Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl America
The plumed serpent god of Central America. He was the giver of breath and the god of winds. At the same time he was a creator deity, identified with the sun, and the god who descended into the land of the dead, mictlan, where ‘he fell like one dead’. On his recovery, perhaps aided by his double, he gathered up the precious bones there, returned to the earth and, sprinkling them with his own blood, he turned them into human beings.

The mystery surrounding the figure of Quetzalcoatl derives from his dual character. On one hand he is patently a deity at the centre of an amazing myth: as a man, on the other hand, he has acquired the legendary status of a cultural founder hero. In his History of Things of New Spain, written in the sixteenth century, Bernardino de Sahagun wrote: ‘In the city of Tollan reigned many years a king called Quetzalcoatl…. He was exceptional in moral virtues … the place of this king among these...

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