Article suitable for older students

Which was the first [Aztec/Maya] god you ever learned about?

15th Aug 2023

‘A Visual Guide to the Aztec Pantheon’

We like to survey our Panel of Experts when as a team we receive a particularly intriguing question from a child during one of our workshops. Such was the case again in January this year (2023) when a Yr 5/6 pupil at Bar Hill Community Primary in Cambridge asked us ‘Which was the first [Maya/Aztec] god you ever learned about?’ 42 of our current Panel responded. The results won’t surprise you, but some of the anecdotes given as context - shown in order of receipt - may resonate with and amuse you... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

A quarter of respondents told us the first god they learned about was Quetzalcóatl. When I was little and traveling in Mexico with my family, I heard that name and thought that it was awfully strange: that ‘tz’ and a ‘tl’ at the end! Then someone told me that it meant “Plumed Serpent.” As a kid I thought that was really cool. In the process, I learned my first Nahuatl (Aztec) words: quetzal = feather, coatl = snake / serpent. I vividly remember seeing images of him on the archeological ruins that we visited (John Schwaller). The meaning of his name in the Aztec language is “Emerald Plumed Quetzal”. He is named Kukulkan, which is also translated as “Emerald Plumed Quetzal, in the language of the Maya. A Quetzal is a very colourful bird living in many Latin-American countries. This deity is extremely fascinating as he is also venerated by many other cultures in Mexico (not only the Aztec and the Maya) (Lars Pharo). For many peoples living over centuries in central and southern Mexico, this was one of the most important deities. Among the Aztecs, Quetzalcóatl was the god of wind, rain, and fertility, he brought knowledge to humanity and was also associated with the planet Venus. A comparable god among the Maya was Itzamná (Ivan Šprajc). The feathered serpent god of wisdom. He is personified by Venus who always stays close to the sun, from whom he gathers sacred knowledge when he follows him into the underworld (Tony Aveni). No doubt the first Aztec god I heard about was Quetzalcoatl - and I’m reminded that one of my first books was Four Masterworks of American Indian Literature: Quetzalcoatl, the Ritual of Condolence, Cuceb, the Night Chant. (John Bierhorst). Quetzalcoatl, not so much for his role in Aztec religion as for his appearance, which is much closer to the western aesthetic and suitably affixed to any number of tourist objects. However, I don’t think he was as important as he is made out to be in the literature so now I would opt for Huitzilopochtli (Ross Hassig).

I don’t remember learning about any Aztec gods until I was in college and took a course called “Traditional Arts of the Americas.” Through that, I learned about many of the major deities, such as Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, and Huitzilopochtli. I attribute this late exposure to there not being much Mesoamerican culture or history covered in my K-12 curriculum. We learned about Greek and Roman gods, as well as some Egyptian ones, but none from the Aztec, Maya, or other Mesoamerican cultures. I am glad to see this bias is starting to change with school curricula becoming more diversified in terms of the world regions they engage with and sites like Mexicolore providing useful resources for teachers and students!
My kids, however, have a different story, given that both their parents are archaeologists and they have been coming to Mexico pretty regularly since they were in diapers [nappies]. Both of them were first interested in Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. Naturally, kids tend to gravitate to dinosaurs and dragons, and Quetzalcoatl has a similar appeal as a flying serpent. When one of my Mexican colleagues, Raul Garcia, learned of my son Tony’s interest in Quetzalcoatl, he generously gifted him the stuffed animal that you see here (David Carballo). The feathered serpent, of course, since this strange name is very popular among so many writers, authors (Lawrence) and even movie makers. I probably read or heard of other gods, but could not memorise their names until much later (Eric Taladoire). I grew up in Mexico, and this god was always the first one we would discuss in school before delving into the others (Tlaloc being a close second, and Huitzilopochtli a usual third). But, personally, my favorite is Xilonen, the goddess of maize (and fertility) (Vania Smith Allen). Quetzalcoatl (James Maffie). When I was a child I had an illustrated book on pre-Columbian civilisations and there was an artistic image of a feathered serpent, i.e., the Aztec Quetzalcóatl. That image, together with an aerial photo of Serpent Mound (Ohio), fascinated me, and it was one of the reasons why I decided to pursue a career in American archaeology and anthropology (Davide Domenici).

