#conquistador
The Aztec religion, polytheistic and based on nature incorporated the main god of tribes they conquered. This, however, gave them such a large amount of gods that it became impossible to worship them all. Which led to the formation of separate cults which worshiped one god supreme and others as minor gods. This can be compared loosely to the many separate branches of Christianity such as Protestant, Catholic, Lutheran, or in particular, to Catholicism and the Saints.
Aztec legend of the creation of mankind and the origins of the Aztec tribe tie directly into reasons for human sacrifice. The main points in these legends is that the gods sacrificed for humans, thus, humans must sacrifice for the gods. Furthermore, the gods depended on humans for the precious liquid chalchihuatl, – human blood to sustain themselves. In Catholicism Christ was crucified to pay for human sins, in turn, Catholics sacrifice during lent, but also throughout the year. There is a close parallel between the Aztec gods need for blood and Catholic communion: the Catholic priest who is the representative of god is always the first one to drink the communion wine, the symbol of blood.
Another parallel is the legend of the creation of the Aztec tribe and the creation of the god Huitzilopochtli, one of the most important Aztec gods.
Huitzilopochtli was conceived spontaneously by a ball of down touching his mother. In Catholicism the Virgin Mary was visited by an angel with feathered wings to tell her that she was to give birth to the Messiah.
Moreover, Huitzilopochtli the god of the sun made the Aztec his chosen people in the same manner that the Hebrews where God’s chosen people in Judaism. Since Christ the Messiah was Jewish, the followers of Christ became the chosen people of god. Another very similar characteristic between the two religions is the fact that they both had saviors. Jesus Christ came to earth to teach humans religion and proper behavior; the god Quetzalcoatl also came to teach people this. They both said that they would come again.
The Aztecs view of death was similar to the Christian view. They believed that there was a hell called Mictlán and a Heaven called Tlalocán. Mictlán was ruled by the god Mictlatecuhtli and Tlalocán was ruled by Tlaloc the rain god and Huitzilopochtli the warrior god in the same manner that Satan rules hell and Jesus and God rule heaven.
The world of the dead was composed 9 levels below and 13 levels above the earth. The period in hell was not permanent but considered a 4 year journey, during this time the family of the deceased made many offering and sacrifices to make the journey easier. The remnants of this Aztec belief is the present day Mexican celebration of Día De Los Muertos where people set up altars for the deceased and make food offering. In preparation for De Los Muertos candy skeletons and skeleton bread are sold throughout Mexico, this has grounds in the fact that Mictlatecuhtli the Aztec god of the dead was a skeleton.
The Aztecs’ belief in how to arrive in heaven are very different from most main stream religions. They believe that entrance to heaven is based on the amount of suffering during life. For instance a new born baby would go to hell for he had not suffered enough during life. In Catholicism a baby would go to limbo if not baptized prior to death for Baptism in the catholic faith is the washing away of original sin. Limbo is a midway point between heaven, hell and earth.
But if a baby is baptized before death, he is immediately guaranteed entrance in heaven. The people who had suffered such as warriors, sacrificial victims, mothers who died giving birth and slaves were to enter heaven, just like good people do in the Catholic religion. Furthermore, stealing was considered bad as where most things looked upon as sins in Catholicism. The Aztec temples were a place of worship like a church.
The Spanish priests were quick to see these parallels and made use of them. The priests used the already existing religion and made changes. For instance they might change the savior’s name from Quetzalcoatl to Christ they might change the virgin from Coatlicue to Mary and the method of virgin conception from a ball of down to the speaking of a Feathered angel. These changes made it easy for the Aztecs to switch religions. One of the most important factors was that by converting to Catholicism the Aztecs were given the opportunity to place themselves on the social ladder with the Spanish. This means that Mexico started to form a new culture mixed with both the Spanish and Aztec in both blood and ideals.
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[DevArt]
Poster-like sketch. Why did I draw it?
Although I love Ubisoft ever since “Prince of Persia”, “Beyond Good and Evil”, Ezio Auditore, and much more, I absolutely not approve of another pop-cultured Scandinavian lore. NOT AGAIN! Hollywood did it, game industry did, for over a decade this has been a special kind of mainstream. Please do not consider this as anything negative towards the developers - I believe the game itself, as their job at Ubisoft, is tremendous! As usual :)
Our world is a wonderful place, full of unbelievable civilizations. One of those is Mesoamerican. Imagine yourself being an Assassin, a trusted face of El-Dorado city that has promised to the tribes keep this Isu city away from the guns of Spanish Conquerors.
A local Apple of Eden, Isu Artifact is an earthly representation of the Sun and/or Gods, the Isu. Imagine the conquistadors being like the templars, like the Cult of Kosmos to the cradle of South American civilization.
