After the destruction of Four Water, the heavens had been raised again and the earth restored to order, but the world remained without the Sun of the present age. The gods therefore assembled at Teotihuacan, the ancient sacred place whose name came to be understood as the place where gods are made or the place where the gods were born.
The Teotihuacan of this account already possessed an antiquity beyond the ordinary histories of kingdoms and dynasties. Later peoples encountered its immense pyramids, avenues, temples, and abandoned compounds and regarded the place as belonging to a sacred past. In the cosmological traditions of the Fifth Sun, it became the setting for one of the most important events since the formation of the earth itself.
There the gods prepared a great divine hearth, the teotexcalli, in which a fire was maintained for four years according to the Leyenda de los Soles. A new Sun could not simply be appointed. A god would have to enter the fire and become it.
Two divine figures were chosen.
The first was Tecuciztecatl, a wealthy and distinguished god whose name is connected with the marine conch shell. In the account recorded by Sahagún, he volunteered when the gods asked who would undertake the task of bringing light to the world.
The second was Nanahuatzin, whose name refers to his afflicted or sore-covered body. He was poor, humble in appearance, and did not put himself forward. The assembled gods chose him.
The contrast between them is emphasized throughout the account. During the prescribed period of fasting and penance, Tecuciztecatl offered objects of great value: fine feathers, gold, precious stones, and costly incense. Nanahuatzin possessed none of these things. His offerings were simple materials, and his acts of penance were performed with ordinary maguey spines. Where Tecuciztecatl displayed wealth, Nanahuatzin offered what little he had.
At the end of their penance, both were brought before the divine fire.
Tecuciztecatl was ordered to enter the flames first.
He approached the fire but drew back from its heat. He tried again and withdrew a second time. Four times he attempted to cast himself into the flames, and four times he failed.
The gods then called upon Nanahuatzin.
He did not hesitate. Nanahuatzin closed his eyes, gathered his courage, and threw himself directly into the fire.
Only after seeing Nanahuatzin enter did Tecuciztecatl follow him.
Both disappeared into the flames.
The gods waited to see where the new light would emerge. Eventually the eastern sky reddened. Nanahuatzin appeared there transformed into the Sun, shining with such brilliance that the gods could scarcely look toward him.
Tecuciztecatl then rose as well.
He had also passed through the divine fire and consequently emerged luminous. For a time the two shone with equal brilliance. The gods judged that two equally powerful lights should not cross the heavens together, particularly when Tecuciztecatl had entered the fire only after Nanahuatzin had shown the courage to do so.
In the account recorded in the Florentine Codex, one of the gods took a rabbit and struck or cast it against Tecuciztecatl's face. His brilliance diminished, and the shape of the rabbit remained visible upon him.
Tecuciztecatl became the Moon.
The familiar rabbit visible in the Moon is therefore not merely a pattern imagined in its markings. It records the distinction established between the two celestial bodies when the Fifth Sun was born.
Nanahuatzin had become the greater light.
The appearance of the Sun did not complete the creation of the age.
Nanahuatzin rose in the east and illuminated the world, but he remained still.
The Moon also remained in place.
The gods questioned why the new Sun did not begin its journey across the heavens. In the version preserved in the Leyenda de los Soles, the Sun answered that he required the blood and sacrifice of the gods before he would move.
The demand extended the same principle that had already governed creation. Tlaltecuhtli had been divided so that the earth might exist. Nanahuatzin had entered the fire so that there could be a Sun. The continuation of the new age now required sacrifice from the divine community itself.
The accounts differ in their details concerning what followed.
In one tradition, the gods accepted the necessity of their deaths and were sacrificed so that the Sun could move. Quetzalcoatl performed the sacrifice, opening the gods and offering their hearts. Another account describes the god Ehecatl, the Wind, taking an active role afterward and blowing with sufficient force to set the Sun into motion.
Not every god accepted death willingly. Xolotl, associated with twins, deformity, dogs, transformation, and the evening star, attempted to escape. He hid first by changing himself into a double-stalked maize plant, then into a double maguey. Finally he entered the water and transformed himself into the creature still called the axolotl, the water-being bearing his name. His transformations did not ultimately save him from the sacrifice required of the gods.
