Tezcatlipoca- Aztec GodDeity"Lord of the Smoking Mirror"

Creator of the Earth

Tezcatlipoca carried an obsidian mirror that showed him everything hidden: the secrets of the heart, events in distant places, the shape of fate. The Primeros Memoriales calls him Moyocoyani, "He Who Invents Himself," a god who exists by his own will. He was one of four brothers born from the dual creator Ometeotl, each tied to a cardinal direction. Tezcatlipoca took the north, the region of death and cold.

Before the world existed, only the primordial sea stretched endlessly, and within it swam Cipactli, the earth monster. Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl descended together to create the world. Tezcatlipoca dangled his foot in the water as bait, and when Cipactli surged up to devour it, the gods seized the monster. They tore it apart: its back became the mountains, its eyes the springs and caves. But Cipactli bit off Tezcatlipoca's foot, and he wears an obsidian mirror in its place.

The Cycles of the Suns

Tezcatlipoca ruled the First Sun, Nahui Ocelotl, the Sun of Jaguars. Under his reign the world was populated by giants, but Quetzalcoatl struck him from the sky with a great stone club. Tezcatlipoca plunged into the sea and rose again as a monstrous jaguar. In his fury he summoned an army of jaguars that devoured every giant on earth, ending the First Age.

Quetzalcoatl then claimed the Second Sun, but Tezcatlipoca struck back, toppling his rival and unleashing hurricanes that swept away that world's people and turned them into monkeys. Through the Third and Fourth Suns the brothers continued their pattern of creation and catastrophe, each age ending in flood or fire, until the gods gathered at Teotihuacan to kindle the Fifth Sun.

The Fall of Tula

At Tula, Quetzalcoatl had built a golden age. As the priest-king Ce Acatl Topiltzin, he offered only butterflies and incense to the gods. No human blood. Tezcatlipoca found this intolerable.

Taking the form of an old man, he appeared before Quetzalcoatl with a mirror and showed the priest-king his own mortal face, old and haggard. In the Anales de Cuauhtitlán, he took other guises too: a naked chile seller whose virility drove Quetzalcoatl's daughter mad with desire, and a sorcerer who made a puppet dance in the marketplace until a stampede killed thousands.

Then he offered pulque, promising medicine for the body and the soul. Quetzalcoatl drank. By night's end the god of learning was roaring drunk, and in some accounts from the Anales he lay with his own sister Quetzalpetlatl. When dawn came and shame with it, Quetzalcoatl could not face what he had become. He burned his palaces, buried his treasures, and departed eastward, immolating himself on a pyre at the sea's edge. His heart ascended as Venus, the Morning Star. Tula's golden age ended.

The Toxcatl Festival

New kings addressed long prayers to Tezcatlipoca at their coronation. Sahagún recorded them in the Florentine Codex: the king declared himself unworthy, begged not to be made a laughingstock, and acknowledged that the throne was Tezcatlipoca's to grant and to revoke. The king was a flute through which the god blew his will.

The god's greatest festival was Toxcatl, held in the fifth month. A year before the ceremony, priests selected a young captive of perfect physical beauty to become the god's ixiptla, his living image on earth. For twelve months he lived as Tezcatlipoca incarnate, dressed in the god's regalia and taught to play the flute. He walked freely through Tenochtitlan, and all who saw him bowed. Twenty days before the sacrifice, he received four young women as his brides, each representing a goddess. On the appointed day, he walked to a small temple, ascended its steps while breaking one by one the flutes he had played throughout the year, and offered his heart.

The Crossroads

Tezcatlipoca was the supreme patron of nahualli, sorcerers who transformed into animal forms and moved unseen through darkness. His own animal form was the jaguar. The Florentine Codex describes how sorcerers invoked him before their rites, seeking his favor to shapeshift or read the fates of others.

He was said to roam the crossroads at night in jaguar form, testing travelers. Those who faced him with courage might receive his blessing. Cowards were dragged into the dark. Stone boxes carved with jaguar imagery found at the Templo Mayor show him emerging from the night sky in feline form, his obsidian mirror gleaming where his foot should be.