"And the first men who were formed and created were called the sorcerers of deadly laughter, the sorcerers of the night, the savages, the black wizards...
Their strength was intelligence, they succeeded to know everything there was in the world. When they saw, then they knew everything that surrounded them and they contemplated the arch of heaven and that round face of the earth...
(And the Creator said): "You know about
everything... what should we do with them now? Just allow their sight reach what is near, let them see only a piece of the face of the earth! ...aren't they the simple beings of my creation? Do they have to be God too?
[Popol Vuh of Quiche Maya]
TEZCATLIPOCA - THE SMOKING MIRROR
Tezcatlipoca was a symbol of ruthlessness and limitless power. Among the Mesoamerican Aztecs, Tezcatlipoca (lit. Smoking Mirror) was the fearsome god-form of the night sky, black magic and sorcery, warfare, temptation and treachery. He symbolized the polar opposite of what any society (including the Aztecs themselves) considered sacred and right. Yet he was revered instead of condemned and received one of the most prominent places in the Mexican pantheon.
What could have caused the Aztecs to place so much emphasis on qualities they considered dangerous and unpleasant, and what does the worship of this god say about themselves? Tezcatlipoca may have been the projection of a psychological demiurge, also known as the "Shadow".
LEGEND AND HISTORY
Tezcatlipoca left his first mark on this world by creating the earth on which humans live. A gigantic dragon-like creature once existed beneath the waves of the ocean, and Tezcatlipoca pulled it to the surface, using his foot as bait. As the giant sea serpent's fangs closed around his foot, he dislocated its lower jaw, preventing it from diving again. It was its mountainous ridge upon which plants, animals, and human beings were created.
As with Seth, Tezcatlipoca's astrological symbol is the constellation of the Great Bear, Ursus Major, symbolizing his single foot and oblique circular path around the Star of the North. (The Star of the North was considered a sacred symbol of purity by Mesoamericans, and Tezcatlipoca's impure nature was believed to prevent him from ever reaching the star.)
We observe the first appearance of Tezcatlipoca among the Toltecs, whose widespread empiricism preceded the arrival of the Aztecs by at least 300 years. His position among the Toltecs was in direct opposition to the, by far older, Quetzalcoatl (literally "Plumed Serpent" - but also "Precious Twin"), their supreme chief god of learning, culture and all fruits of consciousness. The archaic Mesoamerican religion placed a considerable value on dualism and always paid attention to a balancing element. The god form of the Toltec Tezcatlipoca cult was therefore possibly determined by the fact that the chronologically older and more powerful god Quetzalcoatl could not fulfill this requirement alone.
It sometimes happens that cults arise in reaction to or through the annihilation of other cults - their power springs from the reversal of prevailing ethics and morals. Examples of such movements may include some heretical sects of Islamic Sufi and the Kurdish Yezidi tribes, whose worship of the demonic rebel angel Iblis, or the rejection of dominant Hindu, dogma as a fundamental principle of Indian tantra.
Only very rarely do these "carnivalized" religions become so large that their cults are able to overshadow the original religions. Yet it appears that this is exactly what happened at some point during the Toltec period. The cult gained the support of the military structures and Tezcatlipoca became the patron saint and god of war and warfare.
According to the tradition of the time, the Toltec ruler was also the manifestation and earthly incarnation of Quetzalcoatl and thus he was absolutely certain of the highest respect and veneration among the Toltec citizens. So while Quetzalcoatl was in office, Tezcatlipoca could not exert much influence over the people and so he devised deceitful and insidious ways to gain power. On the occasion of one of the highest sacred festivals of the Toltecs, Tezcatlipoca mixed various drugs and aphrodisiacs into the drink of Quetzalcoatl, whereupon the latter raped a priestess in front of the assembled guests. Sober again, Quetzalcoatl was overcome with shame and fled the country. Now the way was clear for Tezcatlipoca and his influence over the Toltecs grew rapidly.
While this story sounds more like legend, there was a veritable spiritual coup d'etat among the Toltecs at this time, in which Quetzalcoatl was actually expelled. The later decline of the Toltec Empire was also blamed on the intrigues of Tezcatlipoca, who allegedly, naked and painted blue and red, seduced the king's daughter and her son, Huemac, who was later to become king, in the middle of the market place, leading the Toltecs into an all-destroying civil war.
