The ancient Americans, like most
primitive societies, worshipped and feared a huge pantheon of powerful
beings who controlled every aspect of their lives. If a thing was worth
bothering about there was a god for it, including Huix-tocihuatl, goddess
of salt and Tlatolteotl, goddess of licentious-ness! There was even
a special goddess of the maguey!
The four cardinal points, each with its
special color, animals and gods, represented the four previous creations
as symbolized by earth, air, fire and water. Our present, and frighteningly
temporary, world is the fifth sun. Only Tezcatlipoca appears in all
quadrants, though oddly at variance with the usual color associations.
He is black in the white north, blue in the yellow west and white in
the black south. Only in the red east does he deign to wear the right
color. Deities associated with the south, gods and goddesses of the
dance, drinking, pleasure, beauty and flowers, seem, on the whole, the
most attractive lot.
Since pagan beliefs were much the same
world-wide it is hardly surprising that many pre-Columbian deities have
their counterparts in old-world mythologies. Nor was it a unique concept
that the world had been destroyed four times, twice by flood, and would
be destroyed again by cataclysmic earthquake at the end of some 52-year
cycle. Concepts of afterlife, including 13 heavens and 9 hells, are
startlingly similar. They even believed, like the Norse, in a Valhalla
reserved for those who died in battle or childbirth. All others were
required to spend at least some time in purgatory, though suicides were
doomed there for all eternity. Tlalocan was a special paradise reserved
for those sacrificed to Tlaloc or killed by lightning and, oddly, those
who died of dropsy or skin diseases. Good souls rejoiced forever in
the shade of the heavenly tree, Yaxche; bad ones suffered eternal torment
in Mitnal. The rest awaited rebirth in Mictlan.......
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