Carl Jung on “Aztecs” – Quotations
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
Among the Taos Pueblos, a virgin was made pregnant by beautiful stones and bore a hero son, who, owing to Spanish influence, assumed the aspect of the Christ child.
The stone plays a similar role in the Aztec cycle of legends. For instance, the mother of Quetzalcoatl was made pregnant by a precious green stone. He himself had the cognomen “priest of the precious stone” and wore a mask made of turquoise. The precious green stone was an animating principle and was placed in the mouth of the dead. Man’s original home was the “bowl of precious stone” ~Carl Jung, CW 13 Para 132
At the Aztec human sacrifices criminals played the part of gods: they were slaughtered and flayed, and the priests then wrapped themselves in the dripping pelts in order to represent the gods’ resurrection and renewal ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 503
The Christian parallel is obvious. It is hardly necessary to suppose any Christian influence here, since Fray Bernardino de Sahagún had already described the eucharist of Huitzilopochtli among the Aztecs early in the sixteenth century. This god, too, was ceremonially eaten ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 522
The flaying of the god, which we have already touched on in connection with the ceremonies of the Aztecs, is intimately bound up with the snake-like nature of the hero ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 594
