Tezcatlipoca
Tezcatlipoca depicted in The Codex Borgia
God's providence
Name	Tezcatlipoca
Translation in French	"Smoking Mirror"
Parents	Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl
Brothers and sisters	Quetzalcoatl Huitzilopochtli Xipe Totec
Residence (s)	Teteocan
Tonalpohualli
Daily with	Acatl (Roseau)
change

Tezcatlipoca (name Nahuatl literally means "smoking mirror") is a god of Aztec mythology. This is the most feared of all the Aztec gods. This is the second of four son of Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl , parents of four Tezcatlipoca: Xipe Totec (the red Tezcatlipoca), Tezcatlipoca (the black Tezcatlipoca), Quetzalcoatl (the white Tezcatlipoca) and Huitzilopochtli (the blue Tezcatlipoca).

It also has various epithets that refer to several aspects of his divinity Titlacauan ("We are His slaves"), Ipalnemoani ("He by whom we live"), Necocyaotl ("Enemy of the two sides"), Tloque Nahuaque ("Lord near and distant) and Yohualli Ehecatl ("Night, Wind), Ome acatl (" Two Reed "), Ilhuicahua Tlalticpaque (" Possessor of heaven and earth ").

In his temple, his statue was hidden and only a few priests could contemplate. Once a year, he always reserved the most beautiful captives for sacrifice and four girls to serve as symbolic of wives.

Tezcatlipoca is associated with many concepts: night, discord, war , the hunt , the monarchy , the time , the welfare , sorcerers and memory.

Dark as night, black Tezcatlipoca has fully covered the body of this color, except yellow stripes on his face that associates the jaguar, the Nagual. His attribute is the mirror of obsidian, divining her purpose for reading the future and the human heart, that door is around the neck or to his ankle. This is often seen crippled or terminated by a snake, an evocation of his fight with the monster Cipactli, the body which the gods created the world. The other foot is often a shoe, a sign of agility. In the "true story of the conquest of New Spain" author Bernal Diaz del Castillo appointed by deforming it into "Tezcatepuca.

Notes

Bibliography

Primo Feliciano Velazquez, Cdice Chimalpopoca. Cuauhtitlan anal y Leyenda de los Soles, Mxico, Instituto de Investigaciones Histrica, 1975, 161 p. ( ISBN 968-36-2747-1 ) Adela Fernndez Prehispnicos Dioses de Mxico, Mxico, Panorama Editorial, 1998, 162 p. ( ISBN 968-38-0306-7 ) Patricia Turner and Charles Russell Coulter, Dictionary of Ancient Deities, United States, Oxford University Press, 2001, 608 p. ( ISBN 0-19-514504-6 )

Otilia Meza, El Mundo Magico de los Dioses del Anahuac, Mxico, Editorial Universo Mxico, 1981, 153 p. ( ISBN 968-35-0093-5 ) Michael Jordan, Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses, United States, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 2004, 402 p. ( ISBN 0-8160-5923-3 ) Guilhem Olivier, Teasing and metamorphoses of an Aztec god: Tezcatlipoca, the lord the smoking mirror ", Paris, Institute of Ethnology, 1997, 386 p. ( ISBN 2-85265-125-4 )

External Links

• Encyclopedia Mythica: mythology, folklore, and religion