So sort of like sacrificing the deplorable many to the god that is the State/Corporation/Science Matrix? Get thee vaccinated or we shall turn away while you are sacrificed to ventilators and remdesivir? You who complain about globalization, AI, automation and open borders destroying your culture and prospects, let your streets be awash in fentanyl/meth/crack? You who question instituitions corporate, State and Education, may you be cast out, starve and freeze?
There are interesting parallels between east and west on this topic. And thank you for pointing out that the Aztec elite had decayed somehow into a river of death. While I too hold a fascination for what lost thoughts and forms and goodness too were lost in their Armageddon, the circumstances suggested make a lot of sense.
The connections run deep and hint at a civilization long past. It appears from the record that Quetzecotyl, the plumed serpent, was an office title, and at some point, there was a coup, and the human sacrificers came to power. But it was not just a coup in MesoAmerica. It was more likely a global coup.
Here is a quote from “Grid of The Gods” by Farrell and deHart: “We now come to confront the issue of human sacrifice in Aztec culture, as it is recounted in the Codex Chimalpopoca, directly. In one place, the account states that in the year 1487, or the year 8 Reed as the Aztecs called it, some 80,400 prisoners were sacrificed on the top of the pyramid at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital.
“Indeed, the numbers are so staggering that one begins to wonder if the whole vast program of Aztec conquest was really driven by a perceived “need” for a constant supply of sacrificial victims.
“However, that same Codex makes it very clear that the god who was considered by the Aztecs themselves to have founded their civilization, Quetzlcoatl, forbade it. The following story of its origins is told, and with it, one has a further insight into the Aztec version of the Masonic ritual and dedication of the Temple: The Toltecs were engaged (in battle) at a place called Netlalpan. And when they had taken captives, human sacrifice also got started, as Toltecs sacrificed their prisoners.
“Among them and in their midst the devil Yaotl followed along. Right on the spot he kept inciting them to make human sacrifices. And then, too, he started and began the practice of flaying humans… Then he made one of the Toltecs named Ziuhcozcatl wear the skin, and he was the first to war a totec skin. Indeed, every kind of human sacrifice that there used to be got started then. For it is told and related that during his time and under his authority, the first Quetzlcoatl, whose name was Ce Acatl, absolutely refused to perform human sacrifice.
“It was precisely when Huemac was ruler that all those things that used to be done got started. It was the devils who started them. But this has been put on paper and written down elsewhere….There are three things to notice here: 1) Sacrifice is considered a payment, i.e., something that is owed, and hence, the implied concept is that there is a debt to be paid, for whatever reason; 2) Sacrifice was not the original order of society, but was instituted at some later period by devils; and, 3) it was instituted by one devil in particular, someone named Yaotl, whose name contains the root “Ya” and who both in name and in character sounds more than a little like the “Yahweh” of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, who takes such delight in smelling the aroma of sacrificed animals.”
Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022Liked by John Carter
This reminds me of the classic pickup line: "Are you an Aztec? Because you just stole my heart."
On energy (or prana, or teotl, or chi) as the irreducible material of reality: well, yes, duh. Transformation of energy is something a slime mold can accomplish. But it is the toddler's answer to the question, and is damned to the same childlike. solipsistic errors. When magnified on a civilizational scale, of course it results in rivers of blood and mountains of skulls, because the adult answer -- consciousness -- is embedded in the human form, waiting to be discovered by the worst and best of us as we advance through life. It's all about who gets there first, and what they decide to do with that knowledge.
How much tail could the average Aztec priest shag in a weekend, even before he washed his bloody hands? What dark fantasies was he free to explore with his flock, while frightening them half to death with apocalyptic prophesy? These seem like the more pertinent questions, if we are to understand them. That is the greatest tragedy of their extinction to me; we can't really know what their Saturday nights looked like.