When Tezcatlipoca was adopted by the Aztecs centuries later, his position was higher than that of the other gods, including Quetzalcoatl. The wild and violent nature of Tezcatlipoca impressed the Aztecs, whose beliefs placed them on a mission to keep the course of the sun alive through human sacrifice. The Aztecs attributed the sun as an aspect of Tezcatlipoca. The sun belonged to whoever ruled at that time and that was Tezcatlipoca as the personification of the Aztec age called the Fifth Sun. And among his specific duties was the justification of violence and cruelty to ensure proper sacrificial rites.
THE SHADOW
Psychologically, there is much to suggest that the Aztecs' relationship with their dark god was a shadow projection. From this point of view, the shadow would be part of the repressed self, made up of unwanted and hated parts of the Aztec being.
The shadow encompasses that part of the human being that in Western culture we would describe as "evil" and indeed these universal dark impulses have been (and continue to be) identified by Western religions as aspects of the "devil".
The Spanish missionary Bernadino Sahagun, from whose records most of our knowledge about the Aztec cults comes, certainly left no doubt about this connection:
"That wicked Tezcatlipoca we know as Lucifer, the great devil who, in the midst of heaven, from the very beginning, fomented war, treachery and corruption."
In an attempt to escape the suppressed dark impulses, these forces may be directed toward targets that remain or are intended to remain invisible. As the shadow struggles to manifest, there is often a rationalization of reasons why it had to be done this way. An example of this are certain forms of religious fanaticism with a rigid code of moral conduct, whose members do not even seem to shy away from murder.
Another form of manifesting the shadow is dissociation from it. When people meet another being that represents a part of themselves that they detest, they respond to that being with heightened affect, often violently. In these cases, these people have met their "mirror" who has revealed to them what they so desperately tried to repress. Just a small core is enough, a tiny memory of your own shadow to project it onto the other person in its entirety and often in a completely exaggerated way. This person must be made a scapegoat and destroyed.
Shadow is instinctively associated with the night, blackness and darkness, and these are the Demiurge Tezcatlipoca's salient characteristics.
Despite its frightening appearance, however, there is nothing inherently "evil" about the shadow, and in fact this hidden aspect of self is often the source of humor, creativity, and imagination.
Tezcatlipoca gave his people the drum, the flute and the dance and he stole the fire from the underworld for the Mexicans.
The shadow seems to enable the distinction between us and the world, between order and chaos. And since he is always just a step away from our consciousness, he serves as a gatekeeper to the realms of neither-neither.
THE AZTEC SPIRIT
The Aztecs, too, maintained a strong sense of dualism, which they worshiped in the deity of separate opposites, Ometecuhtli. This was a philosophy that really encouraged black and white thinking. A strict, almost puritanical code of ethics specifically regulated and restricted sex or the use of drugs, and even the slightest deviation from the law, such as cheating or public drunkenness, was punishable by death. There was already a concept of sin that came very close to the medieval Christian concept. As the Aztecs raided and robbed their neighbors, a sense of guilt increased within them, and this in turn prompted a number of purification and debt-relieving rituals. But who was the cause, the source of their guilt? It was Tezcatlipoca, the epitome of guilt.
"Tezcatlipoca, the true source of what we do,
He is diverse, he is proud, he plays with us.
His will is his desire. He takes us in his
Hand, he makes us round and we roll like bullets.
He throws us back and forth.
We make him laugh and he makes fun of us."
[Nahuatl poem quoted by Sahagun]
In this form, Tezcatlipoca appears as "The One Sitting On Our Shoulders":
"Tezcatlipoca, catches all thoughts and twists them into doing what one does not want and suddenly thinks evil, without reason, if one should actually think responsible, good and holy things."
[Quoted by Spence]
To complete the effect of the Aztec shadow's rigid morality and concepts of guilt and punishment, there was a central belief in one's task of being responsible for the survival of the world. The Aztecs saw themselves as having a special responsibility to the sun, for without their help the sun would not be able to appear in the sky and all life would come to an end. In order to keep the course of the sun alive, it seemed necessary to the Aztecs to provide vast amounts of human sacrifices, the blood came from the countless prisoners of war and convicts.
