Ritual Ceremonies

Campesinos also conducted ceremonies individually in their fields, which also were governed by the calendar and complemented official ceremonies held in the temples. It appears that most varieties of maize were planted between February and March, but the main ceremonies in honor of Cincotl and Chicomecoatl, the gods of maize, were held in the month of Huey Tozoztli. Before the rainy season began and while the stalks were still small, campesinos would carry mats made of maize stalks cut in the eighth month to the temples in the city, and during the rite of Etzalcualiztli campesinos would offer food and pulque to their tools. In the month of Huey Tecuilhuitl rites were performed in honor of Xilonen, another god of maize, and in the tenth month, Ochpaniztli, when the maize had begun to ripen, the entire population fasted in the afternoons and pieced their ears, wiping the blood on their foreheads. In the most important maize ritual a young woman was consecrated as an image of the goddess Chicomecoatl (Seven Serpent), who was subjected to a complicated series of rituals leading to her sacrifice. The following day a "living image" of the goddess Toci was offered by doctors and midwives but was accompanied by the priests of Chicomecoatl. Other rites associated with maize would take place later that month, coinciding with the autumnal equinox, consisting of a procession of young priestesses who bore seven maize stalks on their backs accompanied by priests dressed in the skins of sacrificial victims who threw four different colors of maize kernels toward the four cardinal points of the universe.

Although ceremonies in honor of many other gods were held in the temple of Huitzilopochtli, the patron of the Mexica, the three most important were in honor of Huitzilopochtli himself. Perhaps the most important of these was held by the pochteca (merchants) to commemorate Huitzilopochtli's birth. The ritual required a great deal of advance planning, including a series of rituals in which the pochteca had to demonstrate that they had sufficient funds to carry out the sacrifice. They were required to conduct a pilgrimage to Xicalanco, near present-day Ciudad del Carmen in the southeastern state of Campeche, and they also needed to hold four banquets in which they distributed goods to the guests.