Trecena 16, Opening on Cozcacuauhtli

Trecena 16 opens on 1 Cozcacuauhtli, the vulture, under the patronage of Xolotl, the twin of Quetzalcoatl, a dog headed god who walks the underworld and guides the dead, and who in the Legend of the Five Suns myth journeys into Mictlan alongside his brother to recover the bones from which the present human race is fashioned, offering his own blood alongside Quetzalcoatl's in the act of creation. The vulture week reads long: old age reached in health, counsel valued and wealth gathered slowly, the augury Sahagun records for the vulture born, a favourable week for elders and for patience that fits Xolotl's own association with twilight and the sun's nightly passage through the underworld, a slow, patient journey completed successfully each night the same way this trecena's children were promised a long life completed successfully in the end.

The vulture's own natural history, a bird that outlives most others and thrives on what others have finished with, gave Nahua thought a ready image for the patient, gathering wealth this trecena promised, and its pairing with Xolotl, a guide who has made the underworld journey himself and returned, suggests a week under the protection of a deity who understands the whole span of a life from birth to death rather than only its beginning.