Aztec symbols and gods
The gods of the Mexica (Aztecs) and the symbols of Tenochtitlan, from Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc to the Sun Stone and the eagle on the cactus.
- Quetzalcoatl (the feathered serpent)The feathered serpent, one of the oldest gods of ancient Mexico. For the Mexica (Aztecs) he was a god of wind, Venus and the morning, and the legendary priest-king of Tula; his name means “quetzal serpent” or “serpent of precious feathers”.
- HuitzilopochtliThe patron god of the Mexica (Aztecs), a god of war identified with the sun, who led them from Aztlan to found Tenochtitlan. He is shown with a hummingbird headdress, and his name means “hummingbird of the left”.
- TlalocThe Aztec god of rain, lightning and the earth’s fertility, one of the oldest gods of Mesoamerica. He is known by the rings round his eyes and the fangs hanging from his upper lip.
- Tezcatlipoca (smoking mirror)The Aztec god whose name means “smoking mirror”: a powerful, unpredictable god of rulers and of fate, shown with a face painted in black and yellow bands and a smoking obsidian mirror in place of one foot.
- MictlantecuhtliThe Aztec lord of Mictlan, the land of the dead to which most souls went. He is shown as a skeleton or half-fleshed body with a bare skull face, often with claws and a pleated paper rosette on his brow.
- CoatlicueThe Aztec earth goddess whose name means “serpent skirt”, mother of Huitzilopochtli. Her colossal statue in Mexico City has two facing serpents for a head, a necklace of hands and hearts and a skirt of woven snakes.
- Sun Stone (the Aztec calendar stone)The great carved stone disc of the Mexica, often called the Aztec calendar. It shows the sun and the four ages of the world before ours, ringed by the twenty day signs and two fire serpents, but it is not a working calendar.
- Eagle on a cactusThe sign of the founding of Tenochtitlan: an eagle on a prickly pear cactus growing from a rock in a lake. For the Mexica it marked where their god Huitzilopochtli told them to settle; it is now the coat of arms on the flag of Mexico.
- Eagle warriorThe eagle warriors and jaguar warriors were the elite soldiers of the Mexica (Aztecs), nobles who wore suits imitating the golden eagle and the jaguar. They were dedicated to the sun.
- Aztec day signsThe twenty signs of the Aztec 260-day count, the tonalpohualli, from Crocodile to Flower. Each day was named by a sign and a number from 1 to 13, and the day of birth was read for a person’s fate.
About aztec symbols and gods
The Mexica, the people better known as the Aztecs, founded Mexico-Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco around 1325, and by the time the Spanish arrived they ruled the largest empire in Mesoamerica. These pages follow their gods and signs through the painted books and the carved stones: Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent; Huitzilopochtli, their patron god of war and the sun; Tlaloc, the rain god with ringed eyes and fangs; Tezcatlipoca, the smoking mirror; Mictlantecuhtli, lord of the dead; and Coatlicue, the goddess with the serpent skirt. The Sun Stone is the carved disc often called the Aztec calendar, though it never worked as one; the day signs are the twenty signs of the 260-day count; the eagle on a cactus is the sign of the city’s founding, now on Mexico’s flag; and the eagle and jaguar warriors were the Mexica’s elite soldiers.
Who the Mexica were, and the Nahuas today
According to their tradition the Mexica came from Aztlan, which is why they are often called Aztecs. The historian María Castañeda de la Paz writes that once they had founded Tenochtitlan they gave up the old name and called themselves Tenochca or Mexica-Tenochca. The state they built fell in 1521; their language did not. Mexico’s 2020 census counted 7,364,645 people aged three and over who speak an Indigenous language, and Nahuatl, at 22.4 per cent of them, is the most spoken, in fifteen states. The anthropologist Alan Sandstrom puts its speakers at between 1.5 and 2 million. Nahua villages today, he writes, range from those that have left the old beliefs for Catholic or Protestant churches to those that still keep gods worshipped by their ancestors, and most fall somewhere between.
How the gods were drawn
The gods are told apart by their insignia. H. B. Nicholson, in a guide abridged by Mexicolore, found face painting one of the most telling: blue with yellow stripes for Huitzilopochtli, black with yellow stripes for Tezcatlipoca. Few painted books survive from before the conquest. The historian Guilhem Olivier counts seventeen, four of them Maya, six Mixtec and one Zapotec, that deal with the 260-day count.
