Aztec Creation Stories
According to the Nahuatlacs, there existed, before the creation of the universe, a heaven, inhabited by Tonacatecuhtli and his wife Tonacacihuatl, who in time procreated four sons.
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From The Aztecs: Their History, Manners, and Customs by Lucien Biart, translated by John Leslie Garner, 1900.
According to the Nahuatlacs, there existed, before the creation of the universe, a heaven, inhabited by Tonacatecuhtli and his wife Tonacacihuatl, who in time procreated four sons. The skin of the oldest, Tlatlauhquitezcatlipoca, was red; that of the second, Yayauhqui, black, and his instincts were evil; that of the third, Quetzacoatl, was white; while the youngest, Huitzilipochtli, was a mere skeleton covered with a yellow skin.
After six hundred years of idleness the gods resolved to act. They named Quetzacoatl and Huitzilipochtli as executors of their will; these thereupon created fire, and then a demi-sun. They afterwards created a man, Oxomoco, and a woman, Cipactonatl, whom they commanded to cultivate the ground with care. Cipactonatl, who was also required to spin and weave, was endowed with the gift of prophecy. As a reward for her oracles she was given grains of maize to serve as food for her descendants. The gods then made Mictlanteuctli and his companion, Mictlancihuatl, whom they appointed rulers of the infernal regions. This done, they divided time into days, months, and years.
Resuming their work, they created a first heaven, inhabited by two stars, one male, the other female; then a second which they peopled with Tetzahuacihuatl (“women skeletons”), intended to devour human beings when the end of the world came. In the third heaven they placed four hundred men, yellow, black, white, blue, and red. The fourth heaven served as a residence for birds, which thence descended to the earth; in the fifth, which was peopled with fiery serpents, comets and falling stars had their origin. The sixth was the empire of the wind, the seventh that of dust, and the eighth the abode of the gods. It was not known what existed between this one and the thirteenth, the residence of the immutable Tonacatecuhtli.
In this creation, water received a special organization; for the gods met to form Tlalocaltecuhtli and his wife Chalchiutlicue who became masters of the liquid element. In the dwelling inhabited by these two were four pools filled with different waters. The water of the first pool helped germination, that of the second withered the seed, the water of the third froze them, and that of the fourth dried them. Tlaloc, in his turn, created a multitude of small ministers charged with the execution of his orders. Furnished with an amphora and armed with a wand, these pygmies carried the water where the god directed them, and sprinkled it as rain. Thunder was produced whenever one of them broke his jar, and the lightning which struck men was nothing but a fragment of the shattered vessel. In the midst of the waters a great fish, called Cipactli, charged with sustaining and directing the earth, had been created.
The first woman bore a son; as he had no companion, the gods made him one out of a hair. The demi-sun illuminated the world imperfectly; hence Tezcatlipoca undertook the task of fashioning a complete star. The Nahuatlacs believe that the sun and moon wandered in space. The sun—a curious detail—traversed half the space open before him, and then retreated. His image in the west was only his reflection. Lastly the four gods created the giants, and then Huitzilipochtli’s bones took on a covering of flesh.
Discord broke out among the creators. Quetzacoatl, with a blow of his stick, precipitated Tezcatlipoca into the water, where he was transformed into a tiger, and took his brother’s place as sun. After a period of more than six hundred years, the great tiger Tezcatlipoca gave Quetzacoatl a blow with his paw, and precipitated him in turn from the heavens. The fall of the god produced such a wind that almost all mankind perished; those who survived were transformed into monkeys.
The quarrels of the gods took long to subside. Tezcatlipoca rained fire over the earth, Chalchiutlicue flooded it, and then it was necessary to repeople it. Whereupon Camaxtle-Huitzilipochtli, striking a rock with his stick, caused the Chichimec-Otomites, who had peopled the earth before the Aztecs, to come forth.
