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Ritual parallels in smoking and fighting

28th Oct 2023

Aztec tobacco gear and fighting equipment, Florentine Codex

In the description of a Mexica (Aztec) merchants’ banquet in Book IX of the Florentine Codex, not only is etiquette important, but even the equipment itself has symbolic overtones. Take smoking: ‘The tobacco server, to perform his task, bore the tobacco [tube] in his right hand... And he went bearing the bowl for the tobacco tubes in his left hand. First he offered one the tobacco tube... This denoted the spear thrower or the spear; war equipment; valour...’ (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

‘And the bowl for tobacco tubes stood for the shield, wherefore he bore it in his left hand.’
The same applied to different flowers, to sauce dish (right hand) and tamale basket (left) and to chocolate (cup in right hand, whisk in left...).
Follow the link below to learn more about the Aztec warrior’s use of left and right hands for holding shield and spear.

Source:-
• Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún Book 9 - The Merchants, translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J.O. Anderson, School of American Research and University of Utah, Santa Fe, 1959, p. 34.

Picture source:-
• Images from Book IX of the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994.

Aztec limerick no. 54 (ode to Tobacco)
For the Aztecs it was kind-of habitual
To offer tobacco in ritual.
It wasn’t for smokin’
It was more of a token
To exchange with the gods for some victual.

Aztecs

Maya

Ritual parallels in smoking and fighting

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