Matlactli Once Ehecatl (CQ)

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." That the "beak" may have been perceived as a blowing device is supported by the glyph for Pitztli (below).

The text that refers to this person calls him Quetzalecatzin, which more closely approximates the glyph. According to Sebastián van Doesburg [for the citation, see our Bibliography], Quetzalecatzin was a well-known prehispanic governor of Tecamachalco (which is in the modern state of Puebla), who had Popoloca heritage. His father was Cuetzpaltzin, whose governing seat was at Cuauhtepec, on the mesa to the west of present-day Tecamachalco, Puebla. Quetzalecatzin's wife was Chicome Tochtli (Seven Rabbit). Quetzalecatzin was a governing ruler (tlahtoani) who distributed lands and macehuales to his son in Huitziltepec and Todos Santos Xochitlan, also called Ecatepec, in the mid-fifteenth century.

Other images of the divine force of simply the wind (Ehecatl) appear below for the purpose of comparing the beak and other protrusions above the beak of Quetzalecatzin. Ehecatl was a sign in the 260-day divinatory calendar, called the tonalpohualli in Nahuatl. Calendrics held an important place in Mesoamericans' religious view of the cosmos.