The legend of the Five Suns
What it covers
The four eras before this one and how each ended, in the account the sources give.
The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why
What you have read above is this project's own summary of the legend of the five suns. 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 primer sol: jaguar
- El segundo sol: viento
- El tercer sol: lluvia de fuego
- El cuarto sol: agua
- El quinto sol: el nuestro
- Los nombres, y una advertencia
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «The legend of the Five Suns», The legends. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/legend/los-cinco-soles/