"The opposition between life and death was not so
absolute to the ancient Mexicans as it is to us. Life extended into
death, and vice versa. Death was not the natural end of life but one
phase of an infinite cycle. Life, death and resurrection were stages of
a cosmic process which repeated itself continuously. Life had no higher
function than to flow into death, its opposite and complement; and
death, in turn, was not an end in itself; man fed the insatiable hunger
of life with his death"
Octavio Paz (1950)The Labyrinth of Solitude, pg. 54