Second came Tlaloc, mentioned by seven Panellists.
Tlaloc, the goggled eye god of Teotihuacan, I learned about while living and working at Tikal for 12 months in 1965 as a student intern, age 19. Several stone stelae at TIkal show this deity. I kept this interest and wrote my MA thesis on Teotihuacan influence on the Classic Maya circa 1969. Then decided to map Yaxha (for over 4 years) because it had the largest frontal Tlaloc of any Classic Maya stela (Nicholas Hellmuth). I heard of all the Aztec gods at once, in a course. The most memorable one was Tlaloc who had a verdant paradise (Esther Pasztory). I am sure I learned about an Aztec or Maya god or two as a schoolboy and university student in England. But I don’t remember them. However, the first one that stuck permanently in my head was mentioned to me by a taxi driver in Mexico City, on my first visit there in 1985. As we drove through a torrential downpour and flooded roads that had reduced traffic to a crawl, the driver told me that Tlaloc was angry at the city. Tlaloc was the Aztec god of many things, he explained, including rain (Matthew Restall). Tlaloc - when I was a little girl, I used to hear the adults of the family blaming Tlaloc for the traffic and praising him after a heatwave. What they meant was the floods in the city were caused by rain and they wanted to thank him for the rain provided after a heatwave. Then I understood the power and importance of the God of Rain, and that he was unfairly blamed for the road conditions of the city. Angélica Baena).

As a young person I visited Mexico City’s magnificent anthropology museum and was “greeted” by the awesome statue of Tlaloc. It had rained every day, and I thought “Of course they worshipped the rain god.” It made perfect sense (Frances Berdan). Tlaloc, and I will make a link or two with Rain and Storm deities such as Zeus or Thor. I expect they [British school pupils] will have heard of both of these, and their cultures. (John Carlson). I cannot say for certain that it was the first, but for the most memorable, my vote goes to Tlaloc, the name the Aztecs gave to their principal deity of rain and thunder. Why so memorable? First, because his name is short and easy to pronounce, unlike some other gods I learned about later, such as Tlahiuzcalpanteuctli! Second, his visage is unforgettable, with prominent eye rings and a fanged mouth. And third, because he was already ancient by the time the Aztecs appeared on the scene. Not only was his veneration prominent at Classic period Teotihuacan 1000 years earlier, and from thence spread well into the Maya area, but there are iconographic indications of earlier versions of what may have evolved into a Classic Tlaloc in the preceding Formative (Preclassic) period. He’s basically all over Mesoamerica! (Susan Gillespie).

Four gods tied for third place: Chaac, Tezcatlipoca, Coatlicue and Huitzilopochtli. Following on naturally from Tlaloc, we begin with Chaac. In the Maya area, the first god I heard about was Chac, the rain god. He is sometimes called the long-nosed god. He is known throughout Maya history, and is associated with chert - known in England as flint. This may be because when it rains in Belize or Guatemala or Yucatan, you can find lots of flint tools and flakes on the surface, as if somehow the artefacts rained down on the earth! There are lots of images of the Long-nosed god on the temples in Yucatan (Elizabeth Graham). The first Maya god I heard of was the storm god “Chahk” (variously written as Chak, Chaac, etc.). The Maya (as well as other Mesoamerican societies) were fascinated by lightning bolts crossing the sky, by the power of storms and the rumbling of thunder (Joyce Marcus). The first Maya deity I learned about was the rain god Chaak as a first year college student. The funny thing, though, is that the representations that were believed to be Chaak (the long-nosed “masks” on the corners of structures in the Yucatan) turn out to be something else entirely - a way of representing the building they occurred on as animate (living) mountains. But Chaak is the most common deity in the Maya hieroglyphic codices that I work with so closely and is still important in some Maya communities in Yucatan today where ceremonies to “call” the rains are still performed (Gabrielle Vail).

