Hummingbird war god

Today I would like to talk about Huitzilopochtli, the scary war god of the scary warriors of the Aztec/Mexica tribe. And an astonishing fact that he is basically a deified hummingbird...

Yup, you heard it right. The scary hummingbird war god...

Huitzilopochtli was the patron god of the Aztec/Mexica tribe and their capital city Tenochtitlan. He was also the sun god. The one that had to be constantly fed human blood and hearts (seat of fire), or he would lose his strength and the world would end. You can read more about the Aztec human sacrifices here...

He was the one because of whom Aztecs fought the eternal holy war whose only purpose was capturing sacrificial victims for Huitzilopochtli...

The scary blood thirsty hummingbird war god...

In art and iconography Huitzilopochtli is represented either as a hummingbird or as an anthropomorphic figure with blue-green hummingbird feathered helmet...

His name, Huitzilopochtli, consists of two elements, Huitzilin "hummingbird" and opochtli "left hand side", translats as "Hummingbird of the left hand side" or "Hummingbird of the south" on the basis that Aztec cosmology associated the south with the left hand side of the body...

Soooo...If you learned that the war god of the Aztec/Mexica was a deified hummingbird, wouldn't you go "WHY?!?"

I know I would. Obviously some other people also found this intriguing. And they thought about it. And...

The only proposed explanation that I could find is that "Aztecs believed the bravest warriors were reincarnated as hummingbirds. Because of this, a more appropriate translation of Huitzilopochtli would be "Reincarnated Warrior of the South"...

This, apparently, fits the Aztec belief that "Huitzilopochtli was conceived after his mother, Coatlicue, the Earth Mother goddess, a charming lady about whom I will write more soon, placed in her bosom a ball of hummingbird feathers (the soul of a warrior) that fell from the sky"...

Huitzilopochtli already had many [innumerable] older brothers [southern stars]  and an older sister [moon]. Because they were angry about the way Huitzilopochtli was conceived (?), they decided to kill both him and their mother...

But, hearing of the attack, the pregnant Coatlicue miraculously gave birth to a fully grown and armed Huitzilopochtli [sun, burning with anger and fury and armed with the fire serpent, his deadly main weapon]...

Huitzilopochtli fought ferociously, defended himself and his mother, killed dismembered and decapitated his sister and chased his brothers across the sky southwards...

According to Aztecs, this is why we get day and night because Huitzilopochtli, the sun, continues to chase his brothers, the stars, around and around the world...But there is more to this story as you will see soon. 

Soooo...Happy with this explanation? It all makes sense? This would all make a lot more sense if we knew why were "the bravest warriors reincarnated as hummingbirds" and why was Huitzilopochtli specifically the "hummingbird of the south"...

Well, let's have a look at the hummingbirds and their lifecycle to see if there is any overlap between significant annual lifecycle events of the hummingbirds and the Aztec/Mexica war season...

Cause Huitzilopochtli sure looks like deified animal calendar marker. And as you will see, he is indeed a deified animal calendar marker for the Aztec/Mexica war season...

I have already shown in this article, that all the animals and plants from the Aztec legend about the foundation of Tenochtitlan and Huitzilopochtli's role in it are indeed animal and plant calendar markers...

And I have also shown in this article, that the starfish found as offerings in the temple dedicated to the god of war, Huitzilopochtli, in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan are also animal calendar markers...

So I can bet that hummingbird is no different.

The climatic year in Mexico is divided into dry and wet halves, and so Aztec year was divided into two "opposite" seasons: farming (wet) season, Apr/May-Oct/Nov, and war (dry) season, Oct/Nov-Apr/May...

Huitzilopochtli ruled the war (dry) season, Oct/Nov-Apr/May. I would even suggest that he was deified war season. This is why the Panquetzaliztli festival which was held every year during the Aztec month Panquetzaliztli (Nov 9 to Nov 28), celebrated the (miraculous) birth of Huitzilopochtli...

Guess what ends in Oct/Nov? Southern migration of hummingbirds, who in their millions arrive to Mexico from the north, from Canada and the USA, between Aug and Oct...

BTW, Aztecs believed that North was the location of the land of the dead. Hence the brave dead warrior souls arriving from the land of the dead (north) to the land of the living (south) in a form of a hummingbird...

The arrival of the hummingbirds (warrior souls) signals the change of season from wet season of agriculture and life, to dry season of war and death (impregnates Mother Earth with war god) which springs out of her womb fully grown and armed and ready for war every Oct/Nov...

This indicates that Huitzilopochtli, the hummingbird of the south, was the deified sunny/dry/war season, Oct/Nov-Apr/May, the time which all the hummingbirds spend down south, in the land of the living...

Which is why Aztecs celebrated Huitzilopochtli's birthday every year in Nov...

BTW, the birthday cake baked for Huitzilopochtli was a statue of the god made with sacred amaranth seeds dough. 

Amaranth seeds are harvested in Nov...

After a ritual battle in which warriors "captured" and dismembered the amaranth-dough figure of Huitzilopochtli, the warriors took the dough pieces home to their families to be ritually consumed.

Another, this time plant, calendar marker for the start of the war season...

One other thing. Right around amaranth harvest and the Huitzilopochtli's birthday, in Nov, the Southern Stars, including Southern Cross, become visible from the Aztec land just before dawn. As the sun rises, they move towards, and finally disappear in the southern sky...

They are then visible in the night sky until Jun, until it's time to plant amaranth. So again a calendar marker. The time during which Huitzilopochtli chases his brothers, the southern stars, is the same period ruled by (deified as) Huitzilopochtli: the sunny/dry/war season...

Anyway I will stop here. In my next post I will talk about Huitzilopochtli as the burning sun god...And why he is armed with a "fire serpent", as all burning sun gods should...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...