Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes

Brian McDonald

The Passage is documenting a seminar that takes place in Mexico City in 1988. College officials, professors, and others from the United States, Mexico and Japan, observed and visited sacred areas left from the Aztec’s. Scholars from the United States, namely from the university of Colorado at Bolder, also would use work by Carlos Fuentes, to try to see what he had seen in these sacred places. Following investigation of the temples left from the Aztec civilization, many conclusions were drawn about the symbolism of certain images, and figures. Many conclusions drawn involved the idea of the use of center. Links were drawn between how many figures would seem to point at a center, or an axis mundi. Scholars presumed this as links to be involved with the Aztecs belief in their role as the center of their universe.

It is interesting that the Aztecs considered themselves as the center of civilization through the use of sacred place. They are very similar in fact to the Navajo Indians and their land in the four corners. In addition Van Slyke used the area in Wisconsin he depicted as the Garden of Eden to be the center of creation. It seems all humans feel such strong connection to religious experience, that the landscape where it appears to them as the center of the universe. That is how special religious experience can be, and how important it is.

Carrasco, David. Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes. University Press of Colorado, 1999. Pgs xix-xxiv