Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, the primordial dual couple, generated the four Tezcatlipocas — Xipe Totec, Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, and Quetzalcoatl — along with Xolotl, as the foundational forces of creation.
⚠ Huitzilopochtli's origin is dual-layered: the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus Pinturas places him among the four sons of Ometeotl, while the Florentine Codex narrates his miraculous birth from Coatlicue at Coatepec.
Xolotl accompanied Quetzalcoatl on the descent to Mictlan to retrieve the bones of previous humanity, serving as his guide and protector through the underworld.
Xolotl, the dog-headed evening star, guides the sun Tonatiuh through the dark passages of Mictlan each night, ensuring its safe passage from west to east so it may rise again at dawn.
Ehecatl sacrificed the assembled gods at Teotihuacan to set the newborn Fifth Sun in motion, but Xolotl fled in terror — transforming into a double maize stalk, a maguey, and finally an axolotl before Ehecatl caught and slew him, the last god to die.
Xolotl, the dog-headed twin of Quetzalcoatl, guides the souls of the dead through Mictlan's nine treacherous levels, serving as their companion on the four-year journey to the underworld's deepest darkness.
When Nanahuatzin cast himself into the divine bonfire at Teotihuacan and became the Fifth Sun, the assembled gods were called to sacrifice themselves so the sun could move — but Xolotl alone refused, weeping until his eyes fell from their sockets, fleeing through three desperate transformations before his capture and death.
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