Here you can clearly see the division in Aztec thought: on the one hand they were sinful mortals and slaves to their unconscious urges (one of Tezcatlipoca's names was Titlacahuan, meaning "he whose slaves we are") and on the other hand there were the Aztecs Agents of good with a special mission to preserve all life on earth, a race of humans chosen by God.
Concentrating on the conscious ideals while at the same time suppressing the "sinful" unconscious is fertile ground for a growing shadow self, the special mission for the gods gave the Aztecs a real "license to kill" and they killed veritably and much. The dark cult of the Aztecs claimed countless human lives, alone 20,000 people were slaughtered in 1487 for the consecration of the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan.
Most of the sacrificial rites were held in honor of the god Tezcatlipoca. It was he who eagerly drank the blood of these people.
TEZCATLIPOCA AND SEXUALITY
Few natural instincts have been so socially repressed as sexuality. The Aztecs had a sexual moral code reminiscent of Victorian times. The one who broke these laws was Tzintli (literally: dirt), a particularly bad crime.
Tezcatlipoca was the embodiment of the dark side of sex, a skilled seducer who used sex as a weapon against his victims.
Tradition has it that this dark side of sexuality drove Tezcatlipoca to this world.
He seduced the divine virgin Xochiquetzal ("Delicious Flower") and took her to the underworld. For thus introducing sin into the pantheon, like Lucifer, he was cast down to earth.
He later developed seduction as a tool that he used so successfully, for example, in the aforementioned seizure of power by the Quetzalcoatl dynasty. He lured the Toltecs to their downfall when he, as a merchant of the Huaxtec (who were notorious for their sexual prowess at the time), approached the princess and impregnated her publicly in the marketplace. It was her son Huemac who, by taking power, triggered the civil war that ended Toltec rule. Some say he founded Tollan afterwards, some say he was expelled. The last ruler of the Toltecs was actually named Huemac and he died in a rebellion.
THE ENEMY
Part of the shadow's function is to create an enemy. Others are forced to reverse their own conscious values. This can go so far that the "enemy" is accused of characteristics that he certainly does not even remotely have. It makes little difference whether the shadow suits the enemy or not, as long as there is someone to blame for one's dark side. In the process, what is demonized, dehumanized and destroyed in others is what one's own self cannot or does not want to believe in.
Consequently, the Aztec title of Tezcatlipoca was Yaotl, meaning the enemy. It was his job to sow strife and resentment, to start conflicts and wars.
"Whenever participants in debates quarreled and insulted one another and war seemed inevitable, Tezcatlipoca was responsible for the provocation. His title was therefore Necoc Yaotl, the 'enemy of both sides', underscoring that his intentions and aspirations were not disunity to the advantage of one party.
[Burr, 1979]
Tezcatlipoca was the god of war and enmity, but he was not a god of war in the traditional sense. Usually, a war god is an aspect of collective strength that can be evoked to gain battle strength.
Tezcatlipoca, on the other hand, represented the principle of war without guaranteeing an advantage for one side or the other. He was only interested in creating discord and making people think of each other as enemies.
TALKiNG TO THE SHADOW
The name Tezcatlipoca means "smoking mirror". It comes from a device that is both his symbol and his tool. A round magical mirror made of black obsidian.
Tezcatlipoca used his own mirror to see directly into the heart of every mortal, to learn their innermost thoughts and secrets. It was this black obsidian mirror that he made Quetzalcoatl look into after raping the priestess to reveal his own monstrous and disgusting nature, causing Quetzalcoatl to flee the kingdom in panic.
All devices of this kind were called portals of Tezcatlipoca, gateways to his realm.
In the hands of an Aztec priest, the mirror became an instrument of the oracle. After the ritual preparation, the priest stared at the surface of the powerful device until he fell into a trance. Then the visions began:
"The mirror clouds and shadows cross its surface."
