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. Tepeílhuitl is the 13 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 — Tepeílhuitl 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 Tepeílhuitl 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 13 of 18

Tepeílhuitl

Q: What is the veintena of Tepeílhuitl?

Tepeílhuitl means «The feast of the hills». It is veintena 13 of the eighteen twenty-day stretches of the Mexica solar year. It is dedicated to the mountains and the tlaloque.

«The feast of the hills»

Still from the animated background of the veintena of Tepeílhuitl — The background of Tepeílhuitl, 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 honour the hills the water you drink comes down from.

The energy it is dedicated to is The mountains and 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 Tepeílhuitl. 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 farewell to the rains: the last clouds of the year over the hills. The water that carried the cycle is thanked just as it begins to fail.

Symbolism

The mountain, living body and vessel of water

The hill is not inert landscape but a living body and a vessel where water is born and kept. To make it a figure of dough is to acknowledge that.

Rituals

The central rite: figures were modelled from amaranth dough — the tepictoton, «the little moulded ones» — standing for the mountains, the serpents and the energies of rain. Small hills of dough to honour the great hills of water.

The veintena honours the hills because from them water is born and in them it is kept. It is the reverse of Atlcahualo: there one climbed the summits to ask for rain; here one climbs to thank it and see it off.

With this veintena the last clouds of the year depart. The completed cycle is given thanks for, and the waters are already asked to return next year. (An element associated with the hills and with pulque is not developed here; see the omission note.)

How to cite this page

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

Questions that reach this page

Does the Day of the Dead come from the Aztecs?

In part, and the part matters. The sources describe twenty-day months dedicated to the dead — Tepeilhuitl among them — but they fell at other points in the year and do not line up with 1 and 2 November, which are Christian in origin. What exists is continuity of elements, not the same feast moved.