Greeting The Dawn

The Sun Disk

“The Sun has come, has risen, the Shining One. How will He fare today? What will He do? Maybe disaster will strike us, His people. O Lord, go and do your noble duty! Bring light to Earth’s Surface!”

Above is my version of one of the traditional Aztec prayers to greet the sun, modeled upon the one recited each morning. (To read the original that inspired this, go HERE and type Tonametl in the “Search in this Book” field. A professional translation of the source prayer is the only hit on page 50, so you can’t miss it.)

Traditionally, a prayer like this was offered right at sunrise, as the Sun, Tonatiuh (literally, “He Goes Forth Shining”), climbed into the sky. It was a daily duty of the priests, and they accompanied their prayer with the beheading of quail, burning copal incense, and possibly autosacrifical bloodletting as well. While the daily offering of quail was generally reserved for the priests and not the general populace, prayer, incense, and autosacrifice were things accessible to all.

The basic structure is simple, and some of its features appear in the longer, more elaborate festival prayers. It has an invocation and a recitation of the god’s name(s), and parallel repetition of phrases. The repetition is a common feature of what was called “lordly speech” in Imperial times, and was a formal style of rhetoric used by nobles and by people addressing the aristocracy. As the Teteo are depicted as the nobility over humans, the same type of formal language is used in prayers addressing them, as all humans would be commoners or macehuales to Them. These techniques combine to show the respect the worshipper has for the gods.

The second half of the prayer consists of contemplation of the future, including the realization that our world is an uncertain, unstable place, and our fortunes could reverse at any time. I wouldn’t be surprised in this context if it is not only a statement of the fragility of mankind, but a subtle plea to Tonatiuh to not be slack in His duties of warming and lighting Tlalticpac (Earth’s Surface). Finally, the prayer closes with a double exhortation to the Teotl to shine with vigor upon the world, the petitioner literally cheering the god on.

If you wish to become more familiar with how the Aztecs composed their prayers and hymns, I recommend visiting my Hymns & Prayers section on the Sacred Texts section of this blog.

September 27, 2008 | Categories: Culture, Interpretations, Literature, Religion | Tags: adorar, antes de la conquista, autosacrifice, Aztec, Aztec religion, Azteca, ética, belief, bloodletting, ceremony, Codex, codices, copal, costumbre, creencia, cultura, culture, deity, devotion, dios, dioses, divine, divinity, ethics, faith, fe, filosofía, god, goddess, gods, himno, hymn, idea, incense, indígena, Indian, indigenous, indio, la religión de los aztecas, macehuales, Mesoamerica, Mexica, Mexicayotl, Mexico, modern, moral, morality, Nahua, offering, ofrenda, oración, philosophy, piedad, piety, prayer, pre-Columbian, pre-Conquest, Pre-Hispanic, Precolumbian, preconquest, Prehispanic, priest, quail, reflexión, religion, rhetoric, ritual, sacerdote, sacred text, sacrifice, sangre, Sun, teología, Teotl, theology, thought, Tlalticpac, Tonametl, Tonatiuh, tradicional, traditional, veneration, worship | 7 Comments