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.

Malcolm Collins:We shouldn’t be talking about favorite [bleep].

Simone Collins:That’s that’s a You know what?

Speaker 4:Your space king drove my race to near extinction once. Okay. Awesome.

Simone Collins:For real. And I think that you’re going to agree with me after you read. And we’re not so there’s this book that was that was created called Aztecs, an interpretation by Inga Klendin clan Klendinen from Cambridge University Press published in 1991. This is not new news, but it’s new news to me because And it’s

Malcolm Collins:not disputed news, I would tell you.

Simone Collins:It’s not.

Malcolm Collins:No. No. No. Major historical scholar disputes how evil the Aztecs were.

Simone Collins:Yeah. That that is because, yeah, that there is abundant evidence. They were not, like, shy about how they went about things and why they did them and all these things. But I genuinely did not know how bad it was, and the only reason I know now is that John Smith of mister and missus Smith’s bookshelf, which is one of my favorite substacks, wrote a book review about this 1991 book because of Why are you reading

Malcolm Collins:book reviews? Is this something you do recreationally?

Simone Collins:So there is this couple. Okay? They go on Substack by mister and missus Smith, but p p s m I t h. So, like, the the p is silent. Okay? They’re they write

Malcolm Collins:So it’s like a gay version of Smith?

Simone Collins:I don’t know. Okay. But here’s the thing, is they they have a bunch of kids, like a lot of kids, and they’re pretty, like, based about the way that they raise them. Okay. They have this, like, weird idyllic life where the way it seems from their substack is they just sit around with their kids and just read a whole bunch of intellectual books and talk about them. And to me, it’s like this idyllic cozy life of, like, what you would do with unlimited money. and it

Malcolm Collins:sounds fun. Do we do with our unlimited cozy life?

Simone Collins:Well, we talk about low culture, and perhaps that is a lot more fun. I do So put bikers

Malcolm Collins:girls and VTubers and are lollies okay?

Simone Collins:The the high the highbrow version of our aspirational life is mister and miss Smith, and I love their subs deck. And so here I am sitting in the lobby of of our fertility clinic waiting for post what’s the word? Post miscarriage blood work with the documentary team filming me in my moment of of humiliation. And I decide to read this because I’m like, this will distract me. Oh, look. A new book review. This will this will cheer me up. I love reading their book reviews. They’re always inspiring and intellectual. And then I just come away, like, just shook. Just totally shook. So I’m just gonna I’m just gonna start reading, and you’re gonna tell me just how good you feel about these people having left the the planet, that they’re gone, that there may be some diaspora left, but they’ve been conquered fully by the Spanish and, more importantly, by just infectious disease, which is I’ve never been

Malcolm Collins:so No. No. The Aztecs were more conquered by the Spanish than infectious disease.

Simone Collins:Oh, no. They were more conquered by infectious disease.

Malcolm Collins:Oh, really? Continue.

Speaker 6:So I double checked my memory on this, and Simone is wrong on this one. the Aztecs were, one, if you’re gonna say what was the number one thing that led to their downfall, it was all of the groups that hated them and ended up supporting the Spanish, then the Spanish, and a third disease. Disease did come at the wrong time for them and made their military forces weaker, but it wasn’t the instrumental piece of their downfall as it was for many other native groups.

Octavian Collins:Mhmm.

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