Horoscopes · Systems of many cultures
Aztec (Tonalpohualli) · Aztec day sign 2
Ehecatl
Wind
Ehecatl, 'wind', day sign 2 of the Aztec tonalpohualli. Patron: Quetzalcoatl.
Ehecatl is the wind, and also the name of the wind god, an aspect of Quetzalcoatl who sweeps the road for the rain gods. The sign suggests breath, movement and change. Diviners regarded it as a changeable sign: wind can carry life-giving rain or scatter what has been built. Those born under it were thought to be inconstant, quick and mobile.
The patron deities of the day signs differ between the surviving codices; the list used here follows the Codex Borgia tradition as reconstructed by modern scholars. The tonalpohualli was read by trained diviners together with the number of the day and its trecena, so a sign was never interpreted alone.
Personality
quick · communicative · changeable · imaginative · mobile · restless
In the Aztec tonalpohualli, a person whose tonalli, or birth sign, is Ehecatl is described as quick, mobile and changeable as the wind that gives the sign its name. Its patron is Quetzalcoatl in his form as the wind god, who sweeps the road for the rain, and the sign carries the sense of breath, speech, movement and change.
Aztec diviners, as described in colonial sources, regarded Ehecatl as an inconstant sign: wind may bring life-giving rain or scatter what has been built. Those born under it were thought to be lively, versatile and quick of mind, gifted in speech and ideas, but also unstable, restless and liable to be blown from one course to another without settling.
In love Ehecatl people are portrayed as charming and expressive but in need of freedom; in work, as messengers, teachers, speakers and travellers, suited to anything that moves. Like every tonalli, Ehecatl was never read in isolation: the number of the birth day and the character of the trecena could strengthen or soften its influence, and a newborn's naming could be moved to a better day.
Sources and further reading
- The Aztec Calendar Stone — Khristaan D. Villela and Mary Ellen Miller (eds.), 2010
- Codex Borgia: A Full-Color Restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript — Gisele Díaz and Alan Rodgers, 1993
- The Aztecs — Michael E. Smith, 2012