Tochtli's Patron and the Southern Quarter

Tochtli's patron is Mayahuel, goddess of the maguey plant and, in the myth cycle, mother of the Centzon Totochtin, the four hundred rabbit gods whose feast days scatter through the count and whose namesake sign is this one, a patronage that makes the rabbit sign and its governing deity share the same association with pulque's abundance and danger directly rather than only by coincidence. Its direction is south, and as one of the four year bearer signs Tochtli specifically names the years of the southern quarter across the fifty two year Calendar Round, the point at which the 260 day tonalpohualli and the 365 day solar count return to their shared starting alignment after each has cycled independently, the tonalpohualli twice over and the solar year fifty two times.

A year opening under Tochtli's name carried, per the same logic that shapes an individual Tochtli day, a reading of expected abundance shadowed by the specific risk of excess, and Mayahuel's own myth of transformation from a plant discovered and raised to godhood by Quetzalcoatl gave the tonalpouhque a ready story to draw on when explaining the year's promise and its danger to the community whose year it was. Mayahuel's myth of transformation from a discovered maguey plant into a goddess, credited to Quetzalcoatl in one telling, gave the tonalpouhque a concrete story of raw material made valuable to set beside the rabbit sign's own promise of increase, provided the abundance it offered was handled with the same care the plant itself required.