Tlaloque- Aztec GroupCollective"Ministers of Tlaloc"

Servants at the Four Quarters

The Tlaloque dwelt upon the peak of Tlalocan, the green mountain paradise ruled by their master Tlaloc. Sahagún recorded in the Florentine Codex that these beings stood at each of the four cardinal directions, each holding great jars filled with different kinds of water. One jar held beneficial rain that nourished maize and brought good harvests. Another contained water that rotted crops with blight. A third produced frost, and the fourth brought only barren drizzle. When Tlaloc commanded, a Tlaloque would lift his jar and shatter it against the clouds. The water spilling forth became rain upon the earth. The sound of the breaking vessel was thunder, and the shards flying through the sky were lightning bolts.

This mechanism of rain production, described in Florentine Codex Book 7, placed the Tlaloque at the center of agricultural life. Farmers understood that the quality of each season's rainfall depended upon which jar had been broken and from which direction the rain arrived. East-blown rain brought growth; rain from the south carried rot and disease for the crops.

Mountains and Cult Practice

The Aztecs identified mountains themselves as dwelling places of the Tlaloque. Each significant peak in the Valley of Mexico was understood to house one of these rain beings within its hollow interior. The Florentine Codex Book 1 records that the Aztecs fashioned small wooden images (tetehuitl) representing the mountains and their resident Tlaloque, placing offerings before them during the veintena festivals of Atlcahualo and Tozoztontli.

Child sacrifices formed the most solemn offering to the Tlaloque during these festivals. Sahagún documented that children were selected and adorned, then carried to mountain shrines where they were offered so that the Tlaloque would release their rains for the coming agricultural season. The tears of the children were themselves considered sympathetic magic, encouraging the rain to fall. Archaeological evidence from Templo Mayor excavations in Mexico City has recovered offerings associated with Tlaloc's cult, including greenstone figurines and water-related ritual objects, confirming the material dimensions of this worship.

Those who died by lightning strike, drowning, or water-related diseases such as dropsy were believed to be claimed by the Tlaloque and sent to Tlalocan rather than Mictlan. This form of death was considered a divine selection, and the bodies of such dead were not cremated but buried, their passage to Tlaloc's paradise assured.