I was instantly inspired while discussing it with my friend, and I only hope this will come true in “Assassin’s Creed: El Dorado” some day.
I’m heading to Spain next week for an #mtg event hosted by Arcanis Project. This will be my first trip to Spain. I’m looking forward to meeting new fans from this part of the world! #mtgaddicts #art #ixalan #magicthegathering #guestartist #conquistador #vampire #spain
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Sometimes less is more but sometimes more is more. This one is from last month. I thought I stopped too early, maybe I didn’t though. Who knows?
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The Bored Conquistador 2018 ink on paper 42cm x 60cm
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#inkdrawing #drawing #disegno #linedrawing #contemporaryart #contemporaryartist #contemporarydrawing #arte #arteitaliana #artecontemporanea #artecontemporaneo #artcontemporain #kunst #nycart #hamont #canadianart #vancouverart #montrealart #torontoart #horse #horsebackriding #riding #conquistador #arthistory #cubism
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On page 21 of California by Kevin Starr, he describes the Spanish Explorer’s willingness to believe in fanciful tales like those of cities of gold or fountains of youth. Specifically he says “Today it is easy to dismiss such stories as fairy tales, but in the early sixteenth century, among a people not yet fully emerged from a medieval mindset and gifted with vivid imaginations, such myths and legends possessed the power to motivate some of the most arduous and heroic overland and maritime expeditions in human history.” This is rather sweeping and grandiose, and it seems foolish to describe actions motivated by apparent greed and ending in the destruction of entire populations as “heroic.” Further it seems to obscure historical processes and perpetuate a certain arrogance in assuming a “medieval mindset” – something we apparently don’t have to worry about anymore – as the agent for human gullibility.
These “heroic” men were apparently looking for what the stories had promised them (as you can learn from a closer reading of the Calafia tale), specifically beautiful and exotic women who would marry them, convert to their religions and in doing assure European ego’s of their superiority, all while presenting them with their very kingdoms, gold jewels and a life of leisure in terrestrial paradise. These men ended up affording that leisure with the slave labor of Indians, and while they didn’t find any ravishing, willing, amazons they did find plenty of opportunities for rape.
Again, I don’t think this is a product of some former mindset humans have evolved past. Large endeavors with gruesome consequence are still organized around media spin and the manipulation of public opinion through modern lies and ‘fairy tales,’ i.e. a foreign invasion will be greeted as a liberating force of democracy, or individual terrorist acts that come with the promised reward of 'virgins’ in heaven.
So Donny Trump wants to emasculate the American military by firing all the trans soldiers. (I see what I did there.)
This desecration of human rights is not something that can be casually brushed aside to start a conversation about the history of trans people fighting for their countries. Even if no evidence existed of transsexual, transgendered or two-spirited soldiers becoming battlefield heroes, this hideous embrace of discrimination would still be immoral.
Therefore, please consider this post to be part of a secondary argument: that women who biologically started life as boys and men who biologically started life as girls have served in armies with integrity and courage. The war against terror (or whatever it’s being called these days) will become harder to win (if that’s even possible) by Trump’s transphobia; in short, he is putting the lives of Americans at risk for the sake of his prejudices.
There’s a problem of language when examining the lives of this cadre of soldiers. Dr. Harry Benjamin coined the word transsexualism in its current meaning in 1953, while transgenderism does not appear in the lexicon until the late 1980s. In the absence of accurate words, it is difficult to distinguish between disguise, cross-dressing and sexual or gender identification. For Alonso Diaz Ramirez de Guzman, a conquistador, and British army surgeon Dr. James Barry (later Inspector General of Hospitals in Canada), I’d suggest trans is the appropriate term as they lived their entire adult lives as men.
Ramirez’s secret was revealed when he was wounded in 1624 while serving with the Spanish army in South America, but he had demonstrated such heroism–albeit in a cause we now consider despicable–that Pope Urban VIII issued a special dispensation that allowed Ramirez to continue to present as male.
Florence Nightingale recalled Barry (pictured below) as the “hardest creature I ever met.” The discovery of his typically female genitalia didn’t happen until his death of natural causes in 1865.
By contrast, I don’t think trans is the right word for Deborah Sampson, who enlisted in the American revolutionary forces as Robert Shirtliffe in 1778. She returned to her female identity after a doctor discovered her ruse and relayed his findings to George Washington, who discharged her from duty. She went on to marry a farmer and received a land grant and pension in recognition of her service. She was a woman who donned a disguise to help a cause she found inspiring, not someone whose gender and sex mismatched.
