I don't think we appreciate the Sun enough,
and I say this as someone who gets sunburns from Hubble pics and people with unusually shiny teeth.
I have every reason to hate the Sun,
but really, I think we take it for granted these days.
Ever since we figured out that solar eclipses didn't mean the Sun was literally getting eaten by a giant snake,
we've kinda stopped worrying about it.
And I think that's a shame,
because some of my absolute favorite myths are about what happens when the Sun stops working.
But while many mythologies have designated sun gods
and/or the occasional myth where the Sun is threatened but ultimately saved,
I think the Aztec creation myth has my favorite take on the subject.
So let's take a look at what history's most notoriously bloody mythos has to say on the subject of Suns.
The Aztec creation myth begins when Ometeotl,
the primordial dual God that may or may not have ever actually been worshiped,
spontaneously creates themself and promptly spoots out four gods to start filling out the pantheon.
These four gods are associated with the cardinal directions as well as the colors white, blue, red, and black.
They're sometimes referred to as the "Four Tezcatlipocas",
which is a bit confusing, because only one of them is actually named Tezcatlipoca.
The other three are Xipe Totec and two more familiar Aztec deities,
Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli.
Quetzalcoatl, the white Tezcatlipoca,
is the god of the winds, the West, knowledge, learning, art, and the planet Venus.
His name means "feathered serpent," which is usually how he's represented in the art.
Huitzilopochtli, the blue Tezcatlipoca, is the god of the South,
along with war and human sacrifice,
and his name means "Hummingbird of the South".
Xipe Totec, the red Tezcatlipoca, is the god of the East,
along with agriculture, farming, springtime, and disease,
with his name meaning "Our Lord the Flayed One."
Which, heh, might be why he's red!
Anyway, rounding out our roster is Tezcatlipoca, redundantly called "the black Tezcatlipoca,"
who's the god of the night sky, hurricanes, obsidian, chaos, conflict, and jaguars.
His name means "Smoking Mirror", which is cool as hell.
So these four gods do what gods do best and start trying to make stuff,
but the problem is right now the universe is just this big empty void
hovering over primordial ocean that's home to Cipactli,
a giant monster-crocodile-Eldritch-abomination... thing
with big ol' crocodile mouths on every joint of its body.
I'm picturing a Jacob's Ladder... made of nightmares.
And whenever they make anything, it falls into the ocean and Cipactli eats it.
So Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl come up with a plan that'll kill two birds with one stone.
Tezcatlipoca lures Cipactli to the surface,
incidentally losing a leg in the process,
and the four gods catch and kill it,
then repurpose its nightmare bear-trap body into the land.
However, Cipactli is only kinda dead.
So in order to keep it happy, the gods promised it regular blood sacrifices so it won't eat their stuff anymore.
So, yeah, in the Aztec cosmology,
the Earth itself is a starving primeval monster that wants nothing more than to eat everything at all times.
Let's file that under "yikes" and move on.
So now they've got some land to work with,
and the gods get to work making a bunch more gods.
Plus some humans, although these humans are giant for some reason.
Anyway, that's all cool and stuff.
But this new world is missing something.
It needs a Sun.
So, Tezcatlipoca decides to give it a shot.
He becomes the Sun, but for some reason,
either due to the loss of his leg or the fact that he's a god of the night,
he can only manage half a Sun.
But that works fine, and things go alright for a while,
but over time Tezcatlipoca develops a bit of a rivalry with Quetzalcoatl, and one day,
Quetzalcoatl whacks him out of the sky with a big stone club for some reason.
Tezcatlipoca takes this so badly that he
calls down a rain of jaguars to eat everybody,
and that's how the first world ends.
So, with humanity extinct and Tezcatlipoca thoroughly unfit for duty,
Quetzalcoatl steps up to the plate and becomes the second Sun,
after the gods whip up some new humans.
Smaller this time, probably so they leave less of a mess.
Now Quetzalcoatl loves these new humans,
but over time they stop being quite as respectful to the gods than maybe they could be,
and they maybe start taking them a little for granted.
And who should take offense to this but Tezcatlipoca,
who punishes the wayward humans by transforming them all into monkeys.
Quetzalcoatl is so upset about the loss of his humans that he
blows all the monkeys off the face of the earth and goes home to sulk.
Welp, time for Sun #3 I guess.
Quetzalcoatl make some more humans
and Tlaloc, a rain god, becomes the third Sun.
And he does a pretty good job for a while.
Until Tezcatlipoca seduces Tlaloc's wife,
the fertility goddess Xochiquetzal,
and Tlaloc gets so upset that he refuses to let it rain at all.
After a while, the desperate prayers of humanity start getting on his nerves, so Tlaloc is like:
"Oh, you want RAIN? I'LL GIVE YOU RAIN!"
And then sets off a rain of fire,
burning the entire world to the ground and wiping out everything again.
You know that's not what they were asking for.
Come on, man.
Well, Tlaloc steps down as the Sun and remarries,
this time to the water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue,
who also steps up to become the fourth Sun.
Now, Chalchiuhtlicue is a total sweetheart and dotes on her new humans, but--
Here, take a guess who screws this up.
Yep, our old buddy Tezcatlipoca accuses Chalchiuhtlicue of being a total poser
who's only pretending to like those humans so they worship her.
This cutting accusation is so hurtful that Chalchiuhtlicue
cries blood for 52 years and drowns everybody.
But at this point, Quetzalcoatl's getting REAL sick of having to build new humans every few years.
So instead of starting from scratch he stomps down to the underworld,
steals the bones of all those dead humans from the underworld god Mictlantecuhtli,
and stomps right back up again,
but not before he trips, falls in a hole and breaks all the bones.
Don't worry, it doesn't do anything bad,
but this is used to explain why people come in different heights now.
Anyway, Quetzalcoatl dips the bones in his blood and the humans all come back to life,
and into the world of the fifth and current Sun, staffed by Huitzilopochtli.
And, while according to the mythos he hasn't screwed up yet,
he's in constant conflict with the Moon Coyolxauhqui and the stars,
who are also scary skeleton ladies called the Tzitzimimeh.
The Aztecs believed that the world of the fifth Sun would end in a catastrophic earthquake,
so I guess, uh...
*sigh*
California, quit trying to fall into the ocean,
and remember to pour one out for Cipactli once in a while.
Blood sacrifices keep the planet from eating your feet!
One day, you'll look
To see I've gone
For tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun
Someday, you'll know
I was the one
But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun