In the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas, the pantheon descends from a primordial couple in the thirteenth heaven, Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl, whom some modern scholars read as a single dual god, Ometeotl. From this couple came the brother-gods who built and unmade the world's successive suns: the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, the smoking mirror Tezcatlipoca, and the war-sun Huitzilopochtli, patron of Tenochtitlan.
Around them stand the gods who govern survival and the afterlife — Tlaloc, who sends the rains that feed the maize, and Mictlantecuhtli, skeletal lord of the underworld of Mictlan. Together they form a cosmos kept alive only through sacrifice.
This is a pantheon defined by cycles rather than a single fixed order of events. Aztec cosmology holds that the world has already been created and destroyed four times, each of the "Five Suns" ruled and ended by a different god — Tezcatlipoca's earth-age fell to jaguars, Quetzalcoatl's to hurricanes, Tlaloc's to fiery rain, and a fourth age governed by the water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue to a great flood — before the present, fifth sun was set moving at Teotihuacan and given life through Huitzilopochtli's war-driven cult. That present age was, in Mexica belief, sustained day by day through offerings and sacrifice performed at the twin-shrined Templo Mayor in their capital, Tenochtitlan — the physical and ritual heart of the entire pantheon.
Family ties bind the pantheon as much as shared purpose does. The creator couple's four sons divide the cosmos among the cardinal directions; Tlaloc rules alongside his consort Chalchiuhtlicue and a company of small rain-spirits, the Tlaloque; and Mictlantecuhtli shares his underworld throne with Mictecacihuatl, the "Lady of the Dead." The rivalry between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca is the engine behind most of the pantheon's best-known myths, from the shaping of the earth-monster into land and sky to the recurring destruction and rebirth of the world itself.
Members
- Ometeotl - the modern name for the primordial creator couple Tonacatecuhtli and Tonacacihuatl, read by some scholars as a single dual god.
- Quetzalcoatl — the feathered serpent of wind, wisdom, and creation.
- Tezcatlipoca — the smoking-mirror god of night, sorcery, and fate.
- Huitzilopochtli — the war-sun god and patron of Tenochtitlan.
- Tlaloc — the rain and fertility god who rules the paradise of Tlalocan.
- Mictlantecuhtli — the skeletal lord of the underworld of Mictlan.
For the wider tradition these gods belong to, see the Aztec mythology overview.