The Spaniards were out manned 10,000 to one. The Aztecs had pissed off all their neighbors by engaging in stupid ethnic preference policies and not bothering to ingratiate themselves to the surrounding peoples. The conquista was by no means as simple as the stupid revisionist historians make it out to be. It certainly wasn't purely "the mass enslavement of an entire people, the systematic extermination of a culture, and... a genocide."
Thanks for investing (sharing) your "talents" in this very interesting article. It brought me to thinking about the wetiko, Satan, what I call the Alien Mind, and how it works slowly over time to destroy a people. Evil has its own built-in self-destruct mechanism and once it gets going like it has in our nation, it keeps going until it collapses.
The Bible states that the sins of the father continues for several generations. What does this mean exactly? An empath I met explained that we humans should have a veil covering our mind which protects us from the worst of the Alien Mind, but when a father sins, any offspring will lose their "veil" and be more subject to the machinations of the Alien Mind depending on the sin. The wedding veil is probably an understanding of this "purity." If a father who has sinned has several children, then they will not have this veil and without proper upbringing may become victim of Satan and err also. And so it goes with the next generation until all goes to hell, or someone gets smart and turns to God and stops committing sins as outlined in the Ten Commandments.
This is why our nation is failing. We lost God's blessing in 2003 when we let Bush drop tons of Depleted Uranium on Iraq when they were not guilty of any crimes against us. We committed a very grievous sin of adultery. The empath said God would bring the ungodly against us because we failed to watch our nation. When asked how we could atone, he said we needed to bring home all of our military and intelligence people from around the world and put them to growing food for ourselves and others. He was a prophet and warned us of the Oligarchy, too. Fat chance the hawks in our nation would allow that. However, we must if we want to keep our nation.
Boy, that was interesting. You’re such a compelling writer that I end up always reading the whole thing—even when I start out thinking, “ Surely I’m not interested in ~that~.”
Can you elaborate a little on how pure materialism would naturally culminate in death and murder? I’m not a philosopher, so I’m not entirely sure what materialism ~is~. I’m guessing it’s “the physical/tangible is all there is.”
Similar stuff was going on in Hawaii. For them it wasn't teotl but mana. Human sacrifice and religious ritual kept the chief-king well supplied with the share he needed to uphold the cosmic order.
By far the best book I've read on the conquest of the Americas was Fernando Cervantes' Conquistadores : a new history of Spanish discovery and conquest. While he doesn't delve too much into the worldview of the indigenous people, focusing more on the complicated political situations that the Spanish stepped into, he tells the reader about the cultural and religious background that produced the conquerors and missionaries, including a couple of meandering discourses on philosophical and religious movements that impacted the conquest. Absolutely shockingly balanced (no caricatures or plaster saints) and well worth checking out.
"Few would argue the world would be better were waterfalls of blood to still pour down the steps of stone pyramids."
I must be one of the few, then.
Waterfalls of blood flowing down the steps of a stone pyramid is vastly more artistic and esthetically pleasing than thugs shooting each other on WorldStar.
I wonder if Mexican culture, left to its own nihilistic devices and not tempted by the adjoining empty prosperity of the U.S., might not actually be a pleasing place to be.
Your post reminded me of a conclusion I'd reached with regard to the conquistadors. Modern just war theory provides that you may go to war to defend other's lives. But to a Christian, what is the life next to the soul? If you can go to war to defend other's, you surely must be able to go to war to defend their souls. Yet outside of your post, I cannot think of a single writer who has made this justification for any Christian war in...decades?
It has always amazed me how some of our great civilizations could have such beauty and be filled with such violence from within at the same time. And not just the Aztecs, although they are a good example, The Spaniards and Cortez weren't perfect by any means.
I think that it all goes back to what is deemed as the original sin of Cain killing Able or that there is an inherent evil in the world and that we are constantly in a war between good and evil. I know many believe in other viewpoints that aren't biblical in nature, but basically, all religions have the view of good vs. evil. There is a lot of vagueness in the Cain and Able story and I'll just leave it at that.
And maybe in the end the Anunnaki are just sitting back laughing at the crazed world they created in this mixed up bowl of soup!
Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022Liked by John Carter
John, brilliant stuff and very satisfying on several levels. I especially like your take on the metaphysical underpinnings of Aztec savagery. The extraordinary thing about human sacrifice is how lucky we are as a culture to have moved sway from it in the first place. Remove one or two taboos and we too would end up killing as casually, and with as much conviction, as the Aztecs.
Cortes has been a hero of mine since my teenage years, when I read a fair bit about the conquest of Mexico. Of all the heroic figures of the era of conquest and exploration, he was the gold standard. It is a relief to see someone writing sympathetically and respectfully about a man like that. Who needs Marvel 'superheroes' when we have real life historical characters like that? Pre-Columbian religion is disturbing...if you think the Aztecs were bad, the Maya were worse (fewer victims, more sadism).
Re human sacrifice, don't want to quibble and it is many years since I read about anything like this but, if I remember correctly, there are some indications that the very early Romans may indeed have practiced human sacrifice on the q.t. as part of the state cult. They would take a male and female slave of a nation that they aimed to conquer and kill them...dedicating the victims to either Jupiter or Mars or maybe the entire pantheon. Not sure when the practice died out but the latter Romans were certainly very deeply embarrassed about it. It is an obscure subject and, frankly, given the abysmal quality of scholarship today I am not sure who to consult. The pre-Roman Italic cults certainly had elements of human sacrifice (ie the priesthood at the grove at Nemi), gladiatoral games grew out of a form of human sacrifice in the region just south of Rome, and the Eastern Greeks retained something close to it in the human-scapegoating cult of the pharmakos which interested Rene Girard so much. As a rule the Romans suppressed the wilder aspects of religion in the Balkans, Anatolia and North Africa not out of humanity as such but because they were seriously freaked out by the behaviour of the congregants/participants (think voodoo style orgies with extremes of violence).
So sort of like sacrificing the deplorable many to the god that is the State/Corporation/Science Matrix? Get thee vaccinated or we shall turn away while you are sacrificed to ventilators and remdesivir? You who complain about globalization, AI, automation and open borders destroying your culture and prospects, let your streets be awash in fentanyl/meth/crack? You who question instituitions corporate, State and Education, may you be cast out, starve and freeze?
There are interesting parallels between east and west on this topic. And thank you for pointing out that the Aztec elite had decayed somehow into a river of death. While I too hold a fascination for what lost thoughts and forms and goodness too were lost in their Armageddon, the circumstances suggested make a lot of sense.
The connections run deep and hint at a civilization long past. It appears from the record that Quetzecotyl, the plumed serpent, was an office title, and at some point, there was a coup, and the human sacrificers came to power. But it was not just a coup in MesoAmerica. It was more likely a global coup.
Here is a quote from “Grid of The Gods” by Farrell and deHart: “We now come to confront the issue of human sacrifice in Aztec culture, as it is recounted in the Codex Chimalpopoca, directly. In one place, the account states that in the year 1487, or the year 8 Reed as the Aztecs called it, some 80,400 prisoners were sacrificed on the top of the pyramid at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital.
“Indeed, the numbers are so staggering that one begins to wonder if the whole vast program of Aztec conquest was really driven by a perceived “need” for a constant supply of sacrificial victims.
“However, that same Codex makes it very clear that the god who was considered by the Aztecs themselves to have founded their civilization, Quetzlcoatl, forbade it. The following story of its origins is told, and with it, one has a further insight into the Aztec version of the Masonic ritual and dedication of the Temple: The Toltecs were engaged (in battle) at a place called Netlalpan. And when they had taken captives, human sacrifice also got started, as Toltecs sacrificed their prisoners.
“Among them and in their midst the devil Yaotl followed along. Right on the spot he kept inciting them to make human sacrifices. And then, too, he started and began the practice of flaying humans… Then he made one of the Toltecs named Ziuhcozcatl wear the skin, and he was the first to war a totec skin. Indeed, every kind of human sacrifice that there used to be got started then. For it is told and related that during his time and under his authority, the first Quetzlcoatl, whose name was Ce Acatl, absolutely refused to perform human sacrifice.
