30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for Top Juniors and above
Find out moreDid Tezcatlipoca actually have four wives?
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Dante: Did Tezcatlipoca actually have four wives? He’s my favorite god and I want to know as much as I can about him! (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Yes, but only for twenty days! And it wasn’t actually Tezcatlipoca the god, it was his human impersonator. He was married to four Mexica women as part of the Toxcatl festival. They were given the names of four goddesses - Xochiquetzal, Xilonen, Atlatonan and Uixtocihuatl. They were chosen a year in advance (as was he), and carefully protected by wardens. It was their duty to comfort and encourage the young impersonator of Tezcatlipoca in the run-up to him being sacrificed to the deity - then they waved goodbye to him! We don’t know if the four wives were nobles, prisoners, slaves or what.
Picture source:-
• Image from the Florentine Codex scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994.
Comments (2)
T
Taytay
20th May 2023
I had no idea that they helped the wind god cross the ocean! Thank you!
T
Taytay
17th May 2023
Oh! I was just wondering about this when I came across this article! Thank you :D
Also, I had a question: In the myth where Tezcatlipoca steals music from the sun, I’ve seen some people say that his assistants were a turtle, a mermaid and a whale or a crocodile woman, fish woman, and reed and shell woman. Are either one of these true?
M
Mexicolore
The first three (turtle, mermaid [or ‘sea cow’], whale) yes - they’re supposed to have formed a bridge, so the wind god (sent by Tezcatlipoca) could cross the ocean to reach the Sun... This is according to the ‘Histoyre du Mechique’.
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