Chapter 7: The Rain Festival in Pre-Conquest America

“Eyewitness History: Essays in Contemporary Pre-Conquest Literature”

November 201-

Journal of Pre-Conquest Studies

University of --

Xóchitl Ana María Ferguson, Ph.D., Editor

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of papers the Journal presents for scholars of pre-Conquest indigenous cultures and ceremonies in the Americas. Every effort has been made to verify the authenticity of alleged contemporary accounts. While the authenticity of the document itself presented here is not in doubt, i.e., that it was written at or around the date of the activities it describes, the events chronicled therein are at significant variance from other sources and contemporary accounts. Accordingly, the document’s very explicit, even lurid, descriptions of the activities accompanying the sacrifice must be regarded, pending further study, as unproven.

Abstract

It is claimed that human sacrifice, often accompanied by public displays of extreme wanton sexual activity, was an integral part of pre-Conquest indigenous ceremonies associated with the crop cycle to ensure sufficient rainfall for a successful planting, growing and harvest. This article reproduces what is represented to be an authentic contemporaneous description of one such ceremony and sacrifice.

The young man selected for this ceremony and sacrifice as well as the priestesses charged with preparing him generally were barely past the onset of puberty, which according to most contemporary accounts occurred between fourteen and fifteen years of age. The later onset compared to the modern era is believed to be an effect of the borderline malnutrition common in pre-Conquest societies.

Being A True And Accurate Account

Of Certain Festivities And Native Celebrations

Witnessed By Reliable Observers

And Faithfully Recorded Herein

By

Fr. Jacques M. Landrieu, SJ

Signed And Witnessed

This 22nd Day Of July, Year Of Our Lord 15--.

Until the end, he heard the drums. For days they had been beating, it seemed to him, but the drink the priestesses gave him early this morning made everything fuzzy and he could not be sure. Now, in the evening, he remembered little from before, but before the drug had taken hold of his mind and his senses completely he remembered the torches at sundown, the warm humid night air and, always, the strokes of the young priestess. He tried to remember her name but it escaped him.

His belly was full. The feast day meant grilled meat from the private stock of the priests, and along with the drug in the morning he’d had his fill of the luscious chunks of lamb, he thought, but he didn’t really know. Anyway, as the drug took hold he no longer cared. He had no hunger for the first time in days, he was pleasantly satisfied, almost empty, in fact, from the ministrations of the priestess overnight, and he was at peace. Peace was a fuzzy place.

“Softly, my love,” she chanted as they circled slowly, their limbs in languid gestures, in the ceremonial courtyard at the base of the pyramid. She steadied him as needed when he wobbled, The two were nude, he was rampant once more after almost a full day of rest, his member recovered from the rigors of an active night with the priestess and her sisters. Also an effect of the drug, he thought, even if he couldn’t clear his head enough to be certain. About anything. Or perhaps from the distraction generated by the lithe body of the young priestess who moved against him in the most tantalizing fashion. She was experienced, even if not in intercourse, in keeping her male partner just under the very peak.

She’d drained him repeatedly through the night, her sisters with her and their laughter and giggles infectious as the boy fountained again and again, even as his eruptions waned when dawn approached. As custom demanded he had his last dry climax just before daybreak. She’d ceased her ministrations then and he welcomed the rest and relief from the stimulation by the priestess and her giggling cohort. She accompanied his rest with soft words and an occasional soft touch throughout the day. When the last drugs were given, his natural resilience and his ability to recover like most healthy teenage boys, plus the aphrodisiac administered along with a sedative, would ensure a full recovery and a magnificent erection, even as it mercifully fogged his wits. His recovery and his performance with the young priestess would be one the entire crowd could enjoy vicariously as she touched him during the dance and in between rest periods. If custom was followed many in the crowd would emulate her actions with their own partners. Finally, the drugs would ensure his ability to climax at the proper time when he lay on the altar, formidably erect but barely conscious, under the young priestess and embedded in her.

That final moment of power and glory would the true climax of his young life. If all went well his last seconds of existence on this earth would be a psychological and physical sexual delirium and crescendo of ultimate pleasure.

