What is the veintena of Etzalcualiztli?

Etzalcualiztli means «The etzalli is eaten». It is veintena 6 of the eighteen twenty-day stretches of the Mexica solar year. It is dedicated to the tlaloque.

How many veintenas does the Mexica year have?

Eighteen of twenty days, which make 360, plus five added at the end — the nemontemi — to complete 365. That is the solar count, the xiuhpohualli, and it is distinct from the 260-day count that gives the day-signs. Etzalcualiztli is the 6 of the eighteen.

Is a veintena the same as a trecena?

No, and it is the commonest confusion. A veintena is twenty days of the solar year, of which there are eighteen — Etzalcualiztli among them. A trecena is thirteen days of the divinatory count, of which there are twenty. Both run at once and do not cross the same way twice for fifty-two years.

Why is the full entry on Etzalcualiztli only in Spanish?

Because it rests on the accounts of Sahagún and Durán in their own sixteenth-century words. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation. The Spanish entry is linked.

The eighteen veintenas

Veintena 6 of 18

Etzalcualiztli

«The etzalli is eaten»

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 share the dish, and to settle several things with one gesture.

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 Etzalcualiztli. 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 rains are settled and the rain-fed crop is germinating: the water has been released and abundance begins. The year tips towards summer.

Symbolism

The fast and the banquet

The veintena keeps a rhythm: first the fast (emptying), then the banquet (filling). One gives the other its meaning — there is no full table without having known the empty one.

Rituals

The central rite was a meal: etzalli, maize and beans cooked together and shared out. To eat it ceremonially was to receive the gift of the milpa as a single dish — what grows together, served together.

This veintena held the greatest fasts and penances of the priests in the year. Abstinence came before the banquet: the emptiness first, the table after. (Described as historical and ritual practice, not as a recommendation.)

Dances marked the rains now settled: the water long asked for was falling at last without fail. The veintena celebrates the water cycle fulfilled.

How to cite this page

Alma Mexica, «Etzalcualiztli», The eighteen veintenas. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/veintena/etzalcualiztli/