Let us pause here; nevertheless, as Orozco has judiciously remarked, these fables, absurd as they appear, contain astronomical, religious, and social myths. They show us the ideas of the peoples of Anahuac on the creation of the earth, and the relations which they imagined existed between it and the heavens. Like many other peoples, the Nahuatlacas were convinced that the conflict of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, had caused great cataclysms. In their fables we see the first intimation of the unity of God. Astronomy is originated; the human races with their typical colors are already classified. Domestic arts appear with the maize given as a dowry to the first woman. In place of the Atlas of the Greeks, the columns of the Vedas, the elephants of the Hindoos, it is a whale that supports the world; but what a curious analogy! At last a nation appears; the Chichimecs rise up under the wand of a god striking a rock, and humanity springs into existence.
Now let us approach the special cosmogony, and afterwards the mythology, of the people whose past we are endeavoring to reconstruct.
The Aztec cosmogony, as well as their mythology, like that of all nations, is evidently primitive history altered by oral tradition, transformed by the imagination and symbolized. The gods of the Mexicans, like those of the Greeks, were great men, who were afterwards gradually deified.
Thus, beyond all doubt, the famous god of the air, Quetzacoatl, had been a lawgiver; and Huitzilipochtli, the sanguinary Mars, who had those strangled on the altar whom he spared in battle, had been a famous warrior. A writer who should now endeavor to restore these figures of the past to historic truth would lose himself in hypotheses; therefore we shall not attempt it.
According to the ideographic paintings preserved at Rome, and known as the “Collection of the Vatican,” the Aztecs believed that four suns, successively created by the will of a god, had illuminated the earth. The first of these stars, Atonathiu, or “sun of water,” was afterwards extinguished, whereupon a deluge was produced. The second, Ehecatonathiu, when he was dying, let loose a wind which nothing could withstand. The third, Tletonathiu, destroyed the earth by fire, and finally, the fourth, Tlatonathiu, by his creation produced the state of things we now see. Let us remark that the order in which these suns appeared has often been inverted, accordingly as the manuscripts consulted have been read from left to right or from right to left.
To resume: According to the Aztecs, who, however, borrowed this cosmogony from the peoples whom they had replaced in Anahuac, the human race had been annihilated at three different times, and the earth repeopled as often by couples who had escaped from the catastrophes.
According to the approximate calculation of the epochs assigned to each of these destructions, our globe, flooded, devastated by the wind, then burned, would be about twenty thousand years old.
Although in a rather imperfect way, the Aztecs had the idea of a supreme being, independent and absolute. As they considered him invisible they never attempted to represent him by images; they designated him by the generic name of Teotl (“God”). This word, which resembles the Theos of the Greeks even more in meaning than in pronunciation, has caused learned discussions in regard to the origin of the people of the New World. It is, however, merely a curious coincidence, from which no inference can be drawn.
To paint the greatness of this supreme God, the Aztecs used the most expressive epithets. Thus they called him Ipalnemoani (“he who gives us life”), or Tloque-nahuaque (“he who embraces everything”). But the knowledge of this supreme divinity disappeared before a multitude of secondary gods, engendered by superstition. Let us observe that an evil spirit, named Tlacatecolotl (“the reasoning owl”), the enemy of the human race, was opposed to Teotl. In the beliefs of the Aztecs, this spirit allowed himself to be seen by men only to terrify them or do them some injury; he filled the place of the Satan of the Christians.
The Aztecs, like the other nations of Anahuac on the way towards civilization, believed in the existence of the soul and regarded it as immortal. However, as is shown by their funeral rites, they accorded the same attribute of immortality to the principle which animates all living beings. In their belief three principal places served as a refuge for souls separated from the bodies they had inhabited. The soul of the soldier killed in battle, that of the prisoner sacrificed by the enemy, and that of the woman who died in the pains of childbirth, were transported to the dwelling of the sun, to there enjoy a delightful existence.
Each morning these souls celebrated the rising of the star by hymns, dances, and concerts; they accompanied it as far as the zenith. Then souls of women having come to meet him, in turn escorted the god until his setting with the same demonstrations of joy. After four years of this “glorious” life, the souls animated the clouds, as birds, with harmonious voices and brilliant plumage; free to rise in the depths of heaven or to descend to the earth to sing or to taste the nectar of the flowers. These last privileges the Tlaxcaltecs accorded only to the souls of nobles, which, besides animating the bodies of richly-plumed singing-birds, vivified those also of quadrupeds endowed with generous instincts. As to the souls of plebeians, they sought refuge in the bodies of beetles or other animals of low organization. The Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration, therefore, had partisans in the New World in the sixth century.
