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Did the Aztecs have ritual specialists?

Did the Aztecs have ritual specialists?

Aztec soothsayer discussing a new-born baby’s birth date with the mother

ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Chris: After reading the section on tobacco offerings and realizing how common that is to other native tribes throughout the americas it made me wonder if the aztecs had other rituals/ceremonies and perhaps even roles like other tribes do, one example the anishnaabe tribe having only special men be firekeepers who start and keep fires lit during ceremonies like healing rituals along with rules such as the eastern direction symbolizes the masculine strength of fire. Did the aztecs do anything like that and if so how much do we know of it? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Yes, the Mexica had plenty of ritual specialists, from midwives to New Fire Ceremony priests, from astronomers to deity impersonators to sweat bath practitioners... Perhaps the most ‘obvious’ one to choose is the Aztec soothsayer or tonalpouhque in Nahuatl, since his services were called on constantly in daily life. Here’s a brief intro, from the classic book by Jacques Soustelle Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (1970, p. 56):-
’They were educated in the monastery schools, for it was there that a knowledge of the characters used in the divinatory calendar was taught; and indeed this knowledge formed an integral part of the higher education... Soothsayers did not become members of a temple when they were qualified; they set up on their own account. Neither business nor income can have lacked, for every family necessarily went to a soothsayer whenever a child was born; furthermore, there was no important occasion in life, marriage, leaving for a journey or a military expedition, etc., whose date was not fixed by the soothsayers, either at the request of private persons or of officials. Each of these consultations was paid for by a meal [and] by presents, “several cloaks, some turkeys and a load of victuals”’.

Soustelle quotes here from the Florentine Codex compiled soon after the Spanish invasion by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún with the help of a team of Nahua scholars.

The main image too comes from the Codex, scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994. The photo of the Codex Cospi is by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.

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Did the Aztecs have ritual specialists?

Aztec soothsayer discussing a new-born baby’s birth date with the mother

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