Religion
Like most Mesoamerican religious systems, the Zapotec religion was polytheistic. Two principal deities include Cocijo, the rain god (similar to the Aztec god Tlaloc), and Coquihani, the god of light. It is believed that the Zapotec sometimes used human sacrifice in their rituals.
There are several of Zapotec origin legends. One of them states that the zapotecs were the original people of the valley of Oaxaca and were born from rocks, or descended from animals such as pumas and ocelots. There is also another origin legend which states that they only settled in the Oaxaca valley after founding the Toltic empire, and that they decent from Chicomostoc. Though it is very important to mention that these legends weren’t transcribed until after the Spanish arrival.
The Zapotecs tell that their ancestors emerged from the earth, from caves, or that they turned from trees or jaguars into people, while the elite that governed them believed that they descended from supernatural beings that lived among the clouds, and that upon death they would return to such status. In fact, the name by which Zapotecs are known today resulted from this belief. In Central Valley Zapotec "The Cloud People' is "Be'ena' Za'a".
The Zapotecs had a predominance of deities associated with fertility and agriculture. There are both male and female representation, told apart from each other by costumes. Males normally wear breechclouts and sometimes capes, while females are represented by wearing skirts. Prominent gods are Cocijo – god of lightning and rain, he is represented from Monte Alban 1-4. Another one is the god of maize Pitao Cozobi.
There are some evidence of deities not directly associated with Zapotecs culture, such as the feathered serpent and the butterfly god, they are characteristic for Teotihuacán. And also the Teotihuacán rain god, and Xipe totec a deity associated with spring in nahuatl culture.
Read more about this topic: Zapotec Civilization
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religio of amulets and holy places and priestcraft. Protestantism, in its corresponding decay, becomes a vague mist of ethical platitudes. Catholicism is accused of being too much like all the other religions; Protestantism of being insufficiently like a religion at all. Hence Plato, with his transcendent Forms, is the doctor of Protestants; Aristotle, with his immanent Forms, the doctor of Catholics.”
—C.S. (Clive Staples)
“Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego; it is a dynamic subjectivism. Religion is the coercion of the ego by gods and spirits who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man.”
—Richard Chase (b. 1914)
“Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employment.”
—Michel Guillaume Jean De Crevecoeur (1735–1813)