Codex

The five directions

In Mesoamerican thought, the universe isn't read in four cardinal points but in five · the four horizons plus the center. Each direction carries its color, its god, its animal, its time of day. This site follows that plan.

• Center · Xiuhtecuhtli · jadeThe cosmic axis, the fire that burns without ever going out. Here is the home, the hub, the possible return.
• East · Tonatiuh · goldDawn, the rising sun. Here are the services, what I offer to build with you.
• South · Huitzilopochtli · turquoiseNoon, the warrior hummingbird. Here are the projects, what I've already carried through.
• West · Ehecatl · ashDusk, the breath of wind. Here is contact, an open channel.
• North · Mictlantecuhtli · obsidianNight, the lord of the land of the dead. Here is Teyolía · Memory, what was kept rather than erased.

Huitztlampa, the birth of the sun at Coatepec

The South is Huitztlampa, the place of thorns, the region of the hummingbird. The Florentine Codex (Sahagún, book III) tells that at Coatepec, the serpent mountain, Coatlicue was sweeping the temple when a ball of feathers made her pregnant. Her children, Coyolxauhqui and the four hundred Huitznahua, the stars of the South, took the affront for a disgrace and climbed to kill her. Huitzilopochtli was born armed at the summit, struck Coyolxauhqui with the xiuhcoatl, the fire serpent, and scattered the four hundred. This is sunrise: every dawn, the moon is defeated and the stars fade. On this site, the Projects page replays that gesture. You arrive at night: the four hundred stars are thrown into the sky as you enter, the moon still keeps watch, high in the sky. As you scroll down, the hummingbirds, into which the warriors fallen in battle return, hunt the stars one by one · the sun rises in the east, red then white, and the moon sets. The xiuhcoatl prowls the sky, a mosaic of turquoise with embers at the joints, and at the top of the arc it strikes the stone, whose ring catches fire. Its tail carries the sign of the current year: in Nahuatl, xihuitl means turquoise, grass, comet and year at once. The fire serpent is also the serpent of time. In front of the stag, in the grass, stones write the year as monuments do: as many standing stones as the number, and a stele bearing the year-bearer glyph. What is attested: the blow of the xiuhcoatl, the defeated moon, the four hundred scattered, the count in dots. What is our reading: the serpent stiffening into a shaft (Seler saw in it the ray of the sun), the trembling mountain, the ring lifting, the turquoise flash, the stones catching fire.

Mictlampa, the descent to Mictlán

The North is Mictlampa, the place of the dead, the region of obsidian and night. Ordinary dead do not get there at once: according to Sahagún (book III) and the Codex Vaticanus A, the teyolía travels four years through nine layers before reaching Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl. It crosses the river Chiconahuapan with the help of a dog, passes between two mountains that clash together, faces the obsidian wind of Itzehecayan that cuts like blades, then Temiminaloyan, where invisible hands shoot arrows. On this site, the Memory page is that descent. The stag stands in the black water of the tezcatl, the mirror: like Tezcatlipoca, the smoking mirror, it does not reflect, it reveals or it lies. Fog creeps in from the rim, obsidian blades sweep from east to west around the stag, and the deeper you go, the more arrows fall around him before dissolving into smoke. A path of cempasúchil, the flower that guides the dead home, stretches over the water toward the North. And Xolotl does pass, always, here: follow him with your eyes, he is the one who ferries souls across the river.

Cihuatlampa, the sun carried to its setting

The West is Cihuatlampa, the place of women, the region of dusk. Sahagún (book VI) tells that the sun, once at its zenith, is received by the Cihuateteo, the women who died in childbirth, deified like warriors fallen in battle, and that they carry it in a litter of quetzal feathers down to the sunset, where the people of Mictlán take it for the night. Book I names Ehecatl, the wind, the sweeper who opens the road for the rain gods. The Cihuateteo were no gentle figures: on certain days of the calendar they came down to the crossroads, where people dreaded their passing and left them papers and offerings. Their sculptures show them with faces painted in chalk, unbound hair, clawed hands, a plain skirt with a knotted belt. On this site, the Contact page is that evening road. You arrive in full daylight, and the further you go down, the further the sun falls toward the hills, on the right of the frame, while four black silhouettes carry its litter of feathers. When it enters the earth, they settle at the crossroads, facing the stag, and dance in the wind that sweeps everything toward the West. Papers remain on the ground, and butterflies escape from them: Sahagún (book III, appendix) says that dead warriors come back after four years as birds and butterflies; the Cihuateteo, deified like them (book VI), are given the same return here. That is our reading, not the letter of the text. What is attested: the litter of quetzal feathers, the descent to the crossroads, the papers and offerings, the chalk faces, and the butterflies for the warriors. What is our reading: the ash and coral colour (the sources give the West as white, the region of Quetzalcoatl), the dance, the visible wind, and the silhouettes themselves: the bodies are black and the faces stay patches of dimmed chalk, featureless, borrowing nothing from the faces of the sculptures.

