Deities
Aztec Deities
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As the Aztec face of Neptune, Tlaloc embodies the waters, rain, and the mystical deep. Tlaloc is the Aztec god of rain, water, lightning, and fertility, a giver of the life-bringing rains that make the crops grow, but also a fearsome sender of floods, storms, drought, and disease. He dwells atop the mountains where the rain-clouds gather, and rules the paradise Tlalocan, a lush and watered land that receives the souls of those who die by water, lightning, or the diseases he sends. Depicted with goggle-eyes and jaguar fangs, he was among the most ancient and important of the gods, honored, and feared, with sacrifice. He embodies the waters, the rains, and the mystical, life-and-death power of the deep.
Facts
Belief
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 3 Cult
Principal Cult CentreThe northern shrine of the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan 1 Principal Cult CentreThe summit sanctuary on Mount Tlaloc 1 Attributes and IconographyCarrying a lightning serpent 1 Attributes and IconographyGoggled eyes and a fanged upper lip, in jade blue-green 1 Worship and PracticeThe Florentine Codex records that children sacrificed to Tlaloc were made to weep before their deaths, their tears read as a good omen believed to draw the rains the god controlled, a practice archaeological finds at the Templo Mayor have corroborated with burials of young children among the site's rain god offerings. 4 Function
Domain / Function Domain / Function Domain / Function Domain / FunctionAgriculture and harvest 1 Attestation
Era of Attestation Veneration TodayHistorically attested; no continuous cult 1 HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 2 Practice
LineageAztec myth pairs Tlaloc with the water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, whom sources describe alternately as his wife or his sister, and the two preside together over Tlalocan, the verdant paradise reserved for those who died by drowning, lightning, or water borne disease. 1 Attributions
Mythic AssociationTlaloc, the Aztec rain and storm god, was worshipped at the twin shrine atop the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, paired with the war god Huitzilopochtli. 2 Origins
Origin of the NameTlaloc's name is built from Nahuatl tlalli, earth, though scholars differ on the second element and how it should be read, some taking it as a locative sense close to lying on the surface. Either reading ties the god's name directly to the ground the rain he sends must reach. 3 Life
Associated RelicExcavations of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan recovered numerous ritual offerings dedicated to Tlaloc from the temple's northern shrine, including greenstone figurines, marine shells brought from both the Pacific and Gulf coasts, and the remains of sacrificed children, documented by Mexico's Templo Mayor Project. 2 Learn More
The Giver and the Taker of the Rains
Tlaloc is the Aztec god of rain, of water, of lightning and of fertility, the giver of the life-bringing rains that make the crops grow, and at the same time the fearsome sender of floods, hail, drought and the lightning-stroke. On him, more directly than on almost any other god, the survival of the people depended, and his worship reaches back long before the Aztecs: rain gods of his type are among the oldest and most constant deities of Mesoamerica. He is recognised by his distinctive mask-like face, with great round goggle-eyes and long fangs, formed in the old imagery from the coils of serpents. He rules a paradise, Tlalocan, a lush and verdant land of abundant water and flowers, to which go those who die by water or by the powers associated with him, the drowned, the lightning-struck, those who die of dropsy, who are received into his green and well-watered realm rather than into the ordinary underworld.
The Templo Mayor and the Offerings to the Rain
Tlaloc's central importance to the Aztec state is written into the plan of their capital: the great double pyramid of the Templo Mayor at the heart of Tenochtitlan bore two shrines side by side, one to the war god Huitzilopochtli and the other to Tlaloc, the sun and war on one hand and the rain and fertility on the other, the two powers on which the Aztec world was felt to rest. He was served by a full ritual calendar, and, as the colonial sources record plainly, his worship included the sacrifice of children, whose tears were held to be a fitting and necessary offering to the god of rain; this is set down here as a matter of historical record, as it is in the accounts gathered by Sahagun and preserved in the Aztec sources themselves.
Tlaloc was assisted by a host of small rain-spirits, the tlaloque, who dwelt on the mountain-tops and poured out the rain from their jars, and the mountains where the rain gathered, above all Mount Tlaloc east of the valley, were his sacred places. In Tlaloc the Aztecs worshipped the sheer, ambivalent power of water in a land of uncertain rains: the god who could make the maize grow tall or destroy a whole year's harvest, and on whose favour life itself hung.
Correspondences & Relations
Archetypes
Pantheons
Planetary Faces
Tlaloc is the Mexica rain god of the mountains and of standing water, and the Templo Mayor gave him a shrine beside Huitzilopochtli's. The Neptune pairing takes water as the common term and is modern.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Addressed By
Also Modeled As
The ninth night lord and this deity entry name the same figure, Tlaloc.
Associated With
Tlaloc held the rain half of the Great Temple, the older of the two cults and the one the agricultural year depended on.
This source names Tlaloc directly: "manuscript gives there to the rain god Tlaloc, unusual against the more common veneration of the maize goddess in that festival."
This source names Tlaloc directly: "Mixtec tradition, closely paralleling Tlaloc among the Aztec and Cocijo among the neighboring Zapotec."
This source names Tlaloc directly: "the Tlaloque, the rain gods headed by Tlaloc."
This source names Tlaloc directly: "bearing the same title served Tlaloc; Sahagun's informants describe the two as chosen for learning and lineage and equal in dignity, ranking above every other office in the priestly hierarchy."
Tlaloc ruled the Third Sun, ended by a rain of fire.
Tlalocan is Tlaloc's green place, and it receives those who die by water, lightning or the diseases counted as his.
Depicted In
Married To
In one account Xochiquetzal is the wife of the rain god Tlaloc, before being carried off by Tezcatlipoca.
Patron Of
Patron of the trecena opening on 1 Quiahuitl.
Atemoztli's ruling deity is recorded as the Tlaloque, the class of rain spirits Tlaloc heads; the edge links to Tlaloc as that class's named deity.
Atlcahualo's ruling deity is recorded as Tlaloc and the Tlaloque together with Chalchiuhtlicue.
Patron of the day Mazatl in the tonalamatl day-sign series.
Etzalcualiztli's ruling deity is recorded as the Tlaloque, the class of rain spirits Tlaloc heads; the edge links to Tlaloc as that class's named deity.
Tepeilhuitl's ruling deity is recorded as the Tlaloque and the Tepictoton; the edge links to Tlaloc as the Tlaloque's named deity.
Tlaloc ruled as the sun during the Third Sun in the Codex Chimalpopoca's telling.
Tozoztontli's ruling deity is recorded as Tlaloc, Coatlicue and Centeotl.
Principal Cult Centres
The northern shrine belonged to Tlaloc, whose cult in the valley long predates the Mexica.
Sacred to This Deity
The other shrine of the Templo Mayor was dedicated to Tlaloc.
Worshipped In
Tlaloc, god of rain, shared the Templo Mayor's dual pyramid with Huitzilopochtli.
Sources
1. Religions of Mesoamerica, 2nd edition
David Carrasco, Waveland Press, 2013
2. The Offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan
Leonardo Lopez Lujan, University Press of Colorado, 1994
3. Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind
4. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain
Bernardino de Sahagun; translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research and University of Utah Press, 1950The Florentine Codex: Tlaloc, Tlalocan, and the rites of the rainView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Tlaloc; the rain god and the Templo MayorView the Source The Great Temple of the Aztecs
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