Five Suns
Five Suns is an Aztec myth about how the world was created. It says that there were four other suns before our own, because different gods served as the Sun at different times:
- The first sun was Tezcatlipoca but he fought with his brother Quetzalcoatl and was knocked out of the sky. The humans of this age were all eaten by Tezcatlipoca's jaguars.
- Quetzalcoatl himself became the second sun but Tezcatlipoca turned all humans into monkeys. Quetzalcoatl destroyed these monkeys with a hurricane and left the sky to create new humans.
- The god of rain, Tlaloc, became the third sun but then Tezcatlipoca married his wife. All rains stopped and when humans asked him for water, Tlaloc destroyed Earth with a rain of fire.
- The fourth sun was Chalchiuhtlicue, who loved humans very much. But Tezcatlipoca told her she was selfish and she started crying, causing a flood that killed everyone on Earth.
- The current, fifth sun is Huitzilopochtli who fights every day against Coyolxauhqui, goddess of the Moon. Aztecs believed that this sun would disappear, too, if they didn't support Huitzilopochtli by sacrificing humans.
Five Suns Media
Central part of the monolith of the Stone of the Sun, also named Aztec calendar stone (National Museum of Anthropology and History, Mexico City).
Huitzilopochtli is raising up the skies of the South, one of the four directions of the world, surrounded by their respective trees, temples, patterns, and divination symbols.
Teotihuacan, the "birthplace of the gods".
Codex Borgia page 71 depicts Tonatiuh "The Fifth Sun", and Metzli.
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