Nanacatltzatzi, He who speaks when intoxicated with the poisonous mushroom, called nanacatl.
These four brothers, according to the myth, were born of the goddess, Hueytonantzin, which means "our great, ancient mother," and, with unfilial hands, turned against her and slew her, sacrificing her to the Sun and offering her heart to that divinity.[30] In other words, it is the old story of the cardinal points, defined at daybreak by the Dawn, the eastern Aurora, which is lost in or sacrificed to the Sun on its appearance.
Of these four brothers I suspect the first, Ixcuin, "he who looks four ways," or "has four faces," is none other than Quetzalcoatl,[31] while the Ancient Flint is probably Tezcatlipoca, thus bringing the myth into singularly close relationship with that of the Iroquois, given on a previous page.
Another myth of the Aztecs gave these four brothers or primitive heroes, as:--
Huitzilopochtli.
Huitznahua.
Itztlacoliuhqui.
Pantecatl.
[Of these] Dr. Schultz-Sellack advances plausible reasons for believing that Itztlacoliuhqui, which was the name of a certain form of head-dress, was another title of Quetzalcoatl; and that Pantecatl was one of the names of Tezcatlipoca.[32] If this is the case we have here another version of the same myth.
[§3. Quetzalcoatl, the Hero of Tula.]
But it was not Quetzalcoatl the god, the mysterious creator of the visible world, on whom the thoughts of the Aztec race delighted to dwell, but on Quetzalcoatl, high priest in the glorious city of Tollan (Tula), the teacher of the arts, the wise lawgiver, the virtuous prince, the master builder and the merciful judge.
Here, again, though the scene is transferred from heaven to earth and from the cycles of other worlds to a date not extremely remote, the story continues to be of his contest with Tezcatlipoca, and of the wiles of this enemy, now diminished to a potent magician and jealous rival, to dispossess and drive him from famous Tollan.
No one versed in the metaphors of mythology can be deceived by the thin veil of local color which surrounds the myth in this its terrestrial and historic form. Apart from its being but a repetition or continuation of the genuine ancient account of the conflict of day and night, light and darkness, which I have already given, the name Tollan is enough to point out the place and the powers with which the story deals. For this Tollan, where Quetzalcoatl reigned, is not by any means, as some have supposed, the little town of Tula, still alive, a dozen leagues or so northwest from the city of Mexico; nor was it, as the legend usually stated, in some undefined locality from six hundred to a thousand leagues northwest of that city; nor yet in Asia, as some antiquaries have maintained; nor, indeed, anywhere upon this weary world; but it was, as the name denotes, and as the native historian Tezozomoc long since translated it, where the bright sun lives, and where the god of light forever rules so long as that orb is in the sky. Tollan is but a syncopated form of Tonatlan, the Place of the Sun.[33]