  tezcatlipoca (;  the vowel transliterated here as [i] may in fact have been long or followed by a glottal stop which is sometimes written as an ) was a central deity in aztec religion, and his main festival was the toxcatl ceremony celebrated in the month of may. one of the four sons of ometeotl, he is associated with a wide range of concepts, including the night sky, the night winds, hurricanes, the north, the earth, obsidian, enmity, discord, rulership, divination, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty, war and strife. his name in the nahuatl language is often translated as "smoking mirror"for a discussion of the many interpretations of the meaning of the name tezcatlipoca see olivier (2003) pp. 14-15. and alludes to his connection to obsidian, the material from which mirrors were made in mesoamerica which were used for shamanic rituals and prophecy. another talisman related to tezcatlipoca was a disc worn as a chest pectoral. this talisman was carved out of abalone shell and depicted on the chest of both huitzilopochtli and tezcatlipoca in codex illustrations.   he had many epithets which alluded to different aspects of his deity: titlacauan ("we are his slaves"), ipalnemoani ("he by whom we live"), necoc yaotl ("enemy of both sides"), tloque nahuaque ("lord of the near and the nigh") and yohualli Ãecatl ("night, wind"), ome acatlthis name which is derived from his birthdate in the aztec "2 reed" which is the first date in the aztec year is sometimes also spelled omacatl ("two reed"), ilhuicahua tlalticpaque ("possessor of the sky and earth").for a summary of tezcatlipocas epithets and their siginificance see olivier (2003) chapter 1. when depicted he was usually drawn with a black and a yellow stripe painted across his face. he is often shown with his right foot replaced with an obsidian mirror or a boneâan allusion to the creation myth in which he loses his foot battling with the earth monster. sometimes the mirror was shown on his chest, and sometimes smoke would ema
Aztec_gods Aztec_mythology_and_religion Creator_gods Earth_gods Magic_gods Mesoamerican_deities Mesoamerican_mythology_and_religion Night_gods War_gods