Mexica (Aztec) Religion

The state religion of Tenochtitlan, built around the sun, the rain and the cycles of the Fifth Sun.

1325 – 1521 CE · Valley of Mexico · Indigenous & Animist

The Mexica inherited Mesoamerican gods and calendars and placed their own patron, Huitzilopochtli, beside the rain god Tlaloc atop the Templo Mayor. Their cosmology held that the present world was the fifth creation and needed offerings, including human sacrifice, to endure. Much of what is known comes from codices and accounts gathered after the conquest.

Key figures

• Huitzilopochtli
• Tlaloc
• Quetzalcoatl

Texts

• Codex Borgia and Borbonicus
• Florentine Codex (recorded 1500s)

Beliefs

• We live in the age of the Fifth Sun
• The sun must be fed to keep moving
• The dead travel to different afterlives by how they died

Rituals

• Monthly calendar festivals
• Human sacrifice at the Templo Mayor
• New Fire ceremony every 52 years

Grew from

• Mesoamerican Religion

Connections in the atlas

• The Farmington 'saucer armada'
• Nezahualcoyotl
• Tzitzimimeh
• Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Tepeyac)
• Kukulkan
• The "Hangar 18" alien-bodies claims
• The Codex Borgia
• Hunab Ku
• The figure in the moon
• Island of the Dolls (Isla de las Muñecas)
• Parallel texts: The flood
• Maya sky-reckoning