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At the time of the Spanish conquest, the religion of the Aztecs was polytheistic, based on the worship of a multitude of personal gods, most of them with well-defined attributes. Nevertheless, magic and the idea of certain impersonal and occult forces played an important role among the people. There was, in addition, among the uneducated classes tendency to exaggerate polytheism by conceiving of as gods, also, what to the priests, were only manifestations or attributes of one god ( Caso, 1987 ). Even though there was a magical and impersonal background in the religion of the Aztec people, as well as an exaggerated polytheism, there is also evidence to support that Aztec priests tried to reduce the multiple divinities to different aspects of the same god. When they adopted the gods of conquered peoples or received gods from peoples of more advanced cultures, the priests would always try to incorporate them, like the Romans, into their own national pantheon, by considering them as diverse manifestations of the gods they had inherited from the great civilizations which preceded them and from which they had derived their culture ( Leon-Portilla, 1970 ).
Although the Aztec priests tried to unite in a single concept the different gods of the different tribes the people as a whole would not admit that their local god was subject to any other or that he was only an attribute of a superior being. An exception to this generalized thought was Huitzilopochtli, the Aztecs' own tribal god, and other deities associated with him in the national myths kept alive by Aztec pride. In later legends this god is associated with the creation of the world, occupying a space similar to that held by the traditional Toltec and Teotihuacan gods and by those ...
has been a historical mystery for centuries. Very little facts have been uncovered in the origin of or the truth behind its authors. Not until 1993 on an archeological site in Dan has there been any solid evidence. A flat basalt stone with Aramaic letters etched into its surface had a reference to King David and it dated back to the ninth century...
The Puritans in the time of the Salem Witch trials showed that it was possible for humans to lose all 'rational' thought and blindly condemn people to death. Arthur Miller, a contemporary American playwright, dramatized these proceedings in the attempt to mirror the McCarthy investigations, and show how absurd they truly were. Arthur Miller says o...
Crucifixion probably first began among the Persians. Alexander the Great introduced the practice to Egypt and Carthage, and the Romans appeared to have learned of it from the Carthaginans. Although the Romans did not invent crucifixion, they perfected it as a form of torture and capital punishment that was designed to produce a slow death with maxi...
The word means "enlightened one." It is used today as a title to the one who has given us more religious beliefs than almost any other human who lived in this world. However, he was not given this name at birth; he had to earn it for himself by undergoing long, hard hours of meditation and contemplation. has changed the lifestyles of many cult...
are both major religions of the world. Christianity is emerged from Judaism and developed as a separate religion by the efforts of St.Paul. not only have similarities but they have also many differences concerning their concept of God, teachings and the rituals. The concept of god is quite different in Christianity and Judaism. Judaism was based o...
