Cintéotl, «Maize, in its living form», is one of the forty-five energies that rule the days, trecenas and veintenas of the Mexica calendar. Maize — sustenance, and an energy at once male and female.

Why do you call Cintéotl an energy and not a god?

Because «god» translates badly. The Mexica did not separate the deity from the force it stands for as the European word does. «Energy» is not perfect either, but it does not carry that freight. It is a decision of this site, declared as one — and it applies to Cintéotl as to the other forty-four.

Why is the full entry on Cintéotl only in Spanish?

Because the entry on Cintéotl quotes Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own sixteenth-century words. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation. The Spanish entry is linked from this page.

The energies

One of the forty-five energies

Cintéotl

Maize, in its living form

What it rules

Maize — sustenance, and an energy at once male and female.

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 Cintéotl. 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
Origen y familia
Su fiesta: Huey Tozoztli
De dónde viene su imagen

Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.

Origin and family

His genealogy varies by source: some make him the son of Tlazolteotl and Piltzintecuhtli (a solar energy), born on the day 1-Xochitl; others tie him to Xochiquetzal. All agree on the sense of the story: after being born, he hid under the earth, and from his body came the useful plants.

His feast: Huey Tozoztli

Cinteotl was honoured especially at Huey Tozoztli, the fourth veintena, when the whole community went out to the plots to gather tender maize plants for the temple — the hope of the future harvest made offering.

How to cite this page

Alma Mexica, «Cintéotl», The energies. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/energy/cinteotl/

The name

Cinteotl is the personification of maize, the food that held a whole civilisation up. There is no single fixed image: it is a dual energy, with a masculine aspect (Cinteotl, Centeotecuhtli) and a feminine one (Chicomecoatl, Xilonen), and the sources move between them without troubling to choose.