Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl's name joins quetzal, the emerald-plumed bird of the southern cloud forests, with coatl, serpent: a great snake sheathed in long green feathers. In his wind aspect, Ehecatl, he wears a conical ocelot-skin cap, a duck-like buccal mask through which he blows the winds, and a pectoral cut from a cross-sectioned conch shell; his temples were built round so that no corner would break the flowing air. He is also patron of priests, of the calendar, and of learned crafts, and as Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli he is Venus rising as the morning star.

After the flood that ended the Fourth Sun, Quetzalcoatl descended to Mictlan to claim the bones of the previous human race from Mictlantecuhtli. The death lord set traps; fleeing, Quetzalcoatl fell into a pit and the bones shattered. He carried the fragments to Tamoanchan, where the goddess Cihuacoatl ground them into meal, and the gods bled themselves over the flour to knead the new humanity into being. He later turned himself into a black ant to steal maize kernels from Tonacatepetl, the Mountain of Sustenance, and gave them to people as food.

The Anales de Cuauhtitlan tells also of Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, priest-king of Tollan (the site of Tula), under whom cotton grew already colored and ears of maize were the size of grindstones, until Tezcatlipoca tricked him with a mirror and cups of pulque. Disgraced, he traveled east to the sea and burned himself on a pyre, his heart rising as the morning star. The famous claim that Moctezuma took Cortés for the returning god took shape largely in post-conquest accounts, and scholars treat it with caution.