The Ordinary Face of Aztec Blood Offering

Human sacrifice draws most modern attention to Aztec religion, but autosacrifice was the far more common and far more personal form blood offering took, performed routinely rather than reserved for a rare ceremony. The Florentine Codex, compiled under Bernardino de Sahagun with Nahua informants after the conquest, describes priests drawing blood from their own ears, legs and other parts of the body multiple times a day as a basic devotional discipline, and depicts commoners doing the same at household shrines, at the dedication of a new building, on a child's naming day and before major undertakings such as a journey or a marriage.

Maguey spines, from the same agave plant that supplied fiber, food and the fermented drink pulque, were the everyday instrument, while spines from stingrays traded up from the Gulf and Pacific coasts carried higher ritual prestige and were reserved for more significant occasions and higher status practitioners, including rulers depicted piercing their own tongues or ears in codex illustrations of royal accession and temple dedication ceremonies. Archaeologists have recovered bloodstained paper offerings and spine fragments from household shrine deposits as well as temple precincts, physical evidence that the practice reached well beyond the priesthood into everyday domestic devotion across Aztec society.