30 May 2025 / 10 House
Mexica women kept the empire on the road!
At the centre of every Aztec home was the hearth and the grinding-stone (the metate). And Mexica women were the guardians of the grinding-stone, the fire of life and the home...
Ever since the goddess Cihuacoatl (“Serpent Woman”) had once ground on her own stone the seeds to make the dough to make human flesh, human women had knelt by their metates, making the tortillas that let life go on.
Aztec women offered the food they made to their families AND to the gods. Food offerings were regularly left at the family altars, which women swept and cleaned. By keeping everything clean and tidy they were doing their sacred duty of keeping chaos and danger at bay.
The Aztec house - calli in Náhuatl - wasn’t just a place to sleep, it was the building block of Aztec life, community, society, empire... and of the universe itself!
When Aztec men went off to fight in wars, they couldn’t exactly come home for dinner! They needed food wrapped in tortillas, or toasted maize. Little wonder that women’s work of cooking and preparing the corn was highly valued.
Little wonder too that corn was divine: sometimes women talked to the maize kernels as they poured them out, saying sweetly that they wanted to warm the corn with their breath so it wouldn’t fear the heat of the fire...