Aztec Gods Family Tree

From Ometeotl to the Fifth Sun

Aztec creation begins not with one god but with a pair. Ometeotl, who sits in Omeyocan, is both Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl, and four sons hold the four directions: the black Tezcatlipoca, the red Xipe Totec, the white Quetzalcoatl and the blue Huitzilopochtli. These four brothers build and destroy four suns in turn, and the fifth and last, Nahui Ollin, is born when Nanahuatzin leaps into the fire at Teotihuacan.

This chart should not be read the way the Greek one is read. Everything we have was written down after the conquest, the sources contradict each other, and a single god turns up under several names and several faces. Camaxtli is Mixcoatl in one source and Xipe Totec in another, and Huitzilopochtli is both a son of the first couple and a son of Coatlicue. The Aztec gods are less a fixed genealogy than a set of overlapping aspects, and this chart records the contradictions in the notes instead of hiding them.

142 gods and figures260 days in the tonalpohualli52 years in the Calendar Round17 lineages and groups

Key facts

Main line: from the duality to the fifth sun

The chart runs left to right: Ometeotl and the dual creator, the four Tezcatlipocas and the first great gods, the five suns and the levels of Mictlan, the battle of Coatepec and the star armies, the first humans and the maize line. At the far right the day lords and night lords of the tonalpohualli are gathered in two group boxes. Large clans appear as dashed group boxes; tap a box to open its list below. Drag to pan, Ctrl/⌘ + wheel or the buttons to zoom.

Dual creatorTezcatlipocaGreat godGodWater and rainMonsterNatureCalendar / forceHumanGroup (opens list)

Some of the links change from source to source. Huitzilopochtli is drawn here as the fourth son of the first couple, because that is how the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas tells it, while the Florentine Codex has him born of Coatlicue at Coatepec. Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtlicue and Mictlantecuhtli are likewise said to have been made by the four brothers, so no parent link is drawn for them. The day lords and night lords are not separate gods but the calendar offices of gods already in the chart.

Lineage explorer: who is whose child?

Type a name or tap a box in the chart. The card that opens shows the parent, partner and child links recorded in the colonial codices. "Not recorded" means no link is drawn for that figure in this chart, not that none exists in the sources.

Lineages and groups

All 142 figures in the chart are listed here by lineage and group. The chips above filter by type; tap a name and the explorer opens that figure.

Ometeotl and the dual creator 7
The four Tezcatlipocas 4
The Five Suns 5
Rain and waters: the house of Tlaloc 13
Mictlan: the land of the dead 8
The nine levels of Mictlan 9
Coatlicue and the battle of Coatepec 6
Sky bodies and fire 10
Maize, flowers and feasting 10
The pulque gods (Centzon Totochtin) 11
Earth, fertility and filth 10
Hunters, warriors and Chichimec gods 7
Craft, trade and healing 6
The thirteen Lords of the Day (Tonalteuctin) 13
The nine Lords of the Night (Yohualteuctin) 9
Tzitzimime, Cihuateteo and monsters 6
First humans and deified ancestors 8

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the first god in Aztec mythology?

Aztec creation begins not with one god but with a couple. Ometeotl, who sits in Omeyocan, the highest heaven, means 'Two God' and is Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl at the same time. The Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas calls the same couple Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl, and Citlallatonac and Citlalinicue when they are seen as sky. The four sons of this couple are the four Tezcatlipocas, and it is they who do the actual work of creation.

What is the tonalpohualli and how does it relate to this chart?

The tonalpohualli is the 260-day sacred calendar. Twenty day signs are matched with the numbers one to thirteen, and every possible pairing comes round again after 260 days. Each day sign has a patron deity, so Quetzalcoatl is patron of the day Ehecatl and Mayahuel of the day Tochtli. Each day is also governed in turn by one Lord of the Day and one Lord of the Night, and both lists appear as their own groups in this chart. The tonalpohualli works less like the Western zodiac than like a birth-day oracle: a person carries the name and the fate of the day they were born on.

How do the Aztec year and the fifty-two year cycle work?

The civil calendar, the xiuhpohualli, is 365 days long and consists of eighteen months of twenty days plus five extra days. Those five are the nemontemi, counted unlucky, and no business was done on them. The 260-day tonalpohualli and the 365-day xiuhpohualli only meet again at the same point after 18,980 days, that is after 52 years. This 52-year cycle is the Calendar Round, and at its end every fire was put out and rekindled in the New Fire ceremony, because the end of the cycle was when the tzitzimime were feared to descend.

What is the link between Quetzalcoatl, Xolotl and Venus?

Quetzalcoatl is Venus as the morning star, and in that face he is called Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, 'Lord of the House of Dawn'. His twin brother Xolotl is Venus as the evening star, and he takes the sun through the underworld each night. The story of Ce Acatl Topiltzin burning himself so that his heart rises into the sky describes the same disappearance and return of the planet. The Venus tables in Codex Borgia and the Dresden Codex are the closest Mesoamerica comes to planetary astrology. The Venus Star Point tool and the Maya calendar tool on this site let you follow that cycle for your own dates.

What sources is this family tree based on, and how reliable is it?

Everything we know about the Aztec gods was written down after the conquest. The main sources are Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex, Codex Borgia and the calendar books of the Borgia group, Codex Mendoza, the Leyenda de los Soles and the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas. These texts contradict each other, and the same god appears under different names and with different parents. The chart is therefore not a claim about a fixed lineage but a map of the links the sources most often share, and the places where they part are stated plainly in the notes.

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Try the 260-day calendar on your own dates

The tonalpohualli and the Maya tzolk'in share the same 260-day structure. In the calendar tools the Maya calendar and the Venus cycle calculators will give you the day sign and the Venus phase of any date.

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