The Aztecs were unrivalved in the amount of time which they spent devoted to sacrifice. These occasions were marked by both song and dancing accompanied by music from drums, fltes, conch shells, and rattles. The participants dressed in feathers, in dramatic cloaks, in masks and wigs, in jaguar skins, and in some curcumstances, the skins of human beings.

Blood-letting was extremely important. Everyone from the Emperor to the clown took blood from their tongues, or from the lobes of their ears using needles from the maquey cactus. Other acts of service to the gods included,

The normal procudure was for the victim to be held down on a stone block by four priests. The heart would be plucked out professionally by a chief priest or even the monarch, using a special knife. The heart would be burned in a brazier. The head would be cut off and help up then placed on the skull rack to serve as trophies. The limbs were ritually eaten, with maize or chile, by noblemen and successful warriors. The torsos would be thrown away, or given to the animals.

The bood of sacrificed victims was regularly spattered, as if it were holy water, over the doors, pillars, staircases and courts of the temples and houses.