Tlahuizcalpan, the darts of dawn

The East is Tlahuizcalpan, the house of dawn, the region of Tonatiuh. The sources call it red: our gold is a licence, gold being the metal of the sun. The Leyenda de los Soles tells that at Teotihuacan, after Nanahuatzin threw himself into the fire to become the sun, the sun stood still in the sky and burned everything. Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, the lord of the house of dawn, who is Venus the morning star, grew angry and shot darts at him with his spear-thrower. He missed. The sun shot a dart back and turned him into Itztlacoliuhqui, the curved obsidian blade, the god of frost, the one through whom everything bent under the cold. Then the gods sacrificed themselves, and Ehecatl, the wind, finally pushed the sun along its road. The Anales de Cuauhtitlan add that Venus, on the day she reappears at dawn, wounds with her darts the old, the children, the lords or the rain, depending on the day sign. On this site, the Services page is that dawn. You arrive in a world caught in frost: the stag turned to glass, the Piedra under ice, time stopped, and he still breathing. At the edge the milpa lies flattened and small, killed by the cold: Itztlacoliuhqui is precisely the frost that kills plants. The moment the sun appears before you, the volley of darts leaves the morning star, the sun answers with a single dart falling from its shaft of light, and all the ice flies apart: the stag rears, the wind rises, a shaft of light falls on him, gold fills the carvings of the Piedra, the maize straightens and grows, and all that remains of the frost is a curved obsidian blade planted before him. If you scroll back up, the frost takes the screen for a few moments, and the world freezes again. What is attested: the motionless sun pushed by the wind, the darts of Venus, the dart in return and the metamorphosis into frost, the red East of Tonatiuh, the morning star that wounds. What is our reading: the whole world caught in ice, the explosion, the planted blade, the golden colour. And as in the West, the site watches the real sky: when Venus truly is the morning star, the volley is certain, otherwise one time in three.

The four previous suns

Before Nahui Ollin, four worlds lived and perished. Each left a lesson on how to die · and therefore how to live. Nahua cosmology does not think of creation as linear but as cycles that beget one another by collapsing. Our current sun is the fifth. It is mortal like the previous ones.

• Nahui Ocelotl · 4 JaguarThe first sun. Inhabitants were giants who lived on acorns. The world collapsed under jaguars who devoured the race. Fall by excess of strength.
• Nahui Ehecatl · 4 WindThe second sun, ruled by Quetzalcoatl. An immense wind blew the world away, humans transformed into monkeys still clinging to branches. Fall by lack of grounding.
• Nahui Quiahuitl · 4 Fire RainThe third sun, ruled by Tlaloc. A rain of fire burned the world, inhabitants transformed into turkeys who keep their red crest. Fall by celestial anger.
• Nahui Atl · 4 WaterThe fourth sun, ruled by Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt. A flood drowned the world, humans transformed into fish. Fall by tears held back too long.

Ollin, the tremor of the 5th sun

We live under Nahui Ollin, the sun of the four movements. Nahua prophecy says our world endures only as long as it trembles: when Ollin ceases, the earth stills one final time, Tonatiuh dies, the Tzitzimime descend. Every breath, every heartbeat, every touch is living proof of Ollin. On this site, when you press the mouse or tap the screen, a radial wave crosses the scene: that is Ollin manifesting. The stag Mazātl, messenger between worlds, feels the vibration before your eyes do. The four guardians awaken, the central fire redistributes. You are performing a ritual whose name you did not know. The historic Ollin glyph is a central circle bordered by four cardinal rays · the same five-point cross as the compass in the bottom right. Gesture and structure answer each other.

