Chalchiuhtotolin
Jade turkey
What it rules
Sickness and its counterpart — purification.
Why «energy» and not «god»
Because «god» translates badly. The Mexica did not separate the deity from the force it stands for in the way the European word does, and calling them gods imports an idea that is not theirs. «Energy» is not perfect either, but it does not carry that freight. It is a decision of this site, and it is declared as one.
The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why
What you have read above is this project's own summary of Chalchiuhtotolin. The full entry — the part that rests on the sixteenth-century sources — has not been translated, and that is a decision rather than an omission.
We chose not to touch the primary text. Those sections quote Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own words, often in sixteenth-century Castilian. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile.
In Spanish the entry carries:
- El nombre
- Quien enferma y quien purifica
- Su lugar en el tonalpohualli
- De dónde viene su imagen
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
The one who sickens and the one who cleanses
Chalchiuhtotolin is one of the nahuales — alternate forms — of Tezcatlipoca. The same force able to bring sickness and contamination could also, taking this bird form, cleanse whoever it had afflicted. It is not two opposed powers: it is one, seen from either side.
Its place in the tonalpohualli
In the 260-day count, Chalchiuhtotolin rules the sign Tecpatl (flint) and governs the seventeenth trecena, the one beginning with 1-Tecpatl. In the previous trecena it is preceded by the energy of Xolotl.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «Chalchiuhtotolin», The energies. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/energy/chalchiuhtotolin/
The name
For the peoples of Mesoamerica the turkey was a bird of great ceremonial worth, held to be noble and proper to the courtyards of lords. Calling this energy «jade turkey» grants it that nobility, for all that it is a bird one eats.