Books like Aztec sorcerers in seventeenth century Mexico by Michael D. Coe

"Now available for the first time in English, Guilhem Olivier's Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God is a study of Tezcatlipoca, one of the greatest but least understood deities in the Mesoamerican pantheon. An enigmatic and melodramatic figure, "the Lord of the Smoking Mirror" was both drunken seducer and mutilated transgressor and, although he severely punished those who violated pre-Columbian moral codes, he also received mortal confessions. A patron deity to kings and warriors as well as a protector of slaves, Tezcatlipoca often clashed in epic confrontation with his "enemy brother" Quetzalcoatl, the famed "Feathered Serpent." Yet these powers of Mesoamerican mythology collaborated to create the world, and their common attributes hint toward a dual character." "In a sophisticated and systematic tour through the sources and problems related to Tezcatlipoca's protein powers and shifting meanings, Olivier guides the reader skillfully through the symbolic names of this great god, from his representation on skins and stones to his relationship to ritual knives and other related deities. Drawing upon iconographic material, chronicles written in both Spanish and the native Nahuatl, and the rich contributions of ethnography, Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God - like the mirror of Tezcatlipoca in which the fates of mortals were reflected - reveals an important but obscured portion of the cosmology of pre-Columbian Mexico."--Jacket.

Today the Aztecs seem a remote, alien people. Warlike and bloodthirsty, they are best known as the practitioners of human sacrifice. Yet their creative achievements are impressive: within the space of a hundred years they established the largest empire in Mesoamerican history, and at Tenochtitlan built a vast, shimmering city in a lake, a Venice of the New World whose temple-pyramids, elegant plazas and thronging markets defied the descriptive powers of the. Conquistadors. Richard Townsend presents the first fully rounded portrait of the Aztecs, integrating military, economic and symbolic approaches to reconcile the apparently contradictory aspects of their culture. He begins with a dramatic narrative of the Spanish conquest and then charts the rise of the Aztecs from humble nomads to empire builders. He shows how war and human sacrifice did indeed act as instruments of terror, but also how their deeper significance lay in. The Aztec belief that the shedding of human blood ensured fertility of the land and renewal of the seasons. Chapters on the ancient deities and festival calendar, the New Fire ceremony and sacred rain-mountains, as well as kingship rites, explore this all-pervading theme in Aztec society of physical and spiritual regeneration. The Aztecs ranges from the everyday life of farmers and priests, artisans and kings, to the sinister spying activities of Aztec traders; from the. Making of chocolate to battle tactics. Recent discoveries from archaeological excavations are interwoven with the latest results from studies of the monuments, Spanish records and illustrated codices to produce a fresh and definitive new history of a remarkable people.

American anthropologist Timothy Knab immerses himself in Aztec shamanism, chronicling a quest to interfere with an unwanted son‑in‑law, a journey through dream‑guided rituals, the underworld of Talocan, and the legacy of a historic war of witches.