[Nahuatl text quoted by Brundage]
On the black mirror surface, the reflected daylight becomes the darkest night. The sun becomes the moon. Colors can no longer be distinguished, everything appears gray in gray like on a photo negative. The face of the person looking into the magic mirror appears dark and vague. The reflected face of the priest becomes the face of Tezcatlipoca himself and the manifestation of the shadow self is now made. The god-form of Tezcatlipoca transforms into Tezcatlanextia, the "Let-One-See-Things-In-The-Mirror" and the shadow-self leads the conscious mind into the neither-neither world of the unconscious behind the mirror. There the secrets of the future and the hidden thoughts of the people are revealed to the priest.
The Aztecs firmly believed in destiny and these things were revealed in the mirror as a glimpse on the unchanging future.
Tradition has it that Motecuhzoma (Montezuma) himself foretold the arrival of Cortez and the fall of the Aztec Empire years before the actual arrival of the Spaniards in his kingdom in an obsidian mirror. In this mirror he is said to have seen strange, bearded men riding on the backs of deer (horses were not known). He saw these creatures roam Mexico, destroying him and his gods.
It is also interesting that a century later this mirror may have played a part in the destruction of the Spanish themselves, for the mirror came into the possession of Dr. John Dee, the chief occultist of Queen Elizabeth of England, who destroyed the Spanish Armada and broke Spanish supremacy forever.
WELCOME THE SHADOWS
The Aztecs welcomed what most cultures repressed. Not only did they tolerate the difficulties the shadow brought upon them, but they gave supreme importance to this externalized source of inner fear and conflict. This was a very unusual approach to the shadows: they saw value in it.
Perhaps they liked the conflict itself and recognized it as the path along which conflict is often motivating. The Aztecs knew that strife and war can have a strengthening effect on social systems. But it is also possible that their fixation on moral codes and duality allowed them to see the function of "unacceptable" behavior for a culture as an example of comparative thinking. Just as one can best imagine the day as the opposite of the night and one must first understand the "evil" in order to want the "good".
BLACK MAGIC AND THE SHADOW
Black magic was Tezcatlipoca's specialty and he was known as the Left-Handed Jaguar ("Opoche" means left-handed).
The Aztecs associated left-handedness with malice and forbidden magic. Jaguars were symbols of sudden danger and dark mysterious wisdom. The Maya word "Balam" means both at the same time, jaguar and magician.
Through the sorcerers' direct communication with the shadow, they gained tremendous practical utility. In doing so, they opened gates into worlds that normally remain tightly closed. The black magic rituals of the Smoking Mirrors dictated seeing the surface of the mirror floating like the surface of a black lake on the misty wisps. The sorcerer sinks into this lake and sinks to the bottom in total blackness.
The darkness is the magician's protection and the only thing that shields his mind from the madness that comes with suddenly seeing the face of Tezcatlipoca.
So the wise magician will not proceed too quickly, but patiently approach the matter. It's worth it, but it's also dangerous.
Lore has it that a god form of Tezcatlipoca called the "Night Axe" manifests in the darkest of forests. Anyone who happens to be nearby hears sounds like someone chopping wood and becomes aware of a dim light coming from that direction. If the curious follows the light, he will soon realize that it is not a nocturnal lumberjack. For it is Tezcatlipoca in the form of a half-decomposed corpse or rotting skeleton, his eyes burning with an unnatural light and his tongue hanging out of his grinning mouth. But the hacking sound comes from his chest, which opens and closes like a bear trap and reveals a living and beating human heart.
"Only those who dared to draw nearer and lay their hands on the heart could hope to save their lives and sanity. If they had the courage to defy the apparition and take its heart as if it were their own, would find strength, prosperity, and power. Otherwise they would be lost."
The Aztecs also knew a manifestation of Tezcatlipoca named Tloque Nahuaque ("Always There, Always Near") and Yohualli Ehecatl ("Night and Wind" or "Invisible and Untouchable").
What was unusual was that neither the Toltec nor the Aztecs ever had a face for these manifestations, they had no form.
This abstractness protected Tezcatlipoca from any form of traditional worship. The only temple built to the manifestation of Tezcatlipoca as the Tloque Nahuaque / Yohualli Ehecatl stood in the town of Tezcoco and was built by the famous poet and king Nezahualcoyotl. It was a black pyramid with stars on the altar and absolutely unique - being the only pyramid without images of a deity.