Tonalpohualli, the count of destinies

The sacred calendar counts 260 days: twenty day signs turning against thirteen numbers, so that a pair such as 7 Mazātl, 7 Deer, only comes back after 260 days. The day of birth gave the child its name and its omen; from it comes the word tonalli, the share of heat and destiny a person carries. The deer is the seventh sign, and it is the sign this site was born from. What the site does with it: it remembers the day of your first visit and names it for you, in the book of traces. Going from a modern date to a tonalpohualli day requires a correlation, and scholars have not settled it; we use Alfonso Caso's, anchored on the fall of Tenochtitlan, 13 August 1521 Julian, that is 23 August 1521 Gregorian, which was 1 Cōātl. Competing correlations shift the count by a few days. We do not hide that debate, and we do not settle it either.

The three entities of the Nahua being

In Nahua thought, a person is not a single soul but three entities that coexist, each lodged in a part of the body. They separate at death and take distinct paths. Understanding this triptych is understanding why Teyolía names the Memory page of this site.

• Teyolía · heartThe seat of memory, personality, intimate knowledge. It resides in the heart and, at death, travels to Mictlán after a four-year journey. It carries what you have been.
• Tonalli · headThe vital force tied to the day of birth in the tonalpohualli calendar. It resides in the head and radiates like a heat. It can escape during intense fright · hence the rituals to recall the tonalli after a shock.
• Ihíyotl · liverThe breath, the passions, the desires. It resides in the liver and belly. If unmastered, it can escape and affect others · moral illnesses come from there.

The stag, Mazātl

The nahual is that essence which reveals itself in its true animal form. I chose the stag over the eagle or the jaguar · deliberately avoiding the "Aztec imagery" cliché to stay in the more discreet register of presence: messenger between worlds, associated with grace, vigilance, and the ability to hide one's true nature from others.

Who writes

Sylvain Maurier, senior frontend developer based in Lyon. Ten years shipping interfaces (React, Next.js, Vue, React Native), an ongoing specialization in digital accessibility (RGAA, certification exam October 23, 2026). A simple thread: accessibility is coded, not just audited. PDF reports don't change the world, fix code does.

The family that inhabits this site

Nahual is a French-Mexican project as much as a personal one. Elda, my partner, is Mexican, a native Spanish speaker, a teacher. Léopoldine is our daughter, born in Lyon. Alondra is her older sister, adopted in Mexico. Nahua cosmogony isn't a randomly chosen exotic backdrop · it's a family heritage I'm still learning, with the respect that requires.

On cultural appropriation

This site pays tribute to a living culture, not a museum. The cardinal motifs (sun, flower, blade, spiral, quincunx) are stylized evocations inspired by Mesoamerican iconography, not reproductions of sacred glyphs. Calendar glyphs, the Fejérváry-Mayer codex, the Piedra del Sol are deliberately absent from decorative elements without context. The red line is simple: celebrate what is public, leave what is sacred to those who hold it.

What inspired me

Sacred Labs and Joseph Santamaria for WebGL sobriety, Lusion and Immersive Garden for web cinematography, Bruno Simon for the narrative daring of a 3D portfolio. The Fejérváry-Mayer and Borgia codices for the cosmological structure. Miguel León-Portilla's and Alfredo López Austin's studies for the depth of Nahua philosophy. Thanks to Elda for the patience, to Léo for the micro-naps that saved a few deadlines.

Sources

Everything this Codex claims comes from somewhere. Here is where to read it, online when a digitization exists, and where to see it or buy it for real.

