Cosmogram

The ancient Nahua thought that divine forces came down from the four trees or posts at the outer edges of the world - where the four gods were charged with keeping the two halves of [the crocodilian earth monster] Cipactli separated - revolving constantly in a counterclockwise movement above the surface of the earth. The hot forces that descended from heaven combined with the cold ones coming up from Mictlan. These are the Nahua traditions of the central plateau of Mexico, but this basic cosmovision was held in common among the Mesoamerican peoples.

Source:-
• López Austin, Alfredo (1993) The Myth of the Opossum - Pathways of Mesoamerican Mythology, translated by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano, University of New Mexico Press, p.52.

Picture sources:-
• Main: image scanned from The Codex Borgia: A Full-Colour Restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript by Gisele Díaz and Alan Rodgers, Dover Publications, 1993 - (detail from pl. 51)
• Illustration by Raíces, scanned from Arqueología Mexicana special edition no. 83 (Dec. 2018), Mexico City.

Illustration depicting the anticlockwise flow of cosmic time around the four cardinal direction trees, between sky and underworld; ‘O’ = Oeste/West