Coatlicue, «She of the serpent skirt», is one of the forty-five energies that rule the days, trecenas and veintenas of the Mexica calendar. The earth that gives life and takes it back — mother of what is born and of what dies.

Why do you call Coatlicue 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 Coatlicue as to the other forty-four.

Why is the full entry on Coatlicue only in Spanish?

Because the entry on Coatlicue 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

Coatlicue

She of the serpent skirt

What it rules

The earth that gives life and takes it back — mother of what is born and of what dies.

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 Coatlicue. 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
Madre de lo que nace y de lo que termina
El cerro de Coatepec
De dónde viene su imagen

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

The name

«She of the serpent skirt» is not a decorative description but a statement about the earth itself. For the Mexica the serpent did not stand for danger but for renewal — the animal that sheds its skin and is born again. A whole skirt of serpents is the earth understood as a surface that renews itself without ceasing.

Mother of what is born and of what ends

Coatlicue was also named Tonantzin («our venerated mother») and Teteoh Innan («mother of the energies»). Her image holds life and death together without contradiction: she is the one who nourishes and the one who receives back what the earth gave.

The hill of Coatepec

The best-known account places Coatlicue on the hill of Coatepec, at her penitential work. A ball of feathers came down from the sky; she picked it up and, with no man's part in it, conceived Huitzilopochtli.

How to cite this page

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