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The Aztec religion is the Mesoamerican religion of the Aztecs. Like other Mesoamerican religions, it had elements of human sacrifice in connection with a large number of religious festivals which were held according to patterns of the Aztec calendar. It had a large and ever increasing pantheon; the Aztecs would often adopt deities of other geographic regions or peoples into their own religious practice. Aztec cosmology divided the world into upper and nether worlds, each associated with a specific set of deities and astronomical objects. Important in Aztec religion were the sun, moon and the planet Venus—all of which held different symbolic and religious meanings and were connected to deities and geographical places. Large parts of the Aztec pantheon were inherited from previous Mesoamerican civilizations and others, such as Tlaloc, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, were venerated by different names in most cultures throughout the history of Mesoamerica. For the Aztecs especially important deities were Tlaloc the god of rain, Huitzilopochtli the patron god of the Mexica tribe, Quetzalcoatl the culture hero and god of civilization and order, and Tezcatlipoca the god of destiny and fortune, connected with war and sorcery. Each of these gods had their own temples within the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan—Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli were both worshipped at the Templo Mayor, and a third monument in the plaza before the Templo Mayor is thought to have been a shrine devoted to the wind god Ehecatl, known to be an aspect of Quetzalcoatl. A common Aztec religious practice was the recreation of the divine: Mythological events would be ritually recreated and living persons would impersonate specific deities and be revered as a god—and often ritually sacrificed. ==Teotl== (詳細はgod", but may have held more abstract aspects of divinity or supernatural energy akin to the Polynesian concept of Mana.〔Taube and Miller 1999, pp 89. For a lengthy treatment of the subject see Hvidtfeldt, 1958〕 The nature of ''Teotl'' is a key element in the understanding of the fall of the Aztec empire, because it seems that the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II and the Aztecs in general referred to Cortés and the conquistadors as "Teotl"—it has been widely believed that this means that they believed them to be gods, but a better understanding of "Teotl" might suggest that they were merely seen as "mysterious" and "inexplicable".〔Restall 2001 pp 11.6–118〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Aztec religion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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