Lift Up Your Hearts to Gaia

Humankind has always had an awkward relationship with things we are powerless to control. Problems especially arise when we try to influence the weather, for example.

Aztec priests, big believers in the curative and transformative powers of mass slaughter, would carve open the chests of sacrificial victims in order to appease the gods with victims’ still-beating hearts.

Those gods were unpleasant types, and they would dole out droughts and famines holus-bolus unless sufficient hearts were supplied. Or dead kids. Apparently the tears of a terrified and soon-to-be-murdered child were required before rain god Tlaloc would bother to crank up some clouds.

Tim Blair appears in every edition of Quadrant.
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But the Aztecs eventually ran out of themselves and weather-controlling sacrifices ended in their particular region. And, gradually, other cultures also abandoned sacrifices, possibly after realising they didn’t actually change anything.

Thereafter, people…