One of the structural principles of Mesoamerican cosmovision is the opposition and complementarity between masculine and feminine, and the primordial couple is one of these expressions. In the case of the Highlands, Oxomoco and Cipactonal are examples of mythological, ritual and symbolic dimensions that in the past were fundamental to the structuring of social, religious, calendrical and cosmic order.
In ancient Nahua traditions, this couple was created by Quetzalcóatl and Huitzilopochtli, and tasked with ordering time and managing the divinatory calendar or tonalpohualli (260 days). The ancient ones would have had twenty at their service, teaching the tonalpouhque, priests in charge of reading destiny, the divinatory art of counting the days. The myth in the Historia Eclesiástica Indiana, by Frair Gerónimo de Mendieta, tells the story of Oxomoco, Cipactonal and Quetzalcóatl meeting in a cave in Cuernavaca. It is here they agreed to give a name and a shape to each of the days. The woman started with ce Cipactli in favor of “a certain thing that moves through the water” called Cipactli; with the saurian’s consent, they painted it and gave it first place:
The old lady’s husband set out two reeds, her grandson three houses, etc. and so they put up to three signs on each plane, out of respect for said authors and other gods who had Indians in the middle of each plane, painted and very well placed in this calendar book, which had three planes, and on each plane thirteen signs, which also were used to count the days, weeks, months and years (Mendieta, XIV).
Indeed, the elderly couple appear in the codices conducting rituals in front of books and divinatory instruments. The woman carries corn kernels given to her to conduct predictions and healings, while Cipactonal carries his censer, a bone awl and a bag of copal. As the parents of the first lineages, the ancients gave the macehuales (lower status individuals) the tasks of working the land, spinning, divining, healing illnesses and performing rituals in concert with the stars. The functions and the union of Oxomoco and Cipactonal represent the complementary duality that organizes cosmology, social life, and preservation of ritual, therapeutic and calendrical knowledge.