Tezcatlipoca. I heard about him when I was five years old. My parents and granny left me at home alone and I turned on TV set where a programme about the Aztecs was running. I was deeply impressed by the sacrifice of young man to Tezcatlipoca and it was the start of my interest in Aztec culture (Anastasia Kalyuta). I was especially interested in him/it as it seemed to me that this god was especially redolent with shamanic/transformational issues that went back deep into Mesoamerican time and was therefore the deification of a shaman figure in a great state formation (Nicholas Saunders). It was in my fourth year of learning Spanish in high school when my class was introduced to the prehispanic painted codices from highland Central Mexico. Our teacher showed us images of the Codex Borbonicus and I became fascinated by the images of gods in the pages of the tonalamatl. The god that caught my eye immediately was Tezcatlipoca in his animal guise of a jaguar. I love felines, you see, so the god I thought was a jaguar became one of my favorite Aztec gods to learn more about. I also wanted to understand why he has an obsidian mirror in place of one of his feet (Christine Hernandez).

Coatlicue. ‘She of the Serpent Skirts’. As an undergraduate at the University of Essex I was asked to write an essay on this powerful Mexica (Aztec) god in relation to the extraordinary representation of her immortalised in stone, now on display at the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico City. This particular sculpture, which is an impressive 2.5 metres tall, with its multiple layers of embedded history and origin myth has captivated people since it was rediscovered in the 18th century (Adrian Locke). Mi profesor de 4 año de primaria nos llevó a todos sus alumnos al Museo Nacional de Antropología, y cuando entramos a la sala Mexica, me impresionó mucho la escultura de la Diosa Coatlicue, sobre todo, comprender su rostro!!!! Después busqué en los libros de casa, saber de qué diosa se trataba! (Salvador Guilliem Arroyo). I distinctly remember learning about Coatlicue when I was a freshman in college. An image of the Coatlicue sculpture was shown on one projector (this was back in the day of slide projectors!) and a painting of the Virgin Mary on the other. The juxtaposition of these two “mother goddesses” made me want to learn more about the Aztecs (Lori Diel).

Huitzilopochtli. God of war and the sun (Manuel Aguilar-Moreno). The Aztecs’ patron deity and god of the sun and war (Ben Leeming). The greatest of the great gods in the pantheon. I first encountered him in Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s account of the conquest of Mexico and was immediately fascinated by him. I discovered that he, like the greatest geniuses, was left-handed (or left-clawed, to be exact - he was a hummingbird, after all), so I knew he stood out from the usual divine riffraff. Of course, as a disciplined academic, I strictly refused to allow my own coincidental left-handedness to influence or cloud my judgement in this matter (Gordon Whittaker).

All the other gods received a single mention. We present them less in order of receipt of response and more for convenience in order of amount of background information supplied by the Panellist concerned. We start with Chicomexóchitl. When I was just embarking in 1972 on what became long-term ethnographic research in the Nahua community that I call Amatlán in northern Veracruz, Mexico, I was sitting with a group of men who were talking about an upcoming ritual. I kept hearing the name Chicomexochitl in their conversation. I knew that the Nahuatl name meant Seven Flower and I asked them about this figure. They seemed puzzled at my question but right off told me that it is maize. This was my first introduction to the Nahua pantheon of spirit entities that are the focus of their ritual activity. For the Nahua of this region, Seven Flower is a small boy with blond hair whose mother is Tonantzin (Our Honored Mother), and whose grandmother is a tzitzimitl, a fierce angry crone who tried in vain to kill him through various machinations. Many Aztec deities continue to be actively venerated among their contemporary cultural descendants. Sometimes the names of these entities have changed, but their identities and links to the past are unmistakable. H. E. M. Braakhuis [ref supplied] is one scholar who argues persuasively that Chicomexochitl corresponds to the Aztec deity Xochipilli, that Seven Flower’s mother Tonantzin is Xochiquetzal, and the murderous grandmother is Cihuacoatl Ilamatecuhtli (Alan Sandstrom).

Next up: Ehécatl. El primer dios azteca del que aprendí fue Ehecatl, esto a razón de que desde muy niño mi abuela materna me decía que hay que tener mucha atención cuando se ponen las nubes grises, y oscuras, porque en muy poco tiempo llovería y antes de eso, llega un aire que se encarga de limpiar los campos, y se lleva las enfermedades, este aire llega unos minutos antes de que llueva. Mi abuela no sabía que ese aire era considerado en la antigüedad como un dios, ella sabía que era algo importante y que habría que respetarlo. Mucho tiempo después, y leyendo sobre la historia de los aztecas, me dí cuenta de que el señor del aire, era considerado como un dios, el Aire, Ehecatl, mi abuela tenía mucha razón, hay que poner mucha atención cuando los aires llegan y en seguida llueve (Raúl Macuil).

