Meaning of Aztec Gods

In my shamanic practice I recently was shown by Xipe Totec to give a client a new skin. This Aztec god is sometimes called Lord of the Flayed One, the God of Rebirth. Although in our time we may feel repulsed at the practice of wearing the flayed skins of sacrificial victims until the old rotted off to allow a new skin to emerge from beneath it, but most of us at some time have wanted our old skin of habits, attitudes and sufferings to peel away, revealing a new person within.

Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec war god, then showed me to ask the client to pay five “hearts” in exchange for the work. Although we consider ourselves much too enlightened now to grab still-beating hearts from the bodies of humans, many of us have collections of hearts made from the minerals and materials of the earth, taken and shaped as if these bones of the Mother were slaves to our desire, without the need of asking permission or offering thanks. When we make conscious what was required to bring these objects in their altered form to our hand, and then give this form back to the earth, we feed back to life our effort to understand the scale of our indebtedness to it.

These energies are still with us. When we tell their stories they jump up and live again in our present awareness to feed our hunger for knowing the forces that flow in the seen and unseen realms. The images and stories of the Journey Oracle divination card deck also feed our ancient hunger to know the seasons, the full moons, the tree spirits and the shamanic journey. These forces speak through the colors, images and associations we make when doing life readings for spirit-filled advice.