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. Izcalli is the 18 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 — Izcalli 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 Izcalli 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 18 of 18

Izcalli

Q: What is the veintena of Izcalli?

Izcalli means «The revival». It is veintena 18 of the eighteen twenty-day stretches of the Mexica solar year. It is dedicated to xiuhtecuhtli.

«The revival»

Still from the animated background of the veintena of Izcalli — The background of Izcalli, held still. In the app it moves through the twenty days of its veintena.

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 rekindle: to close by handing on the fire, not by putting it out.

The energy it is dedicated to is Xiuhtecuhtli.

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 Izcalli. 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 reviving: the vegetation waking, the first shoot, the irrigated sowing.

Symbolism

The end and the beginning are the same moment

The central idea, and that of the whole calendar: the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next are the same moment. The year closes with new fire and reviving vegetation. Endings are not the opposite of beginnings: they are the same door, seen from either side.

Rituals

The veintena kindled the new fire: the flame renewed as the year closed. Four priests came down from the temple with lit pine torches, bowed to the four directions, and kept that fire in a brazier all the following year. Offerings were made to the fire and a dough image of Xiuhtecuhtli. To end the year was to rekindle, not to put out. (See the omission note for what this project does not develop.)

Izcalia: «to revive», «to bring back to life». At this time the vegetation wakes from dormancy, the first shoots come, the irrigated sowing begins.

The last veintena ends where the first began: the water asked for at Atlcahualo, the fire renewed here. The calendar is a circle — its end is its beginning.

Every four years the feast «was made great» and turned on the children: they were stretched so they would grow, their ears were pierced, and they danced. It was a rite of passage from one stage of childhood to the next. Mothers lifted their little ones high and repeated to them: «izcalli, izcalli» — «grow, grow».

How to cite this page

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