The feathered serpent who gave humanity maize and his own blood, mistaken at the end for the Spanish conqueror whose seizure of Tenochtitlan in 1521 ended his cult.
Born
100 BCE
Died
1521 CE
Lived
1,621 years
Dead for
505 yrs
Cause of death
Conquest · Forgotten
Replaced by
Catholicism
The Obituary
Quetzalcoatl, the “feathered serpent,” was a Mesoamerican god of wind, knowledge, the morning star (the planet Venus), and the creation of humankind, his cult reaching back to Teotihuacan. Myth credits him with descending to the underworld and shedding his blood on ancestral bones to fashion humanity, and with giving people maize. As Ehecatl, the wind, he was honored in round temples. The Aztec worship of Quetzalcoatl ended with the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521 and the imposition of Catholicism.
Worth remembering
He descended to the underworld and bled on the bones of the dead to create the present race of humans.
As the wind-god Ehecatl he wore a red beak-mask; his temples were round so the wind could pass freely.
Gallery
Feathered serpent heads on the facade of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at TeotihuacanRosemania · CC BY 2.0Page 56 of the pre-Columbian Codex Borgia depicting QuetzalcoatlPublic domain
Watch
The Aztec myth of the unlikeliest sun god — TED-Ed
Sources
Quetzalcoatl was the feathered serpent god of wind, learning, and the morning star Wikipedia
Quetzalcoatl governed winds and rain, learning, science, agriculture, crafts, and the arts; he invented the calendar, was connected with Venus as the morning star, and a six-tiered pyramid was built in his honour at Teotihuacan where 3rd-century representations of feathered serpents are attested World History Encyclopedia
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.
Buried nearby — by shared fate or a neighbouring lifespan.
