Itztlacoliuhqui
Curved obsidian knife
What it rules
Cold, justice, and change brought by pain.
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 Itztlacoliuhqui. 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
- De la alegría al frío
- Frío que ordena
- De dónde viene su imagen
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
The name
«Curved obsidian knife» or, on other readings, «everything has been bent by the cold» — the name describes both an object and a state: the frost that curves and cracks what it touches. He was sometimes shown blindfolded, and so was called «justice with its eyes covered».
The sources count him among the aspects of Tezcatlipoca: the one who punishes. Where that one deals out fortune without warning, this one freezes, and blinds. The same arbitrariness seen from the side it falls on.
The sources identify him with Cinteotl Itztlacoliuhqui, «yehoatl yn cetl» — the cold. And the vertical black band across his face is an attribute of that form, of Huastec origin.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «Itztlacoliuhqui», The energies. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/energy/itztlacoliuhqui/