Panquetzaliztli
«The raising of banners»
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 raise the banner exactly when there is least light.
The energy it is dedicated to is Huitzilopochtli.
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 Panquetzaliztli. 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 winter solstice: the sun at its lowest, the darkest and coldest of the year — and, exactly there, the turn where the light begins to return.
Symbolism
Affirming at the darkest point
The central idea: raising banners when the light is at its least. Affirmation costs more — and is worth more — at the darkest point of the cycle.
Rituals
Banners were raised: on the houses, on the fruit trees and on the useful plants, and a greater banner was planted. To raise a banner when the light is at its least is, in itself, an act of affirmation.
Dough images were made of Huitzilopochtli and of his deputy Paynal, and a great procession went along the eastern shore of the lake. Fasts and dances filled the veintena. (A combat and its consequences are not developed here; see the omission note. The fasts are mentioned as historical practice, not as a recommendation.)
The veintena falls on the winter solstice: the sun at its lowest. And precisely there the sun turns and begins to climb. The feast affirms the light exactly when it is scarcest.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «Panquetzaliztli», The eighteen veintenas. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/veintena/panquetzaliztli/