Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Religion inside the Aztec Empire

The Ways of the World textbook wasn't exactly my cup of tea when I started reading about religion inside the Aztec Empire. I found a lot more information on what I wrote about at this website. http://www.knowledge4africa.com/worldhistory/inca12.htm.
The religious Aztecs had many different rituals and traditions they liked to perform at certain time of the month. Most of their religion has to do with gods and goddesses that they praise and pray too. Some important ones that I found that are very sacred to their empire would be the Huitzilopochtli, god of war; Tonatiuh, god of the sun; Tlaloc, god of rain; and Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, who was part deity and part culture hero. The Aztec calendar was the one common to much of Mesoamerica, and it comprised a solar year of 365 days and a sacred year of 260 days; the two yearly cycles running in parallel produced a larger cycle of 52 years. From prior knowledge, I know that the Mayan Calendar which is similar to the Aztec Calendar states that the world is going to end in 2012. Human sacrifice was one of the main practices towards the sun god. This is because it resembled the way a victim is offering its heart. All in all, the Aztec religion is based around gods and goddeses that the people follow and their celebrations have to do with patterns in their calender.

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