The Aztec people are believed to have had a pantheon of around 200 different gods, but they had two principal deities that were worshipped alongside one another and a dichotomic pair: and Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and war. The Aztecs called themselves the People of the Sun in Huitzilopochtli’s honor.
Reincarnated Warrior of the Sun: Etymology and Iconography
The name Huitzilopochtli literally means “left-handed hummingbird”, and Huitzilopochtli was represented as a hummingbird or an anthropomorphic being with a blue-green hummingbird feather headdress and feathers on his left leg. He also often had a black face and carried a scepter in the form of a snake. This scepter was called a Xiuhcoatl, that he wields as a weapon. He also often holds a round shield decorated with balls of eagle feathers. In some depictions, he is painted blue or with yellow and blue stripes.
But perhaps a better translation for the name Huitzilopochtli is “reincarnated warrior of the sun”. First, the hummingbird was associated with ideas of reincarnation due to its habit of hibernating in the winter, appearing dead, and then coming back to life in the spring. The Aztecs also believed that the bravest warriors were reincarnated as hummingbirds.
Huitzilopochtli Mythology
In one myth, Huitzilopochtli is said to be the son of a couple of Ometeotl creator gods called Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl. He was the smallest of their four sons, the other three being Quetzalcoatl, Xipe Totec, and Tezcatlipoca. Huitzilopochtli and his brother Quetzalcoatl were shared by their parents with bringing order to the world, so they created fire, then male and female humans, and then the earth and the sun for them.
A more popular myth suggests that Huitzilopochtli was the son of the fierce goddess Coatlicue, who was impregnated while sweeping a ball of eagle feathers on Mount Coatapec. She already had four hundred male sons called the Centzonuitznaua and a daughter Coyolxauhqui. For some reason, they were upset that their mother was pregnant with yet another son and decided to kill her.
As his siblings prepared to attack, Huitzilopochtli burst forth from his mother’s womb fully formed and in full armor, and attacked his older siblings to protect his mother. He beheaded his sister and threw her body off the mountain. He then chased his four hundred brothers, who fled across the sky.
Now Huitzilopochtli is the sun, his sister the moon, and his brothers the stars, and Huitzilopochtli continues to protect his earth mother from their attempts to destroy her.
Rituals and Sacrifices
Huitzilopochtli was the patron of the deity of the city of Tenochtitlan, the historic center of Mexico City, where he had at least 19 altars. The main temple was clearly extremely important, as it was enlarged eleven times within its 200-year history.
The temple was actually a dual temple dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, the god of rain. This kind of dual worship was very common among the Aztecs, with Huitzilopochtli representing the sun and light, war and sacrifice, and Tlaloc rain, fertility, and growth.
Huitzilopochtli was originally a god of the Mexica tribe that lived in a place called Aztlan. But Huitzilopochtli ordered the people to abandon their city and find a new home. After he guided them to a new location, he kind of abandoned them and left his people in the charge of his sister Malinalxochitl, who founded Malinalco.
The Aztecs were unhappy under the command of Malinalxochitl and begged Huitzilopochtli to return to them. He put his sister to sleep and ordered the Aztects to leave. She was very upset when she awoke to find her people gone, and in revenge, she gave birth to Copil, who would grow up to challenge Huitzilopochtli, unsuccessfully. In their battle, Huitzilopochtli pulled out his heart and threw it into Lake Texcoco, where it grew into an island. Once this was done, Huitzilopochtli ordered the Aztecs to find and build their city on top of the heart, which explains why the city sat on an island in the lake.
His cult figure in his main temple was decorated with cloth, feathers, gold, and jewels and hidden behind a curtain. According to legend, this state was meant to be destroyed by the Spanish, but it was saved, and believed to still stand in a cave in the Anahuac Valley.
According to accounts by the Spanish, human sacrifice played an important role in the worship of Huitzilopochtli, and it was on a large scale.
The Aztecs believed that the god needed human blood to give him the energy to continue his ongoing fight. This was often done with personal bloodletting on a daily basis by members of the royal family.
But every 52 years, the natural lifecycle of the sun, the Aztecs believed that Huitzilopochtli needed more to ensure that he can overcome his natural end of life and live for another 52 years. This probably corresponds to when the Great Pyramid at Tenochtitlan was reconstructed in 1487. The Aztecs claimed to sacrifice 20,4000 prisoners in just four days.
He probably received human sacrifices each year on his festival days. He was celebrated on Toxcatl, which is on the 19th of December in the modern calendar, and it seems that as many as 60 people could have been sacrificed at a time on this day.
When people were sacrificed, they were placed on a sacred stone and a priest would use an obsidian blade to cut open their abdomen, remove their still-beating heart, and hold it towards the sky to honor the god. The body was then pushed down the pyramid, imitating the way that Huitzilopochtli pushed his sister off the mountain. The remains of the slain were burned, or if they were prisoners, given back to the warrior who brought them in. The warriors would often eat some of those remains in a form of ritual cannibalism.
He also had a long festival between November 9th and 28th. During this period, as well as making human sacrifices, people would decorate their homes and trees with paper flags, engage in processions with dancing and music, and make prayers and sacrifices. They also prepared a special cake for the god made from amaranth, seeds, and honey. At the end of the festival, it was cut into pieces so that everyone in the community could eat a piece of the god.
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