Their strength was intelligence, they succeeded to know everything there was in the world. When they saw, then they knew everything that surrounded them and they contemplated the arch of heaven and that round face of the earth...
(And the Creator said): "You know about
everything... what should we do with them now? Just allow their sight reach what is near, let them see only a piece of the face of the earth! ...aren't they the simple beings of my creation? Do they have to be God too?
[Popol Vuh of Quiche Maya]
TEZCATLIPOCA - THE SMOKING MIRROR
Tezcatlipoca was a symbol of ruthlessness and limitless power. Among the Mesoamerican Aztecs, Tezcatlipoca (lit. Smoking Mirror) was the fearsome god-form of the night sky, black magic and sorcery, warfare, temptation and treachery. He symbolized the polar opposite of what any society (including the Aztecs themselves) considered sacred and right. Yet he was revered instead of condemned and received one of the most prominent places in the Mexican pantheon.
What could have caused the Aztecs to place so much emphasis on qualities they considered dangerous and unpleasant, and what does the worship of this god say about themselves? Tezcatlipoca may have been the projection of a psychological demiurge, also known as the "Shadow".
LEGEND AND HISTORY
Tezcatlipoca left his first mark on this world by creating the earth on which humans live. A gigantic dragon-like creature once existed beneath the waves of the ocean, and Tezcatlipoca pulled it to the surface, using his foot as bait. As the giant sea serpent's fangs closed around his foot, he dislocated its lower jaw, preventing it from diving again. It was its mountainous ridge upon which plants, animals, and human beings were created.
As with Seth, Tezcatlipoca's astrological symbol is the constellation of the Great Bear, Ursus Major, symbolizing his single foot and oblique circular path around the Star of the North. (The Star of the North was considered a sacred symbol of purity by Mesoamericans, and Tezcatlipoca's impure nature was believed to prevent him from ever reaching the star.)
We observe the first appearance of Tezcatlipoca among the Toltecs, whose widespread empiricism preceded the arrival of the Aztecs by at least 300 years. His position among the Toltecs was in direct opposition to the, by far older, Quetzalcoatl (literally "Plumed Serpent" - but also "Precious Twin"), their supreme chief god of learning, culture and all fruits of consciousness. The archaic Mesoamerican religion placed a considerable value on dualism and always paid attention to a balancing element. The god form of the Toltec Tezcatlipoca cult was therefore possibly determined by the fact that the chronologically older and more powerful god Quetzalcoatl could not fulfill this requirement alone.
It sometimes happens that cults arise in reaction to or through the annihilation of other cults - their power springs from the reversal of prevailing ethics and morals. Examples of such movements may include some heretical sects of Islamic Sufi and the Kurdish Yezidi tribes, whose worship of the demonic rebel angel Iblis, or the rejection of dominant Hindu, dogma as a fundamental principle of Indian tantra.
Only very rarely do these "carnivalized" religions become so large that their cults are able to overshadow the original religions. Yet it appears that this is exactly what happened at some point during the Toltec period. The cult gained the support of the military structures and Tezcatlipoca became the patron saint and god of war and warfare.
According to the tradition of the time, the Toltec ruler was also the manifestation and earthly incarnation of Quetzalcoatl and thus he was absolutely certain of the highest respect and veneration among the Toltec citizens. So while Quetzalcoatl was in office, Tezcatlipoca could not exert much influence over the people and so he devised deceitful and insidious ways to gain power. On the occasion of one of the highest sacred festivals of the Toltecs, Tezcatlipoca mixed various drugs and aphrodisiacs into the drink of Quetzalcoatl, whereupon the latter raped a priestess in front of the assembled guests. Sober again, Quetzalcoatl was overcome with shame and fled the country. Now the way was clear for Tezcatlipoca and his influence over the Toltecs grew rapidly.
While this story sounds more like legend, there was a veritable spiritual coup d'etat among the Toltecs at this time, in which Quetzalcoatl was actually expelled. The later decline of the Toltec Empire was also blamed on the intrigues of Tezcatlipoca, who allegedly, naked and painted blue and red, seduced the king's daughter and her son, Huemac, who was later to become king, in the middle of the market place, leading the Toltecs into an all-destroying civil war.
