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Ritual weeping (2)

16th Feb 2024

Aztec children crying as they’re punished; Codex Mendoza fol. 59

In our very early entry (c. 2008) on the Mexica-Aztecs and ritual weeping (link below) we barely scratched the surface of the range of contexts where this occurred. There were many! Scholars agree that overall the Aztecs cried far more often than their European counterparts. Like in any society, they cried in pain, in sorrow and grief - but they also cried in circumstances that today we might find quite unusual... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

In the main picture, above (from the Codex Mendoza, fol. 59), in each row (‘register’) the children are crying while being punished by their parents - a universal human response. Mexica children, we know, were warned from a very early age (literally - by the midwife at the moment of birth!) that suffering would be a constant companion in life: in López Austin’s words ‘Life is a brief period in which sorrow is something normal and natural’ (1988 I: 249). Thanks to the Florentine Codex we also know that this preparation for a tough life ahead was also drummed into young Aztec adults’ minds on multiple occasions, through the speeches of elders (huehuetlatolli): to give one example, rulers and noblemen would advise their sons ‘to seek the humble life as their honoured forefathers had, saying “The more they were honoured, the more they wept, suffered affliction, sighed; they became most humble, most meek, most contrite”’ (Berdan & Rieff Anawalt, 1992: 159). It seems that weeping was universally regarded as not only healthy but also as worthy and indeed honourable.
A tear - ixayotl in Nahuatl - was the very emblem of suffering. At the same time, whilst parents taught their offspring to prepare for a life on Earth of pain, sorrow and anguish, cosmic duality dictated that, to avoid despair, there had to be an upside - divine gifts of pleasure, however fleeting these might be...

This is the message of the following text, from a speech by a Mexica father to his adolescent daughter:-
The earth is not a pleasant place. There is no contentment, no happiness. They say there is only joy mixed with weariness, only joy with affliction on this earth. This is what the elders say: so that we do not live in tears forever, so that men do not die of sadness, he, Our Lord, deigns to give us laughter, dreams, our sustenance, our strength, our courage. And, in addition: that which is earthy so there will be reproduction... All of this enhances life on earth, so that no-one will spend it weeping. (López Austin, 1988: I, 248).
Of course, tears were shed to express the pain of personal death and loss - indeed, mourning was a specialist Mexica ritual in its own right (follow the link below to learn more). The sources suggest that the weeping went further: the Aztecs regularly cried to honour the memory of prestigious individuals who had died. Often this involved song, or more precisely ‘flower-song’ - the Nahuatl term for poetry, of which they were prodigious exponents. Indeed, as John Bierhorst explains, for the Aztecs ‘singing is equated with weeping’ (1985: 23).
And inevitably, being a warrior people, a theme that features strongly in this genre is the invoking, or ‘recalling’ of ‘ghost warriors’ - flowers representing the souls of brave dead warriors, ‘brought to earth by an act of remembrance’ (ibid).

‘To sing a dead warrior’s praises is to do more than perpetuate his memory - it is literally to bring his spirit to earth’, ‘pleasured’ or ‘entertained’, that is coaxed down, with music (ibid). When undertaken collectively, as Caroline Egan explains in her feature on weeping in Nahuatl poetry (link below), ‘tears fall in a raining mist’. The connection between tears, war and sacrifice is shown iconographically on the famous wooden tlalpanhuehuetl from Malinalco, one of the very few original Aztec war drums to have survived. In the beautifully carved ‘text’, eagle and jaguar warriors are depicted singing and dancing - and crying (see pic 3). The principal (eagle) figure is shown symbolically flying upwards - ‘a warrior spirit released to the Sun’; as Inga Clendinnen explains, however, the scene is ambiguous: ‘Are they [the warriors] already victims. or do they weep in ecstatic commitment to their ultimate fate?’ (1991: 240-1).
Aztec warriors who died in battle or who were sacrificed by their captors of course died away from home: without their loved ones’ bodies to grieve over, their widows - there would have been many (see pic 2) - going to extremes in their mourning, screaming, wailing, crying, ritually refraining from washing, until the prescribed mourning period was at an end (learn more via the link below).

Naturally, weeping - expressed in poetry - could also evoke and recall a past delight, pleasure or success, which might equally move the poet-singer to tears. But more often than not we see tears in contexts of grief - or ominous foreboding; and we realise that not just Aztec children and adults cry but gods too! In Book 8 of the Florentine Codex the scribes document the achievements of successive Mexica rulers. During the reign of the ninth (Moctezuma II), ‘it happened that [the goddess] Cihuacoatl went about weeping, at night. Everyone heard it wailing and saying: “My beloved sons, now I am about to leave you”’ (1979: 3). This incident may, incidentally, have inspired the post-invasion myth of La Llorona (‘Wailing Woman’ - learn more, below...), ‘although she presents a rather different picture, in which deprivation, revenge, or malice is the motive for her wailing’ (Read & Gonzalez, 2002: 203).

In our earlier piece we touched on three contexts for ritual Aztec weeping: as part of citizens’ appeals for help to a higher authority, in giving thanks for benefits or rewards received (we could add to this the related context of what Escalante Gonzalbo [2004: 249] calls ‘political weeping’ during important public negotiations, mentioned in several instances by Spanish chroniclers*), and when petitioning Tlaloc for life-giving rain. In this latter context we find another example of a deity him/herself weeping symbolically (pic 5). Not only the Mexica but throughout ancient Mesoamerica there was a strong metaphorical connection - indeed a ritual gift exchange - between tears and drops of life-giving rain.

* Knab (2003: 171) notes that, even today ‘Ritual weeping in political speeches is common among the Huichol and is commonly seen in supplications in Maya-speaking regions and among speakers of Modern Aztec dialects’.

Sources/references:-
• Berdan, Frances F. & Rieff Anawalt, Patricia (1997) The Essential Codex Mendoza, University of California Press
• Bierhorst, John (1985) Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs, Stanford University Press
• Clendinnen, Inga (1991) Aztecs: an interpretation, Cambridge University Press
• Escalante Gonzalbo, Pablo (2004) Historia de la vida cotidiana en México, vol. 1 Mesoamérica y los ámbitos indígenas de la Nueva España, Colegio de México/Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico DF
• Florentine Codex, Book 8 - Kings and Lords (1979) trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson & Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research/University of Utah
• Knab, Timothy (2003) Ed.) A Scattering of Jades: Stories, Poems and Prayers of the Aztecs trans. Thelma D. Sullivan, University of Arizona Press
• López Austin, Alfredo (1988) The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, trans. Thelma and Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, vol. 1, University of Utah Press
• Read, Kay Almere & Gonzalez, Jason J. (2002) Mesoamerican Mythology, Oxford University Press.

Picture sources:-
• Main & pic 2: images scanned from our own copy of the Codex Mendoza, James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938
• Pic 1: image scanned from Códice Durán - Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e Islas de Tierra Firme, Arrendedora Internacional, Mexico City, 1990
• Pic 3: photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Pic 4: image from the Florentine Codex scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 5: photo by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore
• Pic 6: image scanned from Huehuehtlahtolli: Testimonios de la antigua palabra, SEP/Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico DF , 1991.

Aztec limerick no. 59 (ode to ritual weeping) -
There was a young girl who asked why
Were the Aztecs so willing to cry.
In a land of two seasons –
Ask Tlaloc the reason –
He’ll tell you: ‘Appease me or die’!