Aztec Religion: Did you mean...?

Atlalli, ink on parchment, unknown artist, included in the Florentine Codex by Bernardino de Sahagún, Mexico, 1577. A farmer in Mexico cultivates irrigated land. Water has a swirling texture while the land is sparsely...

Xipe Totec (pron. Xi-pe To-tec) or 'Flayed One' in Nahuatl, was a major god in ancient Mesoamerican culture and particularly important for the Toltecs and Aztecs. He was considered the god of spring, the patron god of seeds and planting...

A belief in an afterlife was central to every major civilization of the ancient world and this encouraged the recognition of the reality of ghosts as the spirits of the departed who, for one...

An Aztec spouted jug. Mexico, 1450-1521 CE. (St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri)

The lighting of fires during the Aztec New Fire Ceremony of 1507, a ritual held every 52 years to ensure the continuation of the Sun. The priests carry fire bundles and wear turquoise masks in imitation of the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli...

Mithra is the Persian god of the rising sun, contracts, covenants, and friendship. He also oversaw the orderly change of the seasons, maintained cosmic order, and was responsible for bestowing divine grace on kings, legitimizing their...

Our Lady of Guadalupe, also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, is a title for a particular image of Mary, Mother of Jesus, as she appeared in the New World in the years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico...

Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, 'Dawn Lord,' was a Mesoamerican god who represented a menacing aspect of Venus, the morning star, and was one of the four gods which held up the sky. The people of the ancient Americas believed his rays...

The fall in 1519 of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica or Aztec Empire, as it was later called, laid the foundation for the Spanish colonial empire on the North American mainland...

The Toltec civilization flourished in ancient central Mexico between the 10th and mid-12th centuries. Continuing the Mesoamerican heritage left to them by earlier cultures, the Toltecs built an impressive capital at Tollan...