Article suitable for older students

Huehueteotl, old Aztec god of Fire

28th Dec 2023

Huehueteotl was, literally, the Old God of the Aztecs - in fact very possibly the oldest deity in Mesoamerica. Though most honoured and prayed to in Central Mexico, images of him have been found in West Mexico, Veracruz, Yucatán, Monte Albán... He was essentially a household deity, and statues of him are usually found in residential contexts rather than in temples. Every day, each Mexica-Aztec family member would throw a small offering into the family hearth, in honour of Huehueteotl...
(Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

‘In his standard representation as a stone sculpture [see main picture, above], Huehueteotl is a seated figure, legs crossed in front of him, with both hands resting on his knees. His right hand is palm up and his left is clenched as it it once held a banner. He hunches over, with the curved spine of age, and his face is usually heavily wrinkled... On his head he usually wears a huge brazier, its rim marked with rhomboid lozenges, symbolic of fire at Teotihuacan. The brazier itself may have held smouldering coals or incense’ (Miller & Taube 1993: 92).
Alfonso Caso explains his importance to the Mexica-Aztec household like this: ‘He was the god of the centre position in relation to the four cardinal points of the compass, just as the tlecuitl, or brazier for kindling fire, was the centre of the indigenous home and temple’ (1958: 38).

Just as the fire in the hearth was the sacred centre, the ‘navel’ of the family home, so, as James Maffie explains, ‘The Aztecs also characterised the earth’s navel as the “navel of fire” (in tlexicco) since there resides Xiuhtecuhtli (Lord of Fire, the Year, and Time; the Turquoise Lord; who overlaps with the aged fire god, Huehueteotl). From there Xiuhtecuhtli pumps sacred energy to the four quadrants of the Fifth Sun...’
One of the four sacred and fundamental forces of the cosmos, together with water, air and earth, ‘Fire is simultaneously destructive, creative and transformative. Its power begins, sustains, and ends life. It initiates life by contributing to the vivifying spark of life. It sustains life by contributing life-giving warmth. It supports the growth, health and survival of newborn children. Sahagún reports that midwives placed newborns near their homes’ hearth fires in order to expose them to fire’s tonalli [spirit]... Lastly, burning ends life.’ (2014: 318, 295-6).

Out of death, of course, new life grows - symbolised in Mexica eyes by (new) fire, kindled ritually every 52 years in the New Fire Ceremony, the birth of a new Mesoamerican ‘century’. Inga Clendinnen reminds us: ‘The Oldest God who sat flickering between his stones in every hearth flamed high before each temple, and all men knew his genesis: kindled on the breast of a young warrior and fed with his flesh and heart’ (1991: 54).

Sources/references:-
• Caso, Alfonso (1958) The Aztecs - People of the Sun, University of Oklahoma Press
• Clendinnen, Inga (1991) Aztecs, Cambridge University Press
• Maffie, James (2014) Aztec Philosophy, University Press of Colorado
• Miller, Mary & Taube, Karl (1993) The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, Thames & Hudson Ltd., London.

Picture sources:-
• Main: our animation of an original photo by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore
• Other photos by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Colour illustration for and © Mexicolore by Felipe Dávalos.