In our country’s schools it is common to teach the passage from the Mexica myth in which Huitzilopochtli, god of war and main deity, kills his sister Coyolxauhqui; although few remember that the fratricidal weapon is “a snake made of firebrands that was called xiuhcóatl”, as Fray Bernardino de Sahagún describes in his Book III of the General History of Things in New Spain.
The xiuhcóatl, powerful serpent of fire
First, Huitzilopochtli or Lefty Hummingbird He was the son of Coatlicue and because of the important place he occupied in the Templo Mayor, we know how important it was for the Mexicas: it symbolized war and the tribute received from it by the conquered peoples. Let us remember that under the tutelage of this god, the Mexicas became a powerful empire.
Therefore, a deity of this relevance required an equally powerful weapon, in this case embodied in the xiuhcóatl, a word that in Nahuatl means xiuh, fire/sun/jade and cōātl, snake.
Therefore, it was a sacred animal, a living weapon and the deadliest of the Mexica gods, with which Huitzilopochtli not only killed Coyolxauhqui, but also his 400 brothers and with which he helped his people to get ahead in countless battles.
Tales of the Deadly Living Weapon
In the Florentine Codex there is an account of the xiuhcóatl in the siege imposed on the Mexica by the Spanish, also included in The Vision of the Vanquished. In this it is narrated that Cuauhtémoc appointed an important Mexica captain named Opochtzin to wear the clothes that had belonged to the tlahtoani Ahuítzotl and that he had an insignia with the fire serpent that with his power could stop the conquerors.
Similarly, in the Azcatitlan Codex, the xiuhcóatl appears as a deadly weapon, which thanks to the direct intervention of Huitzilopochtli, allows the Mexica to win a difficult battle against the people of Tzompanco.
The xiuhcóatl as a celestial body
Another theory among those who study the Mexica worldview is that the fire serpent inhabited the firmament and the set of stars called the Pleiades were placed in its trunk. It should be remembered that the Mexicas were scholars of the stars and knew the movements of the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, Venus and the stars.
Consequently, being a creature of fire that inhabited the heavens, they considered it the protective nahual of some deities such as Xiuhtecutli but above all of Huitzilopochtli. It is no coincidence that in many representations, Xiuhtecuhtli and Huitzilopochtli appear with the fire serpent tied on their backs.
Due to the above, there are experts who consider that the xiuhcóatl represented a celestial body whose light disperses the darkness of the night and for this reason only Huitzilopochtli, the solar god, could wield it.
Finally, the Borbónico, Vaticano A-Ríos and Telleriano-Remensis codices speak of this mythical animal and it is also represented in the Stone of the Sun and in the stone sculpture on display in the British Museum in London.