When Tezcatlipoca was adopted by the Aztecs centuries later, his position was higher than that of the other gods, including Quetzalcoatl. The wild and violent nature of Tezcatlipoca impressed the Aztecs, whose beliefs placed them on a mission to keep the course of the sun alive through human sacrifice. The Aztecs attributed the sun as an aspect of Tezcatlipoca. The sun belonged to whoever ruled at that time and that was Tezcatlipoca as the personification of the Aztec age called the Fifth Sun. And among his specific duties was the justification of violence and cruelty to ensure proper sacrificial rites.
THE SHADOW
Psychologically, there is much to suggest that the Aztecs' relationship with their dark god was a shadow projection. From this point of view, the shadow would be part of the repressed self, made up of unwanted and hated parts of the Aztec being.
The shadow encompasses that part of the human being that in Western culture we would describe as "evil" and indeed these universal dark impulses have been (and continue to be) identified by Western religions as aspects of the "devil".
The Spanish missionary Bernadino Sahagun, from whose records most of our knowledge about the Aztec cults comes, certainly left no doubt about this connection:
"That wicked Tezcatlipoca we know as Lucifer, the great devil who, in the midst of heaven, from the very beginning, fomented war, treachery and corruption."
In an attempt to escape the suppressed dark impulses, these forces may be directed toward targets that remain or are intended to remain invisible. As the shadow struggles to manifest, there is often a rationalization of reasons why it had to be done this way. An example of this are certain forms of religious fanaticism with a rigid code of moral conduct, whose members do not even seem to shy away from murder.
Another form of manifesting the shadow is dissociation from it. When people meet another being that represents a part of themselves that they detest, they respond to that being with heightened affect, often violently. In these cases, these people have met their "mirror" who has revealed to them what they so desperately tried to repress. Just a small core is enough, a tiny memory of your own shadow to project it onto the other person in its entirety and often in a completely exaggerated way. This person must be made a scapegoat and destroyed.
Shadow is instinctively associated with the night, blackness and darkness, and these are the Demiurge Tezcatlipoca's salient characteristics.
Despite its frightening appearance, however, there is nothing inherently "evil" about the shadow, and in fact this hidden aspect of self is often the source of humor, creativity, and imagination.
Tezcatlipoca gave his people the drum, the flute and the dance and he stole the fire from the underworld for the Mexicans.
The shadow seems to enable the distinction between us and the world, between order and chaos. And since he is always just a step away from our consciousness, he serves as a gatekeeper to the realms of neither-neither.
THE AZTEC SPIRIT
The Aztecs, too, maintained a strong sense of dualism, which they worshiped in the deity of separate opposites, Ometecuhtli. This was a philosophy that really encouraged black and white thinking. A strict, almost puritanical code of ethics specifically regulated and restricted sex or the use of drugs, and even the slightest deviation from the law, such as cheating or public drunkenness, was punishable by death. There was already a concept of sin that came very close to the medieval Christian concept. As the Aztecs raided and robbed their neighbors, a sense of guilt increased within them, and this in turn prompted a number of purification and debt-relieving rituals. But who was the cause, the source of their guilt? It was Tezcatlipoca, the epitome of guilt.
"Tezcatlipoca, the true source of what we do,
He is diverse, he is proud, he plays with us.
His will is his desire. He takes us in his
Hand, he makes us round and we roll like bullets.
He throws us back and forth.
We make him laugh and he makes fun of us."
[Nahuatl poem quoted by Sahagun]
In this form, Tezcatlipoca appears as "The One Sitting On Our Shoulders":
"Tezcatlipoca, catches all thoughts and twists them into doing what one does not want and suddenly thinks evil, without reason, if one should actually think responsible, good and holy things."
[Quoted by Spence]
To complete the effect of the Aztec shadow's rigid morality and concepts of guilt and punishment, there was a central belief in one's task of being responsible for the survival of the world. The Aztecs saw themselves as having a special responsibility to the sun, for without their help the sun would not be able to appear in the sky and all life would come to an end. In order to keep the course of the sun alive, it seemed necessary to the Aztecs to provide vast amounts of human sacrifices, the blood came from the countless prisoners of war and convicts.
