TYPE: Primordial deity
ORIGIN: Aztec (Classical Mesoamerican) [Mexico]
INFORMATION: In the most widely accepted Aztec cosmogony, this is the self-created, eternal, male principle who combines with Tonacacihuatl to create all life. It exists in the highest, thirteenth heaven and once engendered the sun god Tezcatlipoca, from whom all other deities in the pantheon stemmed. Also one of the group classed as the Ometeotl complex. According to tradition Tonacatecuhtli drove four roads through the center of the earth after the cataclysm of the fourth world age (Atl) to disperse the flood waters of the deluge. His four sons, aided by four unnamed beings, raised the fallen sky, which they propped up on great trees created by Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl a tthe four cardinal points. See also Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl adn Mictlantecuhtli.
In alternative mythology Tonacatecuhtli is the ruler of the sixth of the thirteen heavens known at the time of the Spanish conquest, Ilhuicatl Yayauhcan (the blackish heaven). Also Ometecuhtli.