Aztec certificate

You were born on Chicuace Ocelotl, 6 Jaguar, the 214th day of the sacred count of two hundred and sixty. The jaguar of the night, the warrior and the first Sun of the world. This was your tonalli: the heat of the sun that entered you at birth and shaped your fate. Its first gift is courage and power, its second magnetic presence; its shadow is pride.

The number 6, the root, sets how strongly the sign speaks, and the trecena adds its god: Chalchiuhtotolin. Above the night of your birth stood Tlazolteotl, Lady of Desire and Purification, and over the day stood Teoyaomiqui, Lord of Warriors Who Died, who sent the screech owl as your sacred bird.

The day points to the north of the world, Mictlampa, the place of the dead, the black quarter of Tezcatlipoca, the Black Smoking Mirror. The year was 8 Rabbit, and the month was Panquetzaliztli. The pages that follow read each part in turn.

You asked above all about purpose and direction. These are the parts of the reading that speak most directly to what you are here to do, and where you are heading.

Inwardly Ocelotl is the jaguar of the night, warrior of Tezcatlipoca. Its spiritual life is mysterious and powerful, and it finds peace in solitude and darkness.

Your great gift is courage and inner power.

The elders would say to a child of Ocelotl: your strength is for protecting, never for frightening.

Ocelotl is the jaguar, the most powerful animal of the Americas, lord of the night forest and of the hidden places, emblem of Tezcatlipoca and of the jaguar warriors, the elite of the Mexica army. The first of the Suns was the Jaguar Sun. As a day sign its patron is Tlazolteotl, the goddess of desire and confession. To be born on Jaguar is to have power, courage and a fierce independence. You are a warrior in spirit: brave, proud, protective and passionate. You are mysterious, and you move through life on your own terms. Sahagún recorded that One Jaguar was held to be a day of ill fortune, of captivity, and those born on it must be careful; the jaguar's danger is that its power turns on itself. Your gift is a magnetic, commanding presence and the courage to walk where others dare not go, in the world and in yourself.

The elders would say to a child of Ocelotl: your strength is for protecting, never for frightening.

Six, Chicuace, is the first number of the second half: five and one more, a return to the ground. Six people are responsible, loyal and attached to home and family. They are slow to change and quick to care. In the old count Six was a number of weight; it gives you roots, and your task is to let them feed something that grows.

In love a Six is caring and harmonious, devoted to family. At work a Six is a carer, teacher and community builder.

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The sacred count is divided into twenty trecenas of thirteen days. Each begins on a day numbered one and is ruled by a god painted large on its page of the Codex Borbonicus. You were born on the 6th day of the trecena of Ce Atl.

Your trecena opens on One Water and is ruled by Chalchiuhtotolin, the Jewelled Turkey, a form of Tezcatlipoca who brings both disease and its cure. Born in it, you have powerful influence over others and must use it well.

Tlazolteotl, the Eater of Filth, was the goddess of love, desire and confession, who took in people's faults and made them clean. Under her the night brings passion and the power to forgive. You are magnetic, honest about the body and the heart, and able to hear the worst about someone and still love them. Her children must learn to forgive themselves as well.

The nine Lords of the Night ruled the nights in turn, and each brought its own influence to everything born under it. Tlazolteotl is the 7th of the nine.

Tlazolteotl's gift is purification: you transform what is shameful into healing.

You were born as the sun rose out of the East, at the hour when Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, the Morning Star, fires his first light. The Mexica greeted the sun at this moment with offerings of blood and quail, because it had come back alive from the underworld. A dawn birth gives you the energy of beginnings and of victory over darkness: you wake things up, and you rise again after every night.

Your day belongs to the North, Mictlampa, the black quarter of the world and the direction of the land of the dead, ruled by Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, lord of fate and of the night. North people are deep, serious and strong-willed. They are not afraid of darkness, in the world or in themselves, and they hold the memory of the family and the old ways. Their lesson is to bring their wisdom out into the daylight.

The twenty day signs are dealt to the four directions in turn, as the Mexica drew them around the edge of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer: east, north, west and south. Ocelotl falls to the north.

The North is the direction of Mictlan, of night, winter and the ancestors, ruled by the black Tezcatlipoca. In daily life it asks for reflection, discipline and memory; your best season is winter, when the world rests.

Only four day signs could name a year: Reed, Flint, House and Rabbit, each belonging to one direction. With the numbers one to thirteen they make a cycle of fifty-two years. You were born in the year 8 Tochtli, carried by the south.

You were born in a Rabbit year, carried by the South. Rabbit years were fertile and fast, under the four hundred rabbit gods of pulque and celebration, though a One Rabbit year was feared for famine, as in 1454. A Rabbit year gives a life of abundance and quick change: you multiply what you are given, and you must take care in the lean seasons.

Rabbit years belong to the South, to abundance and the full sun. Those born in them are fertile with ideas and children, and their best years are those of harvest and celebration.

The solar year had eighteen months of twenty days, each with its own great festival in Tenochtitlan, and then the five nameless days. You were born on the 6th day of Panquetzaliztli, the feast of Huitzilopochtli, the sun and war god, at the winter solstice, with banners raised across the city. Born now, you carry the will to lead and to keep the sun moving through the dark of the year.

