Ehecatl's Patron and the North

Ehecatl's patron in the day sign count is Quetzalcoatl himself in his wind aspect, the same deity named as the sign's alternate identity, a doubling that makes this one of the clearest cases in the whole tonalpohualli of a day sign and its governing god sharing a single name and character rather than standing as two separate figures brought together only by the codices' assignment. Its direction is north, the second station in the four direction rotation the twenty signs follow, shared with Miquiztli, Itzcuintli, Ocelotl and Tecpatl, the signs five places on from Ehecatl in either direction around the cycle.

Ehecatl is not a year bearer, standing one place off from Calli at the third position, the nearest year bearer sign in the sequence, so its influence in the civic solar calendar was confined to marking individual days within a year rather than opening one. Quetzalcoatl's patronage of this trecena and day sign together sits alongside his separate appearance as patron of Trecena 2, opening on Ocelotl, where the codices give him a harder augury than the gentler wind reading here, a reminder that one deity's several patronages across the tonalpohualli did not carry a single fixed character throughout.