Piltzintecuhtli- Aztec GodDeity"Young Prince Lord"

The Young Sun

Piltzintecuhtli, "Young Prince Lord," personified the sun in its youthful vigor: the rising light before it reached the blazing zenith claimed by Tonatiuh. Tonatiuh was the sun of the current age, demanding blood to keep moving across the sky. Piltzintecuhtli was the solar force at its freshest, the sun as it first climbed from the horizon.

He held a fixed place in the tonalpohualli, the 260-day ritual calendar, as patron of the trecena beginning with 1 Xochitl (1 Flower). This thirteen-day period was associated with artistic skill, pleasure, and the sacred properties of flowers, including those with hallucinogenic properties used in rituals.

Sun, Flowers, and Maize

Piltzintecuhtli took as consort Xochiquetzal, the goddess of beauty, love, and flowers. From their union came Centeotl, the maize god. Sun and flowering earth together produced the crop that sustained humanity. Maize required both solar heat and the earth's generative power to grow, and this family line traced that dependence to its source.

The Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas places Piltzintecuhtli within the narrative of the cosmic ages, where different deities served as the sun across successive world eras. Each sun eventually fell, destroyed by jaguars, wind, fire rain, or flood, and a new one had to be created. Piltzintecuhtli was the young sun, the moment when a new light rises to replace the one that fell.