Malinalli's Patron and the South

Malinalli's patron is Patecatl, lord of medicines, husband of Mayahuel and the deity credited with discovering the roots and herbs used both to heal illness and to ferment pulque, a patronage that fits the grass sign's own theme of hardship met with a remedy, medicine being precisely the discipline of recovery the sign's augury of reversals implies is available to those who seek it. Its direction is south, the third instance of that direction after Cuetzpalin and Tochtli, standing five places apart in the recurring four direction rotation.

Malinalli is not a year bearer, falling between Tochtli at eight and Acatl at thirteen, outside the spacing that marks the select four. Patecatl's patronage here as a day sign governor is a distinct office from his role as trecena patron of Trecena 11, opening on Ozomahtli the monkey, a different sign from Malinalli, so the lord of medicines holds two separate calendrical posts across the tonalpohualli, one attached to a sign read for hardship and recovery and the other to a sign read for pleasant sociability, a spread that reflects how thoroughly the pantheon's deities were distributed across the count's many independent slots rather than clustered by theme.