Who was Coyolxauhqui, the moon goddess whose body was cast down a sacred mountain in one of the most powerful myths of the Mexica (Aztec) world?

In this episode of The Goddess Divine Podcast, we journey into the cosmology of Tenochtitlan and the sacred stories of the Mexica people to meet Coyolxauhqui "She of the Bells on Her Cheeks." Beginning with a creative historical microstory set beneath the stars near the Templo Mayor, we trace her lineage, her contested position within Mexica cosmology, and the full, harrowing myth of Coatlicue, Huitzilopochtli, and the war at Coatepec. We follow the story forward more than five hundred years, to the moment in 1978 when a Mexico City electrical crew struck stone instead of soil and, without meaning to, brought Coyolxauhqui back into the daylight.

We examine how the Mexica understood the moon, sacrifice, sacred warfare, and humanity's responsibility within a living cosmos. We also explore the fraught survival of her story through colonial documentation by Bernardino de Sahagún and Diego Durán, the archaeological discovery of the Coyolxauhqui Stone, and what modern historians, artists, and Indigenous and Chicana scholarship reveal about her enduring, unfinished significance.

This episode contains discussion of ritual sacrifice, dismemberment, and colonial history.

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