In a stunning loss for a pantheon of leftists and Mesoamerican gods, the California Department of Education has settled a lawsuit centered...
In a stunning loss for a pantheon of leftists and Mesoamerican gods, the California Department of Education has settled a lawsuit centered around the inclusion of Aztec religious chants in a mandatory ethnic studies course.
Two chants that invoke Aztec and West African deities will be removed from a model curriculum for public schools by state election officials, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.
Officials claim no wrongdoing, instead highlighting an “abundance of caution” to explain the curriculum change.
The lawsuit was filed by Thomas More Society attorneys on behalf of a coalition of angry parents and the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation.
“We filed the lawsuit after we discovered that California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, a resource guide for local school districts, included prayer to Aztec gods — the same deities that were invoked when the Aztecs worshipped with human sacrifices,” Thomas More Society special counsel Paul Jonna said in a statement on Sunday.
Jonna painted a worrying picture of the chants as state-encouraged prayers to dark forces instead of part of an educational curriculum.
“The Aztec prayers at issue — which seek blessings from and the intercession of these demonic forces — were not being taught as poetry or history,” he continued. “Rather, the curriculum instructed students to chant the prayers for emotional nourishment after a ‘lesson that may be emotionally taxing or even when student engagement may appear to be low.’ The idea was to use them as prayers.”
A draft of the curriculum predating the September lawsuit against the state Education Department can be found on the government agency’s website.
One chant, the “In Lak Ech Affirmation,” mentions five different gods.
The first is Tezkatlipoka, who, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, was the deity who supposedly oversaw the introduction of human sacrifice to ancient Mexico.
Now some five centuries after the ferocious Tezkaltlipoka’s supply of still-beating tribal hearts dwindled down to nothing, he is being made to suffer another removal to the dustbin of history.
As for other deities, there’s an invocation of Xipe Totek, a bloody death and regeneration god also known as “the flayed one.”
The infamous Mesoamerican winged serpent and “Ancient Aliens” fan favorite Quetzalcoatl is called upon in the chant. Huitzilopochtli, an Aztec god of the sun, war and human sacrifice (sensing a theme here?), is also mentioned.
Hunab Ku, a creator god, is the fifth and last one named.
While not as gruesome as human sacrifice, encouraging groups of schoolchildren to sing these cringe-worthy chants is nearly as nauseating as the practice.
Thanks to a group of parents, lawyers and rights organizations, however, it looks like kids in California will no longer be expected to whistle along as violent gods are openly celebrated and asked for “emotional nourishment.”
While many are fleeing the Golden State because of the government’s tight social, financial and religious control, this settlement may signal that there are some extremes California will not defend.
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