New Fire Ceremony Festival

Celebrated every 52 years.

The Aztec calendar divided the year into 18 months of 20 days each, plus a five-day "unlucky" period. The Aztecs also knew a ritualistic period of 260 days, made up of 13 months with 20 named days in each. When one cycle was superimposed on the other, a "century" of 52 years resulted.

At the end of each of these 52-year cycles, the Aztecs were scared that the world would come to an end, therefore the most impressive and important of all festivals was held in these periods. Widely known as the New Fire Ceremony, this Aztec festival involved the putting out of the old altar fire and the lighting of a new one, as a symbol of the new cycle of life, represented by the dawning of the new era.

On the day of the New Fire Ceremony all the fires in the Valley of Mexico were extinguished before sundown. Great masses of Aztec people journeyed from out of Mexico City to a temple several miles away on the Hill of the Star, following the lead of their priests or shamans. On this hill the priests lingered, waiting for a celestial sign coming from any direction as the firmament of the stars could be observed quite well from this spot. The sign would signify whether the world would end or whether a new cycle would begin.

The marrow of this ritual was actualized when the constellation known as the Pleiades passed the zenith enabling life to go on as it had. Had it failed to do so, the sun, the stars and other celestial bodies would change into ferocious beasts who would thereafter descend to the earth and devour all the Aztecs. Then an earthquake would finish the destruction.

In each year, once a favorable interpretation of the celestial signal was made, burning torch-light were carried by runners all through the valley to rekindle the fires in each house.