The Aztec pantheon descends from Ometeotl, the dual creator who dwells in the highest heaven. From this source 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.
