and streams, lakes, and mountain springs. Every good and useful fruit grew with abundance, and every corner echoed with the croak of frogs and chirp of birds. To this paradise Feathered Serpent brought the young god Tlaloc.
“From this fount of fresh water you will provide the world with rain. But the precious liquid, so vital for life, does not spring eternal. Like all else, it must be renewed. Every death caused by water will channel divine energy to your realm. Those who drown, who are struck by lightning, who suffer from disease, or who struggle with deformities—they ensure the fall of life-giving rain. In times of great drought, humans may elect to give their lives to draw water down from the heavens. Their sacrifice will be yours as well.
“The souls of all these dead will populate your realm. Here they will suffer no more, but delight in the bounty I have prepared for them.”
Finally, Feathered Serpent thought upon the greatest tragedy he knew would face humanity: the death of infants, the foreshortening of their young lives. For an answer, he spread his shimmering green wings and ascended to Omeyocan itself. In the presence of our grandparents, looking with hope and love upon the human souls just beginning to blossom on the Mother Tree, the creator god made his case.
“The souls of children who have not yet begun to truly live,” he argued, “ought to return here, to their place of origin, to await another birth, another chance at joy.”
Ometeotl agreed.
Feathered Serpent’s heart rejoiced. Despite the angry will of Heart of Sky, death could now inspire hope as well as fear.
The First Three Ages of the World
The First Age
The moment had come. After caring lovingly for creation, the younger gods had departed for their celestial home. Feathered Serpent and Heart of Sky stood upon the sea-ringed world and readied themselves to create thinking, speaking beings much different from the mute creatures that the young gods had set roaming earth, water and sky. Taking the very bones of the world, the brothers fashioned a man and a woman—towering, imperious giants of rugged flesh and snow-white hair. Infusing the pair with teotl, the brothers named them Oxomoco and Cipactonal. Enlisting the help of the Lord of Time, the brothers also formed a ball of fire to hang in the third heaven. But this meager sun was weak. Life wilted in its half-light. The giant humans shivered with cold.
Feathered Serpent understood. “A god must sacrifice himself to bring light to this world, must meld with that flame and become a full sun, pouring tonalli, radiant teotl, down to sustain life.”
Seeing that his brother meant to offer himself and become the most revered of all the deities, Heart of Sky swirled up into the heavens and plunged himself into the conflagration, becoming the very first sun to spread its warmth over mountain, sea and field.
To Feathered Serpent fell the labor of teaching the primal couple. He gave them language, taught them the names of every beast and tree, showed them how to work stone and cultivate each useful plant.
With the Lord of Time, he helped them devise a calendar to measure the solar year with all its attendant rites and agricultural seasons—eighteen months of twenty days, plus an unnamed period of five—365 days.
Each of the days of the month had a different sign, twenty in all: crocodile, wind, house, lizard, snake, death, deer, rabbit, water, dog, monkey, grass, reed, jaguar, eagle, vulture, earthquake, flint, rain, flower.
The gods gave the first people another calendar to keep track of the passing of time and to divine probable futures: twenty weeks of thirteen days—260 days.
The two calendars interlocked like gears. As the twenty-day months turned, so did the thirteen-day weeks. Our ancestors named days by combining the number of the week with the sign of the month. The very first day in the universe, then, was 1-Crocodile, as crocodile is the first day sign. The following days were 2-Wind, 3-House, 4-Lizard, and so on.
The ancients also named each year by its first day. Therefore do we know that creation began in the year 1-Crocodile, on the day 1-Crocodile.
The two calendars came into alignment once every fifty-two years, completing a cycle. A new year and fresh cycle would then begin on 1-Crocodile.
As each evening fell and Heart of Sky slipped past the horizon into the Realm of the Dead to be attended to by his minions there, Feathered Serpent taught Oxomoco and Cipactonal not to fear the dark, but to delight in the stars and give each one a name.
In time the couple had a child, a son they called Piltzintecuhtli, Young Prince. He grew to be a handsome, strapping young man, but there was no maiden yet alive to be his wife. Seeing his need, the Divine Mother took strands of long, black hair from the head of Xochiquetzal, goddess of beauty and fertility, and with them wove a lovely bride.
The years wore on, one calendar cycle after another. The giants multiplied and spread across the sea-ringed world. They lifted mighty temples and monuments in order to better worship the gods. There they performed their penances and bloodlettings and sacrifices so that the cosmic order would be sustained.
Heart of Sky looked down on the earth and was not pleased. The sacrifices seemed paltry to him, even the New Fire Ceremony meant to restore his strength every fifty-two years. Listening to the worship and prayers the giants lifted toward heaven, Heart of Sky was convinced that they favored his brother, Feathered Serpent. Temples to Feathered Serpent seemed finer, his priests more richly arrayed, the offerings sweeter.
The god of the smoking mirror coldly resolved to exterminate all the giants. Calling up vast reserves of divine energy, Heart of Sky sent his huge jaguar nahualli down to the sea-ringed world. Mountainheart sought out giants whose calendar day sign, determined by their birth, was jaguar. He taught them dark sorcery, how to transform into their nahualli and bend the minds of others, then he twisted them to his own purpose. When he had trained them to despise other giants utterly, he led them in a vicious war against their brothers and sisters.
In the year 1-Reed, on the day 4-Jaguar, Mountainheart and his army of jaguars devoured nearly every giant on the face of the earth. It was the 676th year since Heart of Sky had become the sun, the end of the thirteenth calendar cycle. A handful of men and women survived in the mountains. They cried out to Feathered Serpent, who descended to find his beloved creation despoiled and bereft. Seeing Mountainheart leap up at the sun to rejoin with his divine form, the creator god knew his brother was to blame.
Driven by indignant rage, Feathered Serpent attacked the sun at its zenith. Their struggle was great. It nearly rent the heavens in its violence. Twinning into Feathered Serpent and Xolotl, the creator simultaneously gripped Heart of Sky, his own plumage aflame, and uprooted one of the World Trees. Wielding it like a gargantuan club, he struck his brother from the third heaven, sending him plunging into the cosmic sea with such force that the god of the smoking mirror was nearly obliterated.
Thus did the first age of the world come to a tragic end.
The Second Age
Soon the gods descended once more to repair the damage done to the sea-ringed world.
The Divine Mother worked with Feathered Serpent to carve new humans from wood. Once he had bled life into them—his own chalchiuhatl, precious liquid—the men and women arose and lived their lives much as the giants had before.
This time Feathered Serpent became the sun,
