House III · The codexMayahuel
The goddess who nursed four hundred children and became a plant.
400Centzon Totochtin
Four hundred breasts
The Nahua peoples told that Mayahuel was the goddess of the maguey. She had four hundred breasts, and with them she nursed her four hundred children, the Centzon Totochtin, the four hundred rabbits.
To the Nahua, four hundred was not an exact figure. It meant "beyond counting", as many as the leaves in a field of maguey.
Coming down from the sky
Mayahuel lived in the sky, watched by her grandmother, one of the tzitzimime, the guardians of the night. Quetzalcóatl climbed up to find her and together they came down to earth.
To hide, they became two branches of the same tree, side by side.
From what was buried, the maguey
The tzitzimime found them. They broke Mayahuel's branch and tore it apart. Quetzalcóatl buried what remained of her, and from that place the first maguey grew.
That is why the plant holds water in the desert and gives without asking: it is the body of the goddess who fed them all.
This story has several versions depending on the colonial chronicle that recorded it. This is the best known.
Why this name
The sacred is never rushed
Mayahuel is not the goddess of tequila. She is the goddess of the plant it is born from. Carrying her name means respecting that plant's time: hence her emblem on every bottle, hence nothing is rushed.
The red of this page is cochineal, the dye the peoples of Mesoamerica drew from an insect that lives on the prickly pear.
Glossary
- Mayahuel
- Nahua goddess of the maguey.
- Centzon Totochtin
- "Four hundred rabbits", the children of Mayahuel.
- Tzitzimime
- Celestial beings of the night; in the story, those who overtake Mayahuel.
- Metl
- The Nahuatl name for the maguey.
Back