Born in the month of raising banners, you are brave and devoted. Your gift is courage.

The first world, ruled by Tezcatlipoca, was the world of the Jaguar Sun, peopled by giants. It ended when jaguars devoured its people. Your day echoes this oldest of the Suns: there is something primal in you, a strength from the beginning of time, a body that knows things before the mind does. You are made for endurance. The lesson of the first Sun is that strength alone does not keep a world alive; it needs care.

The Jaguar Sun echoes in your day: the first world of giants, devoured by jaguars. It gives you strength and a connection to ancient power, and the lesson that strength alone does not last.

Your great gift is courage and inner power.

Your shadow is fierceness without purpose; aim your strength.

As a child, bold and strong-willed, fearless and sometimes defiant, needing firm, respectful guidance and lots of space.

As a woman, powerful and magnetic, a leader and a protector with a mystery about her that draws people in.

In later life Ocelotl is a powerful, respected figure, still fierce, now wise, and admired for the battles it has won.

In Tenochtitlan, a birth was greeted as the return of a warrior from battle. The midwife gave a war cry and spoke to the newborn in the old formal language, the huehuetlatolli: precious necklace, precious feather, you have come to earth. Then the family sent for the tonalpouhqui, the reader of days, who opened the painted tonalamatl and looked for the day of birth.

Your day would have been found as Chicuace Ocelotl. The reader would have studied its sign and number, the god of its trecena, its Lord of the Night and its bird, and told the parents what kind of life was written there. If the day was difficult, he would look for a better day within the next few to hold the naming, because the day of the bathing ceremony could soften a hard fate.

At the naming, the child was bathed by the midwife, offered to the four directions and to the sky, and given its name: often the day name itself, Chicuace Ocelotl, joined to a personal name chosen by the family. A small shield and arrows were laid beside a boy and a spindle and broom beside a girl, and the child's umbilical cord was buried, on a battlefield for a boy and by the hearth for a girl. Every child, the Mexica said, came to earth to work, and to be a precious thing.

In love you are passionate, intense and possessive. You need a strong partner who does not fear your power and who respects your solitude. When you choose, you defend your partner like your own life.

As a friend Ocelotl is brave, mysterious and protective, a powerful ally in dark times who reveals itself slowly. It keeps a small circle and defends it fiercely.

You do well in roles that demand courage and command: leadership, the military, police, surgery, sport, business, politics, and any field where you can rise on your own merit.

Ocelotl earns through courage, strategy and leadership; it does well in competitive fields, the military, protection and any work done at night or behind the scenes.

Every Mexica child was told at birth that they had come to earth to work. For a child of Ocelotl, the work that brings honour is the work that uses courage and power.

The Nahua believed that every person carries three souls, each in its own part of the body. The tonalli lives in the head, above all in the crown: it is the heat of the sun received at birth, the day name and the fate it brings. It can be frightened out of the body by a shock, which is why the crown of a child's head was protected and why a frightened person was said to have lost their tonalli. Ocelotl is the shape of your tonalli.

The teyolia lives in the heart: it is the soul of memory, feeling and character, the part of you that thinks and loves, and the only one that travels after death to the world of the dead. Poets and artists were said to have a deified heart, a yollotl that the gods had touched. The ihiyotl lives in the liver: it is breath, passion and desire, a strong force that must be kept in balance, because when it is too strong it harms the people around you.

For a child of Ocelotl and of the north, the three are in a particular balance. Your tonalli is strong when you live by the qualities of your day; your teyolia grows through the people you love; and your ihiyotl is the fire behind both. Guarding all three, the old healers said, was the whole art of a good life: warm in the head, open in the heart, and calm in the liver.

Every 260 days the sacred count comes back to Chicuace Ocelotl: a day that belongs to you more than any other, good for beginnings, offerings and asking for what matters most. The next three:

Every twenty days Ocelotl returns with another number, a smaller echo of the same day. The next:

After fifty-two years both calendars return together to the moment of birth: the xiuhmolpilli, the binding of the years, when the Mexica put out every fire and lit a New Fire on the Hill of the Star. Your binding of the years will come on Monday, 30 July 2046, at the age of 52: the day your whole calendar is renewed.

In the solar count, the year now running is 2 Acatl, 2 Reed. The year now running is carried by a year bearer from a neighbouring direction, and it flows naturally from the one you were born in. This is a year of steady building and quiet progress, of practical gains and good company. Use it to put down foundations for the years that follow.

The Mexica honoured the day of birth with offerings to its god. For Ocelotl: copal burned at night, and a moment of silence in the dark. Make it on your next Chicuace Ocelotl, and in the morning, facing the north.

The day sign follows the correlation that places the fall of Tenochtitlan on 1 Coatl, 13 August 1521; the solar year and year bearers follow Alfonso Caso, counted without leap days as the Mexica did. The gods of the day signs follow the Codex Borgia, the trecenas and the Lords of the Night and of the Day the Codex Borbonicus, and the birth customs the Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún. The day-sign paintings are from the Codex Magliabechiano (16th century). Interpretations are written for reflection and entertainment.