Aztecs Worshiped Cosmic Horror (Make HP Lovecraft Look Like Dr. Suess)

Today on Based Camp, we dip our toes into the Aztec civilization through a review of Inga Clendinnen’s Aztecs: An Interpretation by John Psmith of Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, exploring how their religion, cosmology, and social structures centered on ritual human sacrifice at an industrial scale. The review examines their gods, warrior culture, child-rearing practices, and the inversion of pleasure-seeking societies into ones obsessed with pain and cosmic dread.

We quickly came to understand why this society felt like Lovecraftian horror made real, how ideas and religion shaped every aspect of life, and why neighboring groups allied with the Spanish against them. The conversation contrasts Aztec culture with other historical civilizations and reflects on the role of moral frameworks in preventing such extremes.

We heartily recommend reading John Psmith’s full review (their entire substack is great, especially for parents and people uniquely interested in culture). Take a moment to thank your lucky stars that YOU WEREN’T BORN IN MEXICO AT THE HEIGHT OF THE AZTEC EMPIRE.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins:it almost reminds me of the urban monoculture, which is an entire society obsessed with pleasure. They’re an inversion of that. How much pain can you assert within your own life and those

Simone Collins:around you? Bouquets of flowers were to be sniffed only at the outer edges, the swooning sweetness at the center belonged

Malcolm Collins:not to that. Even allowed to be happier experience any pleasure not even smelling a flower.

Simone Collins:Not even smelling a bouquet of freaking flowers. the will of tea was also made manifest in the brutal public torture and execution of a warrior or priest who stumbled. Quote, his warrior regalia stripped from him, his scalp locked shorn, his heart excised, his empty body broken into its parts and dispersed to be eaten to eaten. Okay. I didn’t get to them.

Malcolm Collins:The what I this is just like your well, one of your your friends accidentally stumbles in a parade ceremony or something. Mhmm. And it’s not like a, well, he’s in a better place. It’s like, well, of course, we had to tear him apart and eat him.

Simone Collins:human sacrifice was not an occasional or incidental religious custom like an extra spicy church service for the people who only show up on Christmas or Easter. No. The mass butchery of wailing, pleading captives of both sexes and all ages was the core activity around which their entire civilization and society revolved. Their art, their music, their poetry, their approach to warfare, their entire economic system,

Malcolm Collins:Wait. Every day they had to make personal sacrifices of blood? Really feel like the worshipers of one of the dark gods from HP Lovecraft He nails it. Somehow achieved civilizational scale.

Simone Collins:Hello, Malcolm. I am excited to be speaking with you today because I would like to talk about my favorite [bleep], my favorite is extinguishment of of a people because I’m done.