Grid of the Gods (39 page)

    Nor is this the only strange parallel between New World sacrifices and Old World legends. There is another strange connection, this time, in legends of cannibalistic giants:

   
Now, in Tollan the people were no more.

    Huemac was ruler., The second was called Necuametl, the third was Tlaltecatzin, the fourth was called Huitzilpopoca. The four were lift behind by Topilzin when he went away. And the ruler of Nonoalco was called Huetzin…

    Now then, an omen came to him; he saw an ash-bundle man, a giant. And it was the very one who was eating people.

    Then the Toltecs say, “O Toltecs, who is it that’s eating people?”

    Then they snared it, they captured it. And what they captured was a beardless boy.

    Then they kill it. And when they’ve killed it, they look inside it: it has no heart, no innards, no blood.

    Then it stinks. And whoever smells it dies from it, as well as whoever does not smell it, who (simply) passes by. And so a great many people are dying.

    Then they go to drag it away, but it cannot be moved. And when the rope breaks, those who fall down die on the spot. And when it moves, all those who come in contact with it die. It eats them all.
¹³

This not only parallels accounts from the Old World identifying giants with the practice of cannibalism, but in the Aztec context, there is a subtle implication that the story has something to do with the practice of human sacrifice itself, with the literal consumption of the people being “cooked” as burnt sacrifices for the gods; the “giant,” we are told, is opened up, and there is
no blood, no heart.
The giant, who consumes the lives of the people, is a heartless machine.
¹⁴

c. Quetzlcoatl, Sacrifice, Payment, and “the Sorcerers”

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.
¹⁵
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. And there it is to be heard.

    … Huemac sacrificed a human streamer, thus making payment.
¹⁶

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.

One final thing should also be noted before we continue, and that is that the name “Quetzlcoatl” appears to be understood by the Aztecs to be a
titular
name, the name of an
office
as much as it is the name of a person, and office similar in nature to the Mayans’ description, “Sovereign Plumed Serpent.”

The idea of “devils” having been behind the institution of sacrifice is further elaborated:

7 Rabbit (1018). Here began the sacrifice of the human streamers. At that time, in the time of 7 Rabbit, a great famine occurred. What is said is that the Toltecs were seven-rabbited. It was a seven-year famine, a famine that caused much suffering and death.

    It was then that the sorcerers requisitioned Huemac’s own children
and went and left them in the waters of Xochiquetzal and on Huitzco and on Xicocotl, thus making payment with little children. This was the first time that the sacrifice of human streamers occurred.
¹⁷

We have already encountered Huemac as one of the Aztec kings mentioned in the
Codex Chimalpopoca
, but now we learn of another presence behind the practice of human sacrifice: sorcerers, in addition to devils. In other words, the Aztec mythology is suggesting that we are looking at the activity of an initiated elite. And once again, sacrifice is referred to as a payment. It is thus difficult to avoid the conclusion that the “devils” were the ones demanding payment.

However, of all the suggestive passages in the
Codex
that refer to human sacrifice, one in particular stands out above all the rest for the breadth of its implications.

Well, it is told and related that many times during the life of Quetzlcoatl, sorcerers tried to ridicule him into making the human payment, into taking human lives. But he always refused. He did not consent, because he greatly loved his subjects, who were Toltecs. Snakes, birds, and butterflies that he killed were what his sacrifices always were.

    And it is told and related that with this he wore out the sorcerers’ patience. So it was then that they started to ridicule him and make fun of him, the sorcerers saying they wanted to torment Quetzlcoatl and make him run away.

    And it became true. It happened.

    …

    Then they tell how Quetzlcoatl departed. It was when he refused to obey the sorcerers about making the human payment, about sarificing humans. Then the sorcerers deliberated among themselves, they whose names were Texcatlipoca, Ihuimecatly, and Toltecatly. They said, “He must leave his city. We shall live there.”
¹⁸

This is a significant passage, for in it one finds the clear outlines of a peculiar story emerging:

1)  The “old order,” represented by Quetzlcoatl, which refuses to institute human sacrifice;

2)  The “new order” represented by three sorcerers, who eventually force Quetzlcoatl to abandon his city and take it over. These three sorcerers, along with King Quetzlcoatl, represent yet another variation, perhaps, of the Aztec version of the Hiram Abiff story, with the dedication of a temple by sacrifice;

3)  Sacrifice is again referred to as a “payment,” a debt, and Quetzlcoatl’s refusal to institute the practice is, perhaps, suggestive of the fact that he did not accept the whole notion of payment and debt to begin with.

