Goals and Basic Concepts of Aztec Worship

Before you get started making an altar and doing rituals, there are a few basic points that need to be covered. Keep in mind that Mesoamerican religions arose independent of Western (or Eastern) contact, so there are obviously going to be some major differences even within the basic practical framework of worship. The main purpose of this section is to point out some ideas that are essential within Aztec religion, but which would be easy for many people to overlook if not made aware of, because the Western approach to such things is taken as a given.

The Goal of Aztec Religious Ritual

The first thing that I feel the need to point out is the "goal" of Aztec rituals. The main goal is to honor the gods through nextlaoaliztli, "the giving of that which is right." This term referred to the stereotypical blood sacrifice as well as many other things. This doesn't mean that the goal of all Aztec religious rituals is to make a blood offering, all it means is that the primary goal of an Aztec religious ritual is to give the gods what they deserve - your reverence, honor, and the minor sacrifices of time, incense and so on given during any ritual. The rituals are designed to celebrate the gods, the bounty they have given us, and their presence in our life. It is to show our gratitude, and our love for the gods. I bring your attention to the idea of gratitude, because of the primary difference between the Aztec approach to the gods and many modern approaches: the idea that the gods deserve our gratitude and that we owe it to them, rather than the idea that the gods owe us and should be grateful for our attention.

While the idea that the gods should be grateful is mostly a modern Pagan concept, the idea that a god is there primarily to help us with the trivial issues of our life is present in Christianity as well. I am reminded of the time that a Christian told me that Catholics weren't real Christians because their "Hail Mary's" and such were repetitive prayers rather than real requests, and thus would not be answered. I asked her if the goal of her religion was getting her prayers answered, but she didn't know how to respond. Similarly, many Neopagans tend to invoke deities to request that they perform favors for them. I cannot stress enough that this is not the goal of Aztec religious ritual. This is not to say that the Aztecs never made pleas to the gods for assistance - I think that is present in one form or another in most religions - but such prayers are not the main goal and you should never enter into a ritual simply with the intent to deliver a request to the gods. This brings us to the second point.

About Prayers

There are two main types of prayer in Aztec ritual. One is the "honor" prayer, that is, a prayer designed purely with the intent of praising the gods. They contain no petitions or pleas, but are mostly speeches or songs expressing the power, beauty, wisdom and awesomeness of various deities. The purpose of these prayers is pretty self-explanatory: reciting them honors the gods. Because of this, they are a typical part of many Aztec rituals. The second prayer is the "petition" prayer, that is the "please help me with X" prayer. Petition prayers may be individual or community petitions, and they may be very generalized or relatively specific.

To clarify what I said in the above section, petition prayers aren't taboo or unacceptable, it is just that it's important to go about them in the proper way. As said above, they should never be the main intent of your worship or the general bulk of your ritual. You should wait until you are well acquainted with the particular deity you wish to pray to before you petition them for assistance. Knowing a god beforehand is very important; and don't get to know them with the intent to use them for prayer. Get to know deities out of a desire to worship, honor, and love them. Once you have done that, if you are in need, they tend to naturally look out for you, and you may actually find that you feel the need to make requests far less frequently than you once thought you did. The Aztec gods also have a tendency to issue requests to their devotees - you may find that following their requests, rather than the opposite, addresses the lacking areas of your life. If you don't recieve outside guidance well and consistently refuse it, don't expect help with your prayer requests. It would be like returning a gift to someone only to decide you want it back: pretty disrespectful.

So, when you eventually do find yourself in the position of wanting to request divine help, how do you go about it? That will be covered in the Ritual Guidelines section. For now, I just wanted to mention the basic idea.

Concepts of Sacred Space

This is perhaps one of the most important ritual differences between Mesoamerican religion and Neopagan or Western occult rituals that some of you may be familiar with. In Mesoamerican religion, sacred space is permanent. Let me reiterate that again, because it's very important:

Sacred space is permanent.

This means that whether your worship area consists of a small altar or an entire room, that area is to be consecrated and remain sacred. Mesoamerican cultures believed that, in crossing the threshold into a temple, you literally entered the spiritual world. The temple was a part of the spirit world because it had been consecrated, and the consecration merged all the worlds within that place. The temple was called a teocalli, which means "god house," because it was a dwelling place on earth for a particular deity. The idea of "casting" sacred space for a ritual, then disappating it at its end only to recreate it later, is a foriegn one in Aztec thought. Once something is sacred it remains sacred, and must be treated as sacred. In order to remain true to even the basics of Aztec ritual thought, this must be respected regardless of how small an area you have to work with. If the only altar you can afford or have space for is a tiny shelf or table, that's fine. You don't have to consecrate the entire room that the altar is in, but you DO have to consecrate the altar and treat it as sacred from that time foreward. If you choose to make an entire room into your temple, the same applies. Don't use these areas as places to hold your clutter or areas to rest your coffee mug when you're not in the midst of a ritual, and it behooves you to make sure others don't treat the sacred area in your home that way either. You don't have to say, "Don't do that or the wrath of the Aztec gods will be upon you!" and then demand that they repay their transgressions through an immediate blood sacrifice, but do your best to keep others from touching it unasked.

There are a few cases in Aztec practice where a makeshift altar is created for an unforeseen situation, at which point you are obviously not talking about a permanent thing. This was usually done for Tezcatlipoca, since He was known for His habit of dropping in on people unexpectedly. This will be discussed in more detail later, but for now simply realize that this isn't the "typical" way that most Aztec rituals are conducted.

More to come...