• Florentine Codex · Sahagún, around 1577Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. Book I: Ehecatl, sweeper of the road of the rain gods. Book III: the birth of Huitzilopochtli at Coatepec (chapter 1), the nine stages toward Mictlán and the dead warriors returning as birds and butterflies (appendix). Book VI: the Cihuateteo carrying the sun in a litter of quetzal feathers. Book VII: the sun created at Teotihuacan, and Xolotl. Book VII, chapter 2: the sun created at Teotihuacan, motionless until the gods' sacrifice and Ehecatl's breath. Book IV: the book of omens, which unfolds the twenty trecenas of the tonalpohualli and tells what each day promises. Book VII: the binding of the years and the New Fire, the 52 years after which every fire was put out.Online : Digital Florentine Codex, Getty Research Institute, Book III (Nahuatl, Spanish, English) · French translation by Jourdanet and Siméon, Paris, 1880, on archive.orgIn hand : Original at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. Editions: Anderson and Dibble, Florentine Codex, University of Utah Press, 12 volumes; Porrúa, Mexico City, Sepan cuantos series, 1999, ISBN 9684322658.
• Codex Vaticanus A · Codex Ríos, around 1570 to 1589The layers of Mictlán painted folio by folio, and the previous suns. The pictorial source of the descent to the North.Online : DigiVatLib, Vatican Apostolic Library, Vat. lat. 3738 · annotated pages on FAMSIIn hand : Vatican Apostolic Library, Rome. Facsimile: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz, 1979.
• Codex Chimalpopoca · Leyenda de los SolesThe four suns, how each ended, and Nahui Ollin. The five suns story in this Codex comes from here. The darts of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli against the motionless sun, and his metamorphosis into Itztlacoliuhqui, the frost: that is the story of the Services page.Online : John Bierhorst, History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca, digital lending on archive.orgIn hand : John Bierhorst, University of Arizona Press, 1992, ISBN 9780816502455.
• Codex BorgiaA divinatory manuscript, one of the cosmological structures behind this site. Plate 53: Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli and his darts. The figure is not copied on the site: there, the god is the star itself.Online : DigiVatLib, Borg. mess. 1In hand : Vatican Apostolic Library, Rome. Annotated edition: Anders, Jansen and Reyes García, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City, 1993, ISBN 9789681641542.
• Cihuateotl · Mexica sculpture, 1400 to 1521One of the deified women of the West, in stone: kneeling, arms raised at the sides of the chest, clawed hands, unbound hair, a plain skirt with a knotted belt. It is the source for the pose and the garment of the bearers on the Contact page, never for their face.Online : Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 00.5.30, online recordIn hand : Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gallery 360. The four Cihuateteo found together in Mexico City are at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexica hall.
• Codex Fejérváry-MayerIts first page, the four directions around the centre, is the plan of this site.Online : World Museum record, National Museums LiverpoolIn hand : World Museum, Liverpool.
• The Coyolxauhqui stoneThe monolith found in 1978 at the foot of the Templo Mayor, the dismembered moon at the bottom of Coatepec. The gesture the Projects page replays.Online : Museo del Templo Mayor, INAHIn hand : Museo del Templo Mayor, Seminario 8, Centro Histórico, Mexico City.
• The Piedra del SolThe Ollin glyph at the centre, the four suns around it: the compass at the bottom right descends from it.Online : Museo Nacional de Antropología, INAHIn hand : Museo Nacional de Antropología, Chapultepec, Mexico City.
• Alfredo López Austin · Cuerpo humano e ideologíaThe reference study on teyolía, tonalli and ihíyotl, the three entities of the Nahua person.In hand : UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Mexico City, 1980. In English: The Human Body and Ideology, University of Utah Press, 1988, ISBN 9780874802603.
• Miguel León-Portilla · La filosofía náhuatlNahua thought read by one of its own: the tlamatinimeh, time, the suns.In hand : UNAM, Mexico City, 1956, reprinted since. In French: La pensée aztèque, Seuil, Paris, 1985, ISBN 9782020067126.
• Nahuatl dictionariesFor xihuitl, tezcatl, Huitztlampa and every glossed word in this Codex.Online : Gran Diccionario Náhuatl, UNAMIn hand : Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl, University of Oklahoma Press, 1992, ISBN 9780806124216.
• Alfonso Caso, Los calendarios prehispánicos, 1967The correlation the site uses to name the day of a visit: the fall of Tenochtitlan, 13 August 1521 Julian (23 August Gregorian), was 1 Cōātl. It is the best documented date in the Mexica calendar, reported by both Indigenous and Spanish witnesses. Other correlations exist (Rafael Tena, among others) and shift the count by a few days.Online : Review and polemic, Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl (UNAM, 1969)In hand : Alfonso Caso, Los calendarios prehispánicos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1967.