Quetzalcoatl

Sources in the supplied corpus treat Quetzalcoatl primarily as a long-standing, pervasive sacred principle rather than providing a single, consistent origin myth; he is presented both as a cosmological emblem (the Plumed Serpent uniting sky and earth) and as a figure embedded in Toltec-Aztec narrative traditions. Some traditions connect the deity-image to a legendary earthly ruler often called Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl (scholarly summaries reference Nicholson's work on that figure), and colonial-era summaries record narratives of Quetzalcoatl 'having been on earth' as a wealthy high-priest in a city rendered as Tuta/Tollan. Interpretive sources characterize the emblem as ancient and foundational to Mesoamerican religious thought, comparable in centrality to major symbols in other world religions.

Across the supplied materials Quetzalcoatl is consistently described and depicted as a hybrid serpent adorned with feathers — a 'feathered' or 'plumed' serpent often rendered in green-feathered iconography and sometimes shown with wing-like feather arrangements. Sources note the symbol unites bird (sky) and snake (earth) qualities; colonial records summarized in later accounts also distinguish that the term could refer both to the sacred divine image and, in some usages recorded by authors such as Sahagún, to mundane animals that bore the same name.

The supplied sources emphasize domains and patronage rather than discrete miraculous feats. Quetzalcoatl is associated with wind and air (his wind aspect named Ehecatl), the planet Venus, and with intellectual and cultural spheres: arts, crafts, merchants, metallurgy (attributed in some summaries as a founder of metallurgy), learning, and priestly authority. He functions as an emblem of occult knowledge and wisdom in theosophical and comparative treatments and is presented as a civilizing or cultural-founder figure in Toltec-Aztec narratives; one source describes him in a terrestrial role as a wealthy high-priest whose authority and patronage legitimize technical and social institutions.