Ixcuinan, «Four faces», is one of the forty-five energies that rule the days, trecenas and veintenas of the Mexica calendar. The four ages of a woman — and the trecena 1-Ollin.

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

Why is the full entry on Ixcuinan only in Spanish?

Because the entry on Ixcuinan 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

Ixcuinan

Four faces

What it rules

The four ages of a woman — and the trecena 1-Ollin.

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 Ixcuinan. 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
Las cuatro hermanas
En la cuenta
La que recibe lo que se le dice
Su parentesco con Tlazoltéotl
De dónde viene su imagen

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

Where its image comes from

The images in this app are drawn for it, not traced. Below is what the sources say about her appearance, feature by feature. What they do not say is left blank: a declared gap is better than an invented feature.

How to cite this page

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

The name

Sahagún records that Tlazolteotl was «by another name called Ixcuina, and all four of them ixcuiname», in the plural. It is not one energy with four faces: they are four sisters named together, and that set is the name.