Centeotl

Centeotl is the maize god, the personification of the ripened ear that sustained central Mexican life, and the fourth of the nine Lords of the Night. Sahagun's Florentine Codex treats Centeotl as young and vigorous, closely tied to Xilonen, the goddess of the young green maize, and to Chicomecoatl, seven serpent, the older and more matronly grain goddess, the three figures together tracing maize through its life from tender shoot to harvested ear, though the sources vary on whether Centeotl is read as male, as gender was not always kept sharply apart in maize deity iconography.

The great agricultural festivals of the Mexica ritual year, Hueytozoztli in the growing season and the harvest observances folded into Ochpaniztli, centred on maize deities of this cluster, and Centeotl's cult reflects how completely the crop underwrote Mexica subsistence, since a poor maize year was a crisis reaching every household rather than an abstract concern.

In the parentage myth recorded in the Anales de Cuauhtitlan, Centeotl is the child of Piltzintecuhtli and Xochiquetzal, the night lord immediately before him in the nine fold sequence, so that dawn and flower together are read as bringing forth the grain, a lineage that ties three consecutive night lords into a single family story even though Sahagun's calendar chapters record the nine simply as a list with no explicit narrative connecting them.

Sources Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New SpainBernardino de Sahagun; translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble with History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex ChimalpopocaJohn Bierhorst (trans.)

Centeotl holds the fourth position among the Yohualteuctin, recurring every ninth day of the tonalpohualli starting from day four, a rotation that runs independently of the twenty day signs and the thirteen trecena numbers and realigns with them only once every 2340 days. A date under Centeotl's night was read, following the tonalpouhque's layered method that Sahagun describes, as adding the maize god's character of growth, sustenance and patient increase to whatever the day sign and trecena already indicated, a favourable colouring for undertakings tied to planting, provisioning, or the raising of children, though the surviving sources give no complete reading by reading manual and much of this inference follows from Centeotl's known character rather than a preserved liturgy for night lord readings specifically.

The night lord cycle's independence from the day sign cycle means Centeotl's dates fall under every one of the twenty signs and every trecena in turn across a full 2340 day period before the pattern repeats, so there was no single fixed maize day in the tonalpohualli; the calendar priests read Centeotl's turn wherever it fell, in the codices' tonalamatl tables that lay the nine lord row beneath the twenty day sign row for direct reference, work Duran also describes the priesthood performing to advise on the timing of both private and civic undertakings.

Sources Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of FateElizabeth Hill Boone with Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New SpainBernardino de Sahagun; translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, Book of the Gods and Rites and The Ancient CalendarDiego Duran; translated by Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden