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The Aztecs would often adopt gods from different cultures and allow them to be worshiped as part of their pantheon. For example, the fertility god, Xipe Totec, was originally a god of the Yopi (the Nahuatl name of the Tlapanec people), but became an integrated part of the Aztec belief system.
The Aztecs and figures from Aztec mythology feature in Western culture. [186] The name of Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent god, has been used for a genus of pterosaurs, Quetzalcoatlus, a large flying reptile with a wingspan of as much as 11 meters (36 ft). [187] Quetzalcoatl has appeared as a character in many books, films and video games.
This is a list of gods and supernatural beings from the Aztec culture, its religion and mythology. Many of these deities are sourced from Codexes (such as the Florentine Codex (Bernardino de Sahagún), the Codex Borgia (Stefano Borgia), and the informants). They are all divided into gods and goddesses, in sections.
Rig Veda Americanus at Project Gutenberg, Daniel Brinton (Ed); late 19th-century compendium of some Aztec mythological texts and poems appearing in one manuscript version of Sahagun's 16th-century codices. Aztec history, culture and religion Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico (tr. by A. P. Maudsley, 1928, repr. 1965)
It is said that the Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli, instructed the Aztecs to found their city at the location where they saw an eagle, on a cactus, with a snake in its talons (which is on the current Mexican flag). The Aztecs, apparently, saw this vision on the small island where Tenochtitlan was founded.
The Aztecs adopted his cult during the reign of Axayacatl (1469–81). During Tlacaxipehualiztli ("Flaying of Men"), the second ritual month of the Aztec year, the priests killed human victims by removing their hearts. They flayed the bodies and put on the skins, which were dyed yellow and called teocuitlaquemitl ("golden clothes").
Tezcatlipoca was often described as a rival of another important god of the Aztecs: the culture hero, Quetzalcoatl. In one version of the Aztec creation account [ 23 ] the myth of the Five Suns , the first creation, "The Sun of the Earth" was ruled by Tezcatlipoca but destroyed by Quetzalcoatl when he struck down Tezcatlipoca who then ...
While the driving force behind the creation of Spanish-commissioned codices was to serve as aid in converting natives to Catholicism and exterminating the Aztec religion and culture, the Codex Ixtlilxochitl is a tribute to the complex relationship between the colonists and the natives and how that relationship eventually resulted in enough ...