The souls of those who were killed by lightning, drowned, or who died in consequence of tumors, dropsy, wounds, etc., as well as the souls of children sacrificed to Tlaloc, god of the waters, took their flight to a cool and agreeable place named Tlalocan, where they enjoyed varied pleasures and were fed on delicious dishes. In the heart of the great temple of Mexico there was a place reserved in which, on a certain day of the year, all the souls of children met. Finally, a hell, called Mictlan, served as a residence for the god Mictlanteuctli and for his substitute, the goddess Mictlancihuatl. In this hell, situated in the centre of the earth, the souls underwent but one pain,—terrible for people accustomed to the splendors of the tropical sun,—that of living in darkness.
The Aztecs preserved traditions regarding the creation of the world, a universal flood, the confusion of tongues, and the dispersion of men over the surface of the globe; facts represented in a great number of their hieroglyphic paintings. They related that the first inhabitants of the earth having been drowned by incessant rains, a single man, named Coxcox, and a woman called Teocipatli, had been able, like Noah, to save themselves in a boat, and that they had landed near the mountain of Colhuacan. The two fugitives afterwards had many children, all of whom were born dumb, and who remained so, until one day, a dove from the top of a tree taught each of them a different language.
Next to Teotl, the principal god of the Aztecs was called Tezcatlipoca (“shining mirror”); his images always represented him holding one of these articles in his hands. He was also called “soul of the world,” for he was regarded as the creator of heaven and earth, as the master of all things, as Providence. He was personified under the features of a young man; for time had no effect on him, and for this reason he was called Telpuctli. He was the god who rewarded the just, and who punished evil-doers by afflicting them with disease.
Under the name of Necoc-Yaotl (“sower of discord”) he went about among men and induced them to destroy one another. At the corners of streets in cities, stone seats ornamented with plants existed, intended to serve him as a place of rest, seats on which it was forbidden to sit. He was said to have descended from heaven by means of a spider’s thread. On his arrival upon earth he had fought with Quetzacoatl, a high-priest of the kingdom of Tollan,—who was himself later placed among the gods,—and had pursued and driven him from Anahuac.
The principal image of Tezcatlipoca (fig. 7), richly decorated, was made of teotetl (“divine stone”), a kind of brilliant black marble. His ears were ornamented with golden rings, and from his lower lip hung a tube of crystal, enclosing a green or blue feather, simulating a precious stone. His hair was bound with a gold cord, to which hung an ear of the same metal, an emblem of the prayer of the afflicted. His breast was covered with massive gold, and his arms bore bracelets of the same metal. An emerald represented his navel, and in his left hand he held a golden fan ornamented with many-colored feathers in the form of a mirror, by the aid of which he saw what was passing on the earth. At times, to symbolize his justice, he was represented seated on a bench, wrapped in a mantle of red cloth, on which were embroidered skulls and human bones. On these occasions he held a shield and four arrows in his left hand, while his right hand was raised in the act of throwing a dart. His entire body was painted black, and his head was crowned with partridge feathers.
As a curiosity, we give a prayer that was addressed to Tezcatlipoca by his devotees, and which seems to be a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer is quoted, without comment, both by Sahagun and Torquemada.
“Mighty God, thou who givest me life and whose slave I am, grant me the supreme grace of giving me meat and drink; grant me the enjoyment of thy clemency, that it may support me in my labors and my wants. Have pity on me who live sad, poor, and abandoned, and since I serve thee by sweeping thy temple, open to me the hands of thy mercy.”
Ometeuctli (“twice lord”) and Omecihuatl (“twice woman”) were divinities who, in heaven, inhabited an enchanted city, the abode of all the pleasures. From there they watched over the world, Ometeuctli being charged with giving to men their inclinations, and Omecihuatl presided over those of women. It was said that the latter, already the mother of many children, gave birth to a flint knife, which her indignant sons hurled down to the earth.
