Major Myths

According to some accounts, Quetzalcoatl was the son ofthe earth goddess Coatlicue (pronounced koh-aht-LEE-kway). He and three brother gods created the sun, the heavens, and the earth. In the Aztec creation myth, Quetzalcoatl’s conflicts with the god Tezcatlipoca (pronounced tehs-cah-tlee-POH-cah) brought about the creation and destruction of

Quetzalcoatl as he bursts from the serpent's jaws of the earth in his form as Morning Star. WERNER FORMAN/ART RESOURCE, NY.

A series of four suns and earths, leading to the fifth sun and today’s earth.

At first there were no people under the fifth sun. The inhabitants of the earlier worlds had died, and their bones littered Mictlan (pronounced MEEKT-lahn), the underworld or land of the dead. Quetzalcoatl and his twin, Xolotl, journeyed to Mictlan to find the bones, arousing the fury of the Death Lord. As he fled from the underworld, Quetzalcoatl dropped the bones, and they broke into pieces. He gathered up the pieces and took them to the earth goddess Cihuacoatl (pronounced shee-wah-koh-AHT-l), who ground them into flour. Quetzalcoatl moistened the flour with his own blood, which gave it life. Then he and Xolotl shaped the mixture into human forms and taught the new creatures how to reproduce themselves.

Besides creating humans, Quetzalcoatl also protected and helped them. Some myths say that he introduced the cultivation of maize, or Corn, the staple food of Mexico. He did this by disguising himself as a black ant and stealing the precious grain from the red ants. He also taught people astronomy, calendar making, and various crafts, and was the favored god of merchants.

Quetzalcoatl’s departure from his people was the work of his old enemy, Tezcatlipoca, who wanted people to make bloodier sacrifices than the flowers, jade, and butterflies they offered to Quetzalcoatl. Tezcatlipoca tricked Quetzalcoatl by getting him drunk and then holding up a mirror that showed Tezcatlipoca’s cruel face. Believing that he was looking at his own imperfect image, Quetzalcoatl decided to leave the world and threw himself onto a funeral pyre, a large pile of burning wood used in some cultures to cremate a dead body. As his body burned, birds flew forth from the flames, and his heart went up into the heavens to become the morning and evening star known in modern times as the planet Venus. Another version of the myth states that Quetzalcoatl sailed east into the sea on a raft of serpents. Many Aztecs believed that he would come back to his people at the end of a fifty-two-year cycle. In the early 1500s, the Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes took advantage of this belief by encouraging the people of Mexico to view him as the return of the hero-god Quetzalcoatl. According to some reports, this may have allowed Cortes to more easily subdue and conquer the local people.