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Fifth Sun and The Fifth Sun are two separate entries in this atlas, connected by one of only three links anywhere linking its beliefs-and-observances and cosmic-cycles sections. The link carries its own note explaining why there are two: "The existing Fifth Sun Doctrine entry covers the body of belief and ritual practice built around this present age; this Age entry covers the age itself as the fifth world-creation in the Legend of the Suns."

The Age: A Myth of Sacrifice at Teotihuacan

The Age entry tells the myth: "The Fifth Sun, called 4-Movement, is the fifth and current cosmic age of Aztec myth, born at Teotihuacan when the humble god Nanahuatzin threw himself into a divine fire to become the new sun, later named Tonatiuh." Its ending is fixed in its own name: "Aztec tradition holds this age, unlike the four before it, will end in earthquakes, a fate encoded in the day-name Movement itself."

The Doctrine: What the Myth Required of the Living

The Doctrine entry carries the story forward into its consequence. When the new sun "refused to move across the sky until the other gods gave their own blood, the Mexica drew from this myth the doctrine that the sun's continued motion, and with it the world's survival, depended on ongoing human sacrifice, an idea that underwrote state sponsored offerings at temples such as the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan." Read together, the two entries separate an origin story from what it demanded: the Age entry stops at the birth of the sun, and the Doctrine entry carries the story into the obligation the Mexica state built on top of it.

Where To Read More

• Fifth SunPosition 5 in Its CycleThe age itself, ending in earthquakes by its own day-name, Movement
• The Fifth SunCosmology and World-StructureThe doctrine built on the age: the belief that sustaining the sun's motion required ongoing sacrifice