Toci- Aztec GodDeity"Our Grandmother"

Grandmother and Healer

Toci, "Our Grandmother," was an earth goddess also called Tonantzin ("Our Mother") and Tlalli Iyollo ("Heart of the Earth"). She presided over the knowledge that sustained life at its most vulnerable: midwifery, healing, and the medicinal use of herbs. Aztec midwives, the tlamatqui, invoked her name during births, which were understood as battles where the mother fought to bring new life into the world. A woman who died in childbirth was honored as a warrior fallen in combat, and her spirit joined the cihuateteo, fierce celestial beings who accompanied the setting sun. Toci stood behind every midwife's hands, granting the skill to turn difficult births and the prayers that eased mother and child through the ordeal.

She was also patron of weavers. Her symbols were the broom and the spindle, the obsidian knife that cut the umbilical cord and the raw cotton that connected the work of hands to the work of the earth.

The Ochpaniztli

Toci's principal festival, Ochpaniztli ("Sweeping"), was held in the eleventh month of the Aztec calendar, roughly September, as the harvest season began. For days, the people of Tenochtitlan swept their temples, houses, and streets with brooms, purifying the city for the new agricultural cycle. At the festival's climax, a woman chosen to embody the goddess was sacrificed. Her skin was flayed and worn by a priest who then presided over mock battles and fertility rites, the goddess's power transferred through the skin of her living image.

After the conquest, the hill of Tepeyac where Tonantzin was worshipped became the site of the Virgin of Guadalupe's reported appearance. Indigenous peoples continued to call the Virgin "Tonantzin."