After my last post, a piece of text came my way so that I should stop being so horrified about those human sacrifices. In essence it spoke about the attitude and necessity for these rituals.

The Aztecs had no word for 'humamn sacrifice'. For them it was a matter of honor and necessity. Honor to have suceeded in bringing captives for the gods and thereby being recognized byt his people, and necessity since the sun would not move along its course up there in the heavens if it was not fed with a gift equal to its own - which was survival, food, life. So life was exchanged with human blood. This exchange; a sacred debt to the gods was called 'nextlaualli'.

So life had to be paid for. Nothing came free in their worldview. Their myths and tales told of four ages if existence, and in each of them, mankind had been destroyed by the gods. Now they lived in the fifth age and if all tales were to be believed, they all run the risk of being venged upon again. No wonder 'nextlaualli' was a big thing.

Allright, I can understand this better now but can´t suppress a shudder anyway ;)!

*wanders off in search of Huitzilopochtli to have a word with him*