Aztecs and the Solar Eclipse
As we’re just days from another “Great American Eclipse,” whose duration of totality will be nearly five minutes, I wanted to take a moment to share what that unexpected darkness implied for Indigenous people of Mesoamerica before the Spanish Invasion.
The Nahua peoples of the Triple Alliance (“Aztec Empire”) referred to the solar eclipse as “icualoca in tonatiuh” — “the sun’s devouring”—or “in cualo tonatiuh” (literally “when the sun is eaten”).
They believed that the event occurred when the fierce stellar deities known as Tzitzimimeh attacked the sun and attempted to devour it. As protection against being fully consumed, the sun was accompanied in the morning by the winged spirits of warriors who had fallen in battle … and in the afternoon / evenings by cihuateteoh: the fearsome revenants of women who had died giving birth to a child.
Every time this war is waged in the heavens, the Nahua sages affirmed, certain precautions had to be taken. Pregnant women who were caught out under the eclipsed sun would cause their child to be born with a disability, most often harelip. The only protection (other than not being out) was to carry an obsidian blade at the breast.
