Aztec Pottery shows Lucifer was also present in the Aztec Empire

Tezcatlipoca mask

To the Aztecs, the god Tezcatlipoca was a creator divinity that shared credit with the god Quetzalcoatl for the creation of the world from the body of the Earth Monster.  To the Spanish conquistadors and priests who destroyed the Aztec empire, Tezcatlipoca, the god of fate and bringer of dissent, was likened to Lucifer in the Christian tradition.

Tezcatlipoca’s cult goes back at least as far as the Toltecs (c. 950 CE).  They told a tale of a mirror of dark obsidian glass that could predict famine.  At a time of great need, when people were starving in the land, Tezcatlipoca found and hid this mirror in order to keep up the people’s suffering.

God Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror

Whereas Quetzalcoatl,  known s the Plumed Serpent, was a civilizing cultural hero who introduced mankind to maize, Tezcatlipoca was a god of war who brought men into a cycle of destruction and new creation.

Known as the Lord of the Smoking Mirror, Tezcatlipoca was believed to wear a mirror of the volcanic glass obsidian in the back of his head and was often pictured in Aztec pottery and Aztec masks.  Sometimes he was also said to have a mirror in place of one of his feet. 

Traditions vary as to whether Tezcatlipoca lost his foot when he and Quetzalcoatl were fighting the Earth Monster in order to build the earth and sky, or when he was flung out of the thirteenth heaven as a punishment for misusing his dark power to seduce a fair goddess.  Often he was depicted simply with a missing foot, his leg ending in the shinbone.

As the god of night, Tezcatlipoca was patron of concealed nocturnal activities, often dark and wicked ones such as adultery and stealing.  Sometimes he was depicted carrying a scepter concealing a hole through which he could see the hidden side of people and their motives.  Using his shadowy mirror, it was said he could also see the patterns of the future and the secret imaginings of people’s hearts.