Teaching The Controversy

So there is a group of heathens calling themselves "scientists" who claim that the world wasn't created by some all powerful super-being, but was instead the result of matter just forming together in ways that physical laws dictated that they would. These "scientists" also refuse to teach anything other than their ridiculous, closed-minded science. Its just based on generations of "accumulated evidence" and "rationally explains the perceivable universe". What do they know, with their silly, self-consistent, observable phenomena. Even though there are other scientists (probably real ones!) who can show that the world was indeed created as it is now by an intelligent designer. What about teaching intelligent design? Shouldn't you teach the only other side of the argument?

Ugh...OK, that was bad and I am sorry. I feel dirty even saying all of that sarcastically. Incidentally I agree with one point the people who advocate for "teaching the controversy". If you don't want to leave out any "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the world you should teach kids about it. Where I differ though is in my feelings towards this is that I think that if you are going to say "hey, science might be wrong!" then you need to give equal time to EVERY other option out there. Especially when they are more badass than, while also being just as plausible as, yours. Don't agree? Does your god kill shit tons of frost giants in a bloody, multi-dimensional hammer war? No. The Christian creation myth is so boring! Magical Sky Daddy spends a most of a week making toys, then takes a nap. My favorite part was when he took a nap!

And so with that in mind I offer the following:

Teaching The Controversy Part One of Many: The Aztecs!

Most of you readers will know, or think you know, something about the Aztecs. You will probably know that they lived in Mexico prior to the Spanish invasion. You will also probably know them from their enthusiastic appreciation for ritual sacrifice. The origin myth actually explains why this was such a big deal for them. As with most mythology we have many different versions of the myth. Between an almost exclusively oral history, a violent takeover of the continent, and the nasty habit of playing literary analysis with mythology a lot of the information wasn't well kept and what we have today probably differs from the traditional source material. This also means that if I say something that contradicts what you have heard it might be that I read a different version of the myth. I am also just going to be hitting the high points, as I would need to write a book to do these myths justice. So if you want to learn more about the myth/even more about the context behind it, I suggest this.

In the beginning there was nothing except the void. After a while, getting bored of nothingness, a god created itself, Ometecuhtli(male) or Omecihuatl(female). This one being hermaphroditic god-party  represented duality. It was order and chaos, good and evil, light and dark, male and female. This god made sweet love to itself and produced four more gods, each representing a cardinal direction and certain aspects of reality. The god of the West was Tezcatlipoca (sometimes referred to as representing North), who represents judgement, night, deceit, sorcery, and earth. East was Quetzalcoatl(sometimes he is referred to as West instead), who represented light, mercy, and the wind. South was Huitzilpochtli the god who represented war. North was Xipe Toltec (sometimes referred to as representing the East) who ruled over agriculture, vegetation, disease, spring, the making of jewelry, and cutting off people's skin and wearing it about town.

These four began to create a ton more stuff. Water, more gods, and a sea monster named Cipactli. Cipactli was cool because it was a giant (as big as the entire world as it is now) crocodile/fish monster that had mouths at all of its joints and ate everything that went into the water. This behavior introduced a problem to the gods. Everything that they created would fall into the water and be insta-gibbed by the giant sea monster they had created. The solution to this conundrum was simple. Kill Cipactli and turn its corpse into the land. Cipactli's head was turned into the 13 layers of heaven, its body became the earth, and its tail became the 9 layers of hell. During this fight one of the gods, Tezcatlipoca, lost his leg.

So now that the gods could create stuff that would remain uneaten, they went to town. At this point they needed to create a source of energy for the world. This would end up being the sun. Unfortunately an object like the sun was beyond their powers of creation, because, unlike some gods I could mention, the Aztec deities knew when to stop showing off. The unfortunate solution to this was that one of the gods would need to sacrifice themselves to do this. They ended up picking Tezcatlipoca to become the sun, which he did. Unfortunately his sun was only half a sun, either because he had lost his leg, and as such was incomplete, or because he was the god of the night. At this point the first humans were created from ash and were all giants. The gods provided these humans with acorns to eat. Then all hell broke loose when Quetzalcoatl got all jelly that Tezcatlipoca got to be the sun and beat him out of the sky with a club. A now very angry Tazcatlipoca commanded his bad-ass jaguar army to kill all of the humans. Thus ending the first sun.

