From Catechism to Coatlicue: A Journey of Faith
This article is from the original Chicano in Paris recently moved here to its new home.
When I was a kid, like every other Chicano in L.A., I was shoved into catechism almost as soon as I was in school. I didn’t fit in very well; because English was my primary language and I was an avid reader I was always tasked with reading out loud. Unfortunately, I also had a mouth and a brain so I questioned a lot of the stupid shit in King James’ tome of myths. Eventually I got my first communion done and dad left it up to me if I wanted to continue onto my confirmation.
I did not want to.
This did not stop gramma from dragging me from this church to that. I loved the black church in inner-city LA lead by Brother Abraham. Black people have CHURCH, boy. I hated some of the other churches. Ugh, the Seventh Day Adventists were a snooze-fest. Then one day she dragged me to a Pentecostal church. There was a metal band and girls. I liked both so I stuck around. The pastor looked like Eric Clapton and he was smooth, so I kept sticking around.
To paraphrase Gandhi, I like Jesus I just am not a fan of his people. I liked Jesus so much I considered entering the ministry. Can you imagine how rich I would be if I could park my morals and dupe people out of their money by… never mind. Eventually, I was invited to leave the church and if I am honest, it wasn’t a terribly difficult break-up for me.
When I left I still loved my god, whatever that meant, but I really, really could not stand church. In the thirty plus years since then I have met so many different humans with so many different faiths that I came to realize that there is beauty in almost every faith and absolutely every faith can be (and likely has been) used as a cudgel to hurt, control, and even exterminate others. There have been thousands of gods1 worshiped in human existence. Despite the fact that you’ve likely only heard of a small handful, there are still hundreds, if not thousands worshiped today.
This got me wondering about all of the gods that existed and died throughout human existence. How many gods have we never heard of because her worshipers were absorbed by another group tens of thousands of years ago? Then it hit me like a pot of boiling water in the face: my ancestors had gods that were all but wiped off the face of history thanks to a bunch of syphilitic Spanish Catholic ass-clowns.
But then I remembered I am alive at a time when I literally have the entirety of human information at my fingertips so I got to typing away on my keyboard and devouring whatever I could find about the gods of my ancestors. And while I am nowhere near done learning about the many, many gods that make up the Mexica pantheon, there are definitely a few that have piqued my interest.
Coatlicue is a badass goddess who wears a skirt of writhing snakes and a necklace of human hearts and hands of those sacrificed to her. What? Some gods dress like hippies, and other gods dress for the job they want. My favorite description of her, though, was that she was the soil that grew the maize and the grave the consumed the dead. This was a theme with the Mexica, this belief that life was all a part of a never ending cycle of birth-death-rebirth. Not necessarily in a sort-of-reincarnation, we’re all coming back as someone else and were all the King of England in a previous life sort of way, but in a rich, beautiful, illustrative of the second law of thermodynamics sort of way; energy never dies, it just transforms.
That’s just my take on it, but I’ve been sitting with it for awhile and it makes sense.
Take the god Huitzilopochtli, the child of Coatlicue. Dude was born fighting for his mama because he was conceived in a Mexica version of immaculate conception - a ball of feathers fell from the sky and impregnated her - and her older kids were all, “nah,” and tried to shame kill her. Our boy Huitzilopochtli decided to pop out early, armed to the teeth, and whoop on his siblings for trying to hurt his mama. He straight up rips his sister’s - Coyolxauhqui - head from her body and tosses her down a mountain, fwa! Then he shatters his brother - Centzon Huitznahua - into pieces and tosses him into the night sky, bam! His siblings become the moon and stars respectively while Huitzilopochtli himself becomes the Sun God and the God of War.
You gonna tell him no? I didn’t think so.
And the Mexica believe the battle between siblings is played out every dawn and dusk as the day gives way to night gives way to day. Cyclical.
Even the story of creation itself is a cycle. We are currently in the Fifth Sun2; the fifth cycle of creation. After the world was created and the Sun and Moon hung in the sky, the earth itself was still not much more than a beautiful void. There were no people. Well, there were, but they were all dead, killed at the end of the Fourth Sun in a flood. So, no, we’re not even the first humans. Nope, the one god you may have actually heard of, Quetzalcoatl, the Morning Star, had to steal human bones - humans killed at the end of the Fourth Sun - in order to create, well, you and me.
“Why does a god have to steal human bones?” you ask. Well, after the Fourth Sun ended the human remains were hidden away in the Land of the Dead. A place called Mictlan. And Mictlan was guarded by two gods, the Lord and Lady of the Dead themselves - Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl - who were not exactly in a hurry to give up their precious bones.
But seriously, how cool would it be for your title to be Lord or Lady of the Dead? Can you imagine?
“Hello, what do you do for a living?”
“Me? I’m a lawyer/doctor/whatever. What about you?
“Oh, I am the Lord of the Dead and I can’t wait to have you over at my place. Soon. Very soon.”
*Insert evil laugh* annnnnddddd scene.
Getting to the bones meant getting to Mictlan and getting to Mictlan meant getting through nine levels of the Realm of Death. Fortunately, our hero Quetzalcoatl didn’t have to go it alone. Xolotl, the Evening Star and Quetzalcoatl’s twin, lead the way through the Land of the Dead and down the Nine Levels. Down they went where they made a deal with Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl (I really want to call them M&M, but I won’t) for the human bones.3 Of course, the story wouldn’t be worth telling if Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl were just handed the bones and left to scurry away. Nope, the Lord and Lady of the Dead had no plans to let the Brothers Star leave with their precious bones.
As soon as Quetzalcoatl took the bones and He and His brother turned to leave, the Dead Royalty sent their army of dead after them. Even gods don’t wanna mess with the dead chasing after them. And in classic Hollywood slapstick style Quetzalcoatl trips and falls onto the bones shattering them. But being the best brother in the Pantheon, Xolotl scooped his brother up and dusted him off, “bro, we’re gods, we can put these bones back together, better, stronger than before.” Without another look back at the Army of Dead, they headed back up the Nine Levels and through the Land of the Dead. Had they not, you would not be reading this, so, you know, maybe show some gratitude.
That’s a lot of gods and we haven’t even scratched the surface. But I think next week I want to talk about the Mexica themselves. They weren’t a monolith. Nope. Next time we’ll discuss how they wandered for years looking for a home, how they were made up (mostly) of three distinct tribes, and how they took a lake and turned it into a city that rivaled Paris by the time the Spaniards arrived. They were amazing. Obviously. They made me.
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