Thirteen Heavens

Common card · No. 465264

Before the Spanish Invasion, the Nahua people such as the Aztecs, Chichimecs and the Toltecs believed that the heavens were divided into multiple levels, either nine, twelve, or thirteen, depending on the group.. Each level contained different meteoreological, astronomical, or divine phenomena. In Book 10 of the Florentine Codex, we learn that the Toltecs "understood that there were many divisions of heaven; they said there were twelve layers [mahtlāctlanepanōlli omōme]." Yet Book 6 of the same ethnographic work relates that Aztec midwives would tell newborns after bathing them, "You were created in the place of duality [ Ōmeyōcān ], the place above the nine heavens. Your mother and father—Ōmetēuctli and Ōmecihuātl, the heavenly lady—formed you, created you."

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