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For the Aztecs, Day of
the Dead rituals helped people find balance in their personal
lives and social ties. Eyepix/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Growing up in the United States, I remember on Halloween my mother
used to say, Honey, this is not just a day for costumes and
candy. You must also remember your relatives. Know their names.
She would show me pictures of great-aunts, uncles and other deceased
relatives.
Meanwhile, my family members in Mexico observed Day of the Dead,
a national holiday that is celebrated from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2. They
would build small altars at home to honor their loved ones, and
put food, drinks, photos and other personal items on them. They
similarly decorated their ancestors graves.
These days, I am part of a small group
of researchers who are working
to recover Aztec philosophy. My focus is on Aztec ethics, which
the Aztecs thought of as the
art of living well, but we call the pursuit of happiness.
Ive learned that Day of the Dead rituals, which date back
to Mexicos pre-Columbian peoples and are observed all over
the Americas, are deeply rooted in Aztec ethics.
A brief introduction to Aztec philosophy
Shortly after Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in
1492, Spanish people colonized the region. In 1521 the Aztec empire
fell
in a two-year war led by the Spaniard Hernán Cortés.
Afterwards, Spanish priests wanted to understand the native population
in order to convert them to Christianity. They painstakingly detailed
the Aztecs beliefs in volumes of material written in Nahuatl,
the Aztec language. The most important of these sources is the Florentine
Codex, written between 1547 and 1577.
The basic problem of life for the Aztecs, according to these sources,
is that humans arent perfect they make mistakes. The
earth is slippery, slick, the Aztecs would say. And to
avoid falling into error, people need to live a balanced life on
three different levels: in their psyches, their bodies and their
society.
The top individual goal in Aztec ethics, then, is for people to
balance their psyche. It is done by aligning the heart, or yollotl,
and face, or ixtli. By heart, the Aztecs meant thoughts
and desires. By face, they meant the rational organization
of those desires.
Where Day of the Dead fits in
For the Aztecs, then, a happy life is achieved through balance.
Individually, this means balancing ones face and
heart, but socially this involves friends, family and
ancestors. Day of the Dead rituals help with this social balance.
Its important to note that the heart is a metaphor
for all of the bodys desires. Also, the Aztecs did not distinguish
minds from bodies. They believed each region of the body had its
own mind. For example, our eyes think one way, our ears
another, and our skin another way still. As the scholar Alfredo
Lopéz Austin argues,
the Aztecs thought of consciousness as the result of this ecosystem
of minds, with each mind competing for attention and expressing
its own desires.
Within this ecosystem of minds, the Aztecs believed that three
regions held the highest concentration of the cosmic forces that
make humans living, moving beings: the heart (the physical heart,
in this case), the head and the liver.
The heart houses the yolia, which expresses ones
conscious and remembered personality. The head houses the tonalli,
which expresses
the strength of ones character and destiny. And the liver
houses the ihiyotl, which is responsible for our breathing
and health.
When we die, the Aztecs believed these three powers separate from
our bodies. The ihiyotl, or breath, immediately rejoins nature.
The tonalli, or vital strength, returns as energy to be called on
in need. Ones yolia. or personality, however, travels
to the land of the dead, called Mictlán. There, it endures
a series of trials, including hunger and cold winds.
To help in the journey, each persons yolia is accompanied
by a little yellow dog and whatever offerings ones loved ones
make. Thats why on various days of the year not only
during Day of the Dead family
members are supposed to help the yolia of recently deceased
relatives by offering them food, drink and other gifts at their
home shrines.
But after four years, the yolia finishes its journey and rejoins
the fundamental
energy of the universe ometeotl, or god.
All that remains of the deceased, then, is their force of personality
as tonalli, which, the Aztecs believed, could be called on by remembering
their name.
By remembering our ancestors, Aztecs thought, we help balance our
lives while were here on Earth and also support our loves
ones in their afterlife. This, in essence, is the purpose of the
Day of the Dead that many observe today.
Lynn
Sebastian Purcell
Associate Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York
College at Cortland
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