Sources written after the conquest
Much of what is known about the Mexica gods was written down after 1521 by Spanish friars and their Nahua collaborators. The Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún gathered testimony with Nahua assistants in the middle of the sixteenth century, preserved in Nahuatl and Spanish in the Florentine Codex. He described the gods through European eyes: Huitzilopochtli was “another Hercules”, Tezcatlipoca “another Jupiter”. Some stories still repeated began with the friars and their readers. Eduardo Matos Moctezuma traces the white, bearded Quetzalcoatl to them, and Felipe Fernández-Armesto writes that no account from the time of the conquest says the Mexica took Cortés for a god.
Where to see them
Most of the great carvings are in the Sala Mexica of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, among them the Sun Stone, Coatlicue and the Stone of Tízoc. The clay eagle warriors and the figures of Mictlantecuhtli from the House of the Eagles are in the Museo del Templo Mayor beside the excavated pyramid. In the Zócalo, plaques mark where Coatlicue and the Sun Stone were found in 1790, finds INAH counts as the seed of Mexican archaeology.
Sources
- Sala Mexica del Museo Nacional de Antropología (INAH, foto del día), Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, foto del día, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, photo note
- La Coatlicue: pieza fundamental del Museo Nacional de Antropología (Enrique Vela, Arqueología Mexicana), Enrique Vela, “Sala Mexicas”, Arqueología Mexicana special edition no. 123, pp. 39–45, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- Huitzilopochtli: etimología del colibrí zurdo (María Castañeda de la Paz, Arqueología Mexicana), María Castañeda de la Paz, “Huitzilopochtli. El dios colibrí que se transformó en águila”, Arqueología Mexicana special edition no. 124, pp. 40–44, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- Estadísticas a propósito del Día Internacional de los Pueblos Indígenas (INEGI, 2022), Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, comunicado de prensa núm. 430/22, 8 August 2022, from the Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020, Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), p. 1; p. 4
- What happened to the Aztec gods after the Conquest? (Alan Sandstrom, Mexicolore), Alan R. Sandstrom, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne, answer in Mexicolore’s “Ask the experts”, Mexicolore, answer text
- Mexica/Aztec deity insignia (Mexicolore, after H. B. Nicholson), Ian Mursell, Mexicolore; abridged from H. B. Nicholson, “The Late Pre-Hispanic Central Mexican (Aztec) Iconographic System” (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973), Mexicolore, facial painting
- Disertan sobre las prácticas adivinatorias mesoamericanas (INAH), Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, boletín, on a lecture by Guilhem Olivier at El Colegio Nacional, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, bulletin text
- Náhuatl: lengua y cultura con raíces milenarias (Miguel León-Portilla, Arqueología Mexicana), Miguel León-Portilla, “Náhuatl: lengua y cultura con raíces milenarias”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 109, pp. 22–31, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, vol. 1 (Bernardino de Sahagún, ed. Bustamante, 1829), Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, ed. Carlos María de Bustamante, vol. 1 (Mexico: Alejandro Valdés, 1829), Book 3, Appendix, ch. 1, Internet Archive, Book 1, chs. 1 and 3
- Quetzalcóatl ¿blanco y de ojos azules? (Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Arqueología Mexicana), Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, “Quetzalcóatl ¿blanco y de ojos azules?”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 113, pp. 82–83, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- Why did Moctezuma think that Cortés looked like Quetzalcóatl? (Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Mexicolore), Felipe Fernández-Armesto, answer in Mexicolore’s “Ask the experts”; with Mexicolore’s reply quoting Camilla Townsend, Fifth Sun (2019), Mexicolore, answer
- Recinto de las Águilas o Casa de las Águilas, Templo Mayor de Tenochtitlan (Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Arqueología Mexicana), Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, “Recinto de las Águilas o Casa de las Águilas”, Arqueología Mexicana special edition no. 56, pp. 10–32, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), guide text
- Reinstalan placas conmemorativas a los descubrimientos de la Coatlicue y las piedras del Sol y de Tízoc (INAH), Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, boletín, 2025, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, bulletin text
- God of the month: Quetzalcoatl (Mexicolore), Julia Flood, Mexicolore, Mexicolore, article text
- Ley sobre el Escudo, la Bandera y el Himno Nacionales (Cámara de Diputados), Ley sobre el Escudo, la Bandera y el Himno Nacionales, Diario Oficial de la Federación, 8 February 1984, consolidated text with reforms to 21 July 2025, arts. 2–3, Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión, art. 3
- The ‘Calendar Stone’ (Khristaan Villela, Mexicolore), Khristaan Villela, Research Professor of Art History, University of New Mexico, for Mexicolore, Mexicolore, essay text
Last reviewed October 3, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research