Mixcóatl
Cloud Serpent
What it rules
The hunt, the Milky Way and the veintena of Quecholli.
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 Mixcóatl. 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
- La cacería de Zacatépec
- El heno de la montaña
- Dónde lo tenían por suyo
- De dónde viene su imagen
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
The name
Cloud Serpent: the name given to the white band that crosses the night sky, what we now call the Milky Way. A serpent made of mist, stretched from one horizon to the other.
Where its image comes from
The images in this app are drawn for it, not traced. Below is what the sources say about his 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, «Mixcóatl», The energies. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/energy/mixcoatl/