{"id":22614,"date":"2020-10-30T22:41:56","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T22:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=22614"},"modified":"2020-11-02T11:08:02","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T11:08:02","slug":"what-day-of-the-dead-tells-us-about-the-aztec-philosophy-of-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-day-of-the-dead-tells-us-about-the-aztec-philosophy-of-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"What Day of the Dead tells us about the Aztec philosophy of happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lynn Sebastian Purcell<\/a>, State University of New York College at Cortland <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Growing up in the United States, I remember on Halloween my mother used to say, \u201cHoney, this is not just a day for costumes and candy. You must also remember your relatives. Know their names.\u201d She would show me pictures of great-aunts, uncles and other deceased relatives.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 graves.<\/p>\n

These days, I am part of a small group of researchers<\/a> who are working to recover<\/a> Aztec philosophy. My focus is on Aztec ethics, which the Aztecs thought of as the art of living well<\/a>, but we call the pursuit of happiness.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve learned that Day of the Dead rituals, which date back to Mexico\u2019s pre-Columbian peoples and are observed all over the Americas, are deeply rooted in Aztec ethics.<\/p>\n

A brief introduction to Aztec philosophy<\/h2>\n

Shortly after Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492, Spanish people
\ncolonized the region. In 1521 the Aztec empire fell in a two-year war<\/a> led by the Spaniard Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, Spanish priests wanted to understand the native population in order to convert them to Christianity. They painstakingly detailed the Aztecs\u2019 beliefs in volumes of material written in Nahuatl, the Aztec language. The most important of these sources is the \u201cFlorentine Codex<\/a>,\u201d written between 1547 and 1577.<\/p>\n

The basic problem of life for the Aztecs, according to these sources, is that humans aren\u2019t perfect \u2013 they make mistakes. \u201cThe earth is slippery, slick<\/a>,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cheart,\u201d the Aztecs meant thoughts and desires. By \u201cface,\u201d they meant the rational organization of those desires.<\/p>\n

Where Day of the Dead fits in<\/h2>\n

For the Aztecs, then, a happy life is achieved through balance. Individually, this means balancing one\u2019s \u201cface\u201d and \u201cheart,\u201d but socially this involves friends, family and ancestors. Day of the Dead rituals help with this social balance.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note that the \u201cheart\u201d is a metaphor for all of the body\u2019s desires. Also, the Aztecs did not distinguish minds from bodies. They believed each region of the body had its own \u201cmind.\u201d For example, our eyes think one way, our ears another, and our skin another way still. As the scholar Alfredo Lop\u00e9z Austin<\/a> argues<\/a>, the Aztecs thought of consciousness as the result of this ecosystem of minds, with each mind competing for attention and expressing its own desires.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>: the heart (the physical heart, in this case), the head and the liver.<\/p>\n

The heart houses the \u201cyolia,\u201d which expresses one\u2019s conscious and remembered personality. The head houses the \u201ctonalli,\u201d which expresses the strength of one\u2019s character and destiny<\/a>. And the liver houses the \u201cihiyotl,\u201d which is responsible for our breathing and health.<\/p>\n

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. One\u2019s yolia. or personality, however, travels to the land of the dead<\/a>, called Mictl\u00e1n. There, it endures a series of trials, including hunger and cold winds.<\/p>\n

To help in the journey, each person\u2019s yolia is accompanied by a little yellow dog and whatever offerings one\u2019s loved ones make. That\u2019s why on various days of the year \u2013 not only during Day of the Dead \u2013 family members are supposed to help<\/a> the yolia of recently deceased relatives by offering them food, drink and other gifts at their home shrines.<\/p>\n

[Deep knowledge, daily.<\/em> Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

But after four years, the yolia finishes its journey and rejoins the fundamental energy of the universe<\/a> \u2013 \u201cometeotl,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

By remembering our ancestors, Aztecs thought, we help balance our lives while we\u2019re 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.\"The<\/p>\n

Lynn Sebastian Purcell<\/a>, Associate Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York College at Cortland <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lynn Sebastian Purcell, State University of New York College at Cortland Growing up in the United States, I remember on Halloween my mother used to say, \u201cHoney, this is not just a day for costumes and candy. You must also remember your relatives. Know their names.\u201d She would show me pictures of great-aunts, uncles and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":22615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2450],"tags":[7158,7156,485,196,3703,388,581,2875,416],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22614"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22639,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22614\/revisions\/22639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}