Quetzalcoatl: The Feathered Serpent

Quetzalcoatl is the feathered serpent of Mesoamerican religion — the most important of the pre-Columbian American gods after Tezcatlipoca, and the one whose legend most decisively shaped the encounter of the Old World and the New. He is the bringer of arts, agriculture, the calendar, and the morning star, and he is the central figure of the Toltec, the Aztec, the Maya, the Mixtec, and the Zapotec traditions, in the Mexican valley, on the Pacific coast, and in the highland Guatemala of the Quiché.

The Feathered Serpent is part of the wider dragon family of world folklore, and it stands at the meeting point of the great-serpent traditions of Mesoamerica, the Mayan Popol Vuh, and the modern Chicano invocation of an indigenous god.

The name and the figure

The name Quetzalcoatl is a Nahuatl compound: quetzalli, the long, iridescent green tail-feather of the quetzal bird, and coatl, serpent. The name is therefore “the serpent of the quetzal feathers,” and the figure is a great feathered serpent. In the Aztec stone sculpture of the Templo Mayor, the feathered serpent is shown with a long, sinuous body covered in jade-green and white feathers, with a red tongue forked at the end, with a head of a serpent, with the eyes of a god, and with the beard of an old man. The figure is a manifesto of the meeting of the bird and the snake, the sky and the earth, the god and the creature.

In the older Maya tradition, the feathered serpent is Kukulkan, and the Kukulkan of the Maya is the same figure as the Quetzalcoatl of the Aztec, with a different name in a different language. In the older Toltec tradition, the feathered serpent is the Cé Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the historical and semi-divine ruler of the city of Tula, and the priest-king of the Toltecs. The Cé Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl is the founder of the Toltec capital, the priest of the temple of the Feathered Serpent, the bringer of arts and learning to the Toltecs, the enemy of Tezcatlipoca, and the ruler who, in one version of the legend, was driven out of Tula by Tezcatlipoca’s trickery and who promised to return from the east.

Quetzalcoatl in the Popol Vuh and the Maya tradition

The Popol Vuh, the K’iche’ Maya book of the dawn of life, tells the story of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who descend into the underworld of Xibalba to face the Lords of the Death. The Hero Twins are the children of the maize god, and they are the grandparents of the K’iche’ people. The Popol Vuh tells the story of the creation of the world, the failure of the first humans, the success of the Hero Twins, and the coming of the morning star.

Quetzalcoatl is not the principal figure of the Popol Vuh — that honour belongs to Hunahpu and Xbalanque — but he is the figure of the morning star, the Nim-Ak (the great star), the Venus-figure who returns at the end of the story. The Popol Vuh connects the feathered serpent to the Venus-cycle, to the calendar, to the agricultural year, and to the long story of the Maya and the K’iche’. The feathered serpent is, in the Popol Vuh, the figure that the K’iche’ people claim as their patron and as their ancestor.

The Maya temples of the feathered serpent are at Chichen Itza, where the Templo de Kukulkan (the Temple of the Feathered Serpent) is a stepped pyramid with a feathered-serpent balustrade that descends the staircase, at Uxmal, at Kabah, at Sayil, at Labna, and in the highland Guatemala of the Quiché, the Cakchiquel, and the Tzutujil. The feathered serpent was the patron of the priestly class, and his cult was the cult of the calendar, of the Venus-cycle, and of the agricultural year.

Quetzalcoatl in the Aztec and Toltec tradition

The Aztec Templo Mayor in Mexico City, dedicated in 1487, was a double pyramid with two shrines on top: one for Tlaloc, the rain god, and one for Huitzilopochtli, the war god. Quetzalcoatl had his own temple, the Templo de Quetzalcoatl, the round temple of the Feathered Serpent, which stood near the Templo Mayor in the sacred precinct. The round form of the temple was unusual in the Aztec capital, and it suggested the form of a coiled serpent.

The Aztec Quetzalcoatl is a complex figure. He is the wind god Ehecatl, the bringer of the rains, the creator of the world, the inventor of the arts, the bringer of the calendar, the ruler of the morning star, and the patron of the priesthood. He is also the bringer of the Pulque, the fermented drink of the maguey, and the Totochtin, the four hundred rabbit-gods of the Pulque. He is the Tezcatlipoca Blanca, the white Tezcatlipoca, the good brother of the red Tezcatlipoca. He is the Yohualli Ehécatl, the night-wind, the god of the night and of the wind.

The Toltec Cé Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl is the historical figure that the legend has overlaid with divinity. He ruled the city of Tula, capital of the Toltecs, from 980 to 1020 AD, and he is said to have been a priest-king of the temple of the Feathered Serpent, a bringer of arts and learning to the Toltecs, and a builder of the great city. The legend tells that he was driven out of Tula by Tezcatlipoca, the night god, who tricked him into drunkenness and incest, and that he walked to the east, set himself on a pyre, and burned to become the morning star.

The legend of the return

The legend of the return of Quetzalcoatl is the most consequential of the Mesoamerican prophecies. The legend tells that Quetzalcoatl would return from the east, and that his return would signal the end of the fifth sun, the end of the Aztec world, and the beginning of a new age. The legend is recorded in the Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún (c. 1570), in the Codex Mendoza (c. 1540), in the Codex Chimalpopoca (c. 1550), and in the oral tradition of the highland Mexican, the Totonac, the Mixtec, and the Maya.

The arrival of the Spanish in 1519 was interpreted by Moctezuma II, the Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan, as the possible return of Quetzalcoatl. The Aztec calendar of the year 1519 was the year Ce Acatl, the same year-name as the Cé Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, and the prophecy of the return was active. The arrival of Cortés was welcomed by Moctezuma as a possible return of the feathered serpent, and the interpretation made it possible for Cortés to enter Tenochtitlan, made it possible for the Totonac of Cempoala and the Tlaxcalteca to ally with the Spanish against the Aztec, and made it possible for the conquest to succeed in 1521. The interpretation is also the most controversial, and the modern scholarship has, in the past fifty years, complicated it: Moctezuma was uncertain, the Spanish were uncertain, and the interpretation was a calculation rather than a credulity.

The surviving folk tradition

The feathered serpent has survived in the folk tradition of the rural Mexico and Guatemala. The figure is invoked in the agricultural rites of the campesinos of the highland Mexico, in the danza de los quetzales of the Totonac, in the huehues of the Totonacapan, in the Danza de la Conquista of the highland Guatemala, in the Carnaval of Huejotzingo, in the voladores of Papantla, and in the Day of the Dead altars of the mestizo communities.

The figure is also invoked in the modern Chicano art and the Chicano identity. The feathered serpent is the figure of the Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the Aztec, and the figure of the Mexica people. The feathered serpent is the figure of the mestizaje, the mixing of the indigenous and the Spanish, the figure of the Chicano people. The feathered serpent is the figure of the Raza Cósmica, the cosmic race, the figure of the Latin-American future. The feathered serpent is, in the Chicano art of the 1960s and 1970s, the figure of the Mexican-American identity, the figure of the indigenous identity, the figure of the American identity.

Sources and Further Reading

Nicholson, H. B. “Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl: The Once and Future Lord of the Toltecs.” In Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 15, 1981.
Sahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. 13 vols. University of Utah Press, 1950–82.
Tedlock, Dennis, trans. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Townsend, Richard F. The Aztecs. Thames & Hudson, 2000.