Tezcatlipoca

God of Aztec mythology , Tezcatlipoca is at the same time the brother and the worst enemy of Quetzalcoatl, and the most feared of all the Aztec divinities. Its name literally means in Nahuatl “smoking Mirror”. It has also different epithets which return to several aspects of its divinity: Titlacauan (“We are its slaves”), Ipalnemoani (“That by whom we live”), Necocyaotl (“Enemy on the two sides”), Tloque Nahuaque (“Lord of the close relation and the distance”) and Yohualli Ehecatl (“Night, Vent”), Ome acatl (“Two reeds”), Ilhuicahua Tlalticpaque (“Owner of the sky and the ground”).

In its temple, its statue was hidden and only some priests could contemplate it. Once per year, one always held for him most beautiful of the prisoners for sacrifice and four young girls to be used to him symbolically as wives.

Tezcatlipoca is the god of the Chasse, of the Royauté, the Temps, the providence, the wizards and the memory.

The black color symbolizes this god perfectly. The bone of its missing foot is a Miroir. A shoe is attached to the other foot to represent its agility. Its collar is used to him to see in the future and the heart of the men. It has a head of Jaguar striped black and yellow. In the “veracious history of the conquest of News-Spain” the author Bernal Diaz del Castillo names it by deforming it in “Tezcatepuca”.

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