Quecholli
«The bird of rich plumage»
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 read the living signs — the bird, the cold, the leaf — and take only what is needed.
The energy it is dedicated to is Mixcóatl.
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 Quecholli. 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 rain-fed harvest brought in and the arrival of the cold with the bird. The year turns towards winter, and the living world announces it before any calendar does.
Symbolism
A living calendar
The veintena is named for a bird because the bird's arrival is the sign. Living systems marked time before clocks did: the cold comes, the bird comes.
Rituals
In this veintena arrows were made: the hunter's and the warrior's instrument was prepared. The veintena's name is a bird, but its work looks to the hills and to the hunt.
A great ritual hunt was held: the community went out to the hills as people of Mixcoatl. With the harvest in, the hunt began — the other sustenance of the cold season. (Several elements associated with Mixcoatl, with pulque and with Coatlicue are not developed here; see the omission note.)
The veintena commemorated the warriors who had died: those who fell were remembered. Memory, not exaltation — the departed honoured within the cycle of the year.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «Quecholli», The eighteen veintenas. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/veintena/quecholli/