Part 5/20:
Their religious art underscores this: demonic gods with gaping mouths, multiple arms, and disturbing features. Human sacrifice was central, with priests bleeding themselves—sometimes mixing their blood with psychoactive substances—to commune with deities. Rituals involved throwing men into cenotes to nearly drown, seeking spiritual visions borne from suffering. The collective subconscious shaped their gods into embodiments of chaos, cruelty, and predation, contrasting sharply with the more humanized, benevolent concepts in many Eurasian religions.