Memories passed down by elders as well at the accounts of missionaries confirm the participation of two-spirited people in tribal wars. The Cheyenne, Lakota Sioux, Mohave, Navaho, Zapotec and Zuni nations all have words for gender-variant people, suggesting they were more enlightened in some things than the Europeans who attempted to “civilize” them.
As an antidote to the phrase, “fights like a girl,” I’d like to offer a short recap of the life of Philippe I (top), Duke of Orléans and the younger brother of Louis XIV, the famous Sun King. I will use male pronouns to be consistent with the way Phillipe was addressed as a nobleman (and because it’s not clear whether trans or some other term would serve as the best descriptor.)
Queen Anne recognized her son’s disinterest in traditionally male activities when Philippe was young and encouraged him to dress in feminine clothing. Affectionately, she addressed him as “my little girl” and Anne’s friend, the Duchess of Montpensier, called Phillipe “the prettiest child in the world.”
(Below: Phillipe with Louis XIV, who ascended to the throne when he was four years old.)
When the young duke was old enough to participate in court society, he attended parties and dances clothed in female attire. For lovers, he chose other men, an acceptable practice as long as such dalliances remained discrete. Phillipe’s flamboyance made that difficult, particularly after he was married to Princess Henrietta of England, youngest daughter of Charles I. Whenever her husband became overly-infatuated with a new paramour, Henriette complained to the king. He would usually send Philippe’s boyfriend abroad, but after much pining and pleading, the duke would be able to get his brother to relent.
After Henrietta died, the pattern repeated during Phillipe’s second marriage to Princess Elizabeth Charlotte of Palatine, the daughter of an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. Nevertheless, Phillipe fulfilled his dynastic duties, fathering seven children of whom four survived infancy. (A direct descendant of his, Louis Philippe, became King of the French in 1830.)
In his memoirs of Louis XIV’s court, Louis de Rouvroy, Duke of Saint-Simon, offers a description of the adult Phillipe:
He always dressed as a woman and was covered with rings, bracelets and precious stones everywhere. He wore a long wig, black and powdered, and ribbons wherever they could be placed. He was redolent of all kinds of perfumery and… wore rouge.
Historians would probably have dismissed Phillipe as a dandy but for one thing: he was an excellent military commander.
France invaded the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) in 1667, claiming that Spain’s failure to pay Louis a dowry of 500,000 gold pieces made him the rightful ruler of the territory. Members of the royal family were expected to lead their troops and Philippe did not shirk his duties. It was an easy campaign–Spain had just lost Portugal in a war of independence–but Philippe was able to gain a share of the glory through his courage and calmness under fire. Indeed, the soldiers under his command noted he had no fear of being killed, but instead worried about getting sunburned or having his clothes besmirched by gunpowder.
The War of Devolution was a military triumph for France but the peace treaty disappointed Louis. An English, Dutch and Swedish coalition, intent on preserving the balance of power, demanded the restoration of Spanish control over most of the conquered territory. France was only allowed to keep a few gains on the periphery.
Louis seethed for revenge, particularly against the Dutch, who had previously been French allies for more than a century. He invaded in 1672, this time with support from England and Sweden: bribing their kings proved to be a useful diplomatic tool. Again, France won a series a quick victories, which brought other European powers into the war to keep Louis in check and prompted his allies to withdraw their forces.
The decisive battle was fought at Cassel in 1677. Philippe, promoted to lieutenant general on merit, commanded a force of 30,000 soldiers facing an army of similar strength under William of Orange, the future King of England. The French won an overwhelming victory, killing or wounding 8,000 of their opponents.
Thus, Philippe became partly responsible for making his brother the most powerful man in the world.
Almost 450 years later, Cassel remains a French town. It served as Marshal Ferdinand Foch headquarters for part of the First World War.
His mission fulfilled, Philippe returned to his lands and his dresses. As good with money as he was with a sword, he brought in so much revenue that his branch of the family would eventually surpass the wealth of Bourbon royal line.
A stroke ended Philippe’s life on June 9th, 1701. His widow burned all the letters he’d received from lovers over the years, noting that their perfumed scent made her feel nauseous.
Not a mother’s instinct, nor a wardrobe full of women’s clothing, nor a touch of rouge on the cheeks are sufficient to declare someone trans. As for sexual orientation, it is independent from gender identity as a concept.
As Commander-in-Chief, would Trump welcome someone with Philippe’s qualities in his military? The answer is obvious, as are the consequences of refusing to enlist the person who potentially could change the world.
(Additional Sources: The People’s Almanac Book of Lists, vol 1, and the Dancing to Eagle Spirit Society)
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Tenochtitlan
July 1st 1530. Cortés and his men escape from Tenochtitlan, city of the Aztecs, only the ones who discarded the gold made it to the boats.
