“And after this the gods [Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli] created the heavens beyond the thirteenth, and made the water, and in it they created a great fish called Cipactli, which is like an alligator, and from this fish they made the earth, as will be related. [...] Afterwards, all four gods being assembled together, they made the earth out of the fish Cipactli, to which they gave the name Tlaltecutli; and they paint it as a god of the earth, stretched upon a fish, because it was made from him.” (Historia de los mexicanos....: 25-26).
The passage above narrates the creation of earth from the body of a water monster called Cipactli. This goddess was conceived by the ancient Mexicans as a fierce being, like a crocodile, cut in half to constitute the great division of the world: the sky, the earth and the underworld. It was a vertical separation between the upper part, the cosmos, masculine and solar, and the lower part, feminine and aquatic. Nahua myths describe Cipactli’s suffering after being torn apart, for which the gods compensate her and designate her as the source of all humankind’s support in life. Therefore, the goddess symbolizes the origin, earth, food and abundance. For ancient Mexicans, Cipactli is the first day of the calendar of destinies, Tonalpohualli, and is represented as the head of a crocodile.
In Mesoamerican cosmovision, this vertical order is the geometric principle of the world and underscores ideas about how the cosmic machinery works, based on the flow of strengths on different planes. Some fragments of the myths from the central highlands refer to this image when stating that, at one time, half of the goddess Cipactli could not stay up in the sky and fell onto the earth, killing the first humans. It rained a lot during this time and the gods came up with an idea to raise the sky: they ordered the creation of four roads, starting from the center of the earth out towards the ends of the world. One god was put on each corner and turned into a tree, to be able to hold up the sky. The rest of the gods put the stars in the sky. To this day, indigenous cultures synthesize this idea as a quincunx, a figure formed by a horizontal plane that symbolizes the earthly plane, at whose center is the axis mundi, represented by several elements: corn stalks, trees or gods. The projections of the central element can be found on each corner.
Cosmic trees are important elements in Mesoamerican cosmovision and religious traditions. They are a very old presence and, according to Alfredo López Austin, their shape as an extension of the monster of the earth goes back as far as 100 B.C. The union of sky, earth and the underworld means the cosmic tree is none other than the body of the earthly goddess who imposes order; projected on each corner of the world, a path opens up, associated with colors, beings and features that are her own, as well as being connected to the primal tree. The central tree brings together “the power and symbolism of the sky’s supports,” therefore, its nature is “singular, quadruple and quintuple” (López Austin, 1997: 91).
The idea of cosmic trees with hollow trunks is still part of indigenous cultural beliefs today, because the gods and the forces of the sky and the underworld travel through the hollow trunks to come together on earth throughout the year. The meeting of opposing and complementary flows allows for the cyclical movement of the cosmos, sometimes as the turn of the seasons, as life and death, as the growth of corn, among other processes. In several ancient and contemporary myths the actuation of the great cosmic machinery appears as a violent rupture of the cosmic tree and what it ejects, whose bodies bleed, releasing the gifts and the support that the earth carries within. Currently, the cultures ritually revitalize those who hold up the earth, keeping the cyclical rhythm of the forces in place.