“It was precisely when Huemac was ruler that all those things that used to be done got started. It was the devils who started them. But this has been put on paper and written down elsewhere….There are three things to notice here: 1) Sacrifice is considered a payment, i.e., something that is owed, and hence, the implied concept is that there is a debt to be paid, for whatever reason; 2) Sacrifice was not the original order of society, but was instituted at some later period by devils; and, 3) it was instituted by one devil in particular, someone named Yaotl, whose name contains the root “Ya” and who both in name and in character sounds more than a little like the “Yahweh” of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, who takes such delight in smelling the aroma of sacrificed animals.”
This reminds me of the classic pickup line: "Are you an Aztec? Because you just stole my heart."
On energy (or prana, or teotl, or chi) as the irreducible material of reality: well, yes, duh. Transformation of energy is something a slime mold can accomplish. But it is the toddler's answer to the question, and is damned to the same childlike. solipsistic errors. When magnified on a civilizational scale, of course it results in rivers of blood and mountains of skulls, because the adult answer -- consciousness -- is embedded in the human form, waiting to be discovered by the worst and best of us as we advance through life. It's all about who gets there first, and what they decide to do with that knowledge.
How much tail could the average Aztec priest shag in a weekend, even before he washed his bloody hands? What dark fantasies was he free to explore with his flock, while frightening them half to death with apocalyptic prophesy? These seem like the more pertinent questions, if we are to understand them. That is the greatest tragedy of their extinction to me; we can't really know what their Saturday nights looked like.
The Spaniards were out manned 10,000 to one. The Aztecs had pissed off all their neighbors by engaging in stupid ethnic preference policies and not bothering to ingratiate themselves to the surrounding peoples. The conquista was by no means as simple as the stupid revisionist historians make it out to be. It certainly wasn't purely "the mass enslavement of an entire people, the systematic extermination of a culture, and... a genocide."
Thanks for investing (sharing) your "talents" in this very interesting article. It brought me to thinking about the wetiko, Satan, what I call the Alien Mind, and how it works slowly over time to destroy a people. Evil has its own built-in self-destruct mechanism and once it gets going like it has in our nation, it keeps going until it collapses.
The Bible states that the sins of the father continues for several generations. What does this mean exactly? An empath I met explained that we humans should have a veil covering our mind which protects us from the worst of the Alien Mind, but when a father sins, any offspring will lose their "veil" and be more subject to the machinations of the Alien Mind depending on the sin. The wedding veil is probably an understanding of this "purity." If a father who has sinned has several children, then they will not have this veil and without proper upbringing may become victim of Satan and err also. And so it goes with the next generation until all goes to hell, or someone gets smart and turns to God and stops committing sins as outlined in the Ten Commandments.
This is why our nation is failing. We lost God's blessing in 2003 when we let Bush drop tons of Depleted Uranium on Iraq when they were not guilty of any crimes against us. We committed a very grievous sin of adultery. The empath said God would bring the ungodly against us because we failed to watch our nation. When asked how we could atone, he said we needed to bring home all of our military and intelligence people from around the world and put them to growing food for ourselves and others. He was a prophet and warned us of the Oligarchy, too. Fat chance the hawks in our nation would allow that. However, we must if we want to keep our nation.
Boy, that was interesting. You’re such a compelling writer that I end up always reading the whole thing—even when I start out thinking, “ Surely I’m not interested in ~that~.”
whatever you do - do not click on this link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynCHa4l5yaE&t=1181s
Can you elaborate a little on how pure materialism would naturally culminate in death and murder? I’m not a philosopher, so I’m not entirely sure what materialism ~is~. I’m guessing it’s “the physical/tangible is all there is.”
Nice. I haven't read all of Prescott but mean to. He's an old-fashioned historian and so is a Nazi or decent and highly sensible by today's standards.
Sublime.
