Ritual Human Sacrifice (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Wright.

In Mesoamerican belief systems, deity impersonation rituals temporarily transformed human agents into divine beings. While donning the accoutrements of specific deities during ritual activity, they merged with and became literal embodiments of those gods, essentially becoming both functionally and ontologically divine for the duration of the ritual. In rituals of human sacrifice, both victim and executioner were typically bedecked in the costuming of specific gods, indicating that these were...