Here you can clearly see the division in Aztec thought: on the one hand they were sinful mortals and slaves to their unconscious urges (one of Tezcatlipoca's names was Titlacahuan, meaning "he whose slaves we are") and on the other hand there were the Aztecs Agents of good with a special mission to preserve all life on earth, a race of humans chosen by God.
Concentrating on the conscious ideals while at the same time suppressing the "sinful" unconscious is fertile ground for a growing shadow self, the special mission for the gods gave the Aztecs a real "license to kill" and they killed veritably and much. The dark cult of the Aztecs claimed countless human lives, alone 20,000 people were slaughtered in 1487 for the consecration of the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan.
Most of the sacrificial rites were held in honor of the god Tezcatlipoca. It was he who eagerly drank the blood of these people.
TEZCATLIPOCA AND SEXUALITY
Few natural instincts have been so socially repressed as sexuality. The Aztecs had a sexual moral code reminiscent of Victorian times. The one who broke these laws was Tzintli (literally: dirt), a particularly bad crime.
Tezcatlipoca was the embodiment of the dark side of sex, a skilled seducer who used sex as a weapon against his victims.
Tradition has it that this dark side of sexuality drove Tezcatlipoca to this world.
He seduced the divine virgin Xochiquetzal ("Delicious Flower") and took her to the underworld. For thus introducing sin into the pantheon, like Lucifer, he was cast down to earth.
He later developed seduction as a tool that he used so successfully, for example, in the aforementioned seizure of power by the Quetzalcoatl dynasty. He lured the Toltecs to their downfall when he, as a merchant of the Huaxtec (who were notorious for their sexual prowess at the time), approached the princess and impregnated her publicly in the marketplace. It was her son Huemac who, by taking power, triggered the civil war that ended Toltec rule. Some say he founded Tollan afterwards, some say he was expelled. The last ruler of the Toltecs was actually named Huemac and he died in a rebellion.
THE ENEMY
Part of the shadow's function is to create an enemy. Others are forced to reverse their own conscious values. This can go so far that the "enemy" is accused of characteristics that he certainly does not even remotely have. It makes little difference whether the shadow suits the enemy or not, as long as there is someone to blame for one's dark side. In the process, what is demonized, dehumanized and destroyed in others is what one's own self cannot or does not want to believe in.
Consequently, the Aztec title of Tezcatlipoca was Yaotl, meaning the enemy. It was his job to sow strife and resentment, to start conflicts and wars.
"Whenever participants in debates quarreled and insulted one another and war seemed inevitable, Tezcatlipoca was responsible for the provocation. His title was therefore Necoc Yaotl, the 'enemy of both sides', underscoring that his intentions and aspirations were not disunity to the advantage of one party.
[Burr, 1979]
Tezcatlipoca was the god of war and enmity, but he was not a god of war in the traditional sense. Usually, a war god is an aspect of collective strength that can be evoked to gain battle strength.
Tezcatlipoca, on the other hand, represented the principle of war without guaranteeing an advantage for one side or the other. He was only interested in creating discord and making people think of each other as enemies.
TALKiNG TO THE SHADOW
The name Tezcatlipoca means "smoking mirror". It comes from a device that is both his symbol and his tool. A round magical mirror made of black obsidian.
Tezcatlipoca used his own mirror to see directly into the heart of every mortal, to learn their innermost thoughts and secrets. It was this black obsidian mirror that he made Quetzalcoatl look into after raping the priestess to reveal his own monstrous and disgusting nature, causing Quetzalcoatl to flee the kingdom in panic.
All devices of this kind were called portals of Tezcatlipoca, gateways to his realm.
In the hands of an Aztec priest, the mirror became an instrument of the oracle. After the ritual preparation, the priest stared at the surface of the powerful device until he fell into a trance. Then the visions began:
"The mirror clouds and shadows cross its surface."