In falling, the knife gave birth to sixteen hundred demi-gods. The latter, finding no one to serve them,—the earth had just been depopulated by a scourge,—sent an embassy to their mother to ask the gift of creating men. The goddess replied that, if their thoughts had been worthy of their origin, they would have come to live with her. It being granted that they preferred to live on the earth, they should have recourse to Mictlanteuctli, god of the infernal regions, to obtain human bones, which they should sprinkle with their blood, and from which would be born a man and a woman who would increase and multiply. Omecihuatl enjoined them to mistrust the god of the infernal regions, who, after having yielded to their demand, might repent of his complaisance.
Following the advice of his mother, one of the demi-gods, Xolotl, descended to the centre of the earth. Having obtained what he wanted, he departed running. Rendered suspicious by this flight, Mictlanteuctli pursued him; but not being able to overtake him, he returned to his empire.
In his precipitate flight, Xolotl fell and broke the bone he was carrying into a great many pieces of unequal size. He gathered the pieces together and rejoined his brothers; then, the precious fragments having been placed at the bottom of a vase, each of the demi-gods sprinkled them with his blood. On the fourth day a boy was born, and on the seventh day a girl, children whom Xolotl fed with the juice of the thistle.
The custom, so common among the nations of Anahuac, of frequently bleeding themselves from various parts of the body, sprung from this tradition. The difference noticeable in the height of men was explained to the minds of the Aztecs by the unequal size of the fragments of the broken bone.
Ometeuctli was also called Citlatonac, and Omecihuatl, Citlaticue.
Among the goddesses of Mexican mythology the principal was Cihuacohuatl (“woman-serpent”).
It was said she was the first woman that had brought forth children, and that she invariably bore twins. She often showed herself to men, always richly clothed and carrying a cradle in which reposed a new-born child; this apparition presaged a calamity. The Aztecs looked upon tobacco as an incarnation of this goddess.
The sun and the moon were deified by the Aztecs under the names of Tonathiu and Meztli respectively. The human race having been restored in the manner related, all the demi-gods had their servants and partisans. But the primitive sun having become extinct, they assembled at Teotihuacan around a great fire, and declared to their servants that the one among them who would throw himself into the brazier would be transformed into a sun. Immediately a man more intrepid than his comrades, Nanahuatzin, cast himself into the flames and went down into hell.
Those present remained in a state of suspense, anxious to know in what part of the heavens the new sun would appear. At last the star appeared in the east, and scarcely had he risen above the horizon, when he stood still. The demi-gods urged him to continue his course, and the sun replied that he would do so when they were all dead. This response filled them with consternation; one of them, named Citli, angrily seized his bow and shot an arrow towards the sun, which the latter escaped by bowing down. Citii cast two more arrows with no better success.
Irritated in turn, the sun hurled one of the darts at the assailant and fixed it in his forehead, inflicting a wound from which the audacious man died.
Terrified by the misfortune that had befallen their brother, and unable to struggle against the sun, the demi-gods resolved to die by the hand of Xolotl, who, after opening the breasts of all the rest, killed himself.
Mankind were overcome with sorrow at the death of their masters. But soon the god Tezcatlipoca commanded one of them to betake him- self to the abode of the sun to inform him that a bridge of whales and tortoises would be built for the voyage he was to undertake over the sea. The god himself taught the messenger a song, which the latter was to sing during his mission. Thence, according to the Aztecs, came not only the discovery of music, but also their custom of celebrating the feast of their gods with songs and dances. On the other hand, must not the origin of the human holocausts, so common among the ancient Mexicans, be sought for in the frightful immolation of his brothers made by Xolotl?
A fable very much like the one related concerning the birth of the sun was current regarding that of the moon. Imitating the example of Nanahuatzin, a man had thrown himself into the fire lighted at Teotihuacan; but the flames having diminished in intensity, he came forth less brilliant than his predecessor, and was transformed into a moon. On the plains of Teotihuacan still exist the ruins of the two temples commemorative of these old traditions,— one dedicated to the star of day, the other to that of night
Biart, Lucien. The Aztecs: Their History, Manners, and Customs. Translated by John Leslie Garner, A.C. McClurg & Co, 1900.
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