He was young enough that he’d soon recover were he to orgasm again now, to feel that rush, but it was considered bad form for him to reach a climax after daybreak and before the critical moment of the ceremony. After a day of rest the young priestess come dusk had begun to stimulate him again to bring him close but not on the edge and to ensure he remained almost there until the final moment. Her movements were sure, alternate light and harder strokes, and she could tell by his breathing and by the thrusts of his penis when to slack off for a few moments to let him move a little back down this mountain they were climbing step by step, to rest before they resumed their ascent.

The boy and his friends when they were little had been permitted to climb here, even on this most sacred of sites, albeit not on the altar itself, whenever and wherever they wished as long as no ceremony was in progress. Children were given much license in this ancient culture, perhaps because of the demands of adult life which for almost everyone began at puberty.

Food seemed always to be scarce. There were good years, of course, but too often they came only after long periods of hunger. Everyone worked almost every day. The corn required tending, along with the beans. The few goats the high priests kept could not be sacrificed except in times of extraordinary hardship. That’s what everyone had told him and his friends, but there were persistent rumors the priests enjoyed a goat now and then whenever the mood took them.

He remembered one night when he and his best friend, through the fog he could no longer remember the friend’s name and that made him sad, ventured out after their meagre evening meal in their homes. They’d wandered down back alleys until they came to the large square before the largest pyramid.

“Smell.” His friend poked him. “Can you smell it?”

It took him a moment to recognize the aroma, he’d experienced it so rarely.

“Is it... ?”

“Yes. Let’s go closer.”

There was no chance they’d be able to get close enough to see anything, much less get close enough to grab a piece of the smoking meat that gave off an aroma that drove them crazy, but they maneuvered around until they found a ladder left leaning against the side of a mud hut. They scrambled up, hoping the noise wouldn’t wake the family asleep inside. Idly, he wondered how they could sleep anyway, what with that intoxicating aroma of grilling meat.

From the top the boys could see a corner of the feast tables. The meat was there, slabs of it, more than they’d ever seen in their lives. The aroma alone aroused them, but when they saw the dancers their bodies reacted instantly. Priests and priestesses, most of them barely dressed and few completely nude, moved slowly in a dance that mimicked the act of love. Indeed, a few had gone beyond mimicking. His own penis was erect. He looked at his friend, also erect, and without speaking they began to stroke themselves. They’d learned swiftly, as all boys do, to relish these new feelings, the ones that had come for the first time only a few months earlier.

In a society where very little was private the boys knew exactly what their erect organs could do and what it meant when after a few strokes they felt the wonderful convulsions that seemed to course through their bodies. Soon after their marvelous discovery, this miraculous feeling, they’d begun to ejaculate as well, and both boys experimented with how it tasted.

They’d experimented other ways, too, and he remembered how for the first time they’d helped each other with their hands and later on with their mouths as they imitated the acts they’d seen their parents and their older brothers and sisters perform. They practiced rubbing on each other, and in doing so they learned the pleasure smooth warm skin beneath their hands and bodies and mouths could bring.

That night the dancers began to move faster as the beat of the drums increased. The boys were fairly sure they knew what was coming next, and they were not to be disappointed. Two by two, and sometimes in groups of three, the dancers moved together and joined themselves. Usually men and women, but sometimes men with men and women with women.

The beat grew frenzied and the mating continued and the groupings formed and reformed as the dancers exhausted themselves. Some of the men evidently had drunk of the secret potion the priests were known to brew for themselves, and so remained hard and continued to satisfy their partners even after they had drained themselves.

The boys climaxed together, their ejaculate flying through the air, the light breeze suddenly cool on their fevered skin. When they’d recovered they moved, slowly, to descend the ladder. Beyond them in the square the music had slowed and the dancers were motionless, some alone, others in each other’s arms. A few with unquenchable desires continued to pierce their partners, but even their thrusts had weakened as their rhythm slowed.

Despite his adventures with his now-nameless friend, and despite his continued anguished efforts he failed to recall the boy’s name, they’d never known the touch of a woman, not their sisters or their mothers, even though it was common enough in that culture for the women of the family to initiate the boys and the men to initiate the girls, nor had they been with any other female. In many cases the initiation began at the first intimations of puberty.

