Aztec day signs
The 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.
Meaning
The tonalpohualli, “the count of days”, was the Mexica divinatory calendar. Each day had a name made of a number from 1 to 13 and one of twenty signs, from cipactli to xóchitl, Enrique Vela writes, giving 260 day names in twenty periods of thirteen days. Its origin is unknown; Vela thinks it probably tied to the cycles of the sun, the moon and Venus. It ran alongside the 365-day year, the xiuhpohualli, and Rafael Tena notes that the Maya had the same two counts, the tzolkin and the haab. The historian Guilhem Olivier, at a lecture reported by INAH, said that ethnographic studies show many communities still keep some of these practices, and even the divinatory calendar itself.
Origin and history
Twenty signs and thirteen numbers turn together. The art historian William L. Barnes explains: the count starts at 1 Cipactli, 2 Ehecatl, 3 Calli, and runs to 13 Acatl, then the numbers start again at 1 while the signs go on, 1 Ocelotl, 2 Cuauhtli. The two calendars together repeat only every 52 years, 18,980 days. Dates carved on Aztec monuments are days of the tonalpohualli, Barnes notes, and two painted books made before the conquest, the Codex Borgia and the Codex Cospi, lay out all 260 days. The twenty signs also ring the face of the Sun Stone, where they carry no numbers.
The twenty signs
The order and English names follow Barnes; what each drawing shows follows Gordon Whittaker’s notes for Mexicolore.
| Nahuatl | English | What the sign shows | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cipactli | Crocodile | A crocodilian head; the red points on its snout are knives for horns |
| 2 | Ehecatl | Wind | The beaked head of Quetzalcoatl as the wind |
| 3 | Calli | House | A temple front seen from the side |
| 4 | Cuetzpalin | Lizard | A lizard |
| 5 | Coatl | Serpent | A rattlesnake |
| 6 | Miquiztli | Death | A skull with red over the nose for blood |
| 7 | Mazatl | Deer | A deer |
| 8 | Tochtli | Rabbit | A rabbit |
| 9 | Atl | Water | A rushing stream edged with white shell |
| 10 | Itzcuintli | Dog | A dog |
| 11 | Ozomatli | Monkey | A spider monkey wearing Quetzalcoatl’s ear ornament |
| 12 | Malinalli | Grass | Wild grass sprouting from a skull |
| 13 | Acatl | Reed | A reed whose shaft is a feathered arrow |
| 14 | Ocelotl | Jaguar | A jaguar |
| 15 | Cuauhtli | Eagle | An eagle |
| 16 | Cozcacuauhtli | Vulture | A vulture wearing Quetzalcoatl’s ear ornament |
| 17 | Ollin | Movement | Perhaps twirling throwing sticks, with an eye at the pivot |
| 18 | Tecpatl | Flint | A flint knife with an eye and teeth |
| 19 | Quiahuitl | Rain | The head of the rain god Tlaloc |
| 20 | Xochitl | Flower | A flower |
Sixteen of the twenty are virtually the same as the Maya day signs, Mexicolore notes; the Maya had Night for House and Lord for Flower, among others (see the Maya calendar).
Is there an Aztec zodiac?
Not as a set of twenty birth signs with fixed personalities. The day of birth was read by a specialist, the tonalpouhqui, “reader of fates”, Vela writes, and if the day was unlucky the reader could set the child’s naming for a better day, apparently only within the same thirteen-day period. Olivier explains that the divinatory books gave each day its gods and a good, bad or neutral meaning. Mexicolore, whose day-sign cards are being tried out in English schools, calls its own cards “a highly simplistic, even ‘fun’, overview”: the number, the sign, the gods ruling each thirteen days and the gods of the day and night hours all counted, and 2 Rabbit, for example, was a notoriously unfortunate day. Working out a reading, its editors write, “was a specialist job”.
See also
Sun Stone (the Aztec calendar stone), Maya calendar, Quetzalcoatl (the feathered serpent), Huitzilopochtli, Tlaloc, Tezcatlipoca (smoking mirror).
Sources
- El tonalpohualli (Enrique Vela, Arqueología Mexicana), Enrique Vela, “El tonalpohualli”, Arqueología Mexicana special edition no. 75, pp. 32–33, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- El calendario mesoamericano (Rafael Tena, Arqueología Mexicana), Rafael Tena, “El calendario mesoamericano”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 41, pp. 4–11, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- The Aztec (Central Mexican) Calendar (William L. Barnes, Mexicolore), William L. Barnes, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for Mexicolore, Mexicolore, article text
- What do the Aztec day signs represent (Gordon Whittaker, Mexicolore), Gordon Whittaker, answer in Mexicolore, 5 August 2017; day signs drawn by Felipe Dávalos, Mexicolore, answer text
- Aztec and Maya daysigns (Mexicolore), Ian Mursell, Mexicolore, 5 September 2015, Mexicolore, article text
- Daysign Destinies! (Mexicolore), Ian Mursell, Mexicolore, Mexicolore, Mexicolore reply
- 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
- La Piedra del Sol (Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Arqueología Mexicana), Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, “El decir de las piedras. Discurso de ingreso a la Academia Mexicana de la Lengua”, Arqueología Mexicana no. 134, pp. 22–33, Arqueología Mexicana (Editorial Raíces / INAH), article text
- The ‘Calendar Stone’ (Khristaan Villela, Mexicolore), Khristaan Villela, Research Professor of Art History, University of New Mexico, for Mexicolore, Mexicolore, essay text
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Last reviewed October 3, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research
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