Coyolxauhqui- Aztec GodDeity"Moon Goddess"

The Conspiracy at Coatepec

Golden coyolli bells adorned her cheeks and a skull hung at her belt. Before the sun was born, Coyolxauhqui commanded the entire host of the night sky.

At Coatepec, Serpent Mountain, the earth goddess Coatlicue served as a temple priestess, sweeping the shrine each day. One afternoon, a ball of fine feathers descended from the sky and lodged in her bosom. She tucked the feathers into her waistband, but when she reached for them later, they were gone. She was pregnant, with no father to name.

Her children were horrified. Coyolxauhqui rallied her four hundred brothers, the Centzon Huitznahua, a numberless host who filled the southern sky as stars. Their mother had brought shame on the family, she told them, and the only remedy was her death. Coyolxauhqui painted her face with the markings of war, bound her hair in the warrior's topknot, and led the army of stars up the slopes of Coatepec. She did not know that the child in Coatlicue's womb was the sun itself.

The Birth of the Sun

As the army climbed in battle order, one brother, Cuahuitlicac, broke ranks and ran ahead to warn the unborn child. He called out the army's progress: they have reached the terrace, they have crested the ridge, they are at the summit. From within the womb, Huitzilopochtli whispered back: "Do not be afraid. I know what I must do."

The moment Coyolxauhqui and her brothers crested the summit with weapons raised, Huitzilopochtli burst forth fully grown and fully armed. In his hand blazed the xiuhcoatl, the turquoise fire serpent. With a single swing he decapitated his sister. Her head flew from her body, bells still ringing, and her dismembered corpse tumbled down the mountainside, breaking apart on every slope and ledge. Huitzilopochtli turned on the four hundred brothers and pursued them across the sky until the survivors became the stars.

The Moon's Eternal Defeat

Coyolxauhqui's dismembered body was flung into the sky, where it became the moon. Each night she rises, gathering the surviving stars around her like the remnants of her shattered army. Each dawn she is broken apart again by the sun's light. The waxing and waning of the moon traced the rhythm of her wounds: as the crescent swelled, Coyolxauhqui was reassembling herself for another assault. As it waned, she was being dismembered once more.

The Aztecs believed Huitzilopochtli needed constant nourishment to sustain his daily victory. Human hearts and blood fed the ongoing battle that Coyolxauhqui's rebellion had set in motion at Coatepec. Without these offerings, the sun would weaken, and one dawn Coyolxauhqui and her star-brothers would triumph, plunging the world into permanent darkness. Every war captive led up the pyramid steps fed this war.

Coatepec in Stone

In February 1978, electrical workers digging a trench near the Zócalo in Mexico City struck a massive carved stone. Archaeologists uncovered a monumental disk over three meters in diameter: Coyolxauhqui in low relief, dismembered, every bell and serpent and skull rendered with a precision that made her defeat beautiful. The stone lay at the base of the Templo Mayor's south stairway, Huitzilopochtli's side, exactly where myth placed her shattered body after her brother hurled her from the summit.

The discovery triggered the excavation of the Templo Mayor itself, buried beneath colonial buildings for nearly five centuries. Later digs revealed additional Coyolxauhqui sculptures at earlier construction phases of the pyramid. Each time the temple was expanded, her image was carved anew. The Aztecs never allowed the enemy the sun must defeat to fade from sight. The entire temple was Coatepec rebuilt in stone: each step a slope of the sacred mountain, each sacrifice atop the pyramid a reenactment of the first dawn, the victim's body tumbling down the steep steps to land upon Coyolxauhqui's carved face.