Tag Archives: Aztec

Control of blood

February 4, 2020

E.C. Spary United Kingdom Figure 1. Blood spurting from the neck of a decapitated human sacrifice in this bas-relief on the wall of this Mayan temple at Chichen Itza (Yucatan, Mexico) transforms into snakes, indicating its connection to power, life and death. Blood, that vivid liquid within our bodies, has an attraction for human cultures […]

Cranium: the symbolic powers of the skull

August 29, 2019

F. Gonzalez-Crussi Chicago, Illinois, USA   It Was a Man and a Pot. Georgia O’Keeffe. 1942. Crocker Art Museum Of all bodily parts, the head has traditionally enjoyed the greatest prestige. The Platonic Timaeus tells us that secondary gods (themselves created by the Demiurge) copied the round form of the universe to make the head, […]

The story of chocolate

September 27, 2018

Merve Berber Ankara, Turkey     An Aztec woman generates foam by pouring chocolate from one vessel to another From the Codex Tudela Chocolatl, meaning “bitter water,” was the earliest form of chocolate. It was a beverage that contained the seed of the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) and was consumed by the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations of […]