[Nahuatl text quoted by Brundage]
On the black mirror surface, the reflected daylight becomes the darkest night. The sun becomes the moon. Colors can no longer be distinguished, everything appears gray in gray like on a photo negative. The face of the person looking into the magic mirror appears dark and vague. The reflected face of the priest becomes the face of Tezcatlipoca himself and the manifestation of the shadow self is now made. The god-form of Tezcatlipoca transforms into Tezcatlanextia, the "Let-One-See-Things-In-The-Mirror" and the shadow-self leads the conscious mind into the neither-neither world of the unconscious behind the mirror. There the secrets of the future and the hidden thoughts of the people are revealed to the priest.
The Aztecs firmly believed in destiny and these things were revealed in the mirror as a glimpse on the unchanging future.
Tradition has it that Motecuhzoma (Montezuma) himself foretold the arrival of Cortez and the fall of the Aztec Empire years before the actual arrival of the Spaniards in his kingdom in an obsidian mirror. In this mirror he is said to have seen strange, bearded men riding on the backs of deer (horses were not known). He saw these creatures roam Mexico, destroying him and his gods.
It is also interesting that a century later this mirror may have played a part in the destruction of the Spanish themselves, for the mirror came into the possession of Dr. John Dee, the chief occultist of Queen Elizabeth of England, who destroyed the Spanish Armada and broke Spanish supremacy forever.
WELCOME THE SHADOWS
The Aztecs welcomed what most cultures repressed. Not only did they tolerate the difficulties the shadow brought upon them, but they gave supreme importance to this externalized source of inner fear and conflict. This was a very unusual approach to the shadows: they saw value in it.
Perhaps they liked the conflict itself and recognized it as the path along which conflict is often motivating. The Aztecs knew that strife and war can have a strengthening effect on social systems. But it is also possible that their fixation on moral codes and duality allowed them to see the function of "unacceptable" behavior for a culture as an example of comparative thinking. Just as one can best imagine the day as the opposite of the night and one must first understand the "evil" in order to want the "good".
BLACK MAGIC AND THE SHADOW
Black magic was Tezcatlipoca's specialty and he was known as the Left-Handed Jaguar ("Opoche" means left-handed).
The Aztecs associated left-handedness with malice and forbidden magic. Jaguars were symbols of sudden danger and dark mysterious wisdom. The Maya word "Balam" means both at the same time, jaguar and magician.
Through the sorcerers' direct communication with the shadow, they gained tremendous practical utility. In doing so, they opened gates into worlds that normally remain tightly closed. The black magic rituals of the Smoking Mirrors dictated seeing the surface of the mirror floating like the surface of a black lake on the misty wisps. The sorcerer sinks into this lake and sinks to the bottom in total blackness.
The darkness is the magician's protection and the only thing that shields his mind from the madness that comes with suddenly seeing the face of Tezcatlipoca.
So the wise magician will not proceed too quickly, but patiently approach the matter. It's worth it, but it's also dangerous.
Lore has it that a god form of Tezcatlipoca called the "Night Axe" manifests in the darkest of forests. Anyone who happens to be nearby hears sounds like someone chopping wood and becomes aware of a dim light coming from that direction. If the curious follows the light, he will soon realize that it is not a nocturnal lumberjack. For it is Tezcatlipoca in the form of a half-decomposed corpse or rotting skeleton, his eyes burning with an unnatural light and his tongue hanging out of his grinning mouth. But the hacking sound comes from his chest, which opens and closes like a bear trap and reveals a living and beating human heart.
"Only those who dared to draw nearer and lay their hands on the heart could hope to save their lives and sanity. If they had the courage to defy the apparition and take its heart as if it were their own, would find strength, prosperity, and power. Otherwise they would be lost."
The Aztecs also knew a manifestation of Tezcatlipoca named Tloque Nahuaque ("Always There, Always Near") and Yohualli Ehecatl ("Night and Wind" or "Invisible and Untouchable").
What was unusual was that neither the Toltec nor the Aztecs ever had a face for these manifestations, they had no form.
This abstractness protected Tezcatlipoca from any form of traditional worship. The only temple built to the manifestation of Tezcatlipoca as the Tloque Nahuaque / Yohualli Ehecatl stood in the town of Tezcoco and was built by the famous poet and king Nezahualcoyotl. It was a black pyramid with stars on the altar and absolutely unique - being the only pyramid without images of a deity.
