Page 29 - All About History - Issue 54-17

TEZCATLIPOCA MICTLANTECUHTLI PATRON OF: UNDERWORLD
Th
PATRON OF: NIGHT, SORCERY dur e e Aztecs believed that, unless you died in battle,
ing childbirth or you were killed by lightning, then
i
AND THE NORTH yo
you were destined to meet Mictlantecuhtli upon
Tezcatlipoca was the ruler of the First your death. Mictlantecuhtli, along with his Quetzalcoatl
Sun and is said to have created the world wife Mictecacíhuatl, was the ruler of the is said to have
with Quetzalcoatl. He was also a very underworld, or Mictlá. Regular citizens provided humans with
vengeful god, and used the Aztec kings whose deaths did not warrant access to
as his representatives on Earth, getting paradise had to descend through nine the first maize plant, after
them to punish any evil behaviour on layers to get there on a four-year journey a giant ant led him to a
la
his behalf. Every May, a young man was Mictlantecuhtli was full of arduous trials.
fu
typically depicted mountain full of grain
chosen as Tezcatlipoca’s sacrifice, but as a skeleton
before he met his fate, he got to live as TONATIUH and seeds
the god for a whole year, feasting on fine
food and being attended to by servants. PATRON OF: SUN AND WARRIORS
According to Aztec mythology, when the sun first
appeared in the sky following a long period of darkness,
it refused to move. To get it to follow its daily course,
the Aztecs had to supply the sun god Tonatiuh with the
hearts of human sacrifices captured in battle, and so they
staged battles called flower wars for this very purpose.
Tonatiuh was believed to watch over the Aztec Eagle and
Jaguar warriors in this endeavour.

Centeotl is often
depicted with maize
cobs sprouting from
his head

Tezcatlipoca’s
CENTEOTL PATRON OF: MAIZE
name means
‘smoking mirror’
Maize was such an important crop to the
Aztecs that it had several deities associated
CHALCHIUHTLICUE Tonatiuh was with it, but Centeotl was the most important.
He had in fact been born a goddess, but later
the ruler of
PATRON OF: WATER AND CHILDBIRTH the Fifth Sun became male with a feminine counterpart
Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of lakes, streams called Chicomecoátl, and they each watched
and oceans, was the wife or sister of another over different stages of growth. Centeotl
watery god, Tlaloc. She is said to have been wasn’t just worshipped for maize, however, as
the ruler of the Fourth Sun, the version of the he is also said to have given the Aztecs cotton,
sweet potatoes and pulqie, an alcoholic drink.
world before the Aztec era, but destroyed it sweet potatoes and pulqie, an alcoholic drink.
with a flood and turned all the humans to fish.
To the Aztecs, she was both celebrated as the
bringer of water for agriculture and feared as
the creator of whirlpools and storms that made navigation
difficult. They honoured her with a festival lasting for the TLAZOLTEOTL
entire month of February, which involved fasting, feasting PATRON OF: FILTH AND SEXUAL MISDEEDS
and human sacrifices. Although she was said to provoke lust and
Chalchiuhtlicue’s name means lustful behaviour, the goddess Tlazolteotl
‘she of the jade skirt’
could also cleanse such sins during
confessionals and remove corruption from
the world. She was known in four different
guises for the different stages of her life.
She began as a young carefree temptress,
then became a destructive goddess of
gambling and uncertainty. Next, she turned
into a goddess able to absorb human sin, Tlazolteotl was depicted
wearing an elaborate
before finally manifesting as a terrifying headdress made of cotton
old hag who preyed upon youths.
“The Aztec gods and goddesses are, as far as we have known anything

about them, an unlovely and unlovable lot” D.H. Lawrence

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