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Smoking Mirror of Tezcatlipoca
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Description
Tezcatlipoca's obsidian
Nahua sources recorded in Sahagún's Florentine Codex: Tezcatlipoca is "Smoking Mirror." Obsidian mirrors (tezcatl) are his emblem and a Mesoamerican divinatory tool. The missing foot, night, and rulership belong to the same complex. The ethnography is colonial and late; it remains the densest written witness. The object is the god's name and a real mirror-type, not a unique named relic with a forging myth. Specialists used such mirrors; the god is the smoke in the glass.
Primary Sources
“Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror, whose seer-stone is obsidian, lord of the night and of princes.”
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