Huitzilopochtli or ‘Hummingbird of the South’ or ‘Blue Hummingbird on the Left’ was the god of the sun and war, considered the patron of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán and associated with gold, warriors and rulers.
Description[]
Huitzilopochtli may be depicted carrying his snake-shaped spear-thrower (atl-atl) which represents the fire-serpent Xiuhcóatl. He may also carry a shield, hold feathered arrows or darts and be painted with blue arms and legs. The god could be symbolized by either a hummingbird (huitzilin) whose feathers he wore in his helmet.
Overview[]
Since he was the patron god of the Mexican, he was credited with both the victories and defeats that the Mexican people had on the battlefield. The people had to make sacrifices to him to protect the Aztec from infinite night. It is important to remember that the defeat of their patron deity meant the defeat of his people.
Unlike many other Aztec deities, Huitzilopochtli has no clear equivalents from earlier Mesoamerican cultures. In Aztec mythology Huitzilopochtli was the son of Omecίhuatl and Ometecuhtli, respectively, the female and male aspects of the androgynous primordial god Ometeotl. Huitzilopochtli was also considered the brother of those other great Mesoamerican gods Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca and Xipe Totec.
As Huitzilopochtli was such an important deity he was the beneficiary of human sacrifices whose blood would feed and strengthen the god. Victims usually came from war captives and they were led to the top of the Temple Mayor, their hearts were removed, they were skinned and the corpse decapitated and dismembered, perhaps in homage to Coyolxauhqui and her similar fate at the hands of Huitzilopochtli. The torso of the victim was flung down the steps of the pyramid to land at the base where, significantly, stone-carved snakes recall Mt. Coatepec.