Quetzalcoatl decided that he would be the second sun and he and the other gods made more humans (this time humans where a more normal size and ate pinon or pine nuts) prior to him becoming the sun. The second generation of humans became lax in their duties and stopped worshiping the gods. In retribution for this slight, Tezcatlipoca (whose domains included sorcery and judgement) turned all of humanity into monkeys. Quetzalcoatl, who was a fan of humans but apparently had an unrelenting monkey-hate, got angry and blew all of the monkeys away with a hurricane after which he stepped down as sun to make more people.

The next god to volunteer as a sun was Tlaloc, the god of the rain and water. While he was being the sun, Tezcatlipoca stole Tlaloc's wife, Xochiquetzal who was the goddess of sex, flowers, and corn. In his grief at this situation Tlaloc refused to send rain to the humans. After a long period of draught, the humans begged and begged for rain. In anger, Tlaloc sent a rain of fire to earth, burning it to ashes. The gods then reconstructed the earth from these ashes. Another version of the third sun has the world burning to ash thanks to a another major fight between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.

Tlaloc's sister (or second wife depending on the version), Chalchiuhtlicue, became the next version of the sun. She was apparently very kind to the people. Once again jealousy caused other gods (you will never guess who) to want her to not be the sun. Sources differ on what happens next, but either Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca beat her out of the sky with clubs, at which point either the sky opens and floods the earth, killing all of humanity; or Tezcatlipoca tells the people that she is only being kind to get their praise, and she was so hurt by this accusation that she wept blood for 52 years, flooding the earth and killing everyone.

Before the next sun could be made, Quetzalcoatl made his way to the underworld to get all of the human bones there in order to remake humanity. Before he went he was warned that Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the underworld. was never to be trusted. So, after Quetzalcoatl got the bones, he ran away with them as fast as possible, as to limit the time he was in the underworld. As he ran he tripped and broke all of the bones (which is why humans today are of varying sizes) but managed to recover all of the, now shattered, bones. Quetzalcoatl and the other gods put the bones in a depression and poured their own blood over them, causing humans to crawl out of the bloody pool 4 days later. at which point the fifth sun, our current sun, had been made.

There are two stories in which the fifth sun came to be. In the first, two gods offer themselves up as the sun. The first, Tecuciztecatl, is a proud and rich god who chickens out at the last minute. Nanahuatzin, who is depicted as frail and sickly, decides that he will do it instead and turns into the sun. Tecuciztecatl, shamed by this also turns into the sun. The earth is to hot with two suns so the other gods take a rabbit and throw it over the face of Tecuciztecatl dimming him and turning him into the moon. Since Nanahuatzin is weak the other gods give their blood to him to keep him in motion and thus ensure that the earth will survive. To make up for this deficit humans need to give blood back. Some gods like full human sacrifice while others, like Quetzalcoatl, prefer bloodletting as it doesn't kill the donor.

The second version of this is that the fifth sun is Huitzilpochtli. Omecihuatl (the dual god/goddess) had more children, who became the stars. These children were jealous of Huitzilpochitli and they wage a constant war with Huitzilpochtli. This constant struggle is the day and night, with daybreak meaning that Huitzilpochtli is winning, and nightfall is when the stars (the Tzizimitl led by the goddess of the moon, Coyolxauhqui) are winning. This war is aided by blood being sacrificed to Huitzilpochtli and the other gods and goddesses (though the reasons for sacrificing for the other gods are varied).

You may have noticed a pretty significant life/death/rebirth pattern in there. That cycle is a huge part of Aztec mythology and played a major role in their culture. It's interesting and awesome, once again you should definitely look up more information.

So there's the long and (not so) short of it; the origin of earth and humanity according to the Aztecs. I hoped you enjoyed this as much as I did. I will continue this in the future since my hands are dead now from all the typing.

Sources: Here, here, and here