To put it succinctly, it would appear that one is looking at two ideologies, two conceptions, of the place of mankind within the vast “cosmic machine,” an older one, and a newer one, represented by Queztlcoatl and the sorcerers respectively. Those sorcerers were elsewhere called “devils,” and one in particular, “Yaotl,” was behind the practice.

All of this occurs in the post-Flood world of the Fifth Sun, so it is important to note one final thing. After the flood, the gods create “a new sun from the flames of the ‘spirit oven’ at Teotihuacan…”
¹⁹
The notion of sacrifice, in other words, was deeply tied to the most mysterious site on the world Grid in all of the Americas, as it was also tied to the notion of a recreation, a revitalization, of the sun and celestial machinery itself.

But before we look at the implications of these ideas at Teotihuacan, a closer look at the notion of sacrifice, payment, and debt in the culture that
confronted
the Aztecs is in order.

B. Sacrificial Atonement in Latin Christianity:
Anselm of Canterbury’s
Cur Deus Homo

All across Western Europe, from whence the Conquistadores came, sacrifice was being offered in all the hamlet chapels, parish churches, deaneries, monasteries, and cathedrals of Europe: the sacrifice of the mass. Moreover, it would not take a great deal to show that many of these chapels, churches, and cathedrals were built over old pagan shrines or cult centers, occupying places on the world Grid. In brief, the sacrifice of the mass was understood to be a supremely alchemical act, the transubstantiation of earthly bread and wine into the heavenly body and blood of Christ, which had been sacrificed to God the Father at the Crucifixion. It was an act that made that sacrifice really present.

Two cultures, both of them practicing sacrifice of
some
sort, thus confronted each other, and though it could be said that the Spanish were hardly practicing actual human sacrifice, a closer look at the theological doctrine underlying Western Latin Christian belief will reveal that there was no great broad conceptual ocean dividing the
two cultures, but rather the reverse, that much of the language and conceptulization behind both cultures’ practice and belief was the same.

For the western Latin Church, the constellation of ideas surrounding the sacrifice of Christ were most completely enunciated by the 11th century theologian, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), in a work entitled
Cur Deus Homo
, or
Why the God-Man?
Here, the “logic” of sacrifice, debt, and payment is laid out clearly, and with a cold-bloodedness that lies just hidden beneath the surface language of piety.

The first indicator that even Christ Himself is viewed as but a cog in a vast sacrificial “machine” is found in the opening lines of the
Cur Deus Homo
, the very lines that formed the epigraph to this chapter: “…in fine
, leaving Christ out of view (as if nothing had ever been known of him), it proves, by absolute reasons
, the impossibility that any man should be saved without him.”
²⁰
In other words, once Christ is out of view, then it is the “absolute reasons” that form the basis of the machine of sacrifice into which Christ steps as “the essential cog.”

A reading of a few select passages will make this clear.

1. Debt and Will

The
Cur Deus Homo
is laid out as a set of dialogues between Anselm and his pupil, Boso. We begin our examination of the logic of sacrifice in Anselm with this exchange between the archbishop and his student in chapter IX of the
Cur Deus:

Boso:
…How it was of his own accord that he died, and what this means: “he was made obedient even unto death; “ and: “for which cause God hath highly exalted him;” and: “I came not to do my own will; “ and: “he spared not his own Son;” and: “not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

Anselm:
It seems to me that you do not rightly understand the difference between what he did at the demand of obedience, and what he suffered, not demanded by obedience, but inflicted on him, because he kept his obedience perfect.

…

That man, therefore,
owed
this obedience to God the Father,
humanity
to Deity; and the Father
claimed
it from him.

Boso:
…For death was inflicted on him for his perseverance in obedience and he endured it; but I do not understand how it is that obedience did not demand this.