Dedicated to  Dawn, and the players, the audience, the sacrifices, sacrifier, and the victims of the Mesoamerican ball game.

Dawn proffered a question in an affiliated forum regarding the sacrifice in a "Mesoamerican ball game":

            1.  "If human sacrifice was considered so important, was the person being sacrificed thought to have honor?  Meaning, would the people who were beaten in the ball game given some sort of redemption by becoming a sacrifice?"

 

            Let me try to field question 1.

 

            You asked if the victim of the ("ball game") sacrifice is honored and/or redeemed.

 

            First, does the person who is sacrificed have honor?   Today all we have is the ruins of the stadiums, which are huge, pictures in hieroglyphic type drawing such as Borgia Codex, and the testimonies of people who were never there when the "game was played". 

               Most scholars agree to disagree on this.  What was the game called?  Nobody seems to know that.  Was a ball used.  No one knows for sure.  (But there's a boy on the street in Matamoros who says his sister knows and for X dolares he will ask her.)

            Most of the testimony is of that caliber, apparently, and like today, what testimony was given in the early Post Columbian times was given in a foreign language to Europeans by people who were not present when the games were played (several generations removed).  One source says a game something like basketball was played.  No balls survived.  There is no agreement among scholars on the size or the construction of the ball, including what it was made of.  (Some sort of rubber is assumed by some).   some rumors say it was a Human skull, but a human skull would not take much punishment. 

               The scholars seem to agree that the hands and feet of the players could not be used to touch the "ball".  The goal was a vertical donut type thing presumably at one time decorated with gold  (no net).   Scoring a goal was apparently bordering on a superhuman fete. 

               Supposedly making one of the "Teams" was quite a distinction.

 

The sacrifice  (the victim):

            Some scholars say that the winning team captain was sacrificed by the losing team captain. and each captain considered it the greatest of honors.  Others contend that it was the winning captain who sacrificed the loser.  One thing all scholars seem to agree on is that game decided who got sacrificed.  And somebody always did.  Was he (apparently there was no lady's league) redeemed by being the sacrifice?  I assumed you mean according to their mythology.  Redeemed from what?  There was nothing I know of in their mythology about there being anything in the afterlife to be redeemed from.  Being free from the rigidity of their obvious class system might have been a reward. 

 

Honored/redeemed

     I have read chapters on the "sacredness of the sacrifice" in general and there is no way I can adequately narrow it down to a short treatise except to say although each sacrifice ritual has certain roles and properties present, each one is different.

      Before discussing it intelligently we would have to come to an understood definition of several terms.  They would include ritual, place, religious instruments religious personages, the sacrifier, the sacrificer, the victim, ad naseum. (Hubert and Maus, chapter two) Here the place was the arena.  The sacrifier was the one for whom the whole thing was put on.   Possibly the King.  He doesn't really do anything but watch.  He may stand up now and then.  It is expected to be a special spiritual experience for him/her.  The sacrificer would be the team captain who does the killing.  He does it with special instruments (whatever they may have been) and according to an exact ritual (unknown today)..  There is a ritual which includes the game.  This has to be at least overseen by a religious official.  The team captain who is killed has distinguished himself by "making the squad".  But is he redeemed?  From what?  I would assume he was considered closer to the "deity" or "the land of the dead."

       After reading volumes about human and other sacrifice, It is my impression that the whole thing was for the person Hubert and Mauss describe as the sacrifier.  Although he/she may or may not take part, the thing is done for his benefit and is designed to speak as some kind of inspiration to him/her.   Like being the observer of a gladiatorial combat.

       But, Therir blood was, according to Borgia Codex, being drunk by the Gods, so by providing energy for the gods they did achieve something, according to the mythology.

 

Hubert & Mauss     Sacrifice, it's Nature and Function  

                                  Essai sur la Nature et la Funtion du Sacrifice