The Stone That Counted the Suns

At the heart of the Aztec cosmos sat a story of repeated destruction. According to legend, the present age — called Nahui-Ollin, the Fifth Sun — was not the first attempt at creation. Four earlier ages had come before it, each ended by catastrophe, each one 'named in function of the force or divine element that violently put an end to it.' The Aztecs remembered these vanished worlds not as distant fiction but as the deep history of existence itself, a history that culminated in the age they themselves inhabited.

The myth of the Five Suns began, fittingly, in a city the Aztecs did not build but revered: Teotihuacan. There, according to the legend, all the gods gathered and agreed to sacrifice themselves so that a new age could begin. The sun and the world already existed, but without that sacrifice they would remain frozen — lifeless, motionless, without time or history. The gods needed someone willing to burn.

Tecuciztecatl, the strongest and most handsome among them, was expected to make the leap into the sacrificial fire. But when the moment came, his courage failed him. He could not throw himself into the flames. It was Nanahuatl — the smallest, humblest of the gods, his body covered in boils — who stepped forward first and hurled himself into the fire without hesitation. With his sacrifice, the sun lurched into motion. Time began. History, as the Aztecs understood it, was born from that single act of self-immolation.

Humiliated by what Nanahuatl had done, Tecuciztecatl finally leapt into the flames as well, but too late to become the sun — he became the moon instead, forever the dimmer companion to the one who had gone first without fear.

This creation story existed alongside another Aztec myth of origins, one centered on the goddess Coatlicue. She became pregnant after tucking a ball of feathers into her waistband, and her other children — suspicious of the child's father — vowed to kill her. She gave birth on Mount Coatepec while being pursued, and the newborn Huitzilopochtli emerged already armed, ready to fight. He defeated most of his brothers, who became the stars, and killed his half-sister Coyolxauhqui by tearing out her heart with a blue serpent called Xiuhcoatl, throwing her body down the mountainside.