Next, a trio: (Maya) Sun God, Xochiquetzal, Coyolxauhqui. The first Maya god I ever heard about was when I was an undergraduate - and it was definitely the Sun God, famous for his “T-shaped” tooth and immense, eagle-like eyes. What other bird is said to stare right into the sun? ...and, of course, it is a creature of outstanding visual perception. I was lucky to be an undergrad at an institution - the University of Pennsylvania - which has a truly great museum full of Maya pieces. One of them showed this deity (Stephen Houston). I remember which deity I first became fascinated with: Xochiquetzal. I was in an undergraduate class with David Carrasco (who could generate quite a lot of enthusiasm, by the way). Maybe my fascination was because Xochiquetzal was a female; but more likely it was because she was the patron of weavers and other artist-craft people. I was a professional fiber artist at the time, so how could I not like her!? (Kay Read). The first deity I learned about was Coyolxauhqui, Huitzilopochtli’s sister. Later, I saw the Coyolxauhqui Stone at the Templo Mayor. Its discovery there in 1978 started the excavations that led to the Museum and the Proyecto Templo Mayor, the ongoing work at that site (Molly Bassett).

And a duo: Ix Chel and the Maya Maize God. Ix Chel, the Maya moon goddess! I loved that I got to learn about a female goddess who is shown as young and beautiful as well as an old woman, showing the various phases of the moon. I also loved that she was often shown in the company of a rabbit as ancient Mesoamericans saw a rabbit on the moon! (Jennifer Mathews). The first Maya God who really caught my attention was the Corn God. His head is depicted as made of corn! Other ancient civilisations had deities of agriculture, but this was the first I had seen that was made of vegetation. Other ancient gods are part animal, but the Maya Corn god is part plant! (Ed Barnhart).

Next, gods specifically mentioned by Panellists but for which no background context was provided - absolutely fine, since we didn’t ask for any!: Itzamná God of creation and sky (Manuel Aguilar-Moreno), Xochipilli (Andrew Laird), Tlazolteotl (Susan Kellogg).

And to end with, a single but intriguing final entry: Maya God N. When I was little, I went to the Maya hall at the National Museum of Anthropology, and I was fascinated by the image of an old god emerging from a conch shell. Mayanists still don’t know his name, but it is known as God N, adding more mystery to this wise man who observes us from his impossible residence... (Laura Filloy).

Sincere thanks to all our Panellists who took part!

Picture sources (forgive our liberal use of Photoshop’s zoom burst effect!):-
• Main: illustration by, courtesy of and thanks to Gwendal Uguen (link below)
• Drawings of the following gods by Miguel Covarrubias scanned from The Aztecs: People of the Sun by Alfonso Caso, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958: Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, Ehecatl, Xochiquetzal, Xochipilli, Tlazolteotl
• Downpour in Mexico City: photo downloaded from Quora (‘What are the seasons in Mexico?’)
• Chaac: photo by Leonard G. of Terra cotta image of Maya Rain God Chac at San Francisco’s deYoung museum downloaded from Wikipedia (Maya Rain God Chac)
• Coatlicue: illustration by and courtesy of Gwendal Uguen
• Chicomexóchitl: image scanned from Enciclopedia gráfica del México antiguo: Los dioses supremos by Salvador Mateos Higuera, Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, Mexico City 1992
• Maya Sun God: photo downloaded from Wikipedia (God G Kinich Ahau), original from mayavase.com
• Coyolxauhqui: photo by Ana Laura Landa/Mexicolore
• Ix Chel: image scanned from our own copy of the Codex Dresden, ADEVA, Graz facsimile edition, 1975
• Maya Maize God E: photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Itzamna: image downloaded from Wikipedia (Itzamna), original from Francis Robicsek: The Maya Book of the Dead. The Ceramic Codex, University of Virginia Art Museum (1981)
• Maya God N: photo downloaded from mesoweb (follow link below).