Huitzilopochtli claimed Tenochtitlan as his sacred seat — he led the Mexica to its island site with the sign of an eagle on a cactus, and from atop the Templo Mayor's twin pyramid his war cult presided over the empire's beating heart.
Aztlan and Tenochtitlan are the two poles of the Mexica migration — the island homeland left behind and the island city founded generations later when the wanderers finally saw Huitzilopochtli's promised sign, an eagle devouring a serpent atop a nopal cactus.
The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan was built as a ritual recreation of Coatepec, the Serpent Mountain where Huitzilopochtli burst from Coatlicue's womb to slay the Centzon Huitznahua — each new temple layer re-enacting his cosmic victory at the city's sacred center.
Huitzilopochtli slew his nephew Copil and commanded that his heart be hurled into Lake Texcoco, where from stone and blood a nopal cactus burst forth — the very spot where an eagle with a serpent would mark the founding site of Tenochtitlan.
The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan bore twin shrines at its summit — Huitzilopochtli's on the south and Tlaloc's on the north — binding the city's fate to both war and rain, blood and harvest, in a single sacred mountain of stone.
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