Aztec PantheonCreature
Tzitzimime
- Eclipse Manifestation
- Star Form
- Mass Destruction
- Darkness Spreading
Fearsome skeletal star demons from Aztec cosmology, feminine spirits who dwell in the heavens and threaten to descend during solar eclipses to devour humanity. Led by the goddess Itzpapalotl, they represent the stars that battle the sun at dusk and dawn, waiting for the moment when the Fifth Sun dies to consume all living things.
About Tzitzimime
Star-Demons at the Eclipse
Tzitzimime are female stellar beings who threaten to devour people when the sun fails — eclipses, the New Fire year's panic. Itzpapalotl is their best-known leader. Codex and Sahagún notices dress them in skulls and claws; they are cosmology, not a swamp cryptid.
The Fifth Sun's contract is that they wait. Ritual keeps the sun fed so they stay aloft.
When the sun fails
Sahagún's informants (Book 7) record that during solar eclipses people feared the tzitzimime would come down to eat humans, and that at the New Fire Ceremony every 52 years, if the fire could not be drilled, the sun would not rise and they would descend. Pregnant women were masked with maguey leaves and shut away in granaries in case they turned into beasts. Colonial writers equated the tzitzimime with devils, a distortion scholars now try to correct.
Quick answers about Tzitzimime
- What is Tzitzimime?
- Fearsome skeletal star demons from Aztec cosmology, feminine spirits who dwell in the heavens and threaten to descend during solar eclipses to devour humanity. Led by the goddess Itzpapalotl, they represent the stars that battle the sun at dusk and dawn, waiting for the moment when the Fifth Sun dies to consume all living things.
- Where does Tzitzimime live?
- The atlas lists Tzitzimime's habitat as The Stars and Eclipse Shadows.
- What abilities does Tzitzimime have?
- The atlas lists these abilities for Tzitzimime: Eclipse Manifestation, Star Form, Mass Destruction, and Darkness Spreading.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Sahagún, Florentine Codex (eclipse and tzitzimime notices)
About this entry
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.
The danger rating is an editorial shorthand for how the myths portray the creature, not a claim made by the sources.
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