What is the veintena of Tozoztontli?

Tozoztontli means «The small vigil». It is veintena 3 of the eighteen twenty-day stretches of the Mexica solar year. It is dedicated to tláloc.

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. Tozoztontli is the 3 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 — Tozoztontli 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 Tozoztontli 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 3 of 18

Tozoztontli

«The small vigil»

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 watch over what is barely sprouting, without hurrying it or celebrating it too soon.

The energy it is dedicated to is Tláloc.

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 Tozoztontli. 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 this is the time of preparing for the rains: the maize is jointing under irrigation and the rain is asked for, but has not yet come. What is called for is watching and sustaining, not harvesting.

Symbolism

Renewal by letting go

The heart of the veintena is an idea, not a rite: the skin that is worn and then released. The new does not appear because something is added, but because something is let go.

Rituals

Here a rite that spans two veintenas closes: those who had worn the skins since Tlacaxipehualiztli let them go after twenty days and laid them away. The act itself does not take place here; its meaning, though, is the core of this veintena and is stated in full: renewal by letting go. It is not the one who accumulates who is renewed, but the one who releases what has already dried.

The first flowers of the season were offered to Coatlicue. The rule was plain: no flower could be smelled or used before being offered. First fruits — the first of everything — go to the sacred before they go to us.

The lesser vigil: sustained attention on the maize barely showing and on everything still fragile. It is not a time to celebrate a harvest that does not exist, but to accompany what is beginning.

How to cite this page

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