Similar stuff was going on in Hawaii. For them it wasn't teotl but mana. Human sacrifice and religious ritual kept the chief-king well supplied with the share he needed to uphold the cosmic order.
By far the best book I've read on the conquest of the Americas was Fernando Cervantes' Conquistadores : a new history of Spanish discovery and conquest. While he doesn't delve too much into the worldview of the indigenous people, focusing more on the complicated political situations that the Spanish stepped into, he tells the reader about the cultural and religious background that produced the conquerors and missionaries, including a couple of meandering discourses on philosophical and religious movements that impacted the conquest. Absolutely shockingly balanced (no caricatures or plaster saints) and well worth checking out.
"Few would argue the world would be better were waterfalls of blood to still pour down the steps of stone pyramids."
I must be one of the few, then.
Waterfalls of blood flowing down the steps of a stone pyramid is vastly more artistic and esthetically pleasing than thugs shooting each other on WorldStar.
I wonder if Mexican culture, left to its own nihilistic devices and not tempted by the adjoining empty prosperity of the U.S., might not actually be a pleasing place to be.
"...so far from God"
Your post reminded me of a conclusion I'd reached with regard to the conquistadors. Modern just war theory provides that you may go to war to defend other's lives. But to a Christian, what is the life next to the soul? If you can go to war to defend other's, you surely must be able to go to war to defend their souls. Yet outside of your post, I cannot think of a single writer who has made this justification for any Christian war in...decades?
Wow! One of your most chilling and beautifully written pieces yet.
I will have to read the comments and re-read it another time.
This piece offers much to think about.
Interesting read, once again, Will be linking today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
It has always amazed me how some of our great civilizations could have such beauty and be filled with such violence from within at the same time. And not just the Aztecs, although they are a good example, The Spaniards and Cortez weren't perfect by any means.
I think that it all goes back to what is deemed as the original sin of Cain killing Able or that there is an inherent evil in the world and that we are constantly in a war between good and evil. I know many believe in other viewpoints that aren't biblical in nature, but basically, all religions have the view of good vs. evil. There is a lot of vagueness in the Cain and Able story and I'll just leave it at that.
And maybe in the end the Anunnaki are just sitting back laughing at the crazed world they created in this mixed up bowl of soup!
John, brilliant stuff and very satisfying on several levels. I especially like your take on the metaphysical underpinnings of Aztec savagery. The extraordinary thing about human sacrifice is how lucky we are as a culture to have moved sway from it in the first place. Remove one or two taboos and we too would end up killing as casually, and with as much conviction, as the Aztecs.
Cortes has been a hero of mine since my teenage years, when I read a fair bit about the conquest of Mexico. Of all the heroic figures of the era of conquest and exploration, he was the gold standard. It is a relief to see someone writing sympathetically and respectfully about a man like that. Who needs Marvel 'superheroes' when we have real life historical characters like that? Pre-Columbian religion is disturbing...if you think the Aztecs were bad, the Maya were worse (fewer victims, more sadism).
Re human sacrifice, don't want to quibble and it is many years since I read about anything like this but, if I remember correctly, there are some indications that the very early Romans may indeed have practiced human sacrifice on the q.t. as part of the state cult. They would take a male and female slave of a nation that they aimed to conquer and kill them...dedicating the victims to either Jupiter or Mars or maybe the entire pantheon. Not sure when the practice died out but the latter Romans were certainly very deeply embarrassed about it. It is an obscure subject and, frankly, given the abysmal quality of scholarship today I am not sure who to consult. The pre-Roman Italic cults certainly had elements of human sacrifice (ie the priesthood at the grove at Nemi), gladiatoral games grew out of a form of human sacrifice in the region just south of Rome, and the Eastern Greeks retained something close to it in the human-scapegoating cult of the pharmakos which interested Rene Girard so much. As a rule the Romans suppressed the wilder aspects of religion in the Balkans, Anatolia and North Africa not out of humanity as such but because they were seriously freaked out by the behaviour of the congregants/participants (think voodoo style orgies with extremes of violence).