Unbeknownst to him or to his friend, the two of them had been identified early on as candidates worthy of sacrifice to the god of rain. In this culture the god was a distant cousin of the deity who would be known as Tlaloc to the people who inhabited the territory that would one day become México. The boys were marked off limits to everyone, including their families. Even as this deprived them of the loving introduction to the delights of puberty their families would offer, their selection meant they escaped becoming the objects of pleasure of older men during the open festivals at harvest, at spring, and at other important events, a fate many of their friends suffered. Some boys enjoyed it, of course, some didn’t. The safety accorded them by their selection did not assuage their initial dismay when they discovered their mothers and aunts would not perform the usual rites of initiation with them.

As they fully entered puberty the boys were summoned to private classes with the priests, and from time to time with the priestesses. Their instructors observed them carefully, judging their intelligence, their physical fitness and appearance, and their behavior. There was no sexual contact. In the end the priests selected him for the sacrifice and sent his friend back to his own family. Separated from his friend and from his own parents and siblings, the boy never knew how his friend was introduced to the many wonders of physical love by his mother and a younger aunt.

From the moment of his selection the boy was apprehensive. He’d been taught this was a great honor, even unto the last sacred moment, and his treatment, all the food he could want, fine robes, the company of beautiful, albeit chaste, girls, seemed to support the idea he was special. Besides, the young priestess he was dancing with now had been his companion in the weeks leading up to this moment, and at the very beginning of his preparation she’d promised him delights, she said, he could not imagine.

She had backed up her words with games, games that usually ended with the two of them naked and him spurting over her smooth brown belly or on her small bare breasts or even onto her lips and mouth after he’d brought her with fingers or his mouth and tongue to one orgasm after another. He’d proved an adept and eager student for her lessons, and her wholehearted and vocal easy climaxes were almost enough reward in themselves. That she augmented her lessons with skillful hand and tongue, even if not intercourse, made his world ever brighter and more intense.

In fact, with his fading consciousness he wondered vaguely if perhaps he hadn’t been drugged in some fashion from the very beginning. He could barely remember life with his family, and his memories of the weeks in the compound with the priests and priestesses were coming together in a mush of overstimulated senses, smells, sights and sounds.

Tonight, the breeze had begun to quicken. Thunderclouds were building in the east and the air, already humid and warm, held the certainty of rain. This was considered an especially auspicious sign for the coming rainy season and a strong and bountiful crop. The priests would time the ceremony to climax just as the rain began.

The cool air on their skin meant for the priestess the time was drawing near for the next step. Gently, she guided him to stand on a wide ledge just below the altar.

“Are you listening, my love?”

Her words were soft, almost a whisper, beside his ear. He heard her as if from far away and through interference of some sort, but he thought he understood and he nodded. With her hands on his hips she turned him to face the square below.

“They are here for you, my sweet. Look out and tell me what you see.”

He was incapable of coherent speech at this point but he managed a sound that might have been “many people.” He raised his hand, or tried to, to point in the direction of the crowd gathered below their ledge. They waved back, and some returned to their own dances. The strong drink was plentiful, many had imbibed. It was said the drug the priests used had been added to it. If so, tonight was likely to be a night of extended copulation and orgasms and sexual exhaustion.

Another distinction of this special night was that anyone in the square and over the age of puberty, male or female, was fair game. Wise parents kept their nubile children at home on ceremonial nights. Unprotected youngsters often had their first sexual experiences at this ceremony, and for many their introduction to the sexual act was not a pleasant one. As for the adults, it was considered good form to continue until one dropped. Any effort short of this reflected a lack of manners and good education. For this reason the men were pleased to have the drink with its added ingredient. The women, too, for this particular drug seemed to act favorably on the female libido, even if in attenuated form. And who was to say it wasn’t effective? Whether it was a placebo effect or an actual transfiguration was immaterial to the woman happily skewered on a pair of erect male members and consumed by repeated orgasms as she ministered to a third penis or a wet female with her mouth.