Huitzilopochtli

The feathers came down out of a clear sky, a small bright ball of hummingbird down drifting onto the temple terrace at Coatepec, and Coatlicue, sweeping the stones as she always did, tucked them into the front of her dress without thinking. That was all it took. When she straightened up she was already carrying the war god, and the trouble that came with him started almost at once. Her other children saw the pregnancy and read it as shame, and they came up the mountain in armor to kill her for it.

This is the god at the center of the Aztec world, and his story begins with an execution party climbing a hill. Coyolxauhqui, his sister, led them. She was a moon goddess with bells worked into her cheeks, and behind her came the Centzon Huitznahua, the Four Hundred Southerners, the innumerable stars of the southern sky, all of them her brothers and all of them armed. Coatlicue, alone on the summit with the mountain and the unborn child, was terrified. The child spoke to her from inside the womb and told her not to be afraid.

Then he was born, and he was not a baby. Huitzilopochtli came out of his mother fully grown and fully armed, his face striped, a shield on one arm and in his hand the thing that mattered most, Xiuhcoatl, the turquoise fire serpent, a weapon that burned. He struck his sister first. He cut the head from Coyolxauhqui and sent her body tumbling down the slope of Coatepec, and it broke apart as it fell, so that she landed at the foot of the mountain in pieces, arms here, legs there, the head flung up into the sky to become the moon. Then he turned on the four hundred and drove them across the heavens and killed most of them, and the ones who scattered became the stars. Every dawn since is that same fight run again. The sun rises armed, and the moon and the stars go down before it.

The Aztecs built that battle into stone. Their great pyramid in Tenochtitlan, the Templo Mayor, was Coatepec made solid, the Serpent Mountain rebuilt at the heart of the city, and at its foot they set an enormous round stone carved with the dismembered Coyolxauhqui, naked and broken exactly as she fell. When captives were sacrificed at the shrine on the summit, their bodies were rolled down the steps to land on that stone. The killing on the temple and the killing in the myth were meant to be the same act.

He was not always shown as a man. Sometimes he is simply the hummingbird, the small fierce bird whose name he carries, and the Mexica noticed what everyone who has watched hummingbirds notices, that they are far more aggressive than their size suggests and that the males can seem to die in the cold season and return with the warmth, which made them natural emblems of a warrior reborn. More often he stands as a striped warrior in a helmet shaped like a hummingbird head, blue-green and gleaming, feathers on his scalp and down his left leg, a shield trimmed with eagle down on his arm. His face is dark. In his grip is always the serpent of fire.

His name points two ways at once. It joins the word for hummingbird to a word that means the left, or the south, so it has been read as Hummingbird of the South and as Hummingbird on the Left, and the left was the side of the dead, the direction warriors went when they died in battle. There was a belief underneath it: that men who fell in war and women who died in childbirth became companions of the sun, escorting him across the sky, and that after four years they returned to earth as hummingbirds. The god and the bird and the honored dead were one idea.

He was also, before he was a cosmic sun, a tribal god who walked with his people. The Mexica told of leaving a place called Aztlan and wandering for generations, carried as a bundle by priests who heard his voice and relayed his orders, and it was Huitzilopochtli who told them what to look for and where to stop. The sign he gave them was an eagle perched on a cactus growing from a rock in the middle of a lake, and where they saw it they were to build. They saw it on a marshy island, and they built Tenochtitlan there, and the eagle on the cactus is on the Mexican flag to this day.

His powers are the powers of the sun and of war. He commands fire through Xiuhcoatl, he leads armies and grants victory, he holds back the dark simply by rising, and he speaks to his chosen people and steers them across a continent. But the whole system runs on a debt, and the debt is blood. Huitzilopochtli is a god who must be fed. The sun that fights the darkness every night is not guaranteed to win, and only human hearts keep it strong enough to climb again in the morning. That single requirement drove one of the largest sacrificial cults in human history and sent the Mexica to war partly to take the captives their god needed. It is the strangest kind of weakness, a supreme deity who cannot sustain himself, and it made his worshippers indispensable to him and him terrifying to everyone around them. Feed the sun or the world ends. They believed it, and they acted on it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Huitzilopochtli?

Huitzilopochtli is the Aztec (Mexica) god of the sun and war, and the patron deity of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was born fully grown and armed at the mountain of Coatepec, where he defended his mother Coatlicue by killing his sister Coyolxauhqui and scattering his star brothers. The Aztecs believed he needed human blood and hearts to keep the sun moving across the sky.

How was Huitzilopochtli born?

Huitzilopochtli was born after his mother Coatlicue became pregnant from a ball of hummingbird feathers that fell from the sky while she was sweeping at Coatepec. When his sister Coyolxauhqui and his four hundred star brothers came to kill their mother in shame, Huitzilopochtli emerged from the womb already an armed adult. He immediately struck them down, beheading Coyolxauhqui and hurling her dismembered body down the mountainside.

What weapon does Huitzilopochtli carry?

Huitzilopochtli wields Xiuhcoatl, the turquoise fire serpent, which he uses as a weapon to destroy his enemies. With it he killed his sister Coyolxauhqui and drove off the Centzon Huitznahua, the four hundred southern stars. The fire serpent links him to fire and to the burning power of the sun.

Why did the Aztecs practice human sacrifice for Huitzilopochtli?

The Aztecs believed Huitzilopochtli, as the sun, fought a nightly battle against the moon and stars and needed human blood and hearts to stay strong enough to rise each morning. Without this nourishment they feared the sun would die and the world would end. This belief drove large-scale sacrifice at the Templo Mayor and motivated wars to capture victims.

What is the connection between Huitzilopochtli and Tenochtitlan?

Huitzilopochtli guided the wandering Mexica from their homeland of Aztlan and told them to settle where they saw an eagle perched on a cactus. They found the sign on an island in a lake and founded Tenochtitlan there, making him the city’s patron god. Their great pyramid, the Templo Mayor, was built to represent Coatepec, the mountain where he was born.

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Coyolxauhqui, Xiuhcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, Xochiquetzal, Xolotl, Cipactli, Camazotz