The important point shared by the accounts is that the Fifth Sun could not move by its own creation alone.
Divine life had to be given so that cosmic motion could begin.
Once that sacrifice had been made, the Sun traveled westward.
The Fifth Sun had begun.
The solar power of the present age is commonly known as Tonatiuh, He Who Goes Forth Shining. The creation stories preserve Nanahuatzin as the god who entered the fire and became the Sun, while Tonatiuh is the divine identity through which the Sun of the Fifth Age is most commonly worshiped and represented.
Tonatiuh crosses the heavens from east to west each day. His movement provides light and warmth, establishes the visible rhythm of day, and participates in the larger measurement of sacred time.
That movement is not regarded as automatic.
The creation of the Fifth Sun established a relationship of reciprocity and debt between gods and mortals. The gods sacrificed themselves so that the world could possess a moving Sun. The Sun in turn required nourishment for the continuation of its journey.
Blood was understood as a particularly potent sacred substance, sometimes described metaphorically as chalchihuatl, precious water. The heart contained an especially important concentration of life and vital force. Sacrificial rites involving blood and hearts consequently became connected with the maintenance of the solar order.
This principle should not be reduced to the idea that the Sun is simply a monster that consumes human beings. Nahua sacrifice belonged to a much wider system of exchange involving food, flowers, incense, animals, blood drawn through autosacrifice, precious objects, ritual labor, fasting, and human lives under particular ceremonial circumstances. The gods gave to the world, and the people of the world were expected to give in return.
The Fifth Sun itself was founded through such an exchange.
The gods did not demand from humanity something they had been unwilling to do themselves.
The present age is named Nahui Ollin — Four Movement.
Ollin expresses movement, motion, and the joining of opposing forces through which change occurs. The sign occupies the center of the great representation known as the Sun Stone, surrounded by the signs of the four previous creations. The arrangement places the Fifth Sun within the history of those lost ages rather than outside it.
Unlike Four Jaguar, Four Wind, Four Rain, and Four Water, Four Movement has not yet ended.
The traditions nevertheless describe the manner of its eventual destruction. The Leyenda de los Soles and related accounts state that the Fifth Sun will end through movement of the earth, usually understood as great earthquakes, accompanied in some traditions by widespread famine.
The prophecy does not provide a reliable date.
Four Movement is a calendrical sign that occurs within the sacred count, not a unique future day that can simply be located by counting forward from the beginning of the age. Priests can interpret omens, celestial events, earthquakes, eclipses, and calendrical combinations, but the surviving cosmology does not provide an ordinary timetable for the destruction of the Fifth Sun.
For the people of the present world, the eventual end of the age is therefore a certainty without a known schedule.
Generations may be born and die without witnessing it.
Kingdoms may rise and disappear first.
The knowledge of the previous Suns does, however, make earthquakes especially significant. A violent tremor is a natural event experienced by people living among active mountains and unstable ground, but it also resembles the force through which the current creation is ultimately expected to end. Priests distinguish ordinary earthquakes from claims that the final movement has begun, just as they distinguish an ordinary storm from the destruction of Four Wind.
The prophecy concerns the fate of the world, not a requirement that every campaign upon Tlalticpac become an attempt to prevent its destruction.
The Tlalticpac inhabited in the present age is the result of everything that preceded it. Its ground was formed from the primordial earth-being. Its heavens were raised and, after the flood, restored. Its terrain carries the effects of jaguar, wind, fire, water, volcanic change, erosion, and the passage of immense spans of time.
The Fifth Sun shines over that same land.
Cities now occupy valleys that may have held settlements during earlier creations. Lakes cover older ground. Volcanic deposits conceal former surfaces. Ancient structures have been incorporated into newer ceremonial centers, while others remain isolated beyond settled country. The physical map of the Fifth Sun is therefore not a new world placed over the old one but the latest condition of a landscape repeatedly transformed.