Tlacaxipehualiztli
«The flaying of men»
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 shed what is dry in order to wear the new skin.
The energy it is dedicated to is Xipe Tótec.
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 Tlacaxipehualiztli. 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 turn of the farming year
In qualitative terms the veintena marks the passage from dryness to greening: the moment when the earth, hardened by the dry months, prepares to receive the seed and the first waters. The skin that comes loose.
Symbolism
Shedding in order to be reborn
The whole veintena turns on a single image: letting go of the old skin to reveal the new. It is the seed breaking its husk, the snake sloughing, the earth trading its dry mantle for the green of the rains, metal melted to be cast again. The shed skin is not an ending but the wrapping the shoot leaves behind.
Rituals
The most marked rite was the tlahuahuanaliztli, «the striping». A captive taken in war was tied by the waist to the temalacatl, a great circular stone, and armed only with a macuahuitl fitted with feathers instead of blades. Fully armed warriors fought him: a contest deliberately unequal, understood as offering and as passage — the captive gave up his life on the same ground where he had risked it. The man who had taken the captive played no part in his death and ate none of his flesh: he called him «son» and was called «father». The bond between captor and captive was understood as a tie, not a spoil.
Afterwards certain penitents, the xixipeme or tototectin, wore the flayed skins for twenty days, walking the neighbourhoods, receiving offerings and interceding for the sick. The skin dried and came loose until, at the end, it was laid in a hollow of the temple called netlatiloyan. The penitent then emerged from the old skin as the grain emerges from its husk. Wearing the skin was believed to cure ailments of the skin and eyes; many of the sick vowed to accompany the tototectin seeking relief.
How to cite this page
Alma Mexica, «Tlacaxipehualiztli», The eighteen veintenas. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/veintena/tlacaxipehualiztli/