacrifice.

Tláloc

God of rain, married to Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of water, who used to be represented with the image of a frog, and with whom he had many children: the tlalocas or clouds. He lived in a paradise of waters called Tlalocan, where there were those who had died in floods, struck by lightning or sick with dropsy, who there enjoyed eternal happiness. They offered him children and maidens in sacrifice. The farmers, in anticipation of drought, made idols in the image of Tlaloc and worshiped them offering them corn and pulque.

Chicomecoatl

The main goddess of agriculture, another form of water deity, Chalchiuhtlicue. Its festival was held between June and July when the corn plant had fully matured

Xolotl

God of the star of the afternoon, represented the ascending and descending forms of fire. Monstrous God appears in some of his representations with empty eye sockets because, according to legend, when sacrificing the gods to give life to the new Sun, he became so sad and cried so much that his eyes fell from their sockets.

Mictlantecuhtli

God of darkness and death. He lived in a region of Mictlán, in the Navel of the Earth; to this place went the dead who did not deserve any of the various degrees of heavens, and their punishment was boredom.

Maya

They attribute this characteristic of exceptional because they influenced the development of knowledge in the region. With regard to the American continent, from them came astrology, mathematics or writing. The Maya were considered at the same time the merchant community par excellence and were pioneers with cocoa, silk, and cotton.

The Mayan religion is a pre-Columbian religion that was firmly united to the veneration of the gods. Religion was concerned with understanding the why of things, which leads us to define it as a sort of precursor philosophy of modern science. Thus, Mayan scientific discoveries, ideology, and religion can not be conceived separately, since all have, even at the beginning, their origin in faith and belief.

The role of priests was marked by a series of "classes" that hierarchized and divided according to their level of performance between men and gods. In this way, there were the priests of the Sun, who presided over the ritual acts, the prophets (chilán), who had the quality of entering into a kind of trance and predicting what would happen in the future.

The Mayans practiced a religion strongly influenced by astrology and magic, they performed a cult to more than a dozen deities, they practiced blood rites, human sacrifices, animal sacrifices, funeral rites, purification rites, celebratory rites and rituals linked to the ball games.

Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh is a compilation of legends of the Quiché -people of the Mayan majority culture in Guatemala-. In it, you can find mystical, philosophical, artistic and scientific values that together create a religious unity. It is also called the book of the council since it is the most important Maya literary book.

The Popol Vuh is divided into three parts:

The creation of the world.

The creation of the first couple of people and the civilization of corn.

The Quiche and Kings until 1550.

The sun and the moon

The Mayan was very devoted to these stories about the creation of the twin gods called Hun-Hunahpú and Vucub-Hunahpú. They liked to play ball, they were making noise and this annoyed the lords of Xibalbá (the underground kingdom) Hun-Camé and Vucub-Camé. The twins were transported to the lower world, where they would be judged and should go through several tests. But even so, they were executed and buried in the field of play, where they played ball.

Zamná, or Itzamná, was at first a great Mayan priest arrived with the Bacalar changes (later called itzáes) to found and settle in Chichen Itza, around 525 AD. C.

There, at Chichen Itza, Zamna lived for a time and taught his doctrines. A wise man who "named the places and lands, sites and promontories of the Mayab, today Yucatan," and invented the first characters that served as letters to the natives of the region.

After the time, his reputation increased and his fame increased, Zamna was raised to the deity in the Mayan pantheon, is linked to the face of the sun and the rain, therefore with agriculture. Traditionally, Itzamna is considered the son of Hunab Ku, the only God, and among the attributions given to him is being a deity of medicine and agriculture, besides being "The Lord of the heavens, night and day "

Olmecs

One can consider the Olmec culture as the mother of the two previous ones, the architect of what encompasses the settlement of Mesoamerican cultures. They are attributed to the creation of writing and epigraphy, and the invention of the zero and the Mesoamerican calendar.

They considered everything that surrounded them as living beings, such as mountains, trees, rivers, caves. The gods were directly related to the rulers, who were their descendants, for that reason they possessed supernatural powers. The center of the Olmec religion was the belief in nahualism, that is, the ability of man to transform into an animal and vice versa.

The Olmec society was governed exclusively on the basis of theological laws. It is considered a theocracy of antiquity. The worship of the gods (was also polytheistic) was represented in temples dedicated to them and sculptures of idolatry. In addition, there was an authority to regulate the creed: the figure of the Shaman, the equivalent to the Roman Pope.

Within the religion of the Olmec there was a variety of gods represented by figures of creatures of unknown origin combined with animals, considered the ancestors of their rulers, among whom are:

Nahual or the jaguar: was the main god, shaman of the animal world and deity of fertility.

Dragon Olmec: (the monster of the earth) One of the most represented deities of them.

Homxuk: son of the sun and god of corn.

Spirit of the rain: is represented by a small person, but was a powerful rain god with helpers.

Quetzalcoatl: god of the wind, life and the morning.

Huehueteotl: old god or fire, symbolizes the beginning of a new year.

Man of the harvest: he was a man who sacrificed his life so that the people could produce food.

Teotihuacan Culture

Perhaps it is the least known civilization and the most enigmatic of them all since it is believed that it disappeared long before the Spanish invasion. Religion once again takes a leading role in this civilization, and the temples of Quetzalcoatl, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon are witnesses of this.

Within the Teotihuacan religion, various gods were worshiped, which in turn represented natural elements such as fire, water, mountains or earth. A great goddess of the Teotihuacan religion was the Spider Woman, venerated as a creative deity, of the underworld and darkness.

Other relevant gods were Chalchiuhtlicue as the deity of water, and Xipe Totec, god of agriculture and corn. They also worshiped Tlaloc, who represented rain or war, and Quetzalcoatl who manifested wisdom. Another god was Huehuetéotl, an old man venerated as a symbol of fire.

Human sacrifices were a ritual to demonstrate to their gods the dedication and commitment to build a pyramid or to ensure the prosperity of the city. Their victims were enemy warriors, who were decapitated, their hearts were subtracted or buried alive.

At the end of this, I promise to develop more material that will make them arrive as soon as possible until then, I leave my best wishes and my blessings.

Inspired & Made with Love.

Elhoim Leafar.