Ce Ecatl (MH607v)

Very often, as the gloss shows here, the divine force of the wind, which is a name of a day in the tonalpohualli, the 260-day divinatory calendar, is written without the reduplication of the "e." The result is ecatl, which some define as air or breath, instead of ehecatl, wind. In naming glyphs in the collection, we are trying to be true to the spelling of ecatl, even when we are certain, as here, that ehecatl is likely meant. The big blowing device at the mouth is a tip off to ehecatl (see the Pitztli glyph for further evidence that this is a blowing device). Gabrielle Vail and ‎Christine Hernández (Re-Creating Primordial Time, 2013, ) describe Ehecatl as the wind aspect of Quetzalcoatl, and they note that Ehecatl "wears a buccal (duck) mask through which to blow wind."

Calendrics were an important element in the Nahuas' religious views of the cosmos, and the divine force of the wind (whether ecatl or ehecatl) has a significant role in daily life and the writing system. Most agriculture is temporal for the Nahuas, dependent upon rainfall, and the wind often precedes the rain.