Tlaloc

Tlaloc was honored with a twin temple atop the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital located in present-day Mexico City. The temple had two shrines at its summit—one dedicated to Tlaloc and the other to Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec war god—representing two fundamental aspects of Aztec cosmology: rain/agriculture and war. The Templo Mayor was excavated in the 1970s and 1980s, revealing offerings associated with Tlaloc including blue-pitched vessels and marine shells.

Tlaloc is consistently depicted with distinctive 'goggle eyes' (ringed eyes resembling goggles) and prominent fangs or jaguar-like teeth, making him one of the most easily recognizable deities in Mesoamerican art. He often holds a lightning rod or a vessel for water and is frequently painted blue, the color associated with water and fertility. This iconographic style was remarkably consistent across more than a millennium of worship throughout central Mexico.

Tlaloc was worshipped continuously for over a millennium, from at least the Teotihuacan period (around the 1st century AD) through the rise and fall of the Aztec Empire in the early 16th century. His goggle-eyed imagery appears in murals at Teotihuacan and was adopted by subsequent cultures including the Maya (as Chac) and Mixtec civilizations. The Spanish conquest in 1521 ended formal worship, but elements of rain deity veneration persisted in syncretic indigenous practices.

The Aztecs performed child sacrifices to Tlaloc because children's tears were believed to please the rain god and ensure abundant rainfall for crops. Archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence indicates that dedicated ceremonies took place on mountaintops during the dry season, with children selected as offerings for their symbolic purity and their ability to produce tears. The most famous archaeological site associated with these practices is Tlalocan, located on Mount Tlaloc east of Mexico City.