Crocodile (Cipactli)

Cipactli, the earth caiman, opens the twenty day signs of the tonalpohualli, and Sahagun's informants read the day itself as a fortunate beginning, promising those born under it the chance of prosperity if the observances the sign demanded were kept. Nahua cosmology across central Mexico holds Cipactli as the primordial creature whose body became the floating earth, torn apart by Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl acting together in one version of creation recorded in colonial sources, so the day sign carries the whole world's own origin behind its name rather than only an animal's character. As the sign that opens both the twenty day count and, doubled with the number one, the entire 260 day tonalpohualli at 1 Cipactli, its augury set the tone the tonalpouhque, the calendar readers, used to introduce the count to a new client, a foundation day before the readings that followed grew more varied and more mixed. The caiman's own nature, a creature of the water's edge belonging fully to neither land nor sea, gave later interpreters a natural image for beginnings that have not yet settled into a fixed shape, fitting a sign that stands at the exact threshold of the count rather than within its ordinary run.

Cipactli's patron in the twenty day sign count is Tonacatecuhtli, lord of sustenance, one half of the creator pair Sahagun places at the origin of the Mexica pantheon, dwelling with his consort Tonacacihuatl in Omeyocan, the place of duality atop the highest of the thirteen heavens, a fittingly foundational patron for the sign that opens the whole count. Its direction is east, the quarter of sunrise and of light, the first of a four direction rotation, east, north, west and south, that repeats every four day signs across the full twenty, so that Cipactli shares its eastward association with Coatl, Atl, Acatl and Ollin, the signs standing five places apart from it in the cycle.

Cipactli is not among the four year bearer signs, the select group of Calli, Tochtli, Acatl and Tecpatl spaced five places apart that alone could open a solar year in the separate 365 day xiuhpohualli, since 365 divided by 20 leaves a remainder of five and only signs sharing that particular spacing recur as year openers; Cipactli's role stays confined to the 260 day divinatory count rather than extending into the civic calendar of years. As the trecena patron of its own opening week, Tonacatecuhtli governs identically in both roles, a rare case where a day sign's own patron and its trecena's patron are the same deity.