Aztec PantheonRealm
Aztlan
The mythical homeland of the Aztec people, 'Place of Whiteness' or 'Place of Herons.' From this island city, the Mexica began their long migration south, guided by Huitzilopochtli, until they found the eagle on the cactus that marked Tenochtitlan.
About Aztlan
Place of herons, start of the walk
Aztlan is the island origin of the Mexica in the Boturini Codex (Tira de la Peregrinacion) and Sahagun: seven calpulli leave, led by Huitzilopochtli's priests, until the eagle-and-cactus sign. It is a migration charter, not a surveyed homeland. Scholars have looked in western Mexico and found no consensus. There is no Aztlan temple in the Basin. The place exists so an imperial people can say they came from elsewhere by command.
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.
- Codex Boturini / Florentine Codex migration books
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.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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