1 Mazatl

Trecena 3 opens on 1 Mazatl, the deer, under the patronage of Tepeyollotl, heart of the mountain, the jaguar aspect of Tezcatlipoca associated with caves and the echo that Nahua thought read as his own voice answering from within the rock. Sahagun's informants promised the deer week's children mild good fortune joined to the animal's own restless, timid nature, an augury gentler than the trecenas either side of it yet unsteady, favouring those inclined to travel and to the open country beyond the town rather than settled pursuits.

Within this trecena falls 2 Tochtli, the rabbit numbered two, remembered in the wider tradition as the day of the pulque gods, the Centzon Totochtin, the four hundred rabbit deities of drunkenness whose feast days were scattered through the count and whose most infamous appearance closes Trecena 20; its presence here made the deer week one the readers watched for the temptations of drink alongside its gentler general reading. A week favourable to hunters and to travellers by the readers' general judgement, it draws its character from Mazatl's own place in Nahua thought as the wild beyond cultivation, the animal that keeps to open country and startles at little provocation, exactly the quality Sahagun's informants folded into their reading of those born beneath it.

Trecena 3 runs from 1 Mazatl through 13 Quiahuitl, rain, the day sign that opens Trecena 7 later in the count, its thirteen days moving the sequence forward through deer, rabbit, water, dog, monkey, grass and reed before closing on the storm sign. Its third position in the twenty trecena sequence places it early in the full 260 day round, still close enough to the count's opening under Cipactli that the tonalpouhque treated the first several trecenas as together setting the tone for the year's reading before the more difficult central trecenas, such as those governed by Itzpapalotl and Tlazolteotl, were reached.

The pairing of a gentle overall augury with the pulque day 2 Tochtli embedded within it illustrates a general feature of the system Boone's study of the painted books of fate describes: a trecena's stated character was a summary judgment, not a guarantee that every one of its thirteen days read identically, and a skilled diviner distinguished the week's baseline from the sharper or softer readings individual numbered days carried within it. The deer week's span also carries the day sign Tochtli itself, one of the four year bearers, meaning a year could open within this very trecena in the separate 365 day solar count that ran alongside the 260 day tonalpohualli.