Ometéotl, «The duality that holds up the cosmos», is one of the forty-five energies that rule the days, trecenas and veintenas of the Mexica calendar. The dual principle — origin and support of all that is.

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

Why is the full entry on Ometéotl only in Spanish?

Because the entry on Ometéotl 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

Ometéotl

The duality that holds up the cosmos

What it rules

The dual principle — origin and support of all that is.

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 Ometéotl. 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
Teotl no equivale a la categoría europea
Omeyocan, el lugar de la dualidad
Los cuatro que salieron
Una nota honesta: no todos coinciden
De dónde viene su imagen

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

The name

Ometeotl is not a being with a fixed form but the dual principle from which everything proceeds. It manifests as Ometecuhtli («lord of duality») and Omecihuatl («lady of duality») — not two separate entities but the two necessary faces of a single principle: what engenders and what receives.

How to cite this page

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