Atemoztli
«The descent of the waters»
What a veintena is
One of the eighteen twenty-day stretches of the Mexica solar year. Eighteen of them make 360 days; five more — the nemontemi — close the 365. This is a different count from the 260-day one that gives the day-signs, and the two run at the same time.
What this one asks of you
To work in the void, when nothing can be seen yet.
The energy it is dedicated to is The tlaloque.
The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why
What you have read above is this project's own summary of the veintena of Atemoztli. 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:
- Etimología
- Energías
- Rituales
- Sociedad
- Simbolismo
- Códices
- Ecología
- Vigencia hoy
- Interpretaciones modernas
Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.
Ecology
The season
In qualitative terms the full dry season: lakes and rivers low, the water kept underground. And precisely there, the distant rain asked for and the soil left to rest.
Symbolism
Water does not vanish, it hides
The central correction: the water comes down not to vanish but to hide. The lakes dry and the water sinks to the aquifers. What disappears from the surface is kept in the depth — absence is not loss, it is reserve.
Rituals
Papers were offered to the tlaloque, the energies of rain: a petition sustained in the full dry season for water that would come months later.
Dough images of the hills were modelled — the mountains where water is kept — and then ritually unmade. To model the mountain and let it go: an image of the water that comes down and hides. (An associated element is not developed here; see the omission note.)
What stands out: at the driest point of the year, the rain that would come in May was asked for. Five months ahead. Asking into the void, for what gives no sign yet. (The fasts are mentioned as historical practice, not as a recommendation.)
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «Atemoztli